What are the main components of Piaget’s pre-operational stage of development ?
- Egocentrism
- Centration
- Appearance as reality
- Animism
Describe centration in relation to conservation experiments
Centration refers to the tunnel like thinking that preschool children possess where they often leave out important factors of a particular thought problem and concentrate on the basic problem at hand. For example, in the experiment of conservation of liquid, two beakers of water were filled up with equal amounts. The beakers however, were two different shapes, and thus when asked if the amount of water was equal children often will say that it is not.
Describe appearance as reality with an example
Appearance as reality refers to the inability of children to have perspective of objects meaning they see objects for their physical appearance. The means a child who sees a man in a scary mask may act fearful as they do not understand there is a person behind that mask and it is just a costume.
What are the proposed 5 children’s naive theories ?
- Movement
- children realize that animals can move themselves but objects cannot - Growth
- children realize that animals will get bigger but objects do not - Internal parts
- Children realize objects and humans have different parts on the inside - Inheritance
- They realize that only people will resemble their parents - Healing
- Animals and humans can break and be healed but objects must be fixed by humans
Describe the information-processing perspective on development
Rather than seeing the preschool years as an individual “pre-operatinal” stage, this theory regards development as continued growth of several cognitive skills
What are the 3 main components of the information-processing theory
- Attention
- Autobiographical memory
- Counting
Describe Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
His theory concentrated on the socio-cultural influences of a Childs physical and cognitive development. Essentially develop through social interactions with others and those who are more experienced
What are the 3 main components of Vyg’s theory
- The zone of proximal development
- Scaffolding
- Private speech
Describe the zone of proximal development
- the zone of proximal development describes the difference between what a child can do with and without the support of an adult or parent
For example, in a given task like cleaning their room they understand the task at hand, but require directions like what task to do first and so on
