Transcript Ch05a

Behavioral Capacities of the
Newborn
• Newborns have little muscle control,
and exhibit the greatest purposeful
movement with their eyes and mouths.
• Development proceeds from the head
down and from the midline out, and so
gradually babies can move their trunks,
limbs and fingers.
Behavioral Capacities of the Newborn
• Newborns’ Vision
– Newborns have far from perfect vision, but see far
better than was believed just a few generations ago
Behavioral Capacities of the Newborn
• Newborns’ Hearing
– In general, infants suck more vigorously
when they hear sounds that they find
stimulating - an indicator of attention?
• Human voice
• Most sounds eventually produce habituation
• Playing new sounds for an infant will
increase responding, and dishabituation
Behavioral Capacities of the Newborn
• Newborns’ Learning and Memory
– Infants show a marked preference for
their mother’s voice over another
woman’s voice.
– They showed this preference on the day
of their birth!
Behavioral Capacities of the Newborn
• Newborns’ Learning and Memory
– Older infants (2-3 months old) show
ability to learn responses and remember
them for days afterwards
• Kicking their legs to make a mobile move.
– Nine month olds can learn to press a lever
to move a toy train around a track
– Operant conditioning!!
Module 10.2
• The Development of Thinking and
Reasoning
Jean Piaget’s Views of Development
• He began his psychological career
administering IQ tests, but found that
he was bored with this activity. He
was however fascinated by the
incorrect answers that children would
give.
• Children think differently from adults,
both quantitatively and qualitatively.
• Children of different cognitive
maturity levels react to the same
experience very differently.
An Overview of Piaget’s Theory
• The Four Stages of Intellectual
Development
– Sensorimotor
– Preoperational
– Concrete Operations
– Formal Operations
Birth to 1
1 to 7 years
7 to 11 years
11 years and up
An Overview of Piaget’s Theory
• The Sensorimotor Stage (0-1 yr.)
– Sensorimotor stage: at this early age
behavior consists primarily of simple motor
responses to sensory stimuli.
– Infants respond only to what they see and
hear, not what they remember or imagine.
– By the end (1 year), the infant has
developed a sense of self, but object
permanence isn’t complete
• However, 6 month-olds might
understand the difference between
possible and impossible events!
An Overview of Piaget’s Theory
• The Preoperational Stage (1-7 yrs.)
– Preoperational stage because the child
lacks operations (reversible mental
processes).
– The lack of operations leads to errors in
cognition such as egocentric thinking.
An Overview of Piaget’s Theory
• The Preoperational Stage
– preoperational children lack conservation.
– The inability to conserve results in a failure
to recognize that changes in shape and
arrangement do not always signify changes
in amount or number.
An Overview of Piaget’s Theory
• The Concrete Operations Stage (7-11)
– Reversible operations and seem to
understand the conservation of physical
properties.
– During the stage of concrete operations
children can perform mental operations
on concrete objects.
– They may however have trouble with
abstract or hypothetical ideas.
An Overview of Piaget’s Theory
• The Formal Operations Stage (11-up)
– Formal Operations: the mental
processes used to deal with abstract,
hypothetical situations.
– These are processes that demand logical,
deductive reasoning
– This stage is just before adolescence
– Some people take longer to reach formal
operations, and some people never do.
An Overview of Piaget’s Theory
• Are Piaget’s Stages Distinct?
– Piaget believed that the four stages of
intellectual development were discrete,
and that each one represented a major
reorganization in cognitive processes.
– More recently though researchers have
shown that this conclusion is not entirely
warranted.
An Overview of Piaget’s Theory
• Implications for Education: Piaget
– Children must discover certain concepts
on their own.
– Children’s attention must be directed to
key aspects of concepts when they are
ready to learn those concepts.
– The teacher needs to determine the
child’s level of functioning and then teach
material appropriate to that level.
An Overview of Piaget’s Theory
• Implications for Education: Vygotsky
– Zone of proximal development: What a
child can do alone and what a child can do
with assistance from others.
– Instruction should occur within the zone,
but, whenever possible, bring the child to
the boundary (more sophisticated concepts).
Reading Issue 4
• Les Cohen and Marks
(U. Texas)
• Karen Wynn (Yale)