Heads up… your next assessment:

‘Genie – The Wild Child’ & Attachment/Development Theories

• Week 2 Wednesday  I will hand out extended response assessment
• Week 2 (Pupil Free Day)  watch ClickView documentary and
complete textbook reading and questions.
• Week 3 – Prepare for extended response assessment
• Week 3 (Friday)  Assessment – Extended Response
Syllabus Points (today)
Lifespan psychology
domains of development
• theory of cognitive development – Piaget (1936)
• Process of schema formation – assimilation, accommodation, equilibrium and disequilibrium
• Stages and developmental changes
• sensorimotor – object permanence
• pre-operational – egocentrism, animism, symbolic thinking, centration, seriation
• concrete operational – conservation
• formal operational – abstract thinking
• Use of Piagetian tasks to determine developmental changes
• invisible displacement
• three mountains
• conservation
• pendulum problem
Recall 'Developmental Psychology’
Recall - Developmental psychology is an area that focusses on how a
person grows and changes their behaviour over the course of their life.
• Emotional development
• Language acquisition
• Learning morals
• Motor skills and coordinated movement
• Development of the self concept/self awareness
• Developmental changes and learning difficulties
Theory of Cognitive Development (1936)
• Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, proposed in 1936,
emphasises that children actively construct their understanding of the world
through a series of stages.
• According to Piaget, children progress through four (4) stages of cognitive
development (Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational and
Formal Operational).
• Each stage is characterised by specific cognitive abilities and ways of
thinking (milestones/developmental changes).
• Piaget believed that interactions with the environment play a crucial role in
shaping a child’s cognitive development, as they constantly assimilate new
information and accommodate their existing mental structures to form more
complex and accurate schemas about the world.
Theories – Jean Piaget
Piaget was interested in how children think, after administering
intelligence tests to children
• Focussed on the cognition/cognitive aspect of child development
• He was intrigued by reasoning that led to children giving wrong
answers
• He considered that we build an understanding of our world and
develop our thinking skills, language and the rules we follow,
through active interaction with our environment
• From the moment we are born we are given a lot of information. But
how do we organise all of this information - ’schemas’
Schema (organised ideas, beliefs)
• A cognitive or mental framework of the world which holds knowledge about every
piece of information – objects, events, people etc.
• Schema help organise organise our thoughts so that we can then apply them to other
situations/circumstances/objects.
• Schemas are the basic building blocks that enable us to form a mental representation of
the world around us.
• Mental structures that represent a person's knowledge about objects, people or
situations derived from prior experiences and knowledge, that help explain or even
simplify the world around us. They also set our expectations for certain social and
textual contexts and guide particular behaviour and cognitive processes.
• We are meaning making machines. The mind allows us to pull from our schemas to
‘fills in the blanks’ allowing us to paint a picture of an event or person so that our
‘ideas’ further develop.
• This autofill saves us time and energy mentally, but can create inaccurate judgements,
or stereotypes.
Consider an index card cabinet!
Think of an index card cabinet in your brain where you store
everything that you’ve ever learned, experienced, or witnessed.
That’s a lot of information to fit in one mind!
Inside the cabinet are different folders labelled with specific topics – representing
different types of schema. There are many types of schema that help us organise
the world: social schema, person schema, self-schema, event schema and many
more.
In the folder for social schema there is an index card that encompasses what you
know about birthdays. There’s another index card on how to behave in a
restaurant, and another for how to act at a rave.
In the folder for person schemas there’s an index card that encompasses what
you know about Taylor Swift.
1st word that comes to your mind
 What things come to mind when I say
‘birthday’?
Piaget observed as children developed schema and use them like
building blocks. What starts out as very simple schema become more
complex and begin to explain a longer list of concepts in the world.
The first time a child attends a birthday party, for example, they may not
have a solid schema for what will happen at the party. Through their
experience at the party and by listening to their parents explain what is
happening, they start to build the schema.
The next time they hear about a birthday party
or get an invitation, they will have more of a
grasp of what is to come and how they should
behave.
Theories – Piaget: Schemas
A schema is an idea or belief about what something is and also how
to deal with it (i.e. the rules at the country club)
• by adulthood, we have a vast number of these, ranges from those for
chairs and tables to concepts of love and democracy
• Two processes by which we gain and change schemas
• assimilation
• accommodation
Theories – Piaget: Schemas
• Assimilation
• Assimilation is fitting new experiences or new information into our current
schemas/understanding of the world
• So, our schema remains the same

• E.g. 3 year old Shaun had simple schema for a ball that incorporated
everything that was round
• assimilated grapes and olives into this schema, called them ‘ball’

• Schema remains the same, just expanded to fit new addition.

Theory of Cognitive Development
– Piaget: Schemas
• When our existing schemas can explain what we perceive around us,
we are in a state of equilibrium.
• However, when we meet a new situation that we cannot explain, or fit
into a pre-existing schema, it creates disequilibrium
• The child becomes aware that they hold two contradictory views about a
situation and they both cannot be true
• this is uncomfortable
• gives the motivation for learning – to create new schema
Theories – Piaget: Schemas
• Accommodation
• Accommodation is adjusting our current schemas/understanding in order to
understand new experiences
• accommodation is when new information changes or replaces
existing knowledge
• may create new schema/s

• as we interact with our world, we construct and modify our schemas

Piaget’s Schema: Accommodation and Assimilation of New
Information
Theories – Piaget: Criticisms
1. Studies that have modified Piaget’s tasks so that they involve
materials and situations that are common to young children indicate
that children may have failed because they aren’t familiar with the
situation, rather than lack of cognitive skill required.
Theories – Piaget: Criticisms
2. Martin Hughes
• found that children ages between
3.5-4 yrs could take another
persons perspective/no longer
appeared egocentric when asked to
carry out tasks that involved
hiding a boy ‘so policeman
couldn’t see him’
• task made more complex, 90%
children could correctly
achieve it
Theories – Piaget: Criticisms
Donaldson argued
• young children pass Hughes’ task and failed 3 mountains = familiar with
hiding!
• task makes sense!
• 3 mountains = abstract and makes little real-world sense to young children
Theories – Piaget: Criticisms
Other points:
• was Piaget actually testing children’s competence?
• assumed that if child failed cognitive task  they lacked competence
to perform it
• educators are aware that many factors other than competence affect
whether a person performs a task successfully
• eg. children capable of doing the reasoning involved in task but unable to
explain the principles involved
• many of Piaget’s tasks rely on verbal response  lack of skill in verbal
expression may mask competence in reasoning
Theories – Piaget: Criticisms
Other points:
• too little emphasis on how children’s minds develop through their
interactions with others (more competent peers and adults
• underplayed role of social and cultural influences
• BUT correct in:
• sequencing milestones
• emphasis on children as active beings who construct understanding through
their interactions with world  transformed education