psych 130 chapter 6 – Flashcards
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Cognition refers to
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the inner processes and products of the mind that lead to "know- ing." It includes all mental activity—attending, remembering, symbolizing, categorizing, planning, reasoning, problem solving, creating, and fantasizing.
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Researchers studying cognitive development address three main issues:
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? They chart its typical course, identifying transformations that most children undergo from birth to maturity. They ask: Do all aspects of cognition develop uniformly, or do some develop at faster rates than others? ? They examine individual differences. At every age, some children think more or less maturely, and differently, than others. Chapters 6 and 7 focus primarily on the gen- eral course of cognitive development, Chapter 8 on individual differences. But we will encounter both concerns in all three chapters. ? They uncover the mechanisms of cognitive development—how genetic and envi- ronmental factors combine to yield patterns of change
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According to Piaget, human infants
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do not start out as cognitive beings. Instead, out of their perceptual and motor activities, they build and refine psychological structures—organized ways of making sense of experience that permit them to adapt more effectively to the environment.
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Children develop these psychological structures actively by
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using current structures to select and interpret experiences, and modifying those structures to take into account more subtle aspects of reality.
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Piagets theory is described as
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Piaget viewed children as discovering, or constructing, virtually all knowledge about their world through their own activity, his theory is described as a constructivist approach to cognitive development.
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Piaget believed that children move through four stages
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sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. during which infants' exploratory behaviors transform into the abstract, logical intelligence of adolescence and adulthood.
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Piaget's stage sequence has three important characteristics:
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? The stages provide a general theory of development, in which all aspects of cognition change in an integrated fashion, following a similar course. ? The stages are invariant; they always occur in a fixed order, and no stage can be skipped. ? The stages are universal; they are assumed to characterize children everywhere.
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Piaget regarded the order of development as
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rooted in the biology of the human brain. But he emphasized that individual differences in genetic and environmental factors affect the speed with which children move through the stages.
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According to Piaget, schemes:
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According to Piaget, specific psychological structures —organized ways of making sense of experience—change with age.
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Our most powerful mental representations are
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images—mental pictures of objects, people, and spaces—and concepts, categories in which similar objects or events are grouped together. We use a mental image to retrace our steps when we've misplaced some- thing or to imitate another's behavior long after observing it. By thinking in concepts and labeling them (for example, ball for all rounded, movable objects used in play), we become more efficient thinkers, organizing our diverse experiences into meaningful, manageable, and memorable units.
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In Piaget's theory, two processes account for this change from sensorimotor to representational schemes and for further changes in representational schemes from childhood to adulthood
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adaptation and organization.
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Adaptation involves
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building schemes through direct interaction with the environment. It consists of two complementary activities: assimilation and accommodation.
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During assimilation,
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we use our current schemes to interpret the external world. The infant who repeatedly drops objects is assimilating them into his sensorimotor "dropping scheme." And the preschooler who, seeing a camel at the zoo, calls out, "Horse!" has sifted through her conceptual schemes until she finds one that resembles the strange-looking creature.
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In accommodation
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we create new schemes or adjust old ones after noticing that our current way of thinking does not capture the environment completely. The baby who drops objects in different ways is modifying his dropping scheme to take account of the varied properties of objects. And the preschooler who calls a camel a "lumpy horse" has noticed that camels differ from horses in certain ways and has revised her scheme accordingly.
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According to Piaget, the balance between assimilation and accommodation
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varies over time. When children are not changing much, they assimilate more than they accommodate— a steady, comfortable state that Piaget called cognitive equilibrium. During times of rapid cognitive change, children are in a state of disequilibrium, or cognitive discomfort. Realizing that new information does not match their current schemes, they shift from assimilation to accommodation. After modifying their schemes, they move back toward assimilation, exercising their newly changed structures until they are ready to be modified again.
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Piaget's term for this back-and-forth movement between equilibrium and disequilibrium is
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equilibration. Each time equilibration occurs, more effective schemes are produced. Because the times of greatest accommodation are the earliest ones, the sensorimotor stage is Piaget's most complex period of development.
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Schemes also change through organization
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a process that occurs internally, apart from direct contact with the environment. Once children form new schemes, they rearrange them, linking them with other schemes to create a strongly interconnected cognitive system. For example, eventually the baby relates "dropping" to "throwing" and to his developing understanding of "nearness" and "farness." According to Piaget, schemes truly reach equilibrium when they become part of a broad network of structures that can be jointly applied to the surrounding world
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The sensorimotor stage
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spans the first two years of life. Its name reflects Piaget's belief that infants and toddlers "think" with their eyes, ears, hands, and other sensorimotor equipment. They cannot yet carry out many activities mentally.
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The circular reaction
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provides a special means of adapting their first schemes. It involves stumbling onto a new experience caused by the baby's own motor activity. The reaction is "circular" because, as the infant tries to repeat the event again and again, a sensorimotor response that originally occurred by chance strengthens into a new scheme.
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Piaget saw newborn reflexes as the building blocks of sensorimotor intelligence. In Substage 1
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babies suck, grasp, and look in much the same way, no matter what experiences they encounter. In one amusing example, a mother described how her 2-week-old daughter lay on the bed next to her sleeping father, who suddenly awoke with a start. The baby had latched on and begun to suck on his back! ~~these are reflexive, newborn schemes~~
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Around 1 month, as babies enter Substage 2
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they start to gain voluntary control over their actions through the primary circular reaction, by repeating chance behaviors largely motivated by basic needs. This leads to some simple motor habits, such as sucking the fist or thumb. Babies in this substage also begin to vary their behavior in response to environmental demands. For example, they open their mouths differently for a nipple than for a spoon. And they start to anticipate events: A hungry 3-month-old is likely to stop crying as soon as his mother enters the room—a signal that feeding time is near. ~~Simple motor habits centered around the infant's own body; limited anticipation of events~~
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During Substage 3
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from 4 to 8 months, infants sit up and become skilled at reaching for and manipulating objects—motor achievements that strengthen the secondary circular reaction, through which they try to repeat interesting events in the surrounding environment that are caused by their own actions. ~~Actions aimed at repeating interesting effects in the surrounding world; imitation of familiar behaviors~~
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In Substage 4
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8- to 12-month-olds combine schemes into new, more complex action sequences. Now, behaviors leading to new schemes no longer have a random, hit-or-miss quality—accidentally bringing the thumb to the mouth or happening to hit the doll. Instead, 8- to 12-month-olds can engage in intentional, or goal-directed, behavior, coordinating schemes deliberately to solve simple problems. ~~Intentional, or goal-directed, behavior; ability to find a hidden object in the first location in which it is hidden (object permanence); improved anticipation of events; imitation of behaviors slightly different from those the infant usually performs~~ Piaget regarded these means-end action sequences as the foundation for all problem solving.
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Retrieving hidden objects is evidence that infants have begun to master
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object permanence, the understanding that objects continue to exist when they are out of sight. But this awareness is not yet complete. ****Babies still make the A-not-B search error: If they reach several times for an object at one hiding place (A), then see it moved to another (B), they still search for it in the first hiding place (A). Piaget concluded that the babies do not yet have a clear image of the object as persisting when hidden from view.
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In Substage 5,
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the tertiary circular reaction, in which toddlers repeat behaviors with variation, emerges. This deliberately exploratory approach makes 12- to 18-month-olds better problem solvers. According to Piaget, this capacity to experiment leads to a more advanced understanding of object permanence. Toddlers look for a hidden toy in more than one location, displaying an accurate A-B search. Their more flexible action patterns also per- mit them to imitate many more behaviors—stacking blocks, scrib- bling on paper, and making funny faces. Seeing his hands touch, open, and close, a 3-month-old tries to repeat the movements. This primary circular reaction helps him gain voluntary control over his actions. ~~~Exploration of the properties of objects by acting on them in novel ways; imitation of novel behaviors; ability to search in several locations for a hidden object (accurate A-B search)~~~
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In Substage 6
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sensorimotor development culminates in mental representation. One sign of this capacity is that 18- to 24-month-olds arrive at solutions to problems suddenly rather than through trial-and-error behavior, apparently experimenting with actions inside their heads. ~~Internal depictions of objects and events, as indicated by sudden solutions to problems; ability to find an object that has been moved while out of sight (invisible displacement); deferred imitation; and make-believe play~~
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Representation also enables older toddlers to
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advanced object- permanence problems involving invisible displacement—finding a toy moved while out of sight, such as into a small box while under a cover.
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Second, representation permits
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deferred imitation—the ability to remember and copy the behavior of mod- els who are not present. And it makes possible make-believe play, in which children act out everyday and imaginary activities. As the sensorimotor stage draws to a close, mental symbols have become major instruments of thinking.
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To discover what infants know about hidden objects and other aspects of physical reality, researchers often use the violation-of-expectation method.
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They may habituate babies to a physical event (expose them to the event until their looking declines) to familiarize them with a situation in which their knowledge will be tested. Or they may simply show babies an expected event (one that follows physical laws) and an unexpected event (a variation of the first event that violates physical laws). Heightened attention to the unexpected event suggests that the infant is "surprised" by a deviation from physical reality—and, therefore, is aware of that aspect of the physical world.
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If young infants do have some notion of object permanence, how do we explain Piaget's finding that even infants capable of reaching do not try to search for hidden objects before 8 months of age?
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Violation-of-expectation tasks require only that the baby react (through looking) to whether a post-object-hiding scene accords with ordinary experience. Searching for a hidden object is far more cognitively demanding: The baby must predict where the hid- den object is.
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deferred imitation
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—which requires infants to represent a model's past behavior—
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Gains in recall, expressed through deferred imitation, are accompanied by changes in
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brain-wave activity during memory tasks. This suggests that improvements in memory storage in the cerebral cortex contribute to these advances
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Toddlers even imitate rationally, by inferring others' intentions!
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They are more likely to imitate purposeful than accidental behaviors. And they adapt their imitative acts to a model's goals.
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even young infants can categorize
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grouping similar objects and events into a single representation—an ability that is incompatible with a strictly sensorimotor approach to the world. Categorization reduces the enormous amount of new information infants encounter every day, helping them learn and remember
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By 10 to 12 months, infants can engage in analogical problem solving
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applying a solution strategy from one problem to other relevant problems.
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displaced reference
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One of the most momentous advances in early development is the realization that words can be used to cue mental images of things not physically present— emerges around the first birthday. It greatly expands toddlers' capacity to learn about the world through communicating with others.
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This video deficit effect
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poorer performance after a video than a live demonstration
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Unlike Piaget, who thought infants constructed all mental representations out of senso- rimotor activity, most researchers now believe that young babies have some built-in cogni- tive equipment for making sense of experience.
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Others, con- vinced by violation-of-expectation findings, argue that infants start life with considerable innate knowledge, which "jump-starts" their cognitive development. This core knowledge perspective has gained ground in the past decade.
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As children move from the sensorimotor to the preoperational stage,
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which spans the years 2 to 7, the most obvious change is an extraordinary increase in representational, or symbolic, activity.
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Play detaches from the real-life conditions associated with it.
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In early pretending, toddlers use only realistic objects—a toy telephone to talk into or a cup to drink from. but then as they get older, they move away from it and will use a block as a phone
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Play becomes less self-centered.
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At first, make-believe is directed toward the self; for example, children pretend to feed only themselves. Soon, children direct pretend actions toward other people or objects. Make-believe becomes less self-centered as children realize that agents and recipients of pretend actions can be independent of themselves
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Play includes more complex combinations of schemes
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An 18-month-old can pretend to drink from a cup but does not yet combine pouring and drinking. *Later, children combine pretend schemes with those of peers in sociodramatic play, the make-believe with others that is under way by the end of the second year and increases rapidly in complexity during early childhood
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Enhancing Make-Believe Play in Early Childhood
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~Provide sufficient space and play materials. ~Encourage children's play without controlling it. ~Offer a variety of both realistic materials and materials without clear functions. ~Ensure that children have many rich real-world experiences to inspire positive fantasy play. ~Help children solve social conflicts constructively.
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Typically, drawing progresses through the following sequence:
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1. Scribbles. 2. First representational forms. 3. More realistic drawings [ develops gradually, as perception, language (ability to describe visual details), memory, and fine-motor capacities improve]
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The 21?2-year-olds did not realize that the model could be both a toy room and a symbol of another room. They had trouble with dual representation
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viewing a symbolic object as both an object in its own right and a symbol.
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According to Piaget, young children are not capable of operations
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—mental representations of actions that obey logical rules. Rather, their thinking is rigid, limited to one aspect of a situation at a time, and strongly influenced by the way things appear at the moment.
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For Piaget, the most fundamental deficiency of preoperational thinking is egocentrism
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— failure to distinguish others' symbolic viewpoints from one's own. He believed that when children first mentally represent the world, they tend to focus on their own viewpoint and assume that others perceive, think, and feel the same way they do.
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He also regarded egocentrism as responsible for preoperational children's animistic thinking
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—the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities, such as thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions
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Piaget's famous conservation tasks reveal several deficiencies of preoperational thinking. Conservation refers to the idea that
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certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes.
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The inability to conserve highlights several related aspects of preoperational children's thinking.
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~First their understanding is centered, or characterized by centration. They focus on one aspect of a situation, neglecting other important features. ~Second, children are easily distracted by the perceptual appearance of objects. ~Third, children treat the initial and final states of the water as unrelated events, ignoring the dynamic transformation
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The most important illogical feature of preoperational thought is irreversibility. Reversibility
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the ability to go through a series of steps in a problem and then mentally reverse direction, returning to the starting point—is part of every logical operation. In the case of conservation of liquid, the preoperational child cannot imagine the water being poured back into its original container and so fails to see how the amount must remain the same.
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Preoperational children have difficulty with hierarchical classification
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the organization of objects into classes and subclasses on the basis of similarities and differences
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According to Piaget, the concrete operational stage,
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extending from about 7 to 11 years, marks a major turning point in cognitive development. Thought becomes far more logical, flexible, and organized, more closely resembling the reasoning of adults than that of younger children.
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Piaget's class inclusion problem.
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This indicates that they are more aware of classification hierarchies and can focus on relations between a general and two specific categories at the same time—that is, on three relations at once
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seriation.
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The ability to order items along a quantitative dimension, such as length or weight
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transitive inference.
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The concrete operational child can also seriate mentally
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cognitive maps
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mental representations of familiar large-scale spaces, such as their neighborhood or school. ~Preschoolers and young school-age children include landmarks on the maps they draw, but their arrangement is not always accurate.
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Around age 8 to 10, children's maps become better organized, showing landmarks along an organized route of travel.
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well-organized directions for getting from place to place by using a "mental walk" strategy— imagining a person's movements along a route
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Ten- to 12-year-olds also comprehend scale
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the proportional relation between a space and its representation on a map
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As the name of this stage suggests, concrete operational thinking suffers from one important limitation:
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Children think in an organized, logical fashion only when dealing with concrete information they can perceive directly. Their mental operations work poorly with abstract ideas—ones not apparent in the real world
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According to Piaget, around age 11 young people enter the formal operational stage
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in which they develop the capacity for abstract, systematic, scientific thinking.
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hypothetico-deductive reasoning.
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When faced with a problem, they start with a hypothesis, or prediction about variables that might affect an outcome, from which they deduce logical, testable inferences. Then they systematically isolate and combine variables to see which of these inferences are confirmed in the real world.
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Piaget's pendulum problem. Adoles- cents who engage in hypothetico-deductive reasoning think of variables that might possibly affect the speed with which a pendulum swings through its arc. Then they isolate and test each variable, as well as testing the variables in combination. Eventually they deduce that the weight of the object, the height from which it is released, and how forcefully it is pushed have no effect. Only string length makes a difference.
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Formal operational adolescents hypothesize that four variables might be influential: (1) the length of the string, (2) the weight of the object hung on it, (3) how high the object is raised before it is released, and (4) how forcefully the object is pushed. By varying one factor at a time while holding the other three constant, they test each variable separately and, if necessary, also in combination. Eventually they dis- cover that only string length makes a difference. In contrast, concrete operational children cannot separate the effects of each variable. They may test for the effect of string length without holding weight constant—comparing, for example, a short, light pendulum with a long, heavy one. Also, they typically fail to notice variables that are not immediately suggested by the concrete materials of the task—for example, how high the object is raised or how force- fully it is released.
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propositional thought
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adolescents' ability to evaluate the logic of propositions (verbal statements) with- out referring to real-world circumstances.
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Piaget's followers suggest that two distorted images of the relationship between self and others appear.
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imaginary audience and personal fable
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imaginary audience
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adolescents' belief that they are the focus of everyone else's attention and concern. As a result, they become extremely self-conscious, often going to great lengths to avoid embarrassment.
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personal fable
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Certain that others are observing and thinking about them, teenagers develop an inflated opinion of their own importance— a feeling that they are special and unique.
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Good decision making involves:
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(1) identifying pros and cons of each alternative, (2) assessing the likelihood of various outcomes, (3) evaluating one's choice in terms of whether one's goals were met, and, if not, (4) learning from the mistake and making a better future decision.
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Additional evidence confirms that adolescents, relative to adults, are more influenced by the possibility of immediate reward—more willing to take risks and less likely to avoid potential harm
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In sum, the heat of the moment, when making a good decision depends on inhibiting "feel-good" behavior and the appeal of immediate rewards, the brain's emotional/social net- work tends to prevail, and adolescents are far more likely than adults to emphasize short- term over long-term goals
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logical necessity of propositional thought
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that the accuracy of conclusions drawn from premises rests on the rules of logic, not on real-world confirmation.
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Three educational principles derived from Piaget's theory continue to influence teacher training and classroom practices, especially during early childhood
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?Discovery learning. In a Piagetian classroom, children are encouraged to discover for themselves through spontaneous interaction with the environment. Instead of presenting ready-made knowledge verbally, teachers provide a rich variety of activities designed to promote exploration and discovery, including art, puzzles, table games, dress-up clothing, building blocks, books, measuring tools, natural science tasks, and musical instruments. ? Sensitivity to children's readiness to learn. In a Piagetian classroom, teachers introduce activities that build on children's current thinking, challenging their incorrect ways of viewing the world. But they do not try to speed up development by imposing new skills before children indicate they are interested and ready. ? Acceptance of individual differences. Piaget's theory assumes that all children go through the same sequence of development, but at different rates. Therefore, teachers must plan activities for individual children and small groups, not just for the whole class. In addition, teachers evaluate educational progress in relation to the child's previous devel- opment, rather than on the basis of normative standards, or average performance of same-age peers.
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Piaget's belief that infants and young children must act on the environment to revise their thinking is too narrow a notion of how learning takes place
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With its overemphasis on the child's initiative, Piaget's theory has been of limited practical value in devising teaching strategies that foster children's optimum learning.
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Recall our description of organization—that the structures of each stage form a coherent whole. Piaget was not explicit about how the diverse achievements of each stage are bound together by a single, under- lying form of thought—and efforts to confirm this coherence have not succeeded.
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With its overemphasis on the child's initiative, Piaget's theory has been of limited practical value in devising teaching strategies that foster children's optimum learning.
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core knowledge perspective
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infants begin life with innate, special- purpose knowledge systems referred to as core domains of thought. Each of these "prewired" understandings permits a ready grasp of new, related information and therefore supports early, rapid development of certain aspects of cognition. Each core domain has a long evo- lutionary history and is essential for survival ~~Core knowledge theorists argue that infants could not make sense of the multifaceted stimulation around them without having been genetically "set up" in the course of evolution to comprehend its crucial aspects.
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Two core domains have been studied extensively in infancy.
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physical knowledge—in particular, understanding of objects and their effects on one another. numerical knowledge—the capacity to keep track of multiple objects and to add and subtract small quantities. Physical and numerical knowledge enabled our ancestors to secure food and other resources from the environment
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infants' early orientation toward people
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provides the foundation for rapid development of psychological knowledge—in particular, understanding of people as agents who have mental states (such as emotions, intentions, desires, beliefs, and perspectives) that influence their behavior, which is vital for surviving in human groups.
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And young children demonstrate impressive biological knowledge
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including ideas about inheritance of characteristics and about bodily processes, such as birth, growth, illness, and death.
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Rather than regarding development as a general process, core knowledge theorists see it as
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domain-specific and uneven, with each core domain developing independently. And although initial knowledge is assumed to be innate, that knowledge becomes more elaborate as children explore, play, and interact with others.
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Children are viewed as nai?ve theorists
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building on core knowledge concepts to explain their everyday experiences in the physical, psychological, and biological realms. Let's examine a sampling of findings that shed light on the existence of core domains of thought.
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A growing number of researchers believe that children form nai?ve theories, or explanations of events, that differ among core domains. According to this theory theory (meaning theory of children as theorists),
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after children observe an event, they draw on innate concepts to explain, or theorize about, its cause. Then they test their nai?ve theory against experience, revising it when it cannot adequately account for new information
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Nevertheless, critics take issue with the core knowledge assumption, based on violation- of-expectation evidence, that infants are endowed with knowledge
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While emphasizing native endowment, the core knowledge perspective acknowledges that experience is essential for children to elaborate this initial knowledge.
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Lev Vygotsky, while also viewing children as active seekers of knowledge, emphasized the profound effects of rich social and cultural contexts on their thinking.
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According to Vygotsky, infants are endowed with basic perceptual, attention, and mem- ory capacities that they share with other animals. These develop during the first two years through direct contact with the environment. Then rapid growth of language leads to a profound change in thinking. It broadens preschoolers' participation in social dialogues with more knowledgeable individuals, who encourage them to master culturally important tasks. Soon young children start to communicate with themselves much as they converse with others. As a result, basic mental capacities are transformed into uniquely human, higher cognitive processes.
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Piaget (1923/1926) called these utterances egocentric speech, reflecting his belief that young children have difficulty taking the perspectives of others. Their talk, he said, is often "talk for self " in which they express thoughts in whatever form they happen to occur, regardless of whether a listener can understand. Piaget believed that cognitive development and certain social experiences eventually bring an end to egocentric speech. Specifically, through disagreements with peers, children see that others hold viewpoints different from their own. As a result, egocentric speech declines in favor of social speech, in which children adapt what they say to their listeners.
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Vygotsky (1934/1986) disagreed strongly with Piaget's conclusions. Because language helps children think about mental activities and behavior and select courses of action, Vygotsky saw it as the foundation for all higher cognitive pro- cesses, including controlled attention, deliberate memoriza- tion and recall, categorization, planning, problem solving, abstract reasoning, and self-reflection. In Vygotsky's view, children speak to themselves for self-guidance. As they get older and find tasks easier, their self-directed speech is inter- nalized as silent, inner speech—the internal verbal dialogues we carry on while thinking and acting in everyday situations.
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As a result (of more research supporting vygotsky), children's self-directed speech is now called private speech instead of egocentric speech.
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Children use more of it when tasks are appropriately challenging (neither too easy nor too hard), after they make errors, or when they are confused about how to proceed. With age, as Vygotsky predicted, private speech goes underground, changing into whis- pers and silent lip movements. Furthermore, children who freely use self-guiding private speech during a challenging activity are more attentive and involved and show better task performance than their less talkative agemates
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Where does private speech come from? Vygotsky (1930-1935/1978) believed that children's learning takes place within the zone of proximal development—
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a range of tasks too difficult for the child to do alone but possible with the help of adults and more skilled peers.
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To promote cognitive development, social interaction must have certain features. One is intersubjectivity
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the process whereby two participants who begin a task with different understandings arrive at a shared understanding
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A second important feature of social interaction is scaffolding
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adjusting the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child's current level of performance.
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guided participation,
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a broader concept than scaffolding. It refers to shared endeavors between more expert and less expert participants, without specifying the precise features of communication.
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Vygotsky (1933/1978) regarded make-believe play as a unique, broadly influential zone of proximal development in which children advance themselves as they try out a wide variety of challenging skills. In Vygotsky's theory, make-believe is the central source of development during the preschool years, leading development forward in two ways.
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First, as children create imaginary situations, they learn to act in accord with internal ideas, not just in response to external stimuli. While pretending, children continually use one object to stand for another—a stick for a horse, a folded blanket for a sleeping baby— and, in doing so, change the object's usual meaning. Gradually they realize that thinking (or the meaning of words) is separate from objects and that ideas can be used to guide behavior. Second, the rule-based nature of make-believe strengthens children's capacity to think before they act. Pretend play, Vygotsky pointed out, constantly demands that children act against their impulses because they must follow the rules of the play scene. For example, a child pretending to go to sleep obeys the rules of bedtime behavior. A child imagining him- self as a father and a doll as his child conforms to the rules of parental behavior. Through enacting rules in make-believe, children better understand social norms and expectations and strive to follow them.
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Vygotsky's theory offers new visions of teaching and learning—ones that emphasize the importance of social context and collaboration. Like Piagetian classrooms, Vygotskian class- rooms accept individual differences and provide opportunities for children's active participa- tion. But a Vygotskian classroom goes beyond independent discovery to promote assisted discovery. Teachers guide children's learning with explanations, demonstrations, and verbal prompts, tailoring their interventions to each child's zone of proximal development. Assisted discovery is aided by peer collaboration, as children work in groups, teaching and helping one another.
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Vygotsky's educational message for the preschool years is to provide socially rich, mean- ingful activities in children's zones of proximal development and a wealth of opportunities for make-believe play—the ultimate means of fostering the self-discipline required for later academic learning.as they get older, focus on literacy
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In reciprocal teaching,
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a teacher and two to four students form a collaborative group and take turns leading dialogues on the content of a text passage. Within the dialogues, group members apply four cognitive strategies: questioning, summarizing, clarifying, and predicting.
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cooperative learning
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in which small groups of classmates work toward common goals. Conflict and disagreement seem less important than the extent to which peers achieve intersubjectivity—by resolving differences of opinion, sharing responsibilities, and providing one another with sufficient explanations to correct misunderstandings.
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Vygotsky said little about biologi- cal contributions to children's cognition. His theory does not address how basic motor, perceptual, memory, and problem-solving capacities spark changes in children's social expe- riences, from which more advanced cognition springs. Nor does it tell us just how children internalize social experiences to advance their mental functioning (Miller, 2009; Moll, 1994). Consequently, like the other perspectives addressed in this chapter, Vygotsky's theory is vague in its explanation of cognitive change. It is intriguing to imagine the broader theory that might exist today had Piaget and Vygotsky—the two twentieth-century giants of cogni- tive development—had a chance to weave together their extraordinary accomplishments.
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he elevated language to the highest importance.
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Piaget's followers suggest that two distorted images of the relationship between self and others appear.
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maginary audience and personal fable
