2.  Employed to develop french versions of questions on english intelligence tests  Became intrigued with the reasons children gave for wrong answers. He believed wrong answers revealed important differences between the thinking of adults and children.  1 st psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development

3.  Before piaget’s work, the common assumption was that children were merely less competent thinkers than adults.  Piaget showed that young children think in very different ways compared to adults.  According to Piaget children are born with a very basic mental structure

4.  It is concerned with children, rather than all learners  It focuses on development, rather than learning per se, so it does not address learning information of specific behaviours  It proposes discrete stages of development, marked by qualitative differences, rather than gradual increase in number and complexity of behaviours, concepts, and ideas.

5.  1) Schemas: ( building blocks of knowledge) ▪ A way of organizing knowledge. Think ▪ Think of them as units of knowledge each relating to one aspect of the world ▪ When a child’s existing schemas are capable of explaining what it can perceive around it, it is said to be in a state of equilibrium ▪ A schema can be defined as a set of linked mental representations of the world, which we use both to understand and to respond to situations. ▪ For example, a person might have schema about buying a meal in a restaurant. The schema is a stored form of the pattern of behaviour which includes looking at a menu, ordering food, eating it and paying the bill.

6.  Whenever they are in a restaurant, they retrieve this schema from memory and apply it to the situation.  As a child gets older their schemas become more numerous and elaborate.  Believed that newborns have some innnate schemas ( innate reflexes) sucking reflex

7.  Assimilation: which is using an existing schema to deal with a new object or situation  Accommodation: this happens when the existing schema ( knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation

8.  A 2 year old child sees a man who is bald on top of his head and has long frizzy hair on the sides. To the father’s horror, the toddler shouts “ clown, clown”

9.  In the clown incident, the boy’s father explained to his son that the man was not a clown and that even though his hair was like a clown’s, he wasn’t wearing a funny costume and wasn’t doing silly things to make people laugh.  With this new knowledge, the boy was able to change his schema of “ clown” and make this idea fit better to a standard concept of “clown”

10.  A child’s cognitive development is about a child developing or constructing a mental model of the world.  Believed children go through 4 universal stages of cognitive development.  Development is therefore biologically based and changes as the child matures.  Cognition therefore develops in all children in the same sequence of stages.  Each child goes through the stages in the same order, and no stage can be missed out

11.  One of most important accomplishments here  A child’s understanding that objects continue to exist even though they cannot be seen or heard  Peek a boo  Blanket and ball study

12.  0-2 years old  Centred on the infant rying to make sense of the world.  Knowledge limited to his or her sensory perceptions and motor activities  Behaviours are limited to simple motor responses caused by sensory stimuli  Use skills they were born with like looking, sucking, grasping and listening to learn more about environment

13.  2-7 years old  Language development is one of the landmarks here  Unable to take the point of view of others  Become increasingly adept at using symbols, as evidenced by the increase in playing and pretending  Pretending a broom is a horse, role playing ( mommy or daddy)

14.  Three mountain task  Children asked to choose a picture that showed the scene they had observed. Most children are able to do this with little difficulty.  Next, children are asked to select a picture showing what someone else would have observed when looking at the mountain from a different viewpoint  Children almost always choose the scene showing their own view of the mountain scene.  According to Piaget, children experience this difficulty because they are unable to take on another person’s perspective

15.  Equal amounts of liquid are poured into 2 identical containers. The liquid in one container is then poured into a different shaped cup, such as a tall and thin cup or a short and wide up. Children are then asked which cup holds the most liquid  Despite seeing that the liquid amounts were equal, children almost always choos the cup that appears fuller

16.  7-11 years old  Gain a better understanding of mental operations  Begin thinking logically about concrete events, but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts

17.  Awareness that actions can be reversed

18.  12-adulthood  Develop ability to think about abstract concepts.  Skills such as logical though, deductive reasoning, and systematic planning  Abstract thought and problem solving develop