Introduction to Psychology: The Development of Thinking
This lesson will talk about cognitive development through Piaget's theory
How babies think
Piatt believed that the cognitive development of individual infants can show the general law of cognitive development - the law of embryonic recurrence.
The development of an individual simulates or re-enacts the development of a race
It’s a beautiful phrase, but it seems wrong today
Piaget believed that babies will think actively, and this process can be achieved through two mechanisms - assimilation and accommodation.
assimilation and accommodation
Assimilation refers to the expansion of reaction range. A baby who is accustomed to sucking breast milk may suck a bottle or a rattle. This is the scope of reaction expansion. When you have a way of looking at the world, incorporating new information into the existing knowledge structure is assimilation.
Accommodating is changing the way you behave. Babies change the shape of their mouths depending on what they are sucking on. When you change the original knowledge structure to adapt to the new environment, you are adapting.
Piatt believes that these two learning mechanisms help children across various stages of
An experimental method proposed:
asking children to solve some problems and asking them some questions. He found that children have different behaviors at different ages. Based on this discovery, he proposed the stage theory
Various stages of children’s thinking development
The first stage: sensorimotor stage
At this stage, the baby is a purely natural creature. He can only perceive and see, but cannot yet perform logical reasoning. At this stage, babies gradually establish the concept of object permanence.
Object permanence:
the knowledge that someone or something, although currently invisible, still exists
Piatt found through experiments that babies will think that the object has disappeared when it disappears. The process of parents covering their faces with their hands and then opening it will surprise them; slightly older babies cannot tell whether A is not B. Peter Gray in his psychology textbook problematizes this 变换藏身地（changing hiding places）task
Changing hiding places question (changing hiding places question)
Prepare a 9-month-old baby (Piatt believes that 9-month-old babies have just developed the concept of objects and object permanence). You put the object into a cup next to it, and the baby looks This object is missing. The baby will reach for the object when you put it down. Repeat this a few times and then you move the cup to another location. You will find that the baby will still reach for the object, even if he sees the object taken away.
This further proves that they do not understand the concept of objects, which requires a lot of time to learn to master
The second stage: pre-operational stage
When children enter the preoperational stage, they gradually acquire the ability to represent things and construct the world in their minds.
However, this ability has limitations, which are manifested in the following levels:
1. Children are self-centered. Children at this stage are completely unable to realize that the world in the eyes of others can be different from the world they see themselves. One of his evidences is the Sanshan Experiment
Sanshan Experiment
Egocentrism is a cognitive characteristic of children in the pre-operational stage (2 to 7 years old). Egocentrism means that children only see the world from their own point of view and have difficulty understanding other people's points of view. They believe that all people have the same Feelings are the same, often assuming that others share their own emotions, reactions, and opinions.
When we communicate with children of this age, we should look at the problem from their perspective and guide them in an empathetic style.
Another important discovery Piatt made during this stage of development was 守恒that 守恒the characteristics of one aspect of an object would not change due to changes in other characteristics of the object. For example, if you pour a cup of water into a deeper cup, the water content will not change at all; spreading the coins out will not result in more coins. . .
Children at this stage have certain logical thinking abilities, but they are still limited to specific situations. Around the age of 12, children's abstract reasoning and scientific reasoning abilities are improved.
limitations
Whether he really explains how children's thinking changes from concrete to abstract, or how children's concept of object permanence comes from scratch is
still a matter of research method. Piatt is very keen to use The question-and-answer method has been studied, but children do not fully master the language, which may lead you to underestimate their understanding. This problem is often more obvious the younger the child.
How do we explain development, how do we explain when babies acquire knowledge that they didn’t originally know. One answer is neuronal maturation, the development of the brain
Most of the time, neural development is not actually the growth of new neurons, but the removal of neurons, so the neural structure will undergo drastic changes; at the same time, the connections between neurons are also growing crazily. This process will reach its peak at the age of two
This also shows that babies may not be able to support the accuracy of experiments due to incomplete neurological development.
Babies are also social. They will imitate the facial expressions of people around them, and through movie viewing experiments, it was found that they can also understand some social behaviors, such as noticing the relationship between the offense and defense in a football game.