Chapter 12 Life Span Development January 31 Piaget Recap from Last Lecture Jean Piaget focused the ages

from birth to 16 He focused on cognitive development Babies make circular motions; they do not know if objects are out of sight, they think the objects dont exist (object permanence) Piagets Preoperational Period From ages 2-7, preoperational period occurs Children are able to use symbolic thoughts such as numbers Children are able to use the imagination to play (i.e. dressing up, symbolic) Children see the world in an egocentric way during this period (i.e. cannot put oneself in anothers perspective) Conversation in Preoperational Period A limitation to what a child can do during this period is the inability to conserve A child thinks a tall container contains more liquid than the shorter container, although theyve seen that the liquid were of the same volume before being poured in the containers (irreversibility) Irreversibility refers to the thought process of reversing an action (squishing playdoh and thought of reversing it back to original shape) Piagets Concrete Operations Period From ages 7 to 11, this period is called the concrete operations period Children are now able to notice things such as irreversibility (no longer having difficulty with conservation) Operations refer to mental actions that obey logical rules Transitivity is the operation required to answer questions such as Jane is taller than Kim and Kim is taller than Sue, who is tallest? As the long as things are concrete, problems could be solved (i.e. using objects, or people; not getting involved with symbols) Children noticed that just because the playdoh was flattened, it wasnt the same size Piagets Formal Operations Period Children being able to think abstractly (mathematical thinking) Different behaviours have different consequences in different contexts Abstract thought is not thought of the same way in different cultures If people had no thumbs? is an abstract question Adolescence is able to answer these questions using abstract thoughts As children grow they develop better cognitive skills Assimilation and Accommodation According to Piaget what underlies thinking is the schema, cognitive structure (connection of knowledge with the problem/situation presented)

Assimilation refers to the modification of new information to make it fit into an existing modification (i.e. a children walks into the lecture hall calling it room, assimilating other rooms; over assimilation in the case of thinking all men are daddy; children seeing porpoises swimming in a large tank of water, through assimilation, they interpret porpoise as fish) Accommodation refers to the creation or modification of schema to make them fit with new experiences (i.e. creating a cognitive category for men other than daddy; child sees porpoises breathing and pets one, through accommodation, they formed the concept that porpoises are animals that live in water but breathe air and like people)