PSY312 Week 2

1. PSY312 Week 2 • Web address: Check it regularly www.utm.utoronto.ca/~w3psy312

2. Week 2 outline • Vygotsky: a bit of background • His sociological theory • Some articles discussing it • Piaget’s theory

3. Lev Vygoysky

4. Lev Vygotsky 1896-1934 • Started out as a lawyer with no psychology training, and was interested in the psychology of art • Lived during a time of great political tension, and so his ideas were kept locked up

5. Lev Vygotsky 1896-1934 • Main concern: environment and people in the child’s life. • “Sociocultural” perspective, little emphasis on “hidden” processes • Vygotsky believed it was impossible to study development in a vacuum.

6. Assumptions about Humans • Distinguished between LMFs and HMFs • LMFs serve as a basis for HMFs • Example of the intentional reach

7. 4 Levels of Development in Child’s Environment • Ontogenetic level • Individual’s development over the lifespan • Microgenetic level * • Small changes in specific abilities over time • Phylogenetic level • Changes at species level may affect what we do today • Sociohistorical level • Generational differences in context, eg advent of computers Main focus is on level 2

8. Definitions relevant to Vygotsky • Tools of Intellectual Adaptation • What our culture offers us as a means to learning • Collaborative Dialogues • Dialogues between novices and experts where the expert models the activity and transmits verbal instructions • Zone of Proximal Development • When a task is too complex for a child to master alone, but can be accomplished with guidance and encouragement from a more skillful partner

9. Definitions, Continued • Scaffolding or Mediation • When an expert, who is instructing a novice, responds contingently to a novice’s behaviour in a learning situation • Guided Participation • Introduced by Rogoff • Refers to when children’s modes of thinking are shaped when participating with an adult in culturally relevant activities

10. More Definitions… • Context-Independent learning • Learning that has no immediate relevance to the present context, i.e. learning that occurs in educational institutions • Context-DEPENDENT learning makes us active members of society • Cooperative Learning • Situations where teachers arrange for their students to work together • Works for 3 reasons: • More motivating • Explaining own ideas can make them more explicit, understood • Groups generate more ideas than individuals

11. The Collaborative Classroom • This method of teaching is spreading to entire schools, and not just certain parts of the day • 4 features: • Teachers and students have shared knowledge. • They have shared authority • The teachers act as mediators • Heterogeneous groups of students

12. Collaborative classroom continued • Teacher facilitates discussions between students • Classroom is arranged in a way to promote discussion • Older, more experienced students model for the younger students • Student acts as goal-setter, assignment designer, and assesses themselves and their own work.

13. Potential Problems or Challenges • Classroom control • Can be very loud • Curriculum planning • Individual differences in students, environment may not be nurturing for everyone • High achievers, low achievers, shy people

14. Research Examples • Freeman & Somerindyke (2002) examined whether having computers in a preschool classroom is helpful • 20 children participated in a daycare where computers were part of the curriculum • 5 children emerged as computer “experts”, and were sought out by other less experienced classmates • Vygotsky-type peer-mediated learning took place • more knowledgeable students fostering the learning of the less-knowledgeable students

15. Example # 2 • Aram & Levin (2002) examined parental scaffolding in reading and writing • Believed that mother-mediated joint writing would help predict literacy achievement in kindergartners, even more than reading storybooks • Analyzed videotape of mothers and children writing together, and mother got a score for degree to which she helped • Better attention to the child’s ZPD was associated with better literacy

16. Writing Situation #1 • The following mother was working within her child’s ZPD: • “Mother encouraged or helped the child to retrieve and phonological unit and link it with a letter name, for example: Mother points out the /p/ sound in apple, and asks for another word that starts with that sound, and what the letter is. Then she asks how it is written, and encourages the child to write it.”

17. Writing Situation #2 • The following mother was working below her child’s ZPD: “Mother wrote down all the letters of the word for the child. Example: the boy sat in his mother’s lap holding a pencil. She held his hand, murmured the word to herself, and wrote the word by leading his hand. The child looked at the written word and looked at his mother.”

18. Questions • Which situation may have been more helpful to the child, and why? • Would this ALWAYS be the case?

19. Research Study #3 • Levin et al. (1997) looked at potentially harmful effects of maternal mediation in homework. • Examined longitudinally the effects of maternal help with homework on academic achievement, how the mother felt about the help she gave, and changes in the amount of help received between grade 1 and grade 3 • Results show possible negative consequences of maternal involvement

20. Levin et al (1997) continued… • Mothers helping with homework had no effect at all on academic achievement. • Mothers helped less over time, and felt like they weren’t really being helpful • Mothers felt responsible when the child showed no improvement, and felt tense after a session where they tried to help but couldn’t (child also felt tense!) • Children with learning disabilities elicited the most help, but these mothers felt the least helpful, and the most tense Over-Scaffolding is not beneficial!

21. Believed cognitive development varies across cultures Cognitive growth stems from social interaction, guided learning in the ZPD Social processes become individual-psychological processes Adults are especially important as agents of change Vygotsky VS. Piaget

22. Jean Piaget

23. General List of Piaget’s Beliefs and Definitions • Coined term “Genetic Epistemology”, which refers to advent of knowledge • Believed in stage-like, discontinuous development • Processing is domain-general • Child is intrinsically Active • Specific achievements needed to move through stages • Stages are universal, no cultural variation • Order of stages is fixed • Development is characterized by changes in “Structures”

24. Piaget Continued • Development is self-mediated, NOT adult-mediated • Hierarchization • 2 Functional Invariants: • Organization = inborn tendency to combine and integrate available schemes (or structures) into coherent systems or bodies of knowledge • Adaptation = inborn tendency to adjust to the demands of the environment • Comprised of Assimilation and Accommodation

25. Example of Functional Invariants • Have an idea about birds in general • Can fly, Have feathers, Some sing • Have idea about specific birds • Canaries can sing, Pigeons and seagulls are disgusting, Robins have red breasts, and all swans are white • Event not in agreement with current structures; Disequilibrium results • See a black swan • How to resolve? • Could ignore it if not ready to change • Could assimilate it into structure by calling it another name entirely • Could accommodate structures to include black swans

26. PIAGET’S STAGES

27. The Sensorimotor Phase (0-2) • Substage 1: basic reflexes (0-1 Months) • All focussed on basic reflexes • Substage 2: Primary Circular reactions (1-4 months) • All coordination of movements in own limbs • Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months) • Effect of own movements on external environment • Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary circular reactions (8-12 months) • Goal-directed behaviour • Substage 5: Tertiary Circular reactions (12-18 months) • Trail and error, still limited to actions on objects • Substage 6: Mental Combinations (18-24 months) • Covert problem-solving, use of symbols

28. Sensorimotor, con’d • Piaget believed that imitation was a key development during this period • Infants could not imitate until they were 8-12 months old • specific things were happening at each of the 6 substages with relation to imitation

29. Development of Imitation

30. Development of Object Permanence

31. Preoperations (age 2-7) • Operations: General cognitive schemes that describe how children act on the world • Occurs in two substages • Preconceptual thought (2-4 years) • Intuitive thought (4-7 years)

32. Preconceptual Thought • In this stage, use symbolism to let one object represent another • Role of language • Pretend play was crucial to Piaget • They can follow someone else’s pretend idea • Plan and prepare games • Play allows context for language, problem solving, promotes social development • Foster emotional development by allow them to resolve conflicts

33. Preconceptual thought • Preconceptual deficits include animism and egocentrism (inability to take perspective of another) • Also unable to make appearance/reality distinction • Difference between preconceptual and intuitive minimal, operations still not used, but egocentrism and animism are decreased, but child still relies on centered intuition to interpret the world

34. Preoperations con’d: Intuitive thought • Intuitive thought most characterized by failure of conservation • Mass VS liquid VS number VS volume • Child dwells in a perceptual world, where they are easily misled, called centration • Water-Level task deficits

35. Water Level Task Draw where the line would be if the glasses were half full of water

36. Answer by Preoperational Child They are misled by the tilt of the glass!!

37. Preoperations con’d • Intuitive thought most characterized by failure of conservation • number VS mass VS volume • Child dwells in a perceptual world, where they are easily misled, called centration • Water-Level task deficits • Classification, whole/part relations, class inclusion deficits are another series of problems

38. Class Inclusion Problem Are there more blue dots or more round dots? What would a preoperational child say?

39. Concrete Operations (age 7-12) • Children are no longer intuitive perceivers; they now show decentration, and look at all aspects of a display to solve problems (can solve conservation tasks; water-level task) • Can use operations (conservation, classification) • Show mental seriation through relational logic (mentally putting things in order) • Show transitivity • However, cannot yet think hypothetically, or in abstract ways • Fail second version of water-level task

40. Formal Operations Water Level Task If I turn the glass upright, where will the water be?

41. Formal Operations (age 12 +) • Children now think hypothetically, and in the abstract • Third eye example

42. Test your formal operations!!(Shaffer, 1973) • Complete the following assignment: • Suppose that you were given a third eye, and that you could choose to place this eye anywhere on your body. Draw me a picture to show me where you would place this extra eye, and then tell me why you would put it there.

43. Results • Younger children (most put eye on forehead) • Jim (9 ½ ) I would like an eye beside my two other eyes so that if one of them went out, I could still see with two • Tanya (9 ½ ) I want a third eye so I can see you better. • Older children • Ken (11 ½ ) (draws eye at end of tuft of hair) I could revolve the eye to look in all directions! • John (11 ½ ) (draws eye in palm of hand) I could see around corners, and I could see what cookie I would get from the cookie jar. Older children’s answers were more creative, and they had more fun; Younger children didn’t want to pretend, thought it was silly!

44. Formal Operations (age 12 +) • Children now think hypothetically, and in the abstract • Third eye example • Can use hypothetico-deductive reasoning; that is generate hypotheses and test them in a systematic fashion • Piaget believed that this was the final stage, and that no development occurred after this We know he was wrong about some things…how wrong?

45. Challenges to Piaget • Very small sample sizes of observation • Usually observations of his own children • Grossly underestimated capabilities of infants and young children • Baillargeon’s work with very young infants • Hala & Chandler’s study of children’s deception of another • Overestimated abilities of concrete operations children, and of all adults (formal operations) • Some high school students, and even adults have trouble with second Water Level problem • Knowledge base is important

46. Challenges to Piaget’s theory • Did not distinguish competence from performance • Is development really stage-like? • Does Piaget explain cognitive development? • Too little attention to social and cultural influences

47. Quick Quiz: Say what stage is represented in each of the following: • “You killed him” Ben sobs as his mother destroys a clay pigeon while trap shooting. • Sarah flattens her hand on her playdough, making it into a pancake, and says “look! Now I have more!” • Judy blissfully contemplates how nice it would be if there were no racial prejudice • After seeing his brother throw a ball behind the sofa, Sammy looks for it in his toybox • John successfully arranges his seashells in order from largest to smallest

48. Neo-Nativist theories • Believe that we are born equipped to interpret the world • Used idea that children everywhere develop similarly and at the same rate • Baillargeon • Wynn • We are symbolic from birth, which is a very different idea from Piaget!

49. “Theory” Theories • Actually believed a lot of Piaget’s ideas about schemes and constructing knowledge • Believed we are born able to make sense of certain things, with some innate knowledge about objects and speech sounds • But we still need to construct reality by testing the theories we have about it.

50. Important Contributions • Founded the discipline of cognitive development • Innovative ideas about child being active • Actually tried to explain how development worked • His descriptions of broad sequences of developmental trends were probably right • His ideas have had major implications on how we think about social and emotional development and offered practical implications for educators • He asked important questions and drew a lot of research along with new theories