Early brain development
- Forebrain: controls the things we do before we think e.g moving purposely.
- Midbrain: forms a part of the central nervous system and controls…when we sleep.
- Hindbrain: controls most of the things our body does automatically e.g sneezing
- Neural tube: forms around 3-4 weeks, later divided into 3/4 round sections.
Forebrain then midbrain then hindbrain.
- Cerebellum (in the hindbrain): seen from 6 weeks, becomes 3 times the size a year
after birth. Controls muscle activity and physical skills that develop over time.
(involved in responses such as fear and processing info)
- Medulla (in the hindbrain): controls involuntary responses e.g breathing. Formed by
20 weeks. connects the brain to the spinal cord.
Piaget’s stages of development
- States that: -Children are active and learn by doing things
-Development is linked to maturation
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-Children are unable to think in certain ways until their brains have
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Developed.
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- Schema: mental representations of the world based on one’s own experiences.
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- Operations: how we reason and think about things
- Sensorimotor stage (birth-2yrs): use their senses and movements to get information
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about the world - they live in the present - they learn by linking what they see, hear,
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touch, taste, or smell to objects they are using - around 6 months, they develop
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object permanence - around 4 months, children repeat actions
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- Pre-operational stage (2 to 7 yrs):
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- Symbolic function stage (2-4 years)
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-This includes symbolic play
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-They start to use words as symbols for objects (beginning of language
development.)
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- Intuitive thought stage (4-7 years)
-This is the start of reasoning and children ask a lot of questions in
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this stage.
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- Conservation is not yet achieved- children do not realize that changing how
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something looks does not change its volume, size, or weight.
- Irreversibility- a child is not able to use thought to reverse events.
- Concrete operational stage (7 to 12 years): children begin to apply rules and
strategies to help their thinking and use concrete objects to aid their understanding - They
have difficulty with abstract ideas such as morality
-Abilities in this stage include:
-Seriation- Sorting objects, e.g, into size
-Classification- Naming and identifying objects according to appearance
-Conservation- they know that length, quantity or number are not related to how things look.
-Decentration- the ability to take multiple views of a situation (conservation relies on this).
- Formal operational stage (12+ years): Children have developed control over their
thoughts - They also have the ability to think about how time changes things. They
can understand that events have a sequence. - A young person can see that actions
have consequences.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
- Adaptation: using assimilation and accommodation to make sense of the world.
- Assimilation: incorporating new experiences into existing schemas.
- Accommodation: when a schema has to be changed to deal with a new experience.
- Equilibrium: when a child’s schemas can explain all that they experience; a state of
mental balance.
- States that: children develop through adaptation- they adjust to the world as they
experience new things. They form new ideas about the world which take the form of
schemas. As children experience more they need to change their schemas and
create new ones.
- Children increase their understanding when they are faced with disequilibrium – a
state where they cannot explain something with an existing schema, and are forced to
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accommodate the new knowledge by creating new schemas.
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Piaget & Inhelder's (1959) ‘Three Mountains task’
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- Egocentrism: a young child in the pre-operational stage sees their own viewpoint
and cannot see someone else’s view of the world.
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- Aims: look at the extent to which children of different ages were able to take the view
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of another person.
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- Procedure:
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-100 children
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- 1m squared, 12-30cm, 10 pics
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- doll: wooden, no face, 3cm tall
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- 3 green cards, 3 brown, 3 grey
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- Ways to question:
- child was asked to use the cardboard shapes to show how the mountain scene n
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looked from different viewpoints.
- child was asked to place the shapes to show the view they were looking from/the
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doll.
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- shown the 10 pics of the model and then asked to pick which ones were their/the
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doll’s view.
- chose a pic then had to position the doll so it could see that view
- results:
- Pre-operational: can’t place the view that matches the pic the child was shown.
- Concrete operational: start to understand that others see from a different position.
- Qualitative data.
Dweck’s mindset theory
- Mindset: a set of beliefs someone has that guides how someone responds to or
interprets situations.
- Ability: what someone can do.
- Effort: when you try to do better using determination.
- Fixed mindset: believing your abilities are unchangeable
- Growth mindset: believing practice and effort can improve your abilities.
- Dweck focused on helping students achieve more considering how praise affects
development.
- A child’s ability is fixed at birth, if they aren't praised, they assume they don't have
that ability.
- It's better to praise kids for their effort, as they believe they can achieve something
and so carry on trying.
Gunderson et al (2013)
- person praise: praising a child personally.
- process praise: praising a child’s behaviour.
- aims:
- whether children are affected by different parent praises in a natural setting.
- if parents give girls less process praises and more person praises than boys.
- parent’s use of person/process praises in early childhood influences the child’s view
later on.
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- procedure:
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- parents were filmed for a day doing their typical routines for 90-minute sessions.
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- looked at children's beliefs later.
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- the researchers who videotaped and transcribed the data didn’t know that parental
praises was the point; avoids bias and gathering qualitative data.
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- at 7-8yrs the same kids answered 2 questionnaires about what they thought led to a
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person’s intelligence and what led people to act morally. 1st was about ability, 2nd was
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about intelligence
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- 29 boys and 24 girls
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-64% white, 17% African American, 11% Hispanic, 8% multicultural
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-looked at the use of praises when the kids were 14mnths, 26mnths, and 38mnths
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- Results:
- 3% of parental comments were praises
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- 18% process praise
- 16% person praise
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- 24.4% process praise for boys
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- 10.3% process praise for girls
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- the more process praises there are in early childhood, the more lively when older.
Willingham’s theory of practice
- States: to learn and develop skills you must have previous knowledge.
- Knowledge frees up space in our memory.
- Enough practice allows you to do things automatically
- We can boost children’s cognitive, physical, and social development through practice
and effort.
- Cognitive: use problems that are not too far out of the child’s reach - remember that
their abilities change every day.
- Physical: focus on what movements would be necessary for a task - practice muscle
movement in front of children.
- Social: encourage self-regulation - demonstrate appropriate behaviour for children to
model.
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