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genetic epitemology

• def: the study of the origins of knowledge
• knowledge dev. refers to the dev. of logico-mathematical knowledge
• True knowledge is self constructed
• rationalists believe the mind could develop without the body
  • HOWEVER
    • According to Piaget the body is the vehicle for initial cog. dev.
      • E.g. robot cannot be a "blank slate" nor "fully programmed"
• knowledge cannot be passively obtained from observation
  • dev. of all our logico-mathematical thinking springs from the dev. of three types of action schema (grasping, looking, sucking )
    • EVIDENCE
      • Neurodevelopmental evidence that early sensory-motor experience has an influence on our brain's plasticity
        • DAWSON ET AL (2008) evidence that 2 year olds diagonosed with ASD have significantly less experience of other's faces/eyes which may under stimulate areas of the brain linked with social understanding

Schemas

• schema represents ones understanding of what something is/ how something works
• theory has biological basis
  • Any new mental schema is also the product of internal mechanisms and the child's experience (= already exsisting schemas) of its physical environment)
• cog. dev. comes about from the use of mental tools
  • Assimilation
    • analogy of digestive process, not everything can be digested
  • Accomodation
    • results in the creation of new schema or the modification of old schema
  • only assimilation= things would be too generalised
  • only accommodation= things would look too different
    • Things would be so specific we wouldn't be able to count objects
      • E.g. we wouldn't be able to count apples on a table because they would look so different to us that we believe they are different objects
• Piaget's dynamic biologically inspired model of self-motivated cognitive development
  • 1) Equilibrium
    • 2) Dis-equilibrium
      • 3) New equilibrium
        • New Assimulation
        • Cycle repeats
      • Accommodation- 'differentiating '
    • Event e.g. sees cow, but knows it's not a dog
    • Assimilation - 'trying to mentally absorb'

Stages of cog. dev.

• term stage' should not be taken strictly, variability in dev. is due to a child's particular experiences with it's material environment
  • Horizontal decalage
  • model conjures up quantitative breaks but in reality there tends to be overlap e.g. Siegler's wave model
• 1) Sensori-motor
  • 0-2
    • infant learn through direct experience of the senses (no symbolic representations) handling objects and moving them around. No understanding of things exists outside of the sensory actions performed on them.
• 2) Pre-operational
  • 2-6/7
    • Ability to form mental representations ,language. Thinking as internalised actions but centred on self's perspective. Inability to think logically
• 3) Concrete Operational
  • 7/11
    • Thinking can take place in the thinking of others and is logical with respect to concrete actions and objects such as the rules of a game. Inability to think purely in the abstract
• 4) FormalOperational
  • 12+
    • Thinking non-concrete or abstract things. Ability to solve word problems. Ability to form coherent system of thought relating to hypothetical possibilities.

Pros & Cons

• Cons
  • Piagetian theory suggests that logical skills develop in separate groups HOWEVER, any particular child does not necessarily demonstrate the same logicalskill in all domains at the same time, this is a minor problem of Piaget stage theory
    • Horizontal decalage
  • More recent evidence shows that different groups of abilities actually do not necessarily correlate well with each other or with age, and therefore stage. This is not predicted by Piagetian theory of any age-stage theory
    • Vertical decalage
• Pros
  • sheer scope and range of his theory, and inventive methodology enabling us to understand interesting developmental phenomena, and therefore understanding children