Psychology

Questions
1. Describe the six stages of Piagets sensorimotor development. Explain what is meant by feedback loops and circular reactions. In what ways was Piaget mistaken about infant development
Piaget describe the first 2 years of life as the sensorimotor stage of development. There are six sub-stages of the sensorimotor stage.  In sub-stage 1 (0-1 months) of the sensorimotor stage, Piaget described the infant as interacting with her environment on a reflexive level and not differentiating herself from other objects.  In sub-stage 2 (1-4 months) the infant is beginning to acquire feelings, but still does not show behaviors that would imply that she has an understanding of her own movements as they relate to other objects.  During sub-stage 3 (4-8 months) the young child starts to anticipate the positions of objects in motion and sees herself as the cause for all events (Wadsworth, 1996).  According to Piaget, it is in stage 4 of the sensorimotor stage that the young child starts showing observable intelligence in regard to objects in her environment.  That is, the young child begins solidifying the concept of causality.  Her actions on objects begin to show intentionally toward a goal (Wadsworth, 1996).

The next sub-stage, sub-stage 5, describes the experiences of the young child who is approximately 12-18 months of age.   This sub-stage is characterized by behaviors described as more intentional in regard to the young childs interaction with objects.  Where as in sub-stage 4, when meansends activity was the primary mode of interaction, the young child in sub-stage 5 executes a more experimental or intentional method of achieving her goal.  There is a greater level of maturity or at least a more cognitive exploration of objects in this period as compared to the previous period.  Before this period, the interaction was unidirectional.  Now the young child begins to recognize that an object, which has a specific spatial context, can, in addition to cause and effect, be a source of activity independent of her own body (Wadsworth, 1996).

The final sub-stage is Sub-stage 6.  This sub-stage describes the young child who is approximately 18 to 24 months of age.  Piaget characterized the young child in this sub-stage of sensorimotor development as being able to use analogy to problem solve even in novel situations.  This sub-stage is describes as a stage of invention or cognition not based on trial-and-error activity.  Problem solving is a mentally-based, rather than a physically-based activity.  It is at this sub-stage that true and complete object permanence, as well as the concept of logic, emerges.  Observation of the young child who has achieved this period of development illustrates that she has mastered both sequential and invisible displacement.  She would, therefore, search for an object methodically and with logic rather than with trial-and-error experimentation.

Feedback loops and circular reactions are the processes of rediscovering chance coordinations and their preservation through repetition.  Due to the formation of new coordinations between reflexes, the functional repertoire of the infants gets elaborated, which in turn leads to new schemes.  Thus, the various sub-stages of sensorimotor intelligence are characterized by increasing degrees of elaboration and coordinations between schemes.

In some ways, Piaget was also mistaken about infant development since his theory tends to ignore the cognitive skills typically assigned to the right hemisphere of the cerebral cortex.  He tends to ignore intuitive-creative thinking and the holistic use of information which relies on hunches.

2. What are schema  Describe and discuss the processes of adaptation to new information.

Schema, is a term that Piaget described as the cognitive or mental structures by which individuals intellectually adapt to and organize the environment (Wadsworth, 1996, p. 14).  It is in the creation of new schema that the young child becomes more methodical in her adaptations and interactions with objects and her environment.  It is through maturation and the interaction with the environment that the original schemas at birth develop into elaborate or new complex schemas.  The complexity of schemas may vary from a simple structure representative of a specific and simple act to one composed of multiple and interrelated structures representing a theory applicable to many complex present and future problems.  Such a generalizable schema is a powerful tool and may explain why a child may be able to solve new problems with unexpected accuracy and rapidity.
 
3. Describe the information-processing theory of cognition, and discuss how changes in the areas of affordances, categorization, and memory abilities have contributed to our understanding of infant cognition.

The information-processing theory of cognition offered a more suitable explanation for the development of complex innovative behaviors. This theory is especially appealing to psychologists who view man as an active, striving, self-directing organism.  Changes in the areas of affordances, categorization, and memory abilities have contributed to our understanding of infant cognition.  Affordances, categorization, and memory abilities are all crucial both to the conceptual development and linguistic development of young children. In categorization, children gain mental structures of the world or form concepts. Forming a concept often involves forming a category (Mandler, 2003). In memory abilities, they acquire ways to represent and communicate these structures with language. Without categorization, we would have to respond anew to each novel instance or problem we encounter (Quinn, 2003). Cognitive operations from concept formation to judgment, memory, problem-solving and inventive-thinking all involve the areas of affordances, categorization, and memory abilities (Bruner et al., 1956).4. Compare and contrast Skinners and Chomskys theories of language development. What is the current thinking about the processes of language development

Until now stimuli and responses have been discussed only as observables. The attempt to explain all of behavior on the basis of observables has been the goal of radical behaviorists for a number of decades.  A high point in this attempt was Skinners (1957) explanation of language behavior.  However, Skinners work was judged by Chomsky (1959) to be inadequate for linguistic analysis.  Currently, learning theorists of a less fundamentalist bent have dealt with the issue of nonoobservables in the explanation of the process of language development.