PSYC1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Tabula Rasa, Peekaboo, Object Permanence
PSYC1001
15TH MARCH 2018
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
× Continuity (e.g. Rovee-Collier’s theory of infant memory development) vs. Discontinuity
(e.g. Piaget’s stage theory of cognitive development)
× Cognitive development- What do infants and young children know? How do we know what
they know? Do they come into the world knowing anything (innate knowledge)? Or do they
have to learn everything about how the world works from scratch (Tabula rasa)?
× Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
- Swiss philosopher/natural scientist
- Interested in epistemology
- Famous for studying his own children’s development and theorising about how
children acquire knowledge
- Constructivist approach: Piaget thought children constructed knowledge by mixing
their experiences (their interactions with the world) with their own ideas
× He argued that infants and children were forming schemas- mental
structures, or models, that we create to represent, organise and interpret
our experiences
× Theorised that learning occurs as children update their schemas to account
for new experiences that they had- during development, infants/children
adapt to meet the demands of the environment in one of two ways:
assimilation (fitting reality into existing schemas), accommodation
(adjusting schemas to fit with reality)
- Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
1. Sensorimotor stage (birth – 2 years)
a. Infants “think” with their hands, mouths and senses
b. Sensing and acting; little reasoning
c. Egocentric- unable to imagine that others perceive the world
differently to them
d. Milestones: object permanence (e.g. peek-a-boo)- late in the first
year, infants begin to search for hidden objects, but their behaviour
is inflexible- have trouble inhibiting the initial ‘response’ that they
learnt (e.g. A not B)
2. Preoperational stage (ages 2 – 7)
