PSY 2105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: 18 Months, Hans Moravec, Cognitive Development
27 Mar 2019
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Chapter 8 cognitive development: the piagetian approach. Grounding in philosophy: emphasis on basic forms of knowledge, such as concepts of space, time, number, and causality. In addition, an emphasis on invariance and change. Substage 1 - exercising reflexes (birth to 1 month) - piaget held a limited view of newborn abilities, seeing them as simple and automatic reflexes; most scholars now agree this is an underestimation of infant capacities. However, piaget did believe these reflexes are the building blocks of intelligence. As infants exercise these reflexes on different objects in the environment, they assimilate more things, resulting in accommodation, or behavioural changes. Substage 2 - developing schemes (1 to 4 months) - during this substage reflexes become schemes. Sensorimotor schemes, skilled and generalizable action patterns by which infants act on and understand the world, are the cognitive structures of infancy. During this substage schemes become much less primitive, more responsive to environmental qualities and more coordinated.
