In Piaget's view, cognitive development is the combined result of the development of the brain and the nervous system, and of experiences that help the individual adapt to his or her environment.
- He believed that because humans are genetically similar, and share many of the same environmental experiences, they can be expected to exhibit considerable uniformity in their cognitive development.
- To explain the process of cognition, Piaget used several new terms drawn from his background as a biologist like - schemata, assimilation, accommodation, adaptation and equilibration.
Key Points Piaget used the term 'schema' to refer to the comprehension that an infant, child, or adult may have about different aspects of his or her world.
- Piaget proposed that people are born with a tendency to organize their thinking into schemes (schema).
- These schemes are psychological (mental) categories in which people organize knowledge.
- The word 'schema' is derived from a Greek word which means 'form'.
- A schema is like a map or an outline.
- Piaget believed that children develop schemata or schematic outlines of what the world about them is like and that these schemata are maintained in their memory.
- According to him, behavioural schemes (physical activities) involving sensorimotor action patterns characterize infancy- such as sucking, grasping; and mental schemes (cognitive activities) develop in childhood involving skills such as problem-solving, categorization etc.
- Cognitive approaches are based on the mental representations-internal depiction of information which the mind can manipulate.
- He believed that because of a child's lesser experience and because the child's brain is not fully developed biologically, the child's schema of the world will be qualitatively different from an adult's.
- Thus children are not merely adults who know less, and conversely, adults are not simply knowledgeable children.
Thus, it can be inferred that Schema Theory emphasises cognition, conceptual learning, information processing, conscious experience, organising, storing and retrieving of information, reasoning and problem-solving.
Important Points The social learning theory emphasizes the ways in which external factors, such as socialization agents (e.g., parents, peers, teachers, and the media), shape children's behaviour.
- Bandura’s Social Learning Theory is based on the premise that human behaviour is largely acquired and that the principles of learning are sufficient to account for the development and maintenance of behaviour.
- “Social Learning Theory” is recently renamed, “Social Cognitive Theory”.
- Vicarious learning, or the process of learning from other people’s behaviour, is a central idea of Social Cognitive Theory.
- Bandura's theory of social learning can be explained under the following three headings:
- Reciprocal determinism
- Self-system
- Principles of observational learning
Behaviourism or behaviourist theories lay stress on the role of environmental stimuli in determining the way we act. Learning changes in behaviour because of experiences (excluding changes due to fatigue, injury, or drug effects) is at the centre of this approach.
- Its emphasis is on the relationship between observable behaviour (responses) and environmental events (stimuli).
- Parsimony and associationism are the two fundamental assumptions of behaviourism.
- Learning is at the centre of this approach.
- The central tenet of behaviourism is that an organism learns behavioural adaptation, whose learning is governed by the principles of association.
Interaction theories place a premium on interaction in everyday contexts.
- Its emphasis is on an individual's behaviour in terms of contextual interaction rather than mental process.
