week3

9/24/2019 Week 3 - Instructor Guidance: PSY104: Child and Adolescent Development (PTG1939B)

https://ashford.instructure.com/courses/53006/pages/week-3-instructor-guidance?module_item_id=2680402 1/4

Week Three Instructor Guidance

Welcome to Week Three of Child and Adolescent Development   

We have hit the half way mark, and you are doing great! This week’s topic is cognitive development. There are several theories about how we learn new things. Even as adults, we are all constantly learning new things, especially in this academic environment! However, how would you explain this process of “learning”? Can you sit back and self-reflect on a piece of information that you did not previously know and deduce how you learned that information? This week we will look at three specific theories that attempt to explain how we learn. You will also continue to build your Community Child Develop Center.

Cognitive Development Theory

Piaget’s Cognitive Theory

We understand the world around us through schemes (also called schemas sometimes). These schemes are basically maps for how to act in a certain situation (Santrock, 2011). For example, you know what to do when you walk into a McDonald’s, right? We all have a “fast food restaurant” scheme that tells us how to act in McD’s, even if we don’t eat there often. Well, what if I opened a new fast food chain called “Rockin Rock’s”, and you walked in for the first time? You would have no prior knowledge of how to act in my restaurant, so you would actually use a past “fast food restaurant scheme” and apply it to this new situation! This process is called “assimilation.” Assimilation simply means that you apply an old scheme to a new situation that you don’t yet understand (Santrock, 2011). Another example of this is if children call a wolf a “doggie.” The children have never seen a wolf, so they assimilate the old scheme of what they know a dog looks like and apply it to this unfamiliar object!

Well, now, what if “Rockin Rock’s” employees look at you funny when you walk up and order? You quickly realize that this isn’t the same scheme as good ol’ McD’s after all! So, you must change your scheme to adapt to this new situation. Changing your new scheme because it doesn’t match your old one is called “adaptation” (Santrock, 2011). We use adaptation to learn a new scheme. At “Rockin Rock’s” you sit down at your table and someone comes and takes your order! So, now you have a new scheme. Likewise, when parents correct the child who thinks a wolf is a doggie, they are changing that child’s scheme, as well! When the child is told, “No honey, that’s a wolf. It is like a doggie but lives in the wild,” that child can now adapt and change his or her scheme to include wolves!

9/24/2019 Week 3 - Instructor Guidance: PSY104: Child and Adolescent Development (PTG1939B)

https://ashford.instructure.com/courses/53006/pages/week-3-instructor-guidance?module_item_id=2680402 2/4

So, in a nutshell, Piaget believed that we have schemes for old information, and that we apply those schemes to new situations (assimilation) and then learn to change those schemes to fit in that new information (adaptation), and that is how we learn!

Vygotsky’s Theory (Zone of Proximal Development)

Vygotsky differed from Piaget in that he believed we achieve new understanding by building blocks of knowledge and being met at our own level by someone more advanced (parent or teacher). For instance, we would not expect a four year old to be able to paint the Mona Lisa right away. First, we teach the four year old how to hold a paintbrush and distinguish between the colors. How do we do that? Well, a parent or teacher judges how much a child can do on his or her own, then assesses what that child could do if they had assistance. This area in which a child can only complete an activity with assistance is known as the “Zone of Proximal Development” or ZPD (Mossler, 2014). Another example of this zone might be using scissors. A young child will need help to cut with scissors at first, so this activity is in his or her ZPD. After receiving help with cutting using scissors for a while, the child learns to master this ability on his or her own. It is no longer in the ZPD, but in the realm of conquered activities. Now, perhaps cutting a specific shape becomes the new ZPD (Mossler, 2014). The child has mastered cutting in a straight line, but has difficulty cutting circles alone. So, the teacher helps the child cut circles, and this is now in their ZPD. Once it has been mastered, their ZPD moves up one more block, until eventually, using scissors is as easy for them as it is for you or me.

Information-Processing theory

Unlike the previous two theories on learning, the Information-Processing approach focuses less on the environment and more on how our brains capture the information in that environment. In this theory, it is suggested that our minds are like a computer, and we must encode, store, and retrieve “files” from our memory that we can use when we want to learn something (Santrock, 2011). The first stage, encoding, is when the information from the environment is put into the “filing system” of our brain. In order to encode information, we must perceive and understand it (Santrock, 2011). If something happens that we aren’t paying attention to (such as a boring lecture…), we will not be able to encode that information into our brain. The next step is to store that information somewhere. We have both short-term and long-term storage capacity, depending on what type of memory we need (Mossler, 2014). Sometimes, we memorize something for just a few minutes so that we can recall it once very quickly (like a phone number that we keep repeating until we have a pencil to write it down). Other memories need to be stored for a long time, like names, faces, and birthdays. The final stage of this theory is the retrieval. Retrieval is when we need to go and find that piece of information and bring it back to the surface to use that information (Santrock, 2011). Let’s say that you have stored the names of all of the Psychologists involved in the behavioral theory, and then you realize that you will have a test in which you need to recall those names. You would go back to the memory storage files in your brain and remember those names so that you can pass the test!

9/24/2019 Week 3 - Instructor Guidance: PSY104: Child and Adolescent Development (PTG1939B)

https://ashford.instructure.com/courses/53006/pages/week-3-instructor-guidance?module_item_id=2680402 3/4

Readings –

Mossler, R. (2nd ed.). (2014). Child and Adolescent Development. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education.

Chapter 7: Cognitive Development: Piaget and Vygotsky Chapter 8: Cognitive Development: Information Processing Chapter 15.2: Play

Discussion— This week’s discussion will be a comparison between Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories. Digging into the details of these theories will help you to support your chosen cognitive development activities in your Community Child Development Center.

Reading Review—Don’t forget to go to the reading review and complete the 25 questions from the reading this week.

Assignment: Cognitive Development Activities. Just as we did last week with physical development, this week you will create three activities for your Community Child Development Center focused on cognitive development. It is important that you connect your choices to cognitive development theory and that they be age appropriate. Here are two examples (that can also be found in the Week Three assignment tab):

Cognitive Development Activity for Infant Room: Peek-a-boo.

One of the activities we will incorporate into the infant room is Peek-a-boo. This is a game where the caregiver hides himself from the child (covering the child's eyes or hiding behind a chair, etc.) and then appears again by uncovering the child's eyes or coming out from behind the chair. Another variation of this would be hiding a treasured object under a scarf and then revealing it again. One of the milestones of the first year of life is the development of object permanence. Object permanence occurs when an infant grasps that something (an object, a person) still exists even when the infant cannot see it. This is a concept from Piaget's theory of cognitive development and is one of the developmental tasks of the sensorimotor stage. Newborns do not have a sense of permanence. When they cannot see you, you do not exist for them. During the first year of life, they slowing learn that objects and people continue to exist even with they cannot be seen (Mossler, 2014). Playing Peek-a-Boo is one way to foster the development of object permanence. Infants usually delight in seeing someone appear and then hide, only to reappear.

Cognitive Development Activity for Adolescent Room: Board Games involving strategy and problem solving.

9/24/2019 Week 3 - Instructor Guidance: PSY104: Child and Adolescent Development (PTG1939B)

https://ashford.instructure.com/courses/53006/pages/week-3-instructor-guidance?module_item_id=2680402 4/4

In the Adolescent Room, we propose having a collection of board games that require logical thinking and problem solving. Adolescence is the beginning of more sophisticated thinking. Children in this age group move from concrete operations to what Piaget calls formal operations. They are becoming capable of deductive and hypothetical reasoning (Mossler, 2014). Games like chess, Battleship, and checkers all require players to engage in this kind of thinking. Another game that can be used is the game of CLUE. This game supports the development of prepositional logic and requires players to think hypothetically (Neller, Markov and Russell, 2006).

Mossler, R. (2nd ed.). (2014). Child and Adolescent Development. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education.

Neller, T., Markov, Z., & Russell, I. (2006). Clue deduction: Professor Plum teaches logic. Retrieved from http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/papers/flairs06.pdf

Submit your two to three-page (excluding title and reference pages) paper on physical development activities for three of the rooms in your Community Child Development Center. Remember to review the assignment tab for details. You are also encouraged, but not required, to submit the paper to the Writing Center for Feedback.

Mossler, R. (2nd ed.). (2014). Child and Adolescent Development. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education.

Neller, T., Markov, Z., & Russell, I. (2006). Clue deduction: Professor Plum teaches logic (http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/papers/flairs06.pdf) . Retrieved from http://cs.gettysburg.edu/~tneller/papers/flairs06.pdf

Santrock, J. (2011). Life-span development (13th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN: 9780073532097