What is two plus two? Are you sure?
Hi, I'am Matt and this is Simply Psych.
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A long time ago someone came up with a squiggly line and we called it a two.
And then put a few straight lines together and we called that a four.
But how do we know what two plus two actually means?
A famous psychologist in cognitive psychology
named Jean Piaget came up with an answer. Let's get into this.
The person responsible for our understanding of cognitive psychology
is Jean Piaget.
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Piaget was a psychologist and educator in the early to middle
twentieth century. A lot of the work he was focused on was
understanding how we construct knowledge. See, when we're born
we really don't have any idea about what life is like, what the world is like
around us.
And when we see things for the first time we have to actively construct our
understanding
of what it is.So when a baby is born and for the first time they see a man.
He might look like a normal man. He's got all of the characteristics you
might think a man:
facial hair, bald head. Maybe not every man. But a child
understands what a man looks like or what a man
is through this image. When a child sees a man
they have to actively construct in their mind what a man
is. This construction is called a schema.
Its kinda like a blueprint in the mind to an understanding of what a man is.
Now if the child sees another man,
especially if the man looks similar to the first man, then it'll be easy for the
child to understand
okay, that's a man as well. But if the child sees now
a different person who's not a man, say a woman,
the woman, though looks kind of like a man but
significantly different typically having longer hair, wearing different clothing,
not as much facial hair, for the most part. Still the child understands okay
these two people are similar and these two people
are important for me to know. This is called assimilation.
When two things look similar the child doesn't have to change its schema.
They just understand that they can adopt this new information in reference to
their original schema.
So the child then understands, okay, these two people are now people
not just men. Now they may see a person who is significantly different,
say a child. A child looks very different than an adult.
Shorter, probably less facial hair, in most cases,
wearing different clothing. Well because of the drastic difference in the way
that this child looks,
the baby when they see that they have to change their schema to say, okay,
maybe all of these figures are humans.
The changing of one's schema is called accommodation.
The schema must be changed in order to accommodate
for the new information. Now this process of creating schemas,
of assimilating information, of accommodating information is a process
that goes on throughout the development of the child.
Piaget said that our minds develop through a series of stages.
There were four stages to be exact.The first stage is called the sensorimotor stage.
Its called the sensorimotor stage because you sense things and then you move.
Babies do that. So they understand the world through their senses,
all five of them: seeing, hearing, tasting,
touching, smelling. And they build schemas around those senses.
At this time also though, children are learning to move.
They learn to sit up. They learn to crawl. They learn to walk. They learn to run.
They learn to point. Through this process they are growing and developing and their
mind is developing through the sensorimotor stage.
Eventually at about this age of two years old, according to Piaget,
children will then move into the next stage.
He called this the preoperational stage. Now during the preoperational stage a
child is learning
other things besides just through their senses. They are now starting to understand
language.
They also learn to take the perspective of someone else.
There's a characteristic in children, in preschool children,
called egocentrism. Egocentrism means I am
unable to take another person's perspective
so I only understand things in reference to me. You see this in preschoolers when
they hit another child and they don't understand to hit the other child
hurts the other child and makes the other child cry. All they know is
I did that because it makes me feel good. Eventually though, through the
preoperational stage children learn
to speak and they learn also to understand things from another person's
point of view.
Its a very important stage. Piaget said the preoperational stage lasts until about the
age of seven.
At that time children then move into the third stage which is called the concrete
operational stage. During this stage children are able to understand things
concretely.
For instance. Someone in the concrete operational stage might see
a truck.
A truck has basic characteristics.
Its got bigger wheels. Its got a loud roar of the engine.
It's got a bed in the back. A truck looks a certain way, sounds a certain way
and even feels a certain way. Now children will have to determine what a
truck actually is.
When they realize that it's different than a bicycle, it's different than a car,
it's different than a boat, it's different than a man, obviously.
The thing is is that children in the concrete operational stage
understand that this is what a truck is.
But concrete thought is based upon what we can see, what we can touch.
Things that are tangible. Not necessarily the function
of things. By the end of the concrete operational stage
which is about the age of 11 according to Piaget, that's when
we all move into the formal operational stage.
And in the formal operational stage is the development
of abstract thought. Abstract thought is our ability to understand
abstract ideas. Like for instance, take a truck.
Of course in the concrete operational stage we understand what a truck looks
like.
But maybe not what it does. When we move into the formal operational stage
that's where we understand what a truck does. We understand that it can pull
things.
We understand that it has torque. That it's got certain amounts of horsepower.
We even understand what horsepower is - it's a whole bunch of horses.
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These concepts are not found in the concrete operational stage.
They're found in the abstract thought of the formal operational stage.
Other abstract ideas include how to do math,
the symbols that we use when we add two plus two,
or six times seven or 36 times 17.
We understand what that means and those things only represent abstractly
the reality of what they're talking.about. Piaget said how we develop across
time
through the construction of these ideas, these schemas,
through the assimilation, the accommodation and through the different stages we have
in our cognitive development,
we're able to have a very deep and fulfilling understanding of the world.
Let's take a seat.
Whether it's how we are able to recognize a family
or what a truck does, or the answer to six times 7,
Piaget provided us with an understanding of how we understand
the information that comes into our mind.
What a fantastic legacy. Till next time...
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