Bandura took 36 boys and 36 girls for his experiment. The children were between 3 and 6 years old. He also used one man and one woman model. Bandura wanted to see if the children would model aggressive, or mean, behavior. Bandura broke the children into eight groups of 6 and one group of 24. The groups were made by breaking half of the children into an aggressive group and half into one that was not. The two groups were both broken in half again by boys and girls. Bandura then split the girls into two groups. One group had the woman model and the other had the man model. He did the same with the boys. The group of 24 had no model.
The children were put in a play room with the model. The children were told to sit on a chair and the model went to the other side of the room. The children that were in aggressive groups saw the model go up the a Bobo doll in the room and play with it. The model spent most of the time being aggressive to the doll. The children that were not in the aggressive group saw the model play with tinker toys and not pay attention to the Bobo doll. The model then left the room. The children were allowed to play with the toys in the room. Some of the toys let the children play and be aggressive. The children were watched how they played with the toys. Children who saw the aggressive model played aggressively with the toys. The children who had a model who was not aggressive played nicer. The children played nice because they did not watch the aggressive model to copy the behavior. Bandura's experiment showed that children can learn behavior from adults by watching the adult's behavior.
Jean Piaget started his theory on child development when he questioned the way children think. He thought that infants and children had different understandings than adults. Piaget focused on the cognitive development of children instead of adults. Cognitive development is studying how adults and children think and learn. Piaget’s work helped to develop new ways of education and programs of discovery learning. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development has three main parts:
Piaget thought children had and made schemas as they developed. Schemas are ways of making sense of experience. A schema is a picture of something in a child’s mind. The picture is normally of how different things happen in the world. The picture helps the child understand and behave in the world. An example of a schema would be a child’s schema for being in a classroom. The child’s picture would have things like students sitting in chairs at desks. A teacher is in the front of the class teaching. This schema helps the child know how to act and know what might happen in the classroom.
Piaget thought that the first schemas have to do with the child’s reaction to the world. Piaget thought that babies are born with some schemas without learning them. These schemas are sensorimotor actions. The schemas are very simple. Schemas get more complex as the child gets older. The child starts to think before acting. When the child does this, it uses mental representations, or pictures in the mind that are representative of different things. The mental representations can be changed in the mind into new ideas. Piaget thought that the two most powerful mental representations are images and concepts. Images are pictures in the mind of objects, people and spaces. Concepts put the images together in different groups. Schemas can be changed and made from putting together and changing images and concepts in the child’s mind.
Piaget thought that a child’s mind changes to better fit with the world through adaption. Children use adaptation by changing schemas to fit the world. Piaget thought that adaptation has two parts: assimilation and accommodation. In assimilation children use the schemes they have to understand the world. Children’s schemes do not always right. When a child has a schema that is not right, they have to change it. This is called accommodation. In accommodation new schemes are made or old ones are changed. The changes must take place so the child can better understand the world. Piaget thought there is a balance between assimilation and accommodation. He called the balance cognitive equilibrium. When a child’s schemes fit their understanding of the world then the child is in equilibrium. When the schemes do not fit the child is in disequilibrium. Piaget called the moving between equilibrium and disequilibrium equilibration.
Piaget broke his stages of cognitive development of children into four stages. The stages always go in the same order. The stages also happen to children everywhere. At each stage there are key details that happen in that stage.
The sensorimotor stage is the first stage of Piaget’s theory. In this stage, babies “think” with their eyes, ear, and hands. Children in this stage learn about the world through their senses. Piaget thought that children in this stage learn by doing the same acts over and over. These acts come from their sense experience. Piaget called this circular reaction. There are two main kinds of circular reaction: primary and secondary. One month olds use primary circular reaction. In primary circular reaction children do acts that have to do with their basic needs, like eating. Four to eight month olds use secondary circular reaction. Secondary circular reaction happens when children try to make events happen with their acts. Secondary circular reaction in children helps to control their own behavior. Eight to twelve month olds can control their behavior. In the sensorimotor stage, children gain object permanence. This happens between 8 and 12 months. Object permanence is knowing that a thing is still in existence even if the child cannot see it. Object permanence is seen in children eight to twelve months old. Object permanence can be seen in Piaget’s object hiding task. In the task a toy is hidden under a blanket. If the baby can find the toy than the baby has learned object permanence.
Preoperational StageThe preoperational stage has a large change in representative thought in the mind. In this stage children can use symbols to represent their knowledge. Children also learn language in the preoperational stage. Piaget did not think language was that important for cognitive development. He thought that children use words to explain the pictures of experience in their mind. In the preoperational stage, children have egocentricism. Egocentricism is when children cannot tell the difference between their view point and someone else’s. Piaget used the three mountains problem to show egocentricism. In the problem a doll is placed on one side of a group of mountains. A child is placed on a different side. The child is asked to tell what the doll sees. A child who has egocentricism tells what he or she sees and not what the doll sees.
This is for the simple wiki page on child development.
In the concrete operational stage children’s thought becomes more logical. Logical thought uses reason when thinking. Children are able to understand changes between things that are in front of them. They still have a hard time with things that they have to imagine. Children in the concrete operational stage can place items in different arrangements. They understand that things can be placed into more than one group at a time. Children in the concrete operational stage can also put things in order of qualities like length and weight. The understanding of conservation happens in the concrete operational stage. Children who understand conservation know that changing a things shape or container does not change how much is there. For example, in conservation of liquid children know that the amount of liquid does not change if it is put in a different glass.