Working on the project...

I'm very proud of myself today beacuse I worked on my semester project a lot. I think it is a very good thing that we are doing this project since I get to know myself better. There are some pictures of my childhood that I want to use in the paper but since I'm not living with my parents, they will have to search through the photo albums and send me the pictures somehow. Anyway, I have to get back to work.

The first quiz...

In today’s class, we had a quiz. It was the first quiz of the year so I was a little excited. We had to study for the sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, attachment, memory, self concept and theory of mind. Although I was nervous it went really well. I also think that this has made it a lot easier to get ready for the exam since I have already studied these topics once.

I also started writing my project which is going pretty well at the moment. I’ve done an interview which I think contains very good material for my paper.

Preoperational Stage

In the beginning of the lecture on Friday, we talked about self concept and self esteem. Then we started discussing the preoperational stage. We said that the stage is between ages 2-7. We talked about pretend play and how it is important for imaginaton. One thing I now from my own self is that since I am a single-child, I used to play by myself most of the time since I was the only kid in the house. And I can also say that I used to have a very huge imagination. So in class when we said that usually single children and first born children have more pretend play since they have to play with themselves more than others, I saw a reflection from my own life.



Then we discussed the characteristics of this stage. We said that there is difficulty seperating fantasy and reality. We also said that there is egocentrism. I learned that adolescents think of themeselves as unique and they usually say things like “Nothing will happen to me if I do this”. This is called personal fable. There is overdiferentiation of self and others. I also learned a thing called imaginary audience in which adolsecents think that everybody is watching them. When I think of my high school years, I remember that I used to think everyone was watching me too.
Then we talked about animism which means giving inanimate objects feelings, thoughts, intentions. Another term I learned was transductive which means seeing a casual relationship between seperate events. Afterwards, we talked about transductive logic. We said that there is lack of conservation. We talked about two aspects: centration, lack of reversibilty. In centration, we said that the child focuses on one aspect of a problem. The video of the conservation task was a very good example. In the video, the girl was only focusing on the shape of the container but she couldn’t focus on the amount. In lack of reversibilty, we said that since children don’t have this, they don’t have operations.
The last characteristic we talked about was artificialism. We gave examples like “The sky is so blue because someone painted it blue”.
Lastly, we talked about Theory of Mind. We said that the child has a theoryof the content another’s mind. 3 year olds don’t have a theory of mind and otistic children also have a lack of it. We said that there are 2 ways of testing it:
1)False-Belief test - Sally-Anne test:

2)Appereance-Reality Distinction: ex:changing the marker caps
Probably the best part of the lesson was at the end when we watched the video of the Marshmallow Test. I really enjoyed watching it although I still believe that it was very cruel what they did to those children.

Reviewing attachment...

The class on Thursday was very helpful because we reviewed the subject attachment. We went through what we did in the previous lecture. We discussed the theories of attachment. The class was not very crowded so it was easy for me to understand and focus .

Attachment

This Friday, most of the students majoring in psychology didn’t come to the lecture because they had another exam I think. So we did a short lesson and talked about attachment. I had been to the conference by Alan Sroufe last month so I had already known a bit about this topic.
We said that attachment is the bond between a child and the primary caregiver. It can be emotional or cognitive.



Functions of attachment:
• Aids survival - All children develop attachment to survive.
• Provides confidence for children - The child uses this person, the attachment figure as a secure base. If they don’t have this, they don’t have the confidence to go out and explore.
• Close contact/comfort

Then we watched a video with the monkey and saw how the mother becomes the secure base. It was very interesting.

Attachment styles: They have very important influences o the rest of your life.
1) Secure Attachment: Has the most positive attachment. Children are willing to take chances and they are much more confident.
2) Insecure Attachment:
• Ambivalent
• Avoidant/Resistant
• Disorganized



Then we watched a video about the experiment called the “Strange Situation”. We looked at the attachment relationships between some children and their mothers. I think watching these videos really helped me understand the attachment styles. But I also felt very bad for the children when they were crying. It upset me a lot.

We also said that attachment can change if:
• Caregiver changes (sometimes insecure attachments can become secure attachments)
• Environmental changes

Another interesting thing I learned was that a person’s relationship with God can either be secure or insecure depending on that person’s attachment to their primary caregiver.

Lastly we talked about the theories of attachment.
Theories of Attachment:
1) Cognitive
2) Learning
3) Ethological
4) Psychoanalytic

Some review and a practice quiz...

We did some review of Piaget in today’s class. We did a practice quiz in which I scored 9/10 and it felt really good. I sometimes feel that my general psychology knowledge is not enough for this lesson since my major is economics. So when I do well in these practice quizzes, I start being more confident about myself and my knowledge :)

Piaget and Cognitive Development

Last Friday’s lesson was about cognitive development. So we started talking about Piaget. We said that he started his work with IQ testing. He worked in Binet’s laboratory. While working, he looked at the process of understanding. For example, he was wondering why children were giving wrong answers to questions. Later we said that he has four stages:
1) Sensorimotor(age 0-12)
2) Preoperational(age 2-7)
3) Concrete operational(age 7-12)
4) Formal operational(age 12-adult)
One thing which caught my attention in the beginning of the lesson was that in the preoperational period, fantasy and reality are very similar. The example our teacher gave about her daughter was also interesting.

Then we talked about cognition and listed two elements:
1) Adaptation: fitting in
Three processes:
• Assimilation
• Accomodation
• Equilibration
For assimilation we said that new information or knowledge comes in and fits in your existing scheme. However this is not very easy for children. For example if you are kid and you see a dog, you can easily say that it is a mammal. But if you see a whale you can not say that it is a mammal because you don’t think that it looks like a mammal so it doesn’t fit your scheme.
2) Scheme: like a framework
We said that schemes can be mental or physical.

Later, we asked the question “How does cognitive development occur?” This question asks how children go from one stage to the other. When answering this question, we talked about physical maturation. These are the four ways:
• Central nervous system, brain
• Direct experience(ex: playing is very important fort he cognitive development of children)
• Social transmission(ex: teaching)
• Equilibration

We continued talking about Piaget. We discussed his importance and limitations. We said that his historical importance is considerable. His stages are universal. His contemporary importance is high but he underestimates children’s cognitive ability. His stages have less qualitative difference and less of microelements.

In the last part of our lesson, we talked about the sensorimotor stage and its six substages.

Substage 1:Reflex
This happens between 0-1 months. Some reflexes are sucking and grasping.

Substage 2: Primary Circular Reactions
We said that primary refers to the child’s body, circular refers to repeated and reactions refer to response. This happens between 1-4 months. There is focus on child’s body. For example in thumb sucking the thumb goes into the mouth by chance, the child starts sucking the thumb, if he likes it he keeps on sucking. We also gave a bit of a disgusting example with saliva which I will not mention here.

Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions
Secondary refers to external. This stage is between 4-8 months. There is focus on the external world. Examples are rattling an object, kicking something, grabbing things.

Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Schemes
Happens between 8-12 months. There are multiple schemes and now they are becoming more coordinated. There are means-ends.

Substage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions
This stage covers the period from 12-18 months. There is deliberate trial error. There is modification of secondary schemes to accomplish goals and better understanding of cause and effect. The example we discussed about the crib and the stick was very interesting. The kid is trying to get the stick in the crib but can’t do it since he is not holding it upside down. He has to turn the stick which means that now he is modifying the grasping scheme to accomplish goal.

Substage 6: New Means through Mental Combinations
Covers the period through 18-24 months. This is the beginning of symbolism (symbolic thought), mental representation. There is less outright trial/error.
After this stage the child moves to stage 2, the preoperational stage.

This was last week’s lecture and it was a very fun topic to learn. I hope what we will learn this week will be interesting too.