Piaget thought every child developed through a
series of qualitatively different stages.
Name Piaget's four stages, the approximate ages
associated with them, and the crucial
factors that differentiate each stage from the
next.
Summarize the criticisms of Piaget's model of
development offered in the text and, if
possible, come up with a criticism or two of your
own. Discuss briefly how the
information-processing and sociocultural approaches
to cognitive development attempt to
evade these criticisms.
Theory of mind researchers have, for the most part,
tended to ignore individual
differences. Pick one aspect of theory of mind--
such as understanding of false belief and
deception or the difference between appearance and
reality--and discuss how it might
differ significantly from individual to individual.
What are the factors that might
influence such differences?
"Theory theorists" such as Alison Gopnik are so-
called because they have suggested that
the child learns about the world, and about other
minds, by creating hypotheses, testing
them, and discarding or modifying them when they
are contradicted by the evidence. Do
you think this is a realistic assessment of young
children's abilities? What kinds of
evidence do you think could decide whether or not
children are really "little scientists"?
The development of visual acuity is a textbook
case of the interaction of biology and
experience. Discuss this interaction, mentioning
specifically the evidence from animal
studies for the role of visual experience in
shaping visual acuity. Can you think of
another human ability that similarly shows an
interaction between biology and
environment?
