Chapter 4
Learning and Human
Development
The following are the objectives of this
chapter:
- Define and give examples of human development
and the major factors that contribute to it (growth, maturation,
and learning).
- Describe Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems
model and the role of the family in human development.
- Describe how knowledge is acquired and
organized according to the developmental theory of Jean
Piaget.
(Review Quiz Questions
1 and 2)
(Review Quiz Question
4)
- List and describe Piaget's four major stages
of cognitive development.
(Review Quiz Question
3)
(Review Quiz Questions
5 through 7)
- Describe the five factors that account for
development according to Piaget and identify examples of each.
(Review Quiz Questions
8 and 9)
- Describe the implications of Piaget's
cognitive theory for education.
- Describe the major concepts of Vygotsky's
theory of human development as it relates to education.
- Describe the major concepts of constructivist
theories of human development as they relate to education.
(Review Quiz Question
10)
- Describe the major factors in the development
of social skills.
- Describe the major factors in the development
of help seeking strategies and peer relationships among children
and adolescents.
- Describe the major characteristics and
problems of learners at each of the following age levels and
strategies for dealing with these problems:
a. preschool children
b. early and middle elementary
children
c. adolescents
d. adults
Possible
problems and Solutions:
1. Students sometimes confuse the concepts of
assimilation and accommodation.
Similarities: Both occur during the
typical act of learning. They both involve the use of cognitive
structures (schemata).
Differences: Assimilation refers to taking
information into the brain through existing structures.
Accommodation is the activity that reorganizes the existing
structures to form a new, revised set of structures.
Piaget
Unit Quiz
1. Bobby has learned how to
print his name with both a crayon and a pencil. His mother gives him
an ink pen and he immediately begins to print his name. He has
_________ the pen to his structures for writing.
a. assimilated
b. adapted
c. accommodated
d. structured
{Check
your answer.}
2. Randall's father gives
him a golf club and a golf ball. Randall, who has never seen a golf
club, begins to swing it like a baseball bat, then like a tennis
racquet. After a while, Randall realizes that he must swing the club
toward the ground in order to hit the ball. Randall's modification of
the way he swings the golf club is an example of
a. assimilation
b. sensorimotor functioning
c. accommodation
d. structuring
{Check
your answer.}
3. A logical problem begins
with the statement, "Suppose it was possible to move backward but not
forward in a time machine...." Most of the students in the class can
solve the problem easily. They acquired this ability in the course of
this school year. The students in this class appear to be at what
stage of development?
a. Formal operational stage.
b. Concrete operational stage.
c. Preoperational stage.
d. Accommodating stage
{Check
your answer.}
4. A left-handed child
begins going to a new school. He finds out that his new school has
only right-handed desks. The child adjusts by sitting at an unusual
angle in the desk while writing. This adjustment in his sitting
pattern is an example of
a. preservation.
b. conservation.
c. assimilation.
d. accommodation.
e. None of the above.
{Check
your answer.}
Use the following to answer questions 5 and
6:
James and Maria are children of normal
intelligence in Mrs. Bittner's class. Mrs. Bittner has two
containers (one long and thin, one short and fat). She fills the
short one with the colored liquid, then she pours the liquid
(without spilling any) into the tall thin container. James
believes there is now more liquid in the tall container, even
though no water has been added. Maria laughs at him and cannot
understand his reasoning. She says that the amount of liquid has
remained the same.
5. Which of Piaget's stages
is James in?
a. Formal operations
b. Concrete operations
c. Pre-operational
d. Sensorimotor
{Check
your answer.}
6. Which stage is Maria
in?
a. Sensorimotor
b. Formal operations
c. Pre-operational
d. Concrete operation
{Check
your answer.}
7. Fred is smarter than
Jeff; Fred is not as smart as Debbie. Who is the smartest of the
three, or is it impossible to tell? If a child can give the correct
answer this hypothetical question without knowing the above mentioned
children but just thinking about it, that child has reached the stage
of
a. concrete operations
b. intuitive stage
c. formal operations stage
d. conceptual operations
{Check
your answer.}
8. It is sometimes useful to
present information to learners at a level of abstraction slightly
higher than that at which they are comfortable.
a. True. Only if this happens are they
likely to move to higher levels of abstraction.
b. False. Learners cannot assimilate information that is presented
to them at a higher level of abstraction than that at which they
feel comfortable.
c. False. Learners cannot accommodate to information that is
presented to them at a higher level of abstraction than that at
which they feel comfortable.
d. False. Equilibration cannot occur when information is presented
at a higher level of abstraction than that at which learners feel
comfortable.
{Check
your answer.}
9. This term refers to the
communication of information from one person to another by
demonstrating or describing concepts or information.
a. Accommodation
b. Assimilation
c. Equilibration
d. Formal operational thinking
e. Social transmission
{Check
your answer.}
10. What would a
constructivist theory most likely believe?
a. That individuals actively construct
reality for themselves.
b. That reinforcement is preferable to punishment.
c. That natural reinforcement is preferable to artificial
reinforcement.
d. That information must enter the short-term memory before it can
be transferred to the long-term memory.
e. All of the above are essential components of a constructivist
theory.
{Check
your answer.}
Matching
Exercises
Human Development Terms
Match each term with the appropriate
definition.
a. Authoritarian parenting style
b. Authoritative parenting style
c. Biological factors
d. Constructivism
e. Development
f. Environmental Factors
g. Genetic factors
h. Growth
i. Learning
j. Maturation
k. Permissive parenting style
l. Systems model
m. Zone of proximal development
- _____ The factors in human development that
are determined at conception.
- _____ The factors in human development that
can be influenced not only by genes, but also by other
non-learning and non-social events.
- _____ The factors in human development that
are outside the human organism that influence it, including the
family, society, and school.
- _____ Increases in physical size.
- _____ The distance between the actual
developmental level as determined by independent problem solving
and the level of potential development as determined through
problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more
capable peers.
- _____ A process that enables learners to
modify their behavior fairly rapidly in a more or less permanent
way in response to experience, so that the same modification does
not have to occur again and again in each new situation.
- _____ Changes in behavior that occur
relatively independently of the environment.
- _____ The process of orderly, cumulative,
directional, age-related changes that humans experience as they
progress through their life cycle.
- _____ A label given to the cluster of learning
theories that emphasize the idea that learners construct knowledge
(and reality) for themselves by actively interacting with concepts
and information in their environment.
- _____ The parenting style that is warm and
demanding. In general, parents espousing this style believe try to
guide their children's behavior into productive patterns, but they
do this primarily through persuasion rather than parental
decree.
- _____ The parenting style that emphasizes
obedience, even at the expense of the child's autonomy. In
general, parents espousing this style believe that children should
follow parental authority without question.
- _____ The parenting style in which parents
give their children almost unlimited freedom.
- _____ An approach to studying human learning
or development that emphasizes that the developing person acts on
the context while the context acts on the person.
{Click here for
answers to Matching Exercises.}
Piaget Terms
Match each term with the appropriate
definition.
a. Accommodation
b. Adaptation
c. Assimilation
d. Concrete operational stage
e. Content
f. Equilibration
g. Formal operational stage
h. Logico-Mathematical Experience
i. Operation
j. Optimal discrepancy
k. Physical Experience
l. Preoperational stage
m. Sensorimotor stage.
n. Social Transmission
- _____ The information that is organized in a
person's mind with regard to a particular object, idea, or
activity.
- _____ The mental manipulation of an object or
idea.
- _____ Piaget's idea that learning takes place
when new information is familiar enough that a learner can
assimilate it, but also different enough from existing structures
that the learner will have to accommodate those new structures to
handle the new information.
- _____ The earliest stage of cognitive
development (ages 0 to about 2 years), during which children spend
most of their intellectual efforts integrating their senses with
their psychomotor abilities.
- _____ The stage (beginning for some children
around age 13) during which learners develop the ability to
perform mental manipulations on abstractions as well as concrete
objects.
- _____ The stage (from about age 7 to about age
12) during which children can mentally manipulate objects or ideas
- as long as these are concretely present or at least can be
directly recalled from memory.
- _____ The stage (from about age 2 to about age
7) during which children are not yet able to mentally manipulate
objects or ideas.
- _____ The raw input for the assimilations and
accommodations that lead to cognitive growth.
- _____ The person's increasing ability to
construct relationships among objects and ideas.
- _____ The communication of information from
one person to another by demonstrating or describing concepts or
information.
- _____ The balance between assimilation and
accommodation.
- _____ The process by which a person encounters
a new object, idea, or situation and is able to deal with it or
classify it with existing cognitive structures.
- _____ The process by which cognitive
structures are organized. Learners assimilate information through
existing cognitive structures and sometimes accommodate these
previous structures as a result of the newly assimilated
information.
- _____ The process of change in cognitive
structures that occurs when a learner encounters an imperfect
match between newly assimilated information and existing cognitive
structures and is able to make an adjustment in the existing
structures that will account for the new information.
{Click here for
answers to Matching Exercises.}
Key
Ideas
(This fill-in-the-blanks exercise can be a useful
way to verify that you can recall and understand the main concepts
covered in this chapter. When the answers you give differ from those
in the answer key, think about it. If your answer is as good as mine,
that's great! However, there's a good chance that in many cases my
answer may be better than yours. Try to find the logic behind my
answer. The more actively you think - by looking for reasons and
explanations - the more valuable this exercise will be for you.)
(Also note that after you have filled in the
blanks, this set of Key Ideas provides a good summary of the
chapter.)
- Human development refers to the process of
__________, cumulative, directional, age-related changes that
humans experience as they progress through their life cycle.
- Through the process of __________, individuals
undergo qualitative changes and reorganize their behaviors.
- Maturation consists of changes that occur
relatively _______________ of the environment.
- Learning is a process that enables learners to
modify their behavior fairly __________ in a more or less
permanent way in response to __________, so that the same
modification does not have to occur again and again in each new
situation.
- While the pattern of development is likely to
be __________, the outcomes of developmental processes and the
rate of development are likely to __________ among
individuals.
- Development usually takes place __________
among human beings.
- Genetic factors are determined at
__________.
- Biological factors represent a __________
category of factors than genetics, since they can be influenced
not only by genes, but also by other events.
- The term __________ factors usually refers to
factors outside the human organism that influence it, including
the family, society, and school.
- In Bronfenbrenner's model, the person
interacts with various contexts as part of a __________. That is,
the person acts on the context while the context acts on the
person.
- Authoritarian parents emphasize __________,
even at the expense of the child's autonomy. In general, they
believe that children should follow parental authority without
__________.
- Permissive parents give their children almost
__________ __________.
- Authoritative parents are both __________ and
demanding. They try to guide their children's behavior into
productive patterns, but they do this primarily through __________
rather than parental decree.
- Children whose parents employ authoritative
parenting styles tend to display __________ desirable traits than
those whose parents use either permissive or authoritarian
styles.
- According to Piaget children (and everyone
else) __________ __________ knowledge for themselves as a result
of their active interaction with the environment.
- According to Piaget, human beings go through
__________ major stages of cognitive development in a predictable
sequence.
- The focus on how we develop our knowledge by
actively interacting with the environment gives rise to the term
__________.
- According to Piaget, cognitive activity
consists of __________of and adaptation to the environment as the
person perceives it.
- Human beings organize knowledge into
__________ structures, and they modify these structures through
the process of adaptation.
- During the process of __________, we
assimilate information through existing cognitive structures and
sometimes accommodate these previous structures as a result of the
newly assimilated information.
- __________ refers to the way information is
organized in a person's mind with regard to a particular object,
idea, or activity. The organized information is called
content.
- Cognitive __________ are organized sets of
information, skills, or activities. These can also be referred to
as __________ (singular, schema).
- Assimilation occurs when a person encounters a
new object, idea, or situation and is able to deal with it or
classify it with __________ cognitive structures.
- __________ occurs when there is an imperfect
match between the assimilated information and existing cognitive
structures.
- Piaget believes that in order for cognitive
development to take place, the body - especially the neurological
system - must develop through the natural process called
__________.
- __________ __________ provides the raw input
for the assimilations and accommodations that lead to cognitive
growth.
- __________ __________ refers to the person's
increasing ability to construct relationships among objects and
ideas.
- __________ __________ refers to the
communication of information from one person to another by
demonstrating or describing concepts or information.
- Equilibration refers to the __________ between
assimilation and accommodation.
- An important component of Vygotsky's theory is
that __________ __________ are spoken to oneself guide and
regulate human behavior.
- The zone of __________ development is the
distance between the actual developmental level as determined by
independent problem solving and the level of potential development
as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in
collaboration with more capable peers.
- Vygotsky and his followers believe that
__________ learning must take place within the learner's zone of
proximal development.
- Piaget's concept of __________ discrepancy
refers to the idea that learning takes place when new information
is familiar enough that a learner can assimilate it, but also
different enough from existing structures that the learner will
have to __________ those structures to handle the new
information.
- Piaget's earliest stage of cognitive
development is the __________ stage (ages 0 to about 2 years).
- Until they are about two years old, children
spend most of their intellectual efforts integrating their senses
with their __________ abilities - hence the term sensorimotor.
- An operation is the mental __________ of an
object or idea.
- __________ children (from about age 2 to about
age 7) are not yet able to mentally manipulate objects or
ideas.
- Concrete operational children (from about age
7 to about age 12) can mentally manipulate objects or ideas - as
long as these are __________ __________ or at least directly
recalled from memory.
- Formal operational learners can perform mental
manipulations on __________ as well as concrete objects.
- Piaget classifies learners at various stages
not based on what or how much they know, but rather on the basis
of __________ they think.
- Active __________ with objects, ideas, and
concepts is essential not only to help learners master specific
topics and to solve specific problems, but also to help them move
more easily to higher overall stages of cognitive development.
- When the goal is to help learners master
specific topics or solve specific problems, information and
problems should be presented to them at the level of abstraction
at which they are __________. Otherwise, they are not likely to
__________ it and integrate it with their existing structures.
- Learning occurs when learners assimilate
information through existing structures and the __________ these
structures in reaction to the new information.
- According to __________ theory, probably the
single most common mistake that teachers make is to fail to
understand the conceptions that students bring to learning
situations.
{Click here for answers
to Key Ideas.}
Answers
to Quiz and Exercises:
Unit Quiz
1. Answer to Question 1: (a)
Bobby already had a structure for writing. He used that structure to
make sense of the pen. This was assimilation. After he used that
structure to assimilate the pen, he did not need to make any changes
in it in order to print his name. That's why accommodation is not a
correct answer. If the statement said something like, "As a result,
he made an adjustment to the way he held the pen while
writing…." that would be an example of accommodation.
Return to Question
1.
Go to Question
2.
2. Answer to Question 2: (c)
Randall already had a structure for swinging a bat and another for
swinging a tennis racquet. He used those structure to make sense of
the golf club. This was assimilation. After he used those structures
to assimilate the golf club, he needed to make changes in order to
swing the golf club correctly. Those changes constituted an
accommodation.
Return to Question
2.
Go to Question
3.
3. Answer to Question 3: (a)
This requires abstract reasoning. If they could answer the question
on the basis of previous experience or from watching a movie based on
this theme, then this would be concrete operational
activity.
Return to Question
3.
Go to Question
4.
4. Answer to Question 4: (d)
He had a set of structures for sitting in a desk. He tried to
assimilate the new desk through these structures, but there was an
imperfect fit. Therefore, he had to make an adjustment in his
structure for sitting in a desk. This adjustment constituted an
accommodation.
Return to Question
4.
Go to Question
5.
5. Answer to Question 5: (c)
James is obviously not an infant (sensorimotor). However, he is
incapable of doing mental operations. That is, he cannot mentally
manipulate the information that is right there in front of him. Since
he cannot yet do mental operations, he is pre-operational.
Return to Question
5.
Go to Question
6.
6. Answer to Question 6: (d)
Maria is performing mental manipulations on the information that is
right there in front of her. Since she can do this, she is at least
concrete operational. We can tell that she is not formal operational,
because she cannot understand the thinking of James. To understand
his thinking, she would have to be formal operational.
Return to Question
6.
Go to Question
7.
7. Answer to Question 7: (c)
This is a classical description of very simple formal operational
thinking. If the child knew the children in real life and could
recall them from memory or if he had to rely on diagrams to answer
the question, then he would be concrete operational.
Return to Question
7.
Go to Question
8.
8. Answer to Question 8: (a)
This is a true statement of Piaget's theory. It implies that learners
must not only assimilate information but also make accommodations if
learning is to take place.
Return to Question
8.
Go to Question
9.
9. Answer to Question 9: (e)
This definition is taken directly from the textbook.
Return to Question
9.
Go to Question
10.
10. Answer to Question 10:
(a) The basic component of all constructivist theories is that
learners actively construct their own learning for themselves. Some
constructivists may believe some of the other statements, but (a) is
essential to all constructivists.
Return to Question
10.
Matching:
Human Development Terms
1. g
2. c
3. f
4. h
5. m
6. i
7. j
8. e
9. d
10. b
11. a
12. k
13. l
Matching: Piaget
Terms
1. e
2. i
3. j
4. m
5. g
6. d
7. l
8. k
9. h
10. n
11. f
12. c
13. b
14. a
Key
Ideas
1. orderly
2. development
3. independently
4. permanently;
experience
5. similar; vary
6. gradually
7. conception
8. broader
9. environmental
10. system
11. obedience;
question
12. unlimited
freedom
13. warm; persuasion
14. more
15. actively
construct
16. four
17. constructivism
18. organization
19. cognitive
20. adaptation
21. Organization
22. structures
23. existing
24. Accommodation
25. maturation
26. Physical
experience
27. Logico-mathematical
experience
28. Social
transmission
29. balance
30. meaningful words
31. proximal
32. all
33. optimal;
accommodate
34. sensorimotor
35. psychomotor
36. manipulation
37. Preoperational
38. concretely
present
39. abstractions
40. how
41. interaction
42. comfortable;
assimilate
43. modify
(accommodate)
44. constructivist