To what extent and in what ways are people fixed or open to change?

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Alistair Smith        U205353X        TMA 05

Option A

        

To what extent and in what ways are people “fixed” or “open to change”?

In comparison to other mammals living on this planet, we are seen as one of the most intelligent, when we consider our technological advancements over the millennium.  We are also social beings, who crave attention, we long for interaction with others and the longing to belong to a group, Maslow’s fourth hierarchal need.  Generally we also have moral values; we know the difference between right and wrong and are generally law abiding citizens.  

But are we always fixed to this perfect ideology and what can change our perspectives?  How do we embrace change?  This essay will explore the dichotomy of “fixity” and “change” and to what extent the humanistic perspective is influence by either one.  Sometimes referred to as “stability” and” adaptation” but nonetheless vital to mans hypothetical survival in the jungle of life.

In this TMA we shall be analyzing three key areas; cognitive, we shall be looking at the changing phases of a child’s cognitive development, how an infant “adapts” learning through schema and how this intelligence “changes” and eventually “stabilizes” as we grow older.  We shall be looking at social interaction considering self awareness, interaction with others and bonding during the vehicle of play.  Finally, we shall visit the moral component, we will be exploring reasoning, internal, external influence and what we understand as right and wrong and how this is “fixed” into our self.

Piaget (1896-1980) was a leading researcher on child development.  Piaget called his general theoretical framework "genetic epistemology" because he was primarily interested in how knowledge developed in human organisms.  The concept of cognitive structure is central to his theory.  Cognitive structures are patterns of physical or mental action that underlie specific acts of intelligence and correspond to stages of child development known as schema or schemata.  There are four primary cognitive structures (i.e., development stages) according to Piaget: Sensory motor, pre-operational, Concrete operations, and Formal operations.  In the Sensory motor stage (0-2 years), intelligence takes the form of motor actions. Intelligence in the pre-operational period (2-6 years) is intuitive in nature.  The cognitive structure during the Concrete operations stage (6-12 years) is logical but depends upon concrete referents.  In the final stage Formal operations (over 12 years), thinking involves abstractions.  In Piaget’s perspective the action patterns provide the first mental categories, or schema, through which infants organize the world that impinges on them (Gleitman, Fridlund and Reisberg, pg 548.2001).  Schema, function in isolation but in addition by the integration of cognitive structures through the process of adaptation and assimilation.  Assimilation involves the event to be interpreted in terms of an existing cognitive structure to make sense of the environment.  Cognitive development through schema consists of a constant development effort to adapt to the environment in terms of assimilation and accommodation.  Through development a child can develop and coordinate these individual actions into one unified exploratory schema. (Piaget, 1952).

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In this sense, Piaget's theory is similar in nature to other constructivist perspectives of learning (e.g., Bruner, Vygotsky).

Piaget’s theory implies that adults demonstrate intellectual maturity as characterized by formal operational thought, and that there are no changes in the way we reason once we reach adolescence (Cooper and Roth, pg 53, 2003) Conversely Horn and Cattell (1967) found that older people do better than younger people on tasks that require experience, such as general knowledge, vocabulary and so on.  This type of intelligence is called crystallized intelligence.  Kincheloe and Steinberg (1993) state that cognitive development isn’t a “fixed” ...

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