Question

Describe three of the following perspectives regarding concept learning, and compare and contrast them regarding their usefulness in explaining how people acquire concepts:

                  • Prototypes

                  • Exemplars

                  • Buildup of associations

                  • Hypothesis testing

Describe at least three ways in which students in Piaget’s formal operations stage are likely to think differently from those in the concrete operations stage. Illustrate each characteristic with a concrete example of how students in each of the two stages might think or behave.

Answer 1

Describe three of the following perspectives regarding concept learning, and compare and contrast them regarding their usefulness in explaining how people acquire concepts:

Concept learning:- it is the form of learning which requires higher order mental processes like thinking, reasoning, intelligence etc. Eg- our concept of “tree” is a mental image that brings to us the similarities or common properties of all the different trees we know.  

Prototypes

Prototype concept learning hold people categorize one or more central examples of a given category.

Eg- Characteritic of a bird is building a nest, that it can fly even some birds dont have this features like penguin, ostrich.

Exemplars

It is the storage of specific instances with new objects. Eg. Water is wet

Buildup of associations

Classical conditioning is a type of associative learning based on the association between a stimulus with one another. It is a process of substituting the original stimulus by a new one and connecting the response with it.

Hypothesis testing

•A statement or pre-assumption about population parameter or population distribution is called as hypothesis.

•Null Hypothesis(H0): A hypothesis of there is no significant difference between population value and sample values

•Alternate Hypothesis(H1): A hypothesis of there is a significant difference between population values and sample values.

common steps involved in test of hypothesis

1.State the Null hypothesis (H0) and its alternate hypothesis(H1)

2.Find out the value of test statistic i.e value of Z, t, chi square

3.Determine probability ie p value at 5% and 1% level of significance

4.Accept or reject H0 at 5% and 1% level of significance

5.Result/Interpretation

Jean Piaget(1970), a cognitive psychologist has developed theory of cognitive development.

Concrete Operational Stage(7-12 years):-

• During this stage, the children use logic and begin to grasp such important principles of nature such as number, classification and conservation of mass and length. They are unable to think in abstract terms.
• Due to influence of social environment, schools, peers and teachers there is corresponding expansion in ways of thinking about people.
• His thought process are limited to real events observed or the actual objects operated by him.
• Children can conserve number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight (age 9). Conservation is the understanding that something stays the same in quantity even though its appearance changes.

Formal Operational Stage(12-15 years):-

• At this stage, the child learns to deal with abstraction(that are not physically present) by logical thinking.
• The child develops ability to think on scientific basis and find solutions to problem.
• Eg- if a child of this stage is shown five colorless, odorless liquids in test tubes and is asked to find out what combination of the five will produce a brown liquid, he is likely to discover the possible combination by adopting a systematic approach like combining first and second, the first and third and then first and fourth and so on.