1. Read the following nouns and give their equivalents in Russian.
mind environment knowledge circumstance
process understanding thinking newborns
observations adaptation organization conception
accommodation experience assimilation cognition
2. Select the appropriate word from the list and write in a space adjacent to the definition.
1. Everything that affects your daily life - the
place where you live, the people around you and things you experience.
2. The process of learning ideas, customs, or
techniques and making use of them.
3. One that has been born recently.
4. A modifying condition, an influencing factor.
5. Comprehension, ability to comprehend, ability
to perceive or grasp; thorough knowledge of something.
6. The psychological result of perception, learning
and reasoning. 7.
mind.
8.
9.
Act of forming ideas, act of conceiving in the
Procedure, routine; course of action. The process by which existing mental
structures and behaviors are modified to adapt to new experiences, according to Jean Piaget.
10. Brain, human faculty which reasons and
judges; human consciousness that is separate from the body.
11. Knowledge obtained by doing; something llml
one has lived through.
12. Arrangement; state of being organized;
organized body.
13. Thought, idea; formation of a thought.
14. Act of adapting; process of making one thing
fit another; modification, adjustment.
15. Act of watching; act of looking; act of paying
attention; supervision; remark.
16. Familiarity, understanding; something that is
known; wisdom; learning, education; awareness, cognizance.
3. Read the following adjectives and give their equivalents in Russian.
conscious vicarious
unconscious cognitive
additional district
existing advanced
Match the adjectives given above to the nouns from Ex. 1. Make ai many phrases as possible.
Read the following verbs and give their equivalents in Russian.
to adapt to include to connect
to pour into to underline to incorporate
to further to separate to adjust
18
19
to
hang to
realize to
reveal
to alter to remember
READING
1. Read the text and mark the following sentences 1-5 t(true) or f(false).
According to Jean Piaget, children can't construct their own cognitive worlds.
Children adapt their thinking to include new ideas.
Assimilation is the adjustment to new information.
According to Piaget's view, assimilation and accommodation appear only in late childhood.
Newborns can construct their understanding of the world.
TEXT 5
Whereas psychoanalytic theories stress the importance of children's unconscious thoughts, cognitive theories emphasize their conscious thoughts. Two important cognitive theories are Piaget's cognitive development theory and information-processing theory.
The famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) stressed that children actively construct their own cognitive worlds; information is not just poured into their minds from the environment. Piaget believes that children adapt their thinking to include new ideas, because additional information furthers understanding.
In Piaget's view, two processes underlie the individual's construction of the world: organization and adaptation. To make sense of our world, we organize our experiences. For example, we separate important ideas from less important ideas. We connect one idea to another. But we not only organize our observations and experiences, we also adapt our thinking to include
new ideas. Piaget (1954) believed that we adapt in two ways: assimilHlioiK and accommodation.
Assimilation occurs when individuals incorporate new information Into their existing knowledge. Accommodation occurs when individuals adjiiNl to new information. Consider a circumstance in which a 7-year-old girl is given a hammer and nails to hang a picture on the wall. She has never used | hammer, but from observation and vicarious experience she realizes ih.ii n hammer is an object to be held, that it is swung by the handle to hit the nnil, and that it is usually swung a number of limes. Recognizing each of tfatM things, she fits her behavior into information she already has (assimilation), However, the hammer is heavy, so she holds it near the top. She swings too hard and the nail bends, so she adjusts the pressure of her strikes. Thciio adjustments reveal her ability to alter her conception of the world slightly (accommodation).
Piaget thought that assimilation and accommodation operate even in the very young infant's life. Newborns reflexively suck everything thnt touches their lips (assimilation), but after several months of experience, they construct their understanding of the world differently. Some objects, such art lingers and the mother's breast, can be sucked, and others, such as fuzzy blankets, should not be sucked (accommodation).
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