A2 PSYCHOLOGY AQA B 21st Jan

right - I've just found out that I don't know anything about cognitive development. Luckily I've managed to catch up on piaget and vygotsky, its just bruner I need help with - can't find much about him. My teacher is never in so I'm basically having to learn it all myself. Anyway I was just wondering whether anyone could help answer the following questions that have been on previous papers.

Outline a way in which bruner explains children's increasing capacity to deal with abstraction. (5marks)

And

Describe and discuss Bruner's theory of cognitive development. Refer to evidence in your answer (12marks) - obviously i don't expect a proper essay, I just need points and the evaluation points to go with them.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Oh and also, the grade boundaries are always low - the highest is probably going to be 44/60 for an A. That's why people say its a soft subject - because its easier to get an A not because its easier as a subject (probably the hardest for me!)

I have only done a couple of practice 12 markers and they have ranged from 2 and a half pages to much more it doesn't really matter how long it is as long as you've got all your points in and a good amount of evaluation.

I don't have -ve/+ve points for Bruner or Vygotsky... oh dear!

Err good question... I can't remember haha. I just know that Piaget thinks of language as a byproduct [ie it happens anyway] whereas Bruner and Vygotsky think otherwise...

same here gone through all the notes and online nothing concrete on bruner of +ve and -ve...?

Hope Piaget and some of his stage theorys comes up as 12 markers

I hope so too. By the looks of whoever posted the 12 marker, Vygotsky & education came up last time... And it was Bruner in January, Piaget the exam before. I have a feeling it could be a case of discuss two of them/all of them

That would be a really good question but I think it might be Vygotsky this time. Negative of vygotsky are that he didn't have much emperical evidence (although bruner extended his work and supported it). Another -ve is that his theory was designed for soviet russia so it was made for a collectivist environment, therefore his ideas of peer-teaching might not work in other cultures as well as they did there.
A positive of Bruner and Vygotsky is their ideas are being used today in education and peer-tutoring has proved a success when it was trialed.

Anyone have any ideas for mood disorder/schizophrenia? I've actually just run out of time to revise now so I'm having to think of what is likely to come up..

Eek, I've given up on revision for now.

I'm just going to read my notes every so often. I think I hit burnout a few days ago.

Hah, yeah. I'm just gonna see what happens. I will also retake PYB1 (even though I got a high B) if I mess this one up It also ties in with PYB5 so it's good