The Development of Thinking (A2)

Topic 10: The Development of Thinking.

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development.
Ideas of Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) have dominated thinking in developmental psychology for many years. Probably the best known psychologist after Sigmund Freud. Recently some alternative answers to his questions have been proposed.

Piaget asked children questions observing them playing and noted the frequencies and circumstances of various interactions such as behaving selfishly or altruistically. Much of his research was conducted on his own three children born in 1925, 1927 and 1931.

In IQ tests it was noticed that some errors were consistent across ages. These errors were predictable and could be described in terms of a stage theory.
In other words errors made at certain ages formed a sequence. Piaget suggested that children’s thought changes quantitively as they pass through stages.

Two strands of Piaget’s theory therefore exist:

An account of the causes of developmental changes (Adaptation.) We will begin by examining the causes.

An account of what changes during development. The cognitive activities at each stage.


The causes of development and the stages of development he argued are biologically driven they occur as a consequence of the maturation of innate forces and structures. Piaget acknowledged the role of experience in cognitive development, intertwining nurture with nature.

The Structure of Intellect

All babies are born with similar biological equipment (Aka ‘Structures.’)
These structures are the senses, the brain, and reflexes.

“…Intelligence is a particular instance of biological adaptation…”
Intelligence “…is the form of equilibrium towards which the successive adaptations and exchanges between the organism and his environment are directed.”
“‘Equilibrium’ is a term used in physics to denote a well balanced adjustment between at least two factors – in this case, between the persons cognitive structures and her or his environment.”
Human infants shortly after birth have approx fifty reflexes – a child’s way of dealing with stimuli.
Piaget argued that these reflexes formed the basis of schema (Mental representations) that a child would develop.
As a child grows their scheme expands.
Piaget called this process of taking on board more cognitive information “Assimilation.”
Once assimilated the knowledge has to be stored in the right place if we are to access it in future. This process is called “Accommodation.”
After assimilation and accommodation, his knowledge (And future behaviour) has changed.
Therefore assimilation and accommodation are the basis of learning!
New learning is an adaptation of previously acquired knowledge.
There must be a balance between assimilation and adaptation for accommodation to occur.
IF the child is being exposed to too much stimulation, that they can’t accommodate, it’s likely to become frustrated rather than educated.
When the child has assimilated, accommodated, and adapted its mental structures she or he is said to be in a state of “Cognitive equilibrium”

If introduced to something new e.g. a horse instead of a dog, then, the child’s mental processing is then in a state of imbalance (Equilibration) and schemas are adapted

Cognitive growth is a constant shift between states of equilibrium and equilibration.

Assimilation _ Accommodation è Adaptation.

An example of a schema would be a mental representation of the human face – there is evidence that infants are born with an innate ability to recognise faces (Fantz - 1961)

Stages in development

Piaget argued that a child’s cognitive abilities are acquired through a series of stages. When a child has achieved a stage of cognitive readiness it will be able to understand things, (e.g. numbers) and its schemas will undergo a major overhaul.


A new stage of development is reached when two things happen:
The child’s brain has matured to a point of ‘Readiness’.
Some new information or experiences that cannot be assimilated challenge the child’s thinking.

Each stage is characterised by a coherent series of principles that operate at that time.

In general studies support Piaget’s observations as to what children can do but greatly underestimate the age at which they could do them – as we will see below.

1. Sensorimotor stage
Young infants have no idea of the permanence of objects once they are out of sight i.e. Object permanence. It will take at least eight months of interaction with the environment for the child to realise that the objects are still there.

Tom Bower (1966) conducted experiments between ages 1 and four months to assess object permanence.

This was a glorified peekaboo exercise using a screen…

In another experiment babies were shown an object they might like to take, the lights turned off as they tried to reach for it. IR camera shows them continuing to reach for the object despite not being able to see it. These infants appeared to possess object permanence despite Piaget’s claims that they were too young to have it.

Mundy-castle and Anglin sat four month olds in from of portholes for an object permanence experiment. They possessed this prior to eight months predicted by Piaget.

2. Pre-operational Stage
· Here children are acquiring many new schemas.
· Each new experience expands mental structures, and as they develop language and communication skills the opportunities for further development expand greatly.
· The child asks questions and makes what sense it can of the answers.
· Despite this, some of Piaget’s descriptions of the cognitive skills of this age group appear rather negative.
· He appears to emphasise what children can’t do rather than what they can. The title ‘Pre-operational’ indicates that children in this stage can’t think in operational (Logical) ways.

3. Preconceptual thought – (2-4 years of age.)
· Childs thinking is dominated by unrealistic ideas one of which is animism:
o Animism = the belief that inanimate objects are alive.
· Since he/she has emotions therefore everything else including inanimate objects must also have them.
· Preconceptual thinking also involves Egocentrism.
o Egocentrism is the child’s own inability to see things from another viewpoint other than their own.
o The ability to take others views into account is called Decentring – Piaget argued this occurs around 7 years of age.
· Intuitive thought is thought to be the second sub stage of the pre-operational stage. This occurs between the ages of four and seven years.
o Conservation is the ability to understand that the more physical characteristics of objects remain the same even though the appearance of them may change. E.g. rolling one of two identical balls flat.

Piaget offered two reasons why children under about seven couldn’t conserve:

They can only attend to one process. They can’t perform the mental operation required to answer the question “What would happen if we reversed the process we have just performed?” ‘Reversibility’ is a complex schema.

The other reason is called Centration. This is the tendency to concentrate on only one aspect of a situation at a time, while ignoring all others that are necessary to solve the problem. The child concentrates on either the shape of the plasticine or the amount but not both.
Egocentrism + }
Irreversibility + } = Some limitations in pre-operational thought.
Centration }


Concrete operational stage

One of Piaget’s most famous conservation tasks involves two identical tall thin jugs containing the same amount of liquid. The content of one of the jugs is emptied into a shorter, wider jug and the child is asked which jug has the most liquid. The pre-operational child will say the tall thin jug; they can’t imagine what liquid level in the first jug would be if the liquid was poured back into it Piaget claimed that mental reversibility would not appear until the child is around 8 years old.



Donaldson (1987) suggests that in the three mountains task children are unsure as to what to do where as in the policemen problem they can use all their knowledge to understand and interpret the questions asked.

John Flavell (1985) showed 3 year olds some cards with a drawing of a cat on one side and a dog on the other. Holding the card vertically between the experimenter and the child, so that the child could see the dog he asked them what they could see. The three year olds had no difficulty in showing what they could decentre by saying that they could see the cat.

Therefore at the very least Piaget was pessimistic about the ages at which these skills occur. He made similar pessimistic judgements about the age for conservation.

McGarrigle and Donaldson (1974) devised a game to test conservation of number in which two identical rows of sweets were placed in front of the child. A glove puppet called ‘naughty teddy’ then spread the sweets in one of the rows while not moving the others. Of the 4 and 5 year olds tested, fifty said that the number of sweets remained the same and so showed that they could conserve number. However when adult researchers moved the sweets themselves only thirteen out of the eighty said they were the same number

Moore and Frye (1986) found that these early results were to some extent explained by the children’s absorption in the game and ‘naughty teddy’ was a distraction. When running a modified version of the research they found that even quite young children observed the changes taking place.

Concrete Operational Stage (Cont..)
Here intuition is replaced by use of logical rules.
Understanding is limited as it deals with the actual concrete world.
These children have difficulty in considering anything hypothetical or abstract.
Two such important abilities are associated with this stage are:
Serration:
Allows the child to arrange sets of items in order of dimensions e.g. dolls in order of height.
Transivity
This is the ability to recognise logical relationships in a series. E.g. who is taller than whom in relation to whom

Piaget liked to asses children’s thinking by presenting them with a ‘conservation task’ – i.e. the logical rule that quantity does not change even when the way it is displayed is transformed..

Pre-operational children fail at this task because they cannot conserve quantity, whereas the concrete operational child comprehends the rule and applies it to this concrete situation.


Formal Operational stage:
Concrete operational stage = children learning to manipulate objects mentally.

Formal operational thinking does not require this direct experience. Basic mental arithmetic and hypothetical questions may now be answered.

The most important shift that people make when moving from concrete to formal operations is in extending their reasoning abilities to objects and situations that they have not seen or experienced at first hand and that they cannot manipulate to see directly. Where the pre-schoolchild may dress up and pretend to be someone else the teenager may think about the different roles they might occupy in the future A major feature is the appearance of deductive logic rather than its forerunner inductive logic.

However, psychologists argue that some people never reach this stage. About 70% of adults go through their lives without fully being able to make logical, reasoned predictions Further than this an individual may be able to do this on one topic but not another. There may be another stage beyond this in which philosophers and great thinkers can reason about society and community in ways that most people cant .

Piaget and Inhelder (1956) demonstrated this with a beaker problem:
· Participants were given four beakers of colourless liquids
· They were asked to find what combination produced a yellow liquid.
· Younger children tried all sorts of random combinations and may or may not have found the answer.
· Older children took a systematic approach systematically excluding possibilities until they found the correct solution.
· They used abstract deductive reasoning forming a principle deriving a hypothesis and testing this to confirm the hypothesis.

Dasen (1994) claims that one third of adults do not reach Formal Operational Stage

Wason and Shapiro (1971) tested students using abstract reasoning tasks they found only 10% could work out the solution but this rose to 62% if the task was given in concrete form.


Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory:
Piaget underestimated the age at which children can do things as he failed to distinguish between Competence (What your capable of doing) and Performance (How you perform in a particular task.) He simply assumed that they lacked the cognitive structures needed to succeed on that task.
Timetable of development is too prescriptive.
But it is not only about age boundaries, but also about universal qualitative, biologically regulated cognitive changes that occur during development. This is supported by cross cultural research that has replicated Piaget’s findings
(E.g. Smith et al. 1998)
If you’re not biologically ready then practice should not improve performance.
Borke (1975) demonstrated that children as young as 3 or 4 years could overcome egocentrism with practice.
Piaget underplayed the role of language and social factors in cognitive development. Sinclair-de-zwart (1969) supports Piaget. However, in an earlier experiment she found children who were non-conservers differed in terms of the language they used from children who were non conservers. This suggests cognitive linguistic development comes together. Which comes first? Sinclair-de-zwart tried the apt verbal skills to the non conservers. However, 90% of these children were still unable to conserve. This supports Piaget’s view that cognitive maturity is a prerequisite for linguistic development.

Despite its shortcomings, the strength of Piaget’s approach and theory should not be overlooked. Like all good theories it has generated research.

Vygotsky’s Theory


Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (Russian: Лев Семёнович Выготский) (November 17 (November 5 Old Style), 1896 – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet developmental psychologist and the founder of the Cultural-historical psychology.



Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky believed that neither nature nor nurture alone could explain human cognitive development and that it must emerge from complex combinations of influences from both sources.

A contemporary of Piaget though they never met.
His most influential work “Thought and language”
Published in 1934 in Russian, translated to English in 1964.
Died of TB.

The influence of culture:
Russian upbringing emphasised social norms of co=operation and collective action;
Emphasised nurture over nature (The prevailing western thought at the time.)
He disagreed with Piaget’s idea that each child egocentrically struggles to make sense of their own world.
Disagrees with Piaget’s more biological role at the role of language development.
For the 1st two years babies development does reflect sensory motor skills.
Vygotsky rejects Piaget’s description of the passive child waiting until it is cognitively ready to acquire a skill such as object permanence ;
He sees aspects of cognitive development appearing as a result of babies making some active attempt to solve problems such as where things are, who has possession, and so on.
This is described as evidence of pre verbal thought
Babies can also use vocalisation to attract and communicate with adults;
This is called pre-intellectual speech.

· As vocabulary and comprehension develop after the age of 2, both pre-thought and vocalisation come together and language begins to play an important part in shaping how the child perceives the world.
· For Paiget language is a system of labels for schemas that we already have. Words help us to define our thoughts and actions, but can only attach to our thoughts.

· For Vygotsky, language actively shapes the thoughts. The process of trying to communicate with others leads to the child acquiring the word meanings that form the structure of the child’s consciousness. This is inner speech and it exists only as a result of social interaction.

· Intellect consists of Elementary and Higher Mental Functions.
Elementary functions are innate capacities such as attention and sensation.
· Vygotsky’s view was that these will develop to a limited extent through experience but cultural influences are required to transform them into higher mental functions such as:
Decision making ;
and comprehension of language.


· Therefore without culture individuals would not progress further than the elementary functions.
· Therefore according to Vygotsky, cultural knowledge is the means by which cognitive development takes place.

There are several examples of this:
Papua New Guinea Counting Systems;
· If higher mental functions are dependant of cultural influences, then we would expect to find different higher mental functions in different cultures.
o Grendler (1992) cited Papua New Guinea children being taught a counting system that begins on the thumb and progresses up the arm. In consequence they can count to 29 using this method therefore it is difficult to add and subtract. This therefore becomes a higher mental function in that culture.





· Use of enculturation in animals is also an example:
o Rumbaugh (1991) taught Bonobo chimpanzees to use human language as well as to use number and quantity concepts by immersing the chimpanzees in a human learning environment. In the wild higher mental functions are not transformed, however, give the right learning environment (Culturally) they are able to develop some of these.

· Availability of knowledge:
o Evidence also exists for the influence of culture from research on IQ.
o IQ’s in many different cultures have been steadily increased in recent decades.
o One explanation is improved diet but another is increased knowledge that surrounds children

The zone of proximal development (ZPD)
· This is the area between what the child knows and what it is capable of knowing.
· Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) used the term scaffolding to describe the support (Guidance) that an adult might offer a child to help it reach a solution.

· Instruction “…wakens a whole series of functions that are in a stage of maturation lying in the zone of proximal development.” (Vygotsky 1987)

· Zygovsky predicted that the greatest learning occurred at the edge of the ZPD.

Refer to McNaughton and Leyland (1990)


Semiotic Meditation
The cognitive development process is mediated by semiotics (Language and other cultural symbols.) Semiotic mediation is a social process.

The Social and Individual Planes.
Learning starts off as a shared, social activity. In time it becomes a sole responsibility of the learner.
Wertsch (1985) have shown how self regulation increases with age and experience.

The Role of Language:
One of Vygotsky’s real interests was the relationship between language and thought. Refer to panel below:


· Language and thought are separate functions here in children below the age of two.
· Vocal activity and pre-intellectual language is a form of social interaction and emotional expression. At the same time children use pre-linguistic thought, mental activities such as problem solving which do not use verbal operations. This is a period of practical intelligence when mental functions are developing.
· After age 2 the child begins to us external symbols or signs such as language or other cultural tools to assist in problem-solving.
· A young child will often talk out loud when solving problems, a kind of egocentric speech. After the age of 7 this self talk becomes silent (inner speech) and differs in the form of social speech. Inner dialogues are used as a means of self regulation to control ones cognitive processes. Learning has moved to the individual plane but continues to be mediated by language.
· Language throughout life serves the dual purpose of being for social communication and thought.
Stages in the development of thinking:

Vygotsky’s theory is not a stage theory as such, though he did propose stages in the development of language and thought. He also proposed stages in the process of concept formation derived from a research study (Vygotsky 1987)

Children were given wooden blocks of varying height and shape. Each was labelled with a nonsense symbol. “ZAT” was used to label tall and square blocks. The child’s task was to identify what these labels meant. Vygotsky observed that the children went through three stages before achieving mature concepts.

See table below:

Evaluation:
· Very little empirical support exists for Vytgotksy’s theory.
o Focuses on the process of cognitive development rather than the outcome, and this is harder to test.
· Strengths and limitations:
o Limited negative criticism as the empirical studies for this theory have only slowly become available.
· The role of biological and individual factors:
o Overemphasises the importance of social influences and underemphasise the biological and individual factors in cognitive development.
o If social influences alone were necessary development then we would expect learning to be faster than it is.
· Individual versus social construction:
o Piaget suggests that knowledge was something that a child creates for themselves (Individualistic and western.) Vygotsky saw knowledge as a collaborative social process (Collectivist.)
o In short both are constructive approaches but one is individualistic versus the other which is collective.
· The role of egocentric speech:
o Piaget argued the causation here was from person to the social world.
o Egocentric speech occurs because the child is unable to share a perspective of another.
o In contrast Vygotsky suggests that development moves from the social to the developmental plane where learning is internalised.
o Egocentric speech is the transition between social context and inner speech.
· Development or learning? Which comes first?
o Piaget suggests that development precedes learning;
o Vygotsky suggested learning comes first and this promotes development.

· Scope for assisted learning:
o Piaget argues you can only wait.
o Vygotsky argues that scope exists for assisted learning.

· Individual differences in learning:
Both approaches reflect cultural differences but also individual differences

· Glassman (1999) argues that it is wrong to see Piaget and Vygotsky as opposites, as they’re remarkably similar at their core. Piaget focused on the natural laws of intellectual development while Vygotsky concentrated on the impact of social processes and culture.
o An integration of both views might therefore be highly productive.


Practical Applications of these Theories to Education.

Having some understanding of the ways in which children’s thinking occurs and develops should help us design an education system for 5 year olds and older children that takes account of their skills and abilities. In those parts of the world that have an education system, children’s knowledge and understanding increases dramatically compared with those in the countries that do not.

The table below recaps on the main differences between the two schools of thought.

Piaget’s discovery learning.
Piaget’s ideas have been applied to the classroom of primary and junior schools.
i.e. Infant school deliver for a pre-operational stage learning environment.
i.e. Junior schools reflect the concrete operational thinking of their pupils.







The social dimension and play remains the least explored aspect of Piaget’s work. Donaldson (1987) “Children’s minds” argues that schooling helps to create disembedded thinking or the ability to solve problems that involve hypothetical, abstract entities rather than concrete objects. This is due to the fact that disembedded thinking is not natural for the human mind no matter how much the child explores.

Vygotsky: The Social Context
· Did not accept that teachers should wait for a child to be ready to learn and claimed that ‘…what a child can do with assistance today he/she can do by him/herself tomorrow.’
· Social context enables learning.
· “There are times when a child should be left alone there are also times when they require assistance (A scaffold)” – Wood et al. (1976)


Collaborative Learning:
Bennett and Dunne (1991) found that children who engaged in cooperative group work were less competitive, less concerned with status and more likely to show evidence of logical thinking than those who worked alone.

Peer tutoring:
Peers can also be experts and peer tutoring was seen as an effective form of learning. Research has also found that peer tutoring may have the greatest benefit for the more expert peer. Cloward (1967)

Evaluation of Vygotsky’s Approach:
Individual differences:
· There are individual differences in the effectiveness of these techniques.
· E.g. Blaye et al some children working at home did not outperform those working alone.
The role of experts:
· Relies on the role of experts to recognise the limits of ZPD and know when and how to respond. Skilful application of this approach may be an unrealistic goal.
The importance of social influences:
· It’s educationally more important to know what children can achieve with assistance than what they can achieve unaided. But this may stifle creativity and understanding.
A combined approach:
· One science programme has combined the Piagetian approach to setting situations that create cognitive conflict with the Vygotskian approach to collaborative learning to produce improved performance in experimental groups, in maths science and English – CASE, i.e. Cognitive acceleration through science education. (Adey and Shayer – 1993.)


References of note:


Fantz (1961) - An example of a schema would be a mental
representation of the human face – there is evidence
that infants are born with an innate ability to
recognise faces

Tom Bower (1966) - Experiments into object permanence with babies
and infants.

Mundy-castle and Anglin - Sat four month olds in from of portholes for an
object permanence experiment. They possessed this
prior to eight months predicted by Piaget.

Martin Hughes (1975) - Hughes hiding from a policeman task


John Flavell (1985) - Showed 3 year olds some cards with a drawing of a
cat on one side and a dog on the other. Holding the card vertically between the experimenter and the child, so that the child could see the dog he asked them what they could see. The three year olds had no difficulty in showing what they could decentre by saying that they could see the cat.



Donaldson (1987) - Suggests that in the three mountains task children
are unsure as to what to do where as in the policemen problem they can use all their knowledge to understand and interpret the questions asked.
McGarrigle and
Donaldson (1974) - Devised a game to test conservation of number in
which two identical rows of sweets were placed in front of the child. A glove puppet called ‘naughty teddy’ then spread the sweets in one of the rows while not moving the others. Of the 4 and 5 year olds tested, fifty said that the number of sweets remained the same and so showed that they could conserve number. However when adult researchers moved the sweets themselves only thirteen out of the eighty said they were the same number

Moore and Frye (1986) - Found that these early results were to some extent
explained by the children’s absorption in the game
and ‘naughty teddy’ was a distraction. When
running a modified version of the research they
found that even quite young children observed the
changes taking place.
Piaget and Inhelder (1956) - Beaker problem proposed to assess the achievement
of the Formal Operational Stage.

Dasen (1994) - Claims that one third of adults do not reach
Formal Operational Stage.
Wason and Shapiro (1971) - Tested students using abstract reasoning tasks they
found only 10% could work out the solution but this rose to 62% if the task was given in concrete form.

Smith et al. (1998) - Cross cultural research that supports Piaget.

Borke (1975) - Demonstrated that children as young as 3 or 4 years
could overcome egocentrism with practice.

Sinclair-de-zwart (1969) - Supports Piaget. However, in an earlier experiment
she found children who were non-conservers
differed in terms of the language they used from
children who were non conservers. This suggests
cognitive linguistic development comes together.
Which comes first? Sinclair-de-zwart tried the apt verbal skills to the non conservers. However, 90% of these children were still unable to conserve. This supports Piaget’s view that cognitive maturity is a prerequisite for linguistic development.

Vygotsky (1934) (1962) - “Thought and language”
Vygotsky’s’ most popular work

Grendler (1992) - Example of higher mental functions being
dependant on different influences. Cited Papua New Guinea children being taught a counting system that begins on the thumb and progresses up the arm. In consequence they can count to 29 using this method therefore it is difficult to add and subtract. This therefore becomes a higher mental function in that culture.

Rumbaugh (1991) - Taught Bonobo chimpanzees to use human
language as well as to use number and quantity concepts by immersing the chimpanzees in a human learning environment. In the wild higher mental functions are not transformed, however, give the right learning environment (Culturally) they are able to develop some of these.

Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) - Zone of proximal development research. Used the
term scaffolding to describe the support (Guidance
that an adult might offer a child to help it reach a
solution.
Vygotsky (1987) - Instruction “…wakens a whole series of functions
that are in a stage of maturation lying in the zone of proximal development.”
McNaughton and Leyland (1990) - The ZPD and Jigsaw Puzzles.

Wertsch (1985) - Have shown how self regulation increases with age
and experience.
Vygotsky (1987) - Speech stage age and function for the development of
language and thought.
Glassman (1999) - Argues that it is wrong to see Piaget and Vygotsky
as opposites, as they’re remarkably similar at their
core. Piaget focused on the natural laws of
intellectual development while Vygotsky
concentrated on the impact of social processes and
culture.
Donaldson (1987)
“Children’s minds” - Argues that schooling helps to create
disembedded thinking or the ability to solve
problems that involve hypothetical, abstract entities
rather than concrete objects.

Wood et al. (1976) - “There are times when a child should be left alone
there are also times when they require assistance (A scaffold)”

Bennett and Dunne (1991) - Collaborative Learning. Found that children who
engaged in cooperative group work were less
competitive, less concerned with status and more
likely to show evidence of logical thinking than
those who worked alone.

Cloward (1967) - Peer tutoring. Peers can also be experts and peer
tutoring was seen as an effective form of learning. Research has also found that peer tutoring may have the greatest benefit for the more expert peer.

Adey and Shayer (1993.) - One science programme has combined the Piagetian
approach to setting situations that create cognitive conflict with the Vygotskian approach to collaborative learning to produce improved performance in experimental groups, in maths science and English (CASE, i.e. Cognitive acceleration through science education.)







Concepts to note:

· Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development;
o Intelligence
o Equilibrium
o Schema
o Assimilation
o Accommodation.
o Equilibration

Piaget’s stages of cognitive development:
Sensorimotor stage
Object permanence
Pre-operational stage (2-4 years)
Animism = the belief that inanimate objects are alive.
Egocentrism = the child’s own inability to see things from another viewpoint other than their own.
Decentring = The ability to take others views into account .
Piaget argued this occurs around 7 years of age.
§ Intuitive thought is thought to be the second sub stage of the pre-operational stage. This occurs between the ages of four and seven years.
Conservation = The ability to understand that the more physical characteristics of objects remain the same even though the appearance of them may change. E.g. rolling one of two identical balls flat.
§ Reversibility;
§ Centration.

Concrete operational stage
Formal operational stage

Vygotsky’s Theory.
· Cultural-historical psychology.
· Scaffolding is the term used by Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) to describe the support (Guidance) that an adult might offer a child to help it reach a solution. I.e. the zone of proximal development.

Disembedded thinking - The ability to solve problems that involve hypothetical,
abstract entities rather than concrete objects. Donaldson (1978)
Collaborative learning;
Peer tutoring.