ch 5 Cognitive development and innateness Flashcards
Nativism
human behaviour in particular human development is constrained by the existence of innate mental modules
Epigenetic Landscape
Waddington. Landscape nudges ball but it gets to about the same place unless it encounters significant changes in landscape.
Object permanence
Objects continue to exists even when not in view Inconclusive work by Piaget. Baby might not know how to get it or lose interest. See other experiment.
Habituation procedures
Baby experiments to see what catches baby’s attention.
Renee Baillargeon
Habituation experiment for object permanence. The rotating arm that hits a box or goes through it. Babies more surprised when the screen when “through” the object demonstrating that babies have object permanence.
Lorenz
Imprinting but….has been shown that it’s more plastic than Lorenz stated
Sensitive period
Period of time when imprinting can happen. Can be extended a bit a modified a bit. Chicks might be more likely to imprint a hen-like object. Mother recognition. Bateson and Hinde
False Belief Test
Smarties/Pencils Perner Criticism of such tests is that it is a pass or fail test, making it appear that ToM develops suddenly. But this type of test cannot determine sudden versus gradual development. The Sally Anne task (sally hides a marble, Anne moves it. Where will Sally look for it) shows that children at 3 years old will look at the correct answer but say the wrong one. At 4, they say the right answer. Their eye gaze might be showing that they get some of the ToM.
Eyes test
Reading the eyes of people and determining emotional state with no other information. Women do better than men on this.
Autism
Difficulty in engaging in social behaviours. Difficulty passing ToM tests. Those with Asperger’s a related condition pass false belief tests. Eyes test and second order ToM tests show autistics and Asperger’s sufferers show impaired tom. Baron-Cohen suggests it’s a cognitive style not a deficit. The systemizing part of empathizing and systemizing. Better on embedded figures tests.
E versus S
Empathize versus Systemizing. Baron-Cohen. independent cognitive styles. Can be high on E or S or can be high or low on both. Males seem to generally be more S, women more E.
Sex Differences in babies examples
boys look more at mobiles, girls at faces.
males more approach behaviours
females more attracted to intimate relationships, more person-centred
infant girls greater empathy. More likely to cry when seeing another infant cry. But not more to a loud noise.
Boys choose toys that are susceptible to systemizing construction kits mechanical objects
Males better at tasks with 3D constructions
Males more interested in classifying animate and inanimate objects.
Occupations that rely on systemizing show a higher proportion of males than females.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Knocks out part of the brain. Fun fact, we might all be capable of savant behaviours if certain parts of the brain are knocked out. Suggests blocking effect.
Williams Disorder
The “extreme female” disorder. Broad nose star shaped iris. full lips “pixie people.” Low IQ, spatial ability. Prefer ornate words. Highly developed social skills. Caused by missing genes on one particular chromosome. Some genetic material on the long arm of one of the chromosome 7 pairs has been deleted in the 11.23 region. Microdeletion removes important protein-assembling genes. about 20 genes. ELN codes fo structural protein elastin. Thus premature skin again. GTF21 may affect IQ. CYLN2 expressed in the cerebellum and LIMK1 codes for protein. LIM_Kinase 1 visual-spatial ability. Tager-Flusberb and Sullivan suggest that whose with Williams have preserved social PERCEPTION abilities but impairments of social COGNITION. Suggest module might need to be adjusted to have sub modules of the brain. One for perception one for cognition. But people with Williams process faces DIFFERENTLY, and this presents an argument AGAINST module processing. While they like florid language, they have problems with embedded relative clauses.
Cortical plasticity
The brain, particularly infant brain is capable of some degree of regeneration following injury. Karmiloff-Smith suggests this presents evidence against brain modules. Instead we have innate domain relevant biases. Biases attract attention and aid learning leading to faster processes and more able to discriminate between different face types.
Neuroconstructivism
Karmiloff-smith. Owes a lot to Piaget’s constructivism model. The mind/brain constructs itself as a result of some genetically influenced developmental programme and the information bombarding the brain via the senses. Believe that there is innate knowledge.
Modularity and Pinker
That the brain is like a computer hard drive and can be defragged. Not infinitely possible to move things around, or not infinitely plastic. If areas of the brain are damaged, some other areas can be used as a substitute.
Modularity
Innate and hardwired modules not changed by experience
