Chapter 3 Flashcards
Piaget’s Constructive Theory
- the human mind constructs its knowledge
- Knowledge is constructed by the developing child (and adult)
- Children are intrinsically motivated to learn- active participant in the learning process, constantly seeking out and trying to make sense of new information
- A child’s active exploration to be organized and organizing
- Mental activity is organized and that the organization evolves in response to the environment
- Controversial
- Cognitive development in stages
Assimilation
- interpret new stimulation in ways that fit with what they already know, sometimes distorting it as a result
- New information is distorted or changed so that sense can be made of it
Accommodation
*as the new information is assimilated, the child’s existing knowledge may be modified somewhat, providing a better much or fit to what is new.
Domain specific
development can proceed at different rates in different domains
Domains- number concepts, morality, biological vs. physical realities
Schemes
Actions or mental representations that organize knowledge
- Behavioral schemes (physical activities) characterize infancy
- Consist of simple actions that can be performed on objects
- Mental schemes (cognitive activities) develop in childhood
- Include strategies and plans for solving problems
Sensorimotor stage
Infant cognitive development lasting from birth to about age 2
-Infants understand the world through their sensory experiences
Habituation paradigm
baby’s tendency to orient to new stimulation and to habituate to repeated or old stimulation
Orienting response
look longer at new stimulus; suck more vigorously on the pacifier in her mouth, blood pressure and heart rate are likely to decrease from their previous base rate
Habituation
grow bored with the stimulus after repeatedly present-> shorter looking times, less vigorous sucing and a return to base rate for heartbeat and blood pressure
Dishabituation
a renewed orienting response
Preferential response paradigms
determine what they prefer to look at or listen to or taste
Visual acuity
- find the level of detail the baby can see
* Visual -adult like by 8 months old
Object concept
They need to know that objects have properties that can stimulate all of their senses: vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch
Intersensory integration/cross-model match/intermodal perception
when young babies perceive an object in one way, they can construct some notion of the object’s other perceptual characteristics
Object permanence
they exist apart from the perceiver
*Capable of representational thought
*Developed by the end of the sensorimotor period
*
Representational thought
capacity to think about things or events that are not currently stimulating our senses
Hidden object test
- assess object permanence
- Infants younger than 8 to 12 months fail to search for the object
- Understanding object permanence has its rudimentary beginnings late in the 1st year of life and gradually improves thereafter
- Representational thought- the ability to form mental representations- is a sill that begins to develop only in the late months of the 1st year of life; improves through the 2nd year of life, until by the end of the sensorimotor period
- Children not only think about objects but can mentally plan their actions, solve simple questions “all in their heads”, remember past experiences= broad capacity for thinking
Joint attention
Individuals focus on the same object or event
- Requires an ability to track another’s behavior (following another’s gaze)
- One person directs another’s attention
- Reciprocal interaction
- Emerge by 7 to 8 months
Recognition memory
- ability to differentiate between experiences that are new and experiences that we have had before
- Use habituation to assess
- When babies habituate to a stimulus that is repeatedly presented, they are showing us that the stimulus is becoming familiar
- Operent conditioning- recognition skills
- Capacity for recognition is already in place before birth
- Improves throughout infancy- duration of recognition, speed with which babies habituate increases
- Recognition speed is an early indicate of the efficiency with which a child may later process information
Recall
- Emerge later in infancy
- Ability to bring to mind an experience that has happened in the past
- The to-be-remembered experience is not presently occurring, but must be mentally represented
- Thinking that involves mental representation, is necesssary for recall
Deferred imitation
- children observe the actions of another on one occassion, and then imitate those actions sometimes later
- Not indicate recall unless there is a time delayed between observed action and imitation
- Piaget: begins around the middle of the baby’s 2nd year
- Can begin late in the 1st year but it does improve dramatically over the next year, both in duration and the complexity of what can be recalled
- Makes observational learning or modeling possible
Separation anxiety
- when parents leave a young baby with another caregiver, the baby typically does not seem to miss the absent parents or to mourn their loss while they are gone.
- In the second half of the 1st year, at about 8 months for most babies, leaving a child with another caregiver may be more difficult-> watch for the missing parents
- Child’s ability to recall the parents is increasing in duration
- Attributable to advances in basic cognitive skills- recall and object permanence
Mirror neurons
located primarily in motor cortex, were activated not only when a monkey performed a particular action, but also when the monkey saw someone else perform that action on an object.
Making interesting sights last
- if one of these behaviors accidentally produces an interesting event, a child is likely to notice the effect and repeat the action, as if she were hoping to repeat the effect
- Precursor of intentional behavior
- Simple operant conditioning
- After behavior occurs -> reinforcing event -> repeat behavior
Means-end behavior
*divert their attention from a goalto produce another actionthat will help achieve the goal
Requires mental representation, planning
*8-12 months
Executive functions (EFs)
*intentionally controlling our own behavior and thought- setting goals, determining what we will pay attention to, and choosing to make one response rather than another
Engage areas of prefrontal cortex- muturational gains late in the first year
Agency
- ability to act without an external trigger
- Act without being pushed or “launched” by some other force
- Begin to understand agency by the end of the 1st year
