Chapter 6 Flashcards
Piaget
What limitations of behaviorism was Piaget responding to?
He said that kids are active agents on their environment and thinking.
A responce to behaviorinsm that children just imitate other’s behaviors or that their behavior is so strictly limited to just reacting to reinforcemnt/punishment
Jean Piaget
Developed the first theory of cognitive development (circa 1920s): – Infant cognition – Language development – Conceptual development – Math and Science – Moral development
As a child, he was extremely brilliant
When he had his own children, he got interested and involved in child development study
Piaget’s Most Profound Contribution
Children are “little scientists”
Intelligence not random, but set of organized cognitive structure infant constructs.
Schemas that are built off of experience.
Learn on their own from experimenting with objects in their environment
Intrinsic motivation
Piaget’s Principles on Change
Distinct changes: Children in different stages think in
qualitatively different ways
Applies to all areas: Children’s level of thinking applies to everything they encounter
Fast changes: Changes happen relatively quickly— sometimes overnight!
No skipping! All children progress through each stage linearly
Discontinuous stages!
Stability in Piaget’s Theory
From birth through out the life span these 3 learning processes operate together:
Adaptation: build schemes through direct interaction
– Assimilation: incoming information is incorporated into existing mental schema
– Accommodation: create new schemes or adjust old ones
Equilibration – Balance between assimilation and accommodation
Boo and “Kitty” (Sully) from Monsters Inc.
Why do you think Boo calls Sully “Kitty?”
she doesn’t have a schema for a monster, so she has a breif moment of disequilibirum as she assimilates Sully as a “kitty”
Equilibrium and Disequilibrium
Use assimilation during equilibrium
Disequilibrium prompts
accommodation
Using Assimilation and Accommodation:
Organization
Internal rearranging and linking schemes
Creates a strongly interconnected cognitive system
Piaget’s Stages
– Sensorimotor stage
(birth to 2 years)
– Pre-operational stage
(2 to 7 years)
– Concrete Operational stage
(7 to 12 years)
– Formal Operational stage
(12 years and older)
Sensorimotor Stage
Birth to 2 years
Intellectual functioning is organized around sensing information and performing actions accordingly
Building schemas through sensory and motor exploration
6 substages of development
6 Substages of the Sensorimotor Stage
- Reflexes
- Primary Circular Reactions
- Secondary Circular Reactions
- Refined Secondary Circular Reactions
- Tertiary Circular Reactions
- Representations and Symbols
Sensorimoter Substage 1:
Reflexes (0–1 month)
Reflexes are the initial, innate building blocks of human cognitive growth
Development occurs as the reflexes are applied to more and more objects and events in the environment
Constitute the infant’s first schemes (i.e., grasping)
No attempt to locate objects that have disappeared
Peek-A-Boo: when you cover face, you disappeared
Sensorimotor Substage 2:
Schemes (2–4 months)
Individual schemes become progressively more skilled and attuned to the environment
Coordination or integration of previously independent schemes
For example, the coordination of sensory information, such as visual and auditory
Primary circular reactions – stumbles upon new discovery and repeats (i.e., thumb-sucking, crying for food)
No attempt to locate objects
Sensorimotor Substage 3:
Procedures (5–8 months)
In Substage 3 actions are directed outward on the environment
The schemes develop into procedures of actions that produce interesting effects in the world
– Initially accidental
– Repeated over time for desired result
Consequently, the procedure gets repeated
Secondary circular reactions: repeating something again out of interest
Like throwing a spoon on the floor, liking the sound, and then doing in over and over again to hear the noise and to see the parent’s response and
Sensorimotor Substage 4:
Intentional Behavior (9 - 12 mos)
In previous substage, infant accidentally produces some outcome then repeats it
In this substage, infant engages in intentional, goal-directed behavior
Ability to use one scheme (i.e., pushing aside obstacles) as a means to another scheme —the end of a goal (i.e., playing with a toy)
“The first actually intelligent behavior patterns.” – Piaget
Secondary circular reactions become well-coordinated
Sensorimotor Substage 4:
Intentional Behavior (9 - 12 mos)
Infants begin to master object permanence (an object continues to exist even when it is out of sight)
Babies make the A-not-B search error
Reach several times for object in first hiding place (A), then see it moved to a second (B), infant still searches for object in the first hiding place
Sensorimotor Substage 5: Experimentation (13–18 months)

Active, trial-and-error exploration of the world, either in response to some specific problem that needs to be solved or simply to see what happens if something new is tried
“The discovery of new means through active experimentation.” – Piaget
Before this substage, the infant produces known actions that will produce mostly known outcomes
Here infant produces NEW actions and observes effects
Tertiary circular reactions: exploring objects by acting on them in novel ways
Sensorimotor Substage 6:
Representation (19–24 months)
Emergence of representational ability or the ability to use one thing (i.e., a mental image, a word) to stand for something else
In the substage infants start to think and act on the world internally
– Naming an object that is not currently present but just thought of
– Deferred imitation: witnessing an action but reproducing it later
– Pretend play
Violation-of-Expectation Method
Assesses infants’ knowledge, based on their attention to events consistent versus inconsistent with reality
Controversial
– Some critics believe it indicates only nonconscious
awareness of physical events
– Others maintain it reveals only perceptual preference for novelty
Baillargeon
Do infants understand that unseen objects continue to exist and have certain properties?
Found that 3.5 month old infants understand that unseen objects continue to exist.
Object Representation vs. Manual Search
Diamon (1987) claimed that infants search at A (where they found the object on previous reaches) instead of B its most recent location) because they have trouble inhibiting
– Failure to coordinate means-ends behavior (suggested by Piaget)
Premature brain
– Inability to inhibit dominant responses is the result of premature prefrontal cortex
Alternate Explanations
Core knowledge perspective: infants born with core domains of knowledge
Permits a ready grasp of new related information and supports early, rapid development
Genetically prepared to understand environment
Infants born with counting abilities
Revised Consensus
Many cognitive changes of infancy are gradual and continuous rather than abrupt and stage-like
Aspects of infant cognition change unevenly because of the challenges posed by different experiences
Piaget’s enormous contribution inspired a wealth of research on infant cognition
According to Piaget, infants’ very first schemes are
sensorimotor action patterns.
In Piaget’s theory, __________ involves building schemes through direct interaction with the environment.
adaptation
In Piaget’s theory, during __________, toddlers use their current schemes to interpret the external world.
ASSIMILATION
According to Piaget, in accommodation, children
create new schemes or adjust old ones.
Some critics argue that the violation-of-expectation method is flawed because
it reveals only babies’ perceptual preference for novelty, not their knowledge of the physical world.
The violation-of-experiment method is based on infants’ tendancy to stare longer at things that go against their expectations, based on the preface that infants are born with an innate ability to sense when things are possible or not
Explain the core knowledge perspective of cognitive development.
What do critics say about the perspective?
Doesn’t incorporate the toddlers’ experience
INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH
Similarity with Piaget:
Children as active, inquiring beings
Difference: Acknowledges numerous components of children’s thinking: – Attention – Memory – Categorization – Complex Problem Solving
The 3 PARTS OF THE MENTAL SYSTEM
Sensory Register
Short-Term Memory Store
Central Executive
Sensory Register
Sights and sounds represented and stored briefly
Attend: active focus on some stimuli to the exclusion of other; interest piqued
Think of the airport slide
Short-Term Memory Store
Info perceived and attended to is transferred into short-term memory
Stored in working memory —> limited number of items are stored/organized or discarded
– “Bedrock for all thinking processes”
CENTRAL EXECUTIVE
“CRUCIAL” Part of Working Memory
Coordinates incoming information
Selects, applies, and monitors strategies
Conscious part of our mental system
Gives priority to certain activities
Think Driving
INFORMATION PROCESSING SYSTEMS
Long-term memory
– Permanent knowledge base
– Challenge becomes retrieval
– Information categorized by content
Improvements in speed, working memory, and executive functioning PERMIT more complex thinking
EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING
Allows us to achieve end desire in situation
– Attention
– Suppressing impulses,
Delay-Of-Gratification
– Monitoring thought & behavior
• Task persistence
• Self-control
• Academic Achievement
• Interpersonal Acceptance
(Accepting oneself)
ATTENTION
2-3 months: shift from single high-contrast features to exploring objects and patterns thoroughly
Infants & toddlers become better at taking in new information
• Pre-term infants: 3-4 minutes
• 4-5 months: 5–10 seconds
Sustained Attention
Habituation paradigm capitalizes on infants’ tendency to get bored with old stimuli and sustain interest in new novelty things.
Younger infants take longer to get bored with things
MEMORY
Retention:
– 1 item at 6 months
– 2-4 items at 12 months
Detected during infancy using two methods:
– Operant Conditioning
• Mobile conjugate reinforcement procedure: Learn operant kicking for visual and auditory reinforcement
– Habituation
– Recall
On average, 7 plus or minus 2 items held in short-term memory
Perhaps the reason why phone numbers are 7 digits
OPERANT CONDITIONING
APPLICATION (Kraebel, 2012):
How does detection of redundant amodal information function within complex learning processes in human infants?
Amodal: utilizing two or more senses at once
KRAEBEL (2012)
Participants
– 36 3-month-old infants
– Randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups
Procedure
– All groups: one experimental session
– Kick rates during the last 3 min session measured learning
Represents the baseline
Infants’ mean kick rate during the baseline and test phases as a function of the amodal redundancy present during the acquisition phase: Amodal None (infants did not hold an object during acquisition), Amodal Match (infants viewed cylinders and held a cylinder during acquisition) or Amodal Mismatch (infants viewed cylinders and held a rectangular cuboid during acquisition).
Learning inhibited when there’s inconsistent amodal stimuli
the cylinder group kicked the most
WHAT DO KREABEL’S RESULTS MEAN?
Infants given matching amodal properties while learning an operant response showed better operant learning than infants who did not hold any object
Infants who held mismatched object showed inhibited learning
Inersensory Redundancy Hypothesis (Bahrick & Lickliter,
2000):
Providing redundant information across 2 or more sensories makes the amodal info more salient
Infants’ mean kick totals during the acquisition phase as a function of amodal redundancy: Amodal None (infants did not hold an object), Amodal Match (infants viewed cylinders and held a cylinder) or Amodal Mismatch (infants viewed cylinders and held a rectangular cuboid).
MEMORY IMPROVES RAPIDLY FROM 2–19 MONTHS
,…
HABITUATION
Infants do not need to be physically active to learn about the environment
• Visually attend to the movement of objects or actions and remember
3 to 5-month-olds memory for faces of unfamiliar people =>
24hrs
• Memory for unusual movement of objects can last 3 months
10 to 12-months =>
better memory of novel actions and features of objects
BAHRICK, GOGATE, & RUIZ, 2002
What is salient to the infant, visually attended to, and remembered, what is less salient?
Infant memory for faces and actions of women performing different repetitive activities
Different ethnicities on purpose
Repetitive actions of people are more salient to infant than appearance of faces
• Robust discrimination and long-lasting memory for action 7-weeks later
No evidence at 1-min or 7-weeks for retaining face of the individual performing the actions
RECALL MEMORY
Recognition: noticing when a stimulus is identical or similar to one previously experienced
Recall: requires remembering something not present
• Improves with age
• 1 year olds can retain short sequences of adult-modeled behavior for up to 3 months
• 1.5 year olds can do so for 12 months
Long-term recall depends on connections among multiple
regions of prefrontal cortex
• Recall assessed through deferred imitation at 20months predicts performance on memory tests at age 6
There’s some stability in memory ability over time.
Genetic reasons?
Environmental reasons?
CATEGORIZATION
Grouping similar objects or events into a single representation
Categorize on basis of shape, size, and physical qualities during first 3 months
After 6 months – categorize on the basis of 2 correlated features (i.e., shape/color of letter)
• Group objects into an impressive array of categories
• Sort emotional and social experiences
After 12 months, better able to detect complex relations
CHANGES IN CATEGORICAL UNDERSTANDING
14-month-olds demonstrate the ability to shift between identifying objects by color to shape to texture
18-months-olds understand distinction between inanimate and animate objects.
Move inanimate objects in linear motion.
22-month-olds move animate object in nonlinear motion!
How do infant/toddler(s) arrive at such changes?
HOW CHANGE OCCURS
Become increasingly sensitive to fine-grained perceptual features and to stable relations
Perceptual to conceptual shift
BOTH VIEWS: • Learning through exploration • Expanding knowledge of world • Vocabulary growth • Adult intervention
EVALUATION
Contributors:
• Underscores continuity of thinking from infancy to adulthood
• Infants as sophisticated beings
• Analyzing cognition in terms of components
• Perception, attention, memory, categorization
Limitation
• Struggles to put components together as cohesive whole
SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY
Lev Vygotsky
Social and cultural contexts affect the way child’s cognitive world is structured
Indirect social support:
• Joint attention
• Social referencing
• Social Scaffolding
Zone of proximal development
• The range of behaviors between what children can do with no assistance and what they can do with social support
Joint Attention: PArent tells child, “look at that plane,” and the child looks.
Social Referencing: Think of the visual cliff when parents were smiling on the other side of the deeper cliff which causes them to do something that they would otherwise be unlikely to do
One residual effect of this theory:
Children as acting both as a teacher and as student
