Chapter 7 Flashcards
what are concepts
General ideas that organize objects, events, qualities, or relations on the basis of some similarity.
Concepts help us understand the world and act effectively in it by allowing us to generalize from prior experience.
what do people do with concepts
People organize things/concepts by similarity (shape, size, material, etc)
Generalize patterns and predict what happens next
React emotionally
how does conceptual development occur in the nativist and empiricist viewpoints
Nativism
-Nature
-Children will be born with some sense of fundamental concepts
Empirists
-Nurture
-Have some general learning skills, but won’t know things until you interact and experience them in your environment
what are the seven fundamental types of concepts and what do they do?
Humans, living things, objects, causality, space, time, numbers
Can categorize everything in the world and our experiences by one or more of these things
ways of organizing objects as concepts
category hierarchies
perceptual categorization
what are category hierarchies
a category that is organized with subcategories
what is perceptual categorization
grouping objects together that have similar appearances
what is naive psychology (people)
People have a commonsense level of understanding of oneself and others
Desires
Beliefs
Actions
what do nativists and empiricists believe about naive psychology
Nativism
Believe that children will be born with an understanding of human psychology
Empiricists
Only through experience will you be able to understand people, their actions, and their beliefs
what is theory of mind (people)
Understanding how mental processes (e.g., intentions, desires, beliefs, perceptions, emotions) influence behaviour
A key assumption of this theory of mind is that desires and beliefs motivate specific actions.
what are the four components/features of theory of mind
Understand that beliefs originate in perceptions (your five senses)
Understand that desires can originate from physiological or psychological states (hunger, happy, sad)
Understand that desires and beliefs produce actions (desires, actions, beliefs are all interconnected)
Understand that differences in people’s beliefs lead to differences in their actions and that will lead to different things
what do nativists and empiricists believe about theory of mind
Nativism
Think that children are born with a brain mechanism that helps you understand people
Empiricists
Think you need to interact with people to develop theory of mind
what is the development of play
Activities that are pursued for their own sake, with no motivation other than the enjoyment they bring
what is sociodramatic play
a kind of pretend play in which they enact miniature dramas with other children or adults, such as “mother comforting baby” or “doctor helping the sick child”
more developed with more people and more advanced
Challenges children face to understanding living things
Difference between inanimate objects and living things
(Preschoolers won’t fully understand this)
Difference between living and non-living things
(Struggle to understand the difference and what alive means)
Uncertainty of whether plants are living or non-living
(Know that like other living things plants grow, eat, and die they still don’t understand because they don’t see plants do these things)
what is causality
If X happens, then Y occurs.
ex) If I don’t clean up my room, then my mom gets upset.
If something unexpected happens, the child will think there is a third variable that is changing what happens
numerical equality (numbers)
The understanding that all sets of X objects share something in common
Understanding that some things could be similar based of how many there is of a thing
what do nativism and empiricists believe about spatial knowledge
Nativism
Spatial knowledge is there from birth
Empiricists
Need to learn spatial knowledge
impact of puzzles on spatial knowledge
If child uses lots of puzzles before the age of 5, after the age of 5, they have a lot more spatial knowledge. Learn how space and things fit together through puzzles
what do nativists and empiricists believe about causality
Nativism
Think kids are born with a brain mechanism that helps them understand cause and effect from the get-go
Empiricists
Children need to experiment with things in the environment to learn about cause and effect
spatial learning (space)
Infants have good spatial knowledge and understanding of up and down, etc from very early
The more they explore, the greater spatial knowledge they will have, which helps with things like object permanence
Will learn to use geometric cues to better learn about environment and locations
Will get a better grasp of things in relation to others in an environment
Learn that geometric ques (left, right) are better directions than non-geometric cues (go to the blue room) to get to locations
Early understanding of landmarks
A not b error is common when learning about spatial knowledge
children and time
The most basic time children will learn is a sequence: before and after
Preschoolers will understand that christmas happened before and Valentine’s day will happen after
Children will star to learn about duration of events
Middle childhood is when children understand duration in relation to events. If 2 events start at the same time but one ends after, that one is longer
As kids develop language, they will more easily be able to describe time
what are the 5 key counting principles
- One-one correspondence:
Each object must be labelled with a single word identifying its number. One number to describe this one thing - Stable order:
There is a certain order to numbers - Cardinality:
The number of objects in the set corresponds to the last number stated - Order irrelevance:
Objects can be counted from right to left and left to right, in any order. It will always be the same number - Abstractions:
Any set of discrete, separate things can be counted
what do counting principles mean (numbers)
Some ways that children are learning how to count and the different kind of things that children need to know to be able to count
empiricist belief of counting principles
Children learning numbers through experience
Children from different cultures learn numbers better or worse depending on the importance placed on numbers in each culture
what three categories do children divide things into
objects, people, and other animals (they are unsure about what category plants fall into for several years)
Often children’s categorization is largely based on _____ rather than on the object as a whole
specific parts of an object
The category hierarchies that young children form often include three levels:
superordinate level (the general one)
basic level (medium or in-between one, starts with this one)
subordinate level (the very specific one)
false-belief problem
another person believes something to be true that the child knows is false.
Nativists and empiricists agree on some issues:
from early infancy, children show impressive understanding of some spatial concepts, such as above, below, left of, and right of.
self-produced movement around the environment stimulates the processing of spatial information
certain parts of the brain are specialized for coding particular types of spatial information
geometric information—information about lengths, angles, and directions—is important in spatial processing.
Nativists’ three main arguments to support the idea that people have a biology module:
During earlier periods of our evolution, it was crucial for human survival that children learn quickly about animals and plants.
Children throughout the world are fascinated by plants and animals and learn about them quickly and easily.
Children throughout the world organize information about plants and animals in very similar ways (in terms of growth, reproduction, inheritance, illness, and healing).
several important aspects of psychological understanding emerge in the second year:
(1) a sense of self, in which children more explicitly realize that they are individuals distinct from other people;
(2) joint attention, in which two or more people focus intentionally on the same referent
(3) intersubjectivity, the mutual understanding that people share during communication.
This emerging understanding of other people during the second year also includes some insight into their emotions
___________ enhances spatial coding
Self-locomotion
