Child Development - Cognition and Intelligence Flashcards
What is cognition?
The mental processes by which knowledge is acquired, elaborated, stored and used to solve problems
What did Jean Piaget theorise about cognitive development?
Four stages of intellectual development, learning through action (how children think rather than what they may know)
What are Piaget’s stages?
- Sensorimotor = 0-2 months
- Pre-operational = 2-7 years
- Concrete operational = 7-11 years
- Formal Operational = 11+ years
What are characteristics of the sensorimotor stage?
- 6 sub-stages
- knowing the physical environment by seeing and touching = ‘thinking only by doing’
- object permanence
- recognition of self as agent of action
- developing memory systems, self-recognition
What is object permanence?
young children do not realise an object is still there if it is hidden by another bigger object
How are memory systems in the sensorimotor stage measured?
- Baseline leg kicks
- Attach string which connects to a mobile, from 2 to 3 months the kicks double in reaction
- test memory later with no string = 2 months remember for 1 day, 3 months remember for 1 week, 6 months for 2+ weeks
What are examples of abilities of 8 months?
- obeys simple requests
- points to objects and following the pointing gesture of an adult
- hold cup to doll’s mouth
- demonstrates affection by hugging and kissing
- shows toes when they are named by mother
- shakes head or says ‘no’ in refusal
What is the mirror test and when does it happen?
Before 18 months, when babies look in the mirror, they see another child.
After, they can point to areas they recognise on themselves
Do animals show mirror self-recognition?
Not all animals but some such as great apes, dolphins and Asian elephants.
What are schemas?
theories about how the physical and social world operate
What is assimilation and accommodation?
Assimilation = understanding a new object
Accommodation = modifying a schema
What are characteristics of pre-operational thought?
Centration = thinking about one thing with the exclusion of others and conservation (understanding that one feature stays the same even though its appearance changes (mass, number, volume)
Egocentrism = self-centred world view, difficulty taking other’s perspectives
What is the 3 mountain problem?
- Doll is placed behind mountains where tallest mountain is the doll’s first view, the child is on the opposite side of the doll.
- Asked to describe the view of the doll.
- Pre 6-7, not able to describe other view
- Rigidity of pre-operational thought
What is an alternative for the 3 mountain problem?
Tell children to hide the doll from the two policemen’s view = success by 90% of children aged 3.5-5
What is operation in terms of cognitive ability?
Logical thought
What is an experiment to measure conservation of mass?
Both stimuli have the same amount of clay = different shapes so child cannot tell they are the same mass
What is an experiment for the conservation of volume?
Example of concrete operation and associated with personal experience, operational thought is reversible
e.g. imagine water is being poured back into a tall, thin glass, compare to shorter but wider glass
What are characteristics of concrete operational?
Thinking in relation to things that are real or imaginable (direct sensory access)
What are characteristics of formal operational?
- Reasoning in purely symbolic terms
- Consider alternatives and plan ahead
- Systematic testing of hypotheses
How was IQ calculated and how is it calculated now?
Before = mental age/chronological age x 100
After = calculated from tables of standardised age scores
How can IQ testing be problematic?
- assessment to evaluate a ‘fixed quality’
- product of genetic inheritance
- social/racial genetic differences
- does not measure underlying competence or ‘world skills’
What is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale?
It gives the overall full scale IQ and:
- Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI)
- Perceptual Reasoning Index (PRI)
- Working Memory Index (WMI)
- Processing Speed Index (PSI)
What are the uses of the IQ tests?
- Identifying educational needs
- Assessment following neurological trauma
- Learning disability, cognitive impairment
- Predicting school performance and job success
What are newer approaches to establishing intelligence by Howard Gardner?
linguistic, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence etc. = multiple intelligences
How is cognitive function localised?
Cerebral lateralisation:
- language
- split brain patients (commissurotomy)
- asymmetry of function
What is commissurotomy?
- Surgical intervention on a patients who had epilepsy that was uncontrolled and was creating brain damage
- Severed the corpus collosum (bundle of fibres that connects two sides of the brain)
- restricts electrical discharge sparing one hemisphere of the brain
What is the contra-lateral rule?
Left visual field goes to the right side of the retina and vice versa
What is an experiment for detecting manual or verbal response?
Word flashed on right visual field = patient’s verbal answer matches the word
Word flashed on left visual field = patient is unable to say what he saw but can draw it
What does the left hemisphere do?
- complex language functions
- complex logical activities
- mathematical computations
What does the right hemisphere do?
- simple language functions
- spatial and pattern abilities
- emotional recognition
