~Class 13 - Early Cognitive Development

Question 1

Are children “worse thinkers” than adults?

Answer 1

No, children are coming up with their own coherent world-view for understanding and explaining things, it’s just that their understanding is not quite fully developed, and that leads to some errors in their thinking and lack of logic in places.

Question 2

Who was the first person to systematically look at children’s’ changes in thinking, reasoning, and understanding about the world?

Answer 2

Piaget

Question 3

Who essentially started the field of cognitive development?

Answer 3

Piaget

Question 4

What are two components of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 4

The Stages of Cognitive Development & The Construction of Knowledge

Question 5

What are the Stages of Cognitive Development?

Answer 5

Sensorimotor (0-2) → Preoperational (2-7) → Concrete Operational (7-11) → Formal Operational (11+)

Question 6

The Stages of Cognitive Development are the ___ of Piaget’s theory.

Answer 6

descriptive/what

Question 7

Who stated that children are active participants in their own development?

Answer 7

Piaget

Question 8

What is involved in the Construction of Knowledge

side of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 8

Assimilation, Accommodation, Equilibration, & Explanatory

Question 9

The Construction of Knowledge is the ___ side of Piaget’s theory.

Answer 9

explanatory/how

Question 10

What are Schemes (aka Schemas; Schemata)?

Answer 10

Organized units of knowledge, hierarchically organized. They are the frameworks that we develop to explain observations that we encounter and understand the world and how it works.

Question 11

In Piaget’s theory, a child’s Schemes start out as being focused on understanding and interacting with the ___.

Answer 11

external world

Question 12

When Schemes are ___, and when they start to develop a coherent set of logical ___ and ___, Piaget referred to those as ___. An internalized Scheme is an ___.

Answer 12

internalized // rules // principals // Operations // Operation

Question 13

Piaget outlines two processes that kind of work in tandem with one another to let us modify our existing knowledge to account for new experiences, ___ & ___.

Answer 13

Assimilation // Accommodation

Question 14

What is Assimilation?

Answer 14

Children expand an existing Scheme to incorporate new information.

Question 15

When you encounter a new experience that you can incorporate into your existing Schemes/understanding of the world you will engage in the process of ___, expanding your existing Scheme a little bit to incorporate the new information.

Answer 15

Assimilation

Question 16

A child’s initial concept of a dog was the German Shepherd-type, but then one day they meet a Chihuahua and learn that that is also considered a dog, so they learn that dogs can have different characteristics, but they all have the shared characteristics of 4 legs and barking. The child is then ___ this new type of dog into their existing Scheme. They’re not fundamentally changing their understanding of what a dog is, they’re just expanding the bubble out a little bit further to include a wider variety of dogs.

Answer 16

Assimilating

Question 17

In some cases, ___ can lead to the child distorting how the world works in order to fit that new information into their Scheme. This may involve distorting the ___, causing ___.

Answer 17

Assimilation // environmental input // Cognitive Errors

Question 18

What is Accommodation?

Answer 18

Accommodation occurs when the new information cannot be fit into existing Schemes. Children modify an existing scheme to incorporate new information.

Question 19

___ is like taking a balloon that has a little bit of air in it and blowing it up even more, you’re not fundamentally changing it, you’re just adding new pieces, new stuff, to the mix

___ is like taking the balloon and turning it into a balloon animal, changing the structure in some way to update and better characterize what you’ve experienced in the world.

Answer 19

Assimilation // Accommodation

Question 20

Are you only ever using Accommodation or Assimilation alone?

Answer 20

No, these two things work together and work in tandem as the child is developing, they’re not only using one of these at any given point.

Question 21

Do you see more Accommodation or Assimilation during periods of rapid cognitive development?

Answer 21

You tend to see a lot more Accommodation during periods of rapid cognitive development.

Question 22

Do you see more Accommodation or Assimilation during periods of more cognitive stability?

Answer 22

In periods of more cognitive stability, where they’re learning new stuff and developing a broader understanding, but are not fundamentally reworking their knowledge constantly, you tend to see more Assimilation.

Question 23

The 2020 toddler mistaking random similar shaped objects for a sanitization station has developed a Scheme for what you do when you see this type of object. This is an example of ___.

Her realizing they aren’t sanitizers and that they serve a different function is an example of ___.

Answer 23

Assimilation // Accommodation

Question 24

Children are working toward a state of ___ in their understanding of the world, a cognitive balance. They want to be in a position where they’ve developed mental structures to organize and explain what they experience, and they want everything to make sense within that framework

Answer 24

equilibrium

Question 25

A child going from having a solid understanding of Arithmetic in Elementary school, to having Algebra introduced in Middle school can cause a state of ___, it doesn’t fit with the child’s current understanding of what’s going on.

Answer 25

cognitive dis-equilibrium

Question 26

Going from “math is arithmetic” to “Math is arithmetic and algebra” is an example of ___.

Answer 26

Accommodation

Question 27

What can happen when we try to introduce something new to a child, but the new information is too discrepant and complicated for the child to understand?

Answer 27

They may just ignore it, rather than try to incorporate it into their understanding of the world.

Question 28

If we want children to learn and incorporate new information into their mental models of the world, then ideally, we do so in a way that is just ___ their current capabilities, but not ___.

Answer 28

beyond // too far

Question 29

Who was the first to systematically look at the behaviours kids showed in their everyday lives, and their ability to think and reason on different types of lab-based tasks?

Answer 29

Piaget

Question 30

The ages of the stages of cognitive development are a ___.

Answer 30

rough guideline

Question 31

Piaget didn’t think it was just a matter of getting better and learning more, he thought it was a matter of us fundamentally restructuring our understanding of the world as we move from one stage to the next. He took a more distinct ___ approach to explaining cognitive development.

Answer 31

stage-like

Question 32

Piaget claimed the stages of cognitive development are ___ and ___, so even though kids will reach a given stage at different points, he thought that everyone, regardless of where they are growing up or what they’re learning, will go through each of these 4 stages.

Answer 32

universal // invariant

Question 33

Piaget saw the stages of cognitive development as ___, which means that you have to go through each of the stages ___, you don’t skip over one, you don’t reach one and then backtrack to the previous one. It’s an ___ through the various stages.

Answer 33

Invariant // in-turn // orderly sequence

Question 34

Why does the first stage of cognitive development, the Sensorimotor stage, not include the word “operations” like the rest?

Answer 34

This is because Piaget argued that during the first couple years of our lives, we’re not yet at a point where we’ve internalized the Schemes we’ve developed about the world.

Question 35

Piaget thought that in babies, Schemes are fairly ___, and based on things like our ___ behaviours, we haven’t yet gotten to the point where we’re terribly good at mentally ___ objects and ___ so that we can think more symbolically and reason without having to physically interact.

Answer 35

external // motor // representing // ideas

Question 36

Piaget’s starting point for this theory comes from the fact that babies have a set of ___ that early-on guide a lot of their behaviour.

Answer 36

in-born reflexes

Question 37

What is the major achievement of the Sensorimotor Stage?

Answer 37

The development of Object Permanence

Question 38

In the Sensorimotor Stage, infants are going from relying on ___ and ___ activities to really understand and learn about the world, to eventually having ___. Put another way, kids are working toward the point where they can think ___.

Answer 38

sensory // motor // internalized mental representations // symbolically

Question 39

What is Object Permanence?

Answer 39

The realization that objects continue to exist even when they are no longer visible (or detectable through other senses).

Question 40

Who was the first to explore the concept of Object Permanence?

Answer 40

Piaget was the first to explore the concept of Object Permanence, and test babies on it.

Question 41

How did Piaget test baby’s Object Permanence?

Answer 41

Piaget would test babies by hiding an object in some way, and seeing if the baby would retrieve it. So the retrieval behaviour was a big part of how he quantified babies object permanence.

Question 42

What are the substages of the Sensorimotor stage?

Answer 42

Reflex Activity (0-1m), Primary Circular Reactions (1-4m), Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8m), Coordination of Secondary CR’s (8-12m), Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18m), and Mental Representations (18-24m).

Question 43

Do babies in the Reflex Activity (0-1m) substage have object permanence?

Answer 43

No, they only track objects when they are directly in view, and when they are out of sight, they are likely out of mind, and don’t show any indication of wanting it, looking for it, or seeking it out in any way.

Question 44

Do babies in the Primary Circular Reactions (1-4m) substage have object permanence?

Answer 44

Piaget didn’t think they showed object permanence, but researchers think that they probably will at least part-way through this substage.

Babies will stare at the spot where an object disappeared from, they won’t actively search for it, but their attention and focus is there.

Question 45

Do babies in the Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8m) substage have object permanence?

Answer 45

At this stage, kids will show some rudimentary signs that could indicate object permanence. Piaget still didn’t think it was fully developed, but there are some indications that they are moving along that path.

They will retrieve a partially-covered object, but not a fully-covered object.

They will search for and attempt to retrieve a hidden object if it is hidden or disappears while they are in the process of interacting with it.

Question 46

Do babies in the Coordination of Secondary CR’s (8-12m) substage have object permanence?

Answer 46

Piaget agreed that kids are starting to show object permanence.

At 8-9 months, they will start to more consistently start to search for a hidden or covered object.

There are some limitations to what they can do.

Question 47

Do babies in the Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18m) substage have object permanence?

Answer 47

At this stage, they’ve overcome the “A not B error”, but they struggle with invisible displacement.

If you take an object and hide it in full sight of the baby, they will be able to retrieve it.

But if the last place they see it is your hand, then go behind a barrier and hide the object there, and bring your hand back up, the babies will tend to look for it in the last place they saw it, so your hand.

Question 48

Do babies in the Mental Representations (18-24m) substage have object permanence?

Answer 48

Here, kids have developed full-blown object permanence.

Question 49

In the Coordination of Secondary CR’s (8-12m) substage, the child is taking the motor schemes that they’ve developed in the previous stages, and ___ them to accomplish goal-directed intentional behaviour. Here, those actions individually are not the type of things that are pleasurable or desirable like thumb-sucking or making a toy squeak, but the end-goal is pleasurable.

Answer 49

combining

Question 50

At what substage will children show the “A not B error”?

Answer 50

The Coordination of Secondary CR’s (8-12m) substage

Question 51

What is the “A not B error”?

Answer 51

There are 2 spots where you might hide an object in front of a kid.

If you repeatedly hide or cover and object in spot A, the baby in the 8-9m range will have no problem retrieving it.

But if you then hide it in B, they will keep going back to spot A, even though they watched when you hid it in B.

Children at this age are still not good at inhibiting their behaviours, and they have just been reinforced over and over to reach over to spot A, they may see and know you’re hiding it in B, but the other pattern has been reinforced so much its now their dominant response, and they struggle to inhibit their response and change course to reach to B.

Question 52

In the Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18m) substage, they start to get more ___ and ___ about how they engage with the world. They are trying to repeat behaviours in slightly different ways to see what happens, this is great for building your understanding of the world and encountering new things you can incorporate into your mental schemes.

Answer 52

exploratory // experimental

Question 53

In what substage do young children in their experimentation and exploration do they have to physically try something and see what happens because they cannot mentally think it through, they have to do it?

Answer 53

The Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18m) substage

Question 54

What substage does Piaget refer to as the pinnacle of the Sensorimotor stage?

Answer 54

The Mental Representations (18-24m) substage

Question 55

In the Mental Representations (18-24m) substage, Piaget thought that they have developed truly ___, so they can ___ objects, actions, and experiences, and use that to understand the world and figure out how to behave.

Here, they can mentally think through the process of something and experiment that way before deciding how to physically act.

Answer 55

symbolic thought // mentally represent

Question 56

Baillargeon’s violation of expectation research experiment is predicated on the observation that even very young babies seem to have an ___ sense of how the ___ works.

Answer 56

innate // physical world

Question 57

In Baillargeon’s violation of expectation research experiment, by ___, longer looking times toward impossible event than possible event

Answer 57

3.5 months

Question 58

Why is it called the Preoperational stage?

Answer 58

Because while they involve internalized mental representations, but those representations also have a logic that allows them to fully understand how concepts relate to each other, and those logical relations between schemes are where kids in this stage still tend to struggle.

Question 59

In the Preoperational stage, kids are really good at using ___ to mentally represent objects and their experiences.

Answer 59

symbolic thinking //

Question 60

In the ___ stage, pretend play becomes really prominent.

Answer 60

Preoperational

Question 61

Younger babies will do more ___ of pretend-play. An 18m will pick up a cup that’s empty and drink from it, pretending there’s water in there. But there’s still limitations here, because they’re using the object for what it’s intended for, not giving it a new ___.

Answer 61

limited forms // identity

Question 62

Even though babies develop the capacity for symbolic thought in the ___ stage, it continues to improve in the ___ stage.

Answer 62

Sensorimotor // Preoperational

Question 63

A ___y/o may know exactly where the Snoopy is in the scale-model, that doesn’t translate to them figuring out where to find it in the physical room.

A ___y/o can find it if you find them a ___ of the room where the Snoopy is, but there’s something about the scale-model that they zoom in on as an interesting object on its own, which gets in the way of thinking of the scale-model as representing the larger room.

Answer 63

2.5 // 2.5 // picture

Question 64

___y/o’s are able to retrieve the Snoopy toy in the physical room after watching it be hidden on the scale model.

Answer 64

3

Question 65

There are a number of limitations to children’s thinking in the Preoperational stage, such as ___ and ___.

Answer 65

Egocentrism // Centration

Question 66

A young girl hopes that the new baby in the family will be a boy, because “my parents already have a girl…”, despite already having a little brother. Thinking of him as only being her brother, being able to only focus on one characteristic of him is an example of ___.

Answer 66

Centration

Question 67

Centration leads to a lot of the ___ errors and ___ difficulties that kids in the ___ stage show.

Answer 67

logic // task // Preoperational

Question 68

Animistic thinking is a form of ___.

Answer 68

Egocentrism

Question 69

What is an example of Animistic thinking?

Answer 69

”The sun went behind the clouds because it saw that I was hot”.

Question 70

What is Animistic thinking?

Answer 70

Talking about inanimate objects as if they have these life-like characteristics. This is attributing intentionality and voluntary action to inanimate objects.

Question 71

Children in the ___ stage can actually distinguish characteristics of animate vs. inanimate, you just need to ask the right questions.

Answer 71

Preoperational

Question 72

If you pair the task down and make it simpler to take in, kids can shift ___ relatively well and accomplish ___.

Answer 72

perspective // perspective taking

Question 73

What is one way of helping kids who would normally struggle on the false-beliefs task?

Answer 73

To get the kid involved in the deception themselves, rather than being an outside-observer, you bring the child into the situation.

Question 74

The broader theme is that these types of Egocentric limitations to Preoperational thinking are there, and are tendencies that we see, but it’s not that the children are incapable of these things, it’s just that these abilities are little bit more fragile than they will be when they get older. So when the task gets too ___, kids will show these errors in their thinking, but when the task level is ___, they are capable of avoiding egocentric-thinking.

Answer 74

complicated // simplified

Question 75

What is Centration (intuitive thinking)?

Answer 75

Centration is the idea that kids at this age tend to focus on one particularly salient feature of an object or situation.

Question 76

In terms of reasoning about physical objects and situations, children who are showing Centration struggle with ___ of ___ characteristics like liquid, number, mass, ect. But recent research has shown that if you train children to think about multiple dimensions along the lines of one of these tasks, they can pick up on it, and they simply need a little scaffolding and support to have it click.

Answer 76

Conservation // physical

Question 77

The ___ thought was Piaget’s major contribution to thinking about preoperational children and the limitations in their thought.

Answer 77

Egocentric

Question 78

Piaget didn’t use the term ___, but in a lot of ways, it’s very tied in with his ideas about egocentrism during the Preoperational period.

Answer 78

Theory of Mind // egocentrism

Question 79

What is Theory of Mind?

Answer 79

Theory of Mind refers to the child’s developing concepts of mental activity and how it works; that mental states are not always shared.

Question 80

Developing Theory of Mind in some respects is a major cognitive milestone, but it’s also important for our social ___ and social ___.

Answer 80

interactions // development

Question 81

Developing Theory of Mind helps us to ___ others’ thoughts, beliefs, desires, and behaviour.

Answer 81

predict/explain

Question 82

Kids with stronger ___ find it easier to interact with their peers, and engage in conflict productively and work things out.

Answer 82

Theory of Mind

Question 83

A kid who hides in a game of hide-and-seek by covering their eyes, and thinks you cannot see them because they cannot see the seeker, is an example of a child who hasn’t developed ___.

Answer 83

Theory of Mind

Question 84

What is a common way of assessing Theory of Mind?

Answer 84

False-Belief task

Question 85

At what age does TOM start to pick up in a majority of children?

Answer 85

age 4

Question 86

Theory of Mind seems to improve as children’s ability to ___ responses improves.

Answer 86

inhibit

Question 87

There’s some research suggesting that children with ___ tend to develop Theory of Mind a little bit more ___.

Answer 87

siblings // readily

Question 88

Some rudimentary forms of Theory of Mind start to emerge from a younger age. ___ month old kids can recognize that other people can hold different ___.

Answer 88

18

Question 89

Kids who are younger than ___ will tend to hand over the food that they themselves like, not what the researcher showed they like.

Answer 89

18 months

Question 90

By ___, children can start to recognize that someone may have a different favourite food from them

Answer 90

18 months

Question 91

At ___ years, Theory of mind can continue to get more sophisticated from here.

Answer 91

7

Question 92

At age ___, As kids reached sort of the Early Elementary School years will also start to pick up on nuances like the fact that even if we all have the same information and the same set of knowledge, other people might interpret the situation differently than I do, so they might have a different take on the shared set of information that can lead us to think different things or behave in different ways.

Answer 92

7

Question 93

As kids Theory of Mind gets stronger, kids tell more ___ than those without TOM.

Answer 93

Lies

Question 94

Research shows that adults are ___ at detecting ___ from children who have developed basic TOM, if the lie is a basic yes or no question, then adults struggle to tell whether it is a lie or not.

Answer 94

pretty bad // lies

Question 95

In the temptation resistance paradigm, children under the age of __, won’t typically try to come up with a cover story, and will simply say the right answer, and if asked how they know, they won’t have an answer.

Answer 95

4

Question 96

In the temptation resistance paradigm, kids ___ who have developed TOM, know they have to come up with some kind of cover story, and their stories are quite dubious.

Answer 96

4-5

Question 97

In the temptation resistance paradigm, age ___ can come up with a somewhat convincing answer, or might pretend they don’t know because they don’t want to get in trouble for peeking.

Answer 97

7-8