cognition and development Flashcards
What are the ideas in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development?
Schemas
Motivation to learn (disequilibrium and equilibration)
Assimilation and accommodation
Briefly describe Piaget’s beliefs surrounding cognitive development.
Piaget believed that children do not simply know less than adults do, instead they think in an entirely different way to grown-ups.
He believed that as children develop they construct more and more detailed and complex mental representations of the world, this is stored in the form of schemas.
Schema = mental structure containing all the information we have about one aspect of the world.
Piaget thought children are born with a small number of schemas, enough to allow them to interact with other people and that in infancy we construct new schemas, one being the me-schema (where all the child’s knowledge about themselves is stored).
Piaget believed that we are motivated to learn when our existing schemas don’t allow us to make sense of something new, this leads to an unpleasant feeling of disequilibrium.
To escape disequilibrium we have to adapt to new situations by exploring and learning what we need to know, we then achieve equilibration (preferred mental state).
Piaget thought learning = adapting to new situation so we can understand it. Adapting is either assimilation (where we understand a new experience and equilibrate by adding new information to our existing schema), or accommodation (radically changing current schemas or forming new ones).
Evaluate Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
- Support for children learning by forming own mental representations of world, Howe found that children aged 9 - 12 put into groups to study increased their level of knowledge and understanding but also did not come to the same conclusions.
- Piaget’s idea that children learn by actively exploring their environment and by forming their own representation of the world revolutionised classroom teaching. So, his work has been influential for application in education.
- Piaget ignored the influence of other people in learning, others may be beneficial in this process.
- Piaget may have overplayed the importance of equilibration, children vary in their mental curiosity and so he may have over-estimated how motivated children are to learn. His sample was a biased group of children from nursery attached to his university, all these children were clever and middle-class.
What are Piaget’s stages of intellectual development?
Sensorimotor stage (0 - 2 yrs)
- Focus is on physical sensations and developing basic physical co-ordination.
- Around 8 months child is capable of understanding object permanence (objects still exist when they are out of sight). Piaget found that before 8 months, children immediately switched their attention away from the object once it was out of sight, but after 8 months they would continue to look for it.
Pre-operational stage (2 - 7 yrs)
- Toddler is mobile and can use language but lacks reasoning ability.
- The display errors in reasoning for conservation (understanding that quantity remains constant even when the appearance of objects changes), egocentrism (to see the world only from one’s own point of view) and class inclusion (where we recognise that classes of objects have subsets and are themselves subsets of larger classes).
Stage of concrete operations (7 - 11 yrs)
- Most children can conserve and perform better on tasks of egocentrism and class inclusion.
Children have better reasoning abilities (operations) but these are concrete, they can be applied only to physical objects in the child’s presence.
Stage of formal operations (11+ yrs)
- Child capable of formal reasoning, they are able to focus on the form of an argument and not be distracted by its content. This can be tested by using syllogisms.
- Once capable of formal reasoning, child is capable of scientific reasoning and appreciating abstract ideas.
Evaluate Piaget’s stages of intellectual development.
- Children taking part in Piaget’s conservation experiment may have been influence by seeing the experimenter change the appearance of the objects. This influences their answer as they believe they were meant to think the quantity had changed. McGarrigle and Donaldson performed the conservation experiment but made the objects look like they had been moved by accident, in a control (the same as Piaget’s) the children answered incorrectly. However, when the objects had been moved by accident, 72% answered correctly, that they were the same number as before. Shows Piaget may have been wrong about conservation in the pre-operational stage.
- Siegler and Svetina tested 100 5 year olds from Slovenia on 3 sessions of 10 class-inclusion tasks, they received an explanation of the task after each session. In one condition the feedback was that there must be more animals than dogs as there were 9 animals but 6 dogs. A different group received feedback that there must be more animals as dogs were a subset of animals. The scores across the 3 sessions improved more for the latter group, suggesting they had a real understanding of class inclusion. Shows Piaget may have been wrong about children under 7 not being able to understand class inclusion.
- Hughes tested the ability of children to see a situation from two people’s viewpoints using a model of walls and 3 dolls, a boy and 2 police officers. Children as young as 3 and a half years old were able to position the boy doll where one police officer could not see him 90% of the time. 4 year olds could do this 90% of the time when there were 2 police officers. This suggests that Piaget may have been wrong about children’s ability to decentre.
- Research with children with learning difficulties such as autistic spectrum disorder suggests that reasoning abilities develop separately, opposed to what Piaget believed. Children with Asperger syndrome are very egocentric but develop normal reasoning and language.
What are the basic ideas behind Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development?
Cultural differences in cognitive abilities
Zone of proximal development
Scaffolding
Briefly describe Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development.
Vygotsky saw cognitive development as a social process of learning from more experienced others (experts), knowledge is first intermental between the more and less expert individual, then intramental within the mind of the less expert individual.
If reasoning abilities are acquired from the expert, children should have reasoning abilities associated with that expert. This means there may or should be cultural differences in cognitive development as children pick up the mental tools most important for their environments.
The zone of proximal development is the gap between what a child can understand alone and what they can potentially understand after interaction with an expert. Expert assistance allows a child to cross the ZPD and understand as much of a subject or situation they are capable. Vygotsky believed that higher mental functions could only be acquired through interaction with more advanced others.
Scaffolding refers to all the kinds of help adults and experts give a child to help them cross the zone of proximal development. Wood, Bruner and Ross identified 5 aspects to scaffolding which are general ways an adult can help:
- Recruitment
- Reduction of degrees of freedom
- Direction maintenance
- Marking critical features
- Demonstration
As a learner crosses the ZPD, the level of help given in scaffolding declines.
Evaluate Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development.
- Roazzi and Bryant provide support for the zone of proximal development, they got 4 and 5 year olds to estimate the number of sweets in a box. One condition did this by themselves, another had help from expert older children. The group with no help failed to give a good estimate whereas the group with help completed the task successfully.
- Support for scaffolding, research shows that the level of help given by the expert partner declines during the process of learning. Conner and Cross studied a longitudinal procedure where they followed up 45 children, observing them engaged in problem-solving tasks with the help of their mothers at 16, 26, 44 and 54 months. Distinctive changes in help were observed over time, mothers used less and less direct intervention and more hints and prompts as children gained experience. They also offered help when it was needed rather than constantly.
- Vygotsky’s ideas have been influential in education, scaffolding has been used in schools to help children through their zone of proximal development. Moreover, Keer and Verhaeghe found that 7 year olds tutored by 10 year olds alongside class teaching, progressed further in reading than controls who only had class teaching.
- With Vygotsky’s idea about interactive learning should mean that children learning together pick up very similar skills and mental representations of the world, however, Howe found that children come to different conclusions when working in groups. What children learn varies between individuals, even in group learning.
- Vygotsky assumed that the processes of learning are the same in all children but individual differences such as personality and style of information may mean that different children learn differently.
Briefly describe Baillargeon’s explanation of infant abilities.
Baillargeon pointed out that alternative research methods have suggested that younger babies may have a better-developed understanding of the physical world than was previously thought. She developed the violation of expectation method to investigate infant understanding.
The VOE method is used to test object permanence, infants will see two or more conditions where objects pass in and out of sight. In a control condition the object behaves as a person with object permanence would expect.
Baillargeon and Graber showed 24 infants aged 5 - 6 months a tall and a short rabbit pass behind a screen with a window. In the possible condition the tall rabbit can be seen passing the window but the short one cannot. In the impossible condition neither rabbit appeared at the window.
It was found that the infants looked for an average of 33.07s at the impossible event as compared to 25.11s in the possible condition. This was interpreted as surprise at the impossible event and this meant that the infants must understand object permanence.
Baillargeon et al propose that humans are born with a physical reasoning system, initially we have a primitive awareness of the physical properties of the world and this becomes more sophisticated as we learn from experience. One of these properties being object persistence, the idea that an object remains in existence and does not alter in structure.
In the first few weeks of life infants begin to identify event categories, each event category corresponds to one way in which objects interact. With Baillargeon’s VOE study, the impossible event captures infants’ attention because of the nature of their PRS, it means that they are predisposed to attend to new events that might allow them to develop their understanding of the physical world.
Evaluate Baillargeon’s explanation of infant abilities.
- The VOE method eliminates the confounding variable of the children shifting their attention away due to losing interest. Losing interest would not explain findings that children look for longer at impossible events meaning that the VOE method has better validity.
- It is hard to judge what an infant understands, the VOE method shows babies behaving as we might expect them to if they understood the physical world. The problems with this is that we are guessing and can never know how a baby might behave in response to a violation of expectations. Also, infants looking at different lengths of time for different events doesn’t necessarily mean that they see them as different. This means that the VOE method may not be entirely valid as a way of investigating infant understanding of the physical world.
- Hespos and Marle point out that without learning we all have understanding of basic properties of physical objects. Some understanding requires a PRS and is universal, this strongly suggests that this system is innate, otherwise we would expect cultural differences for which there is a lack of evidence. This is supporting Baillargeon’s idea that the PRS is universal and innate.
- There is no evidence to suggest that just because the infants acted in accordance to the VOE study, that they actually consciously understood what was going on.
What are the aspects to social cognition?
Selman’s perspective-taking
Theory of mind
Mirror neurons
Briefly describe the ideas behind Selman’s levels of perspective-taking.
Perspective-taking is our ability to appreciate a social situation from the perspective of other people. Selman proposed that the development of social perspective-taking is a separate process to physical perspective-taking.
Selman got 30 boys and 30 girls (20 aged 4, 20 aged 5 and 20 aged 6), all were individually given a task designed to measure role-taking ability, how each person felt in various scenarios.
A scenario featured a girl named Holly who promised her father she wouldn’t continue to climb trees but then finds her friends cat stuck in a tree. The task was to describe and explain how each person would feel if Holly did or did not climb the tree to rescue the kitten.
Selman found that there were distinct levels of role-taking that correlated with age.
Selman proposed 5 stages of social cognitive development in response to the scenario task.
- Stage 0 (3-6 years) Socially egocentric
Child can’t reliably distinguish between own and others emotions. They can identify emotional states in others but do not understand what social behaviour may have caused them.
- Stage 1 (6-8 years) Social information role-taking
Child can tell difference between their own point of view and that of others, but they usually focus on only one of these perspectives.
- Stage 2 (8-10 years) Self-reflective role-taking
Child can put themselves in position of another person and fully appreciate their perspective. They can only take on board one point of view at a time.
- Stage 3 (10-12 years) Mutual role-taking
Child can look at a situation from their own and another’s point of view at the same time.
- Stage 4 (12+) Social and conventional system role-taking
Young people can see that sometimes understanding others’ point of view is not enough to allow people to reach agreement. This is why social conventions are needed to keep order.
** development through the stages is based in maturity and experience
Schultz, Selman and La Russo identified three aspects to social development;
- interpersonal understanding
If we can take different roles this shows we can understand social situations.
- interpersonal negotiation strategies
As well as understanding what others think we need to develop skills in how to respond to them.
- awareness of personal meaning of relationships
Social development also requires the ability to reflect on social behaviour in the context of life history and the full range of relationships.
Evaluate Selman’s level of perspective-taking.
- Evidence that perspective-taking ability improves with age. Selman gave perspective-taking tasks to 60 children aged 4-6 years. Significant positive correlations were found between age and ability to take different perspectives. Longitudinal studies also support this showing that cross-sectional research was not the result of individual differences in social-cognitive ability.
- There is mixed evidence for how important the cognitive ability to take alternative perspectives is in understanding children’s social development. Buijzen and Valkenburg observed child-parent interaction in toyshops, they found a negative correlation between age, perspective-taking and coercive behaviour. This suggests that perspective-taking is important in developing prosocial behaviour. However, Gasser and Keller found that bullies displayed no difficulties in perspective-taking. This suggests that perspective-taking may not be an important factor in the development of socially desirable behaviour.
- Application in understanding atypical development, research shows that children with ADHD and those on the autistic spectrum have problems with perspective-taking. Marton tested 50 8-12 year olds with a diagnosis of ADHD to a control group on perspective-taking tasks and found that those with ADHD did worse on understanding the scenarios, identifying the feelings of each person involved and evaluating the consequences of different actions.
- Selman’s approach doesn’t take into account a range of other factors that impact on a child’s social development. Internal factors like the development of empathy and emotion self-regulation may impact and external factors like family climate and opportunities for peer interaction may impact.
- There are cultural differences in perspective-taking, this means that there is more to the development of perspective-taking than just cognitive maturity because the differences must be due to cultural inputs.
Briefly describe the ideas behind theory of mind.
Theory of mind is our personal understanding of what other people are thinking and feeling.
Meltzoff proved how toddlers have an understanding of adult intentions when carrying out simple actions. Children aged 18 months observed adults place beads into a jar, the the experimental condition the adults appeared to struggle and dropped the beads, in the control condition they didn’t struggle. In both conditions the toddlers placed the beads into the jar, they dropped no beads in the experimental condition. This shows how they were imitating what the adult intended to do.
ToM undergoes a shift and becomes more advanced at around 4 years old. Wimmer and Perner told 3 and 4 year olds about Maxi, a boy who left his chocolate in a blue cupboard, but his mum moved it to a green cupboard. When asked where Maxi would look, 3 year olds answered incorrectly with green but most 4 year olds correctly identified that the blue cupboard was correct.
Baron-Cohen designed the Sally-Anne false belief task, Sally and Anne are two dolls. Sally places a marble in her basket and Anne moves this into her box. The task is to work out where Sally will look for her marble.
Baron-Cohen et al explored ToM deficits and autism spectrum disorder using false belief tasks.
20 high-functioning children diagnosed with ASD and control groups containing 14 children with down’s syndrome and 27 without a diagnosis were individually tested on the Sally-Anne task. It was found that 85% of control groups children correctly identified where sally would look, however only 1 in 4 children in the ASD group could answer correctly. This demonstrates that ASD involves a ToM deficit, Baron-Cohen at al suggested that ToM deficit may be a complete explanation for ASD.
Studies of older children and adults with asperger syndrome showed them to successfully complete false belief tasks, this shows that ToM deficit cannot be a complete explanation for ASD. However, Baron-Cohen et al developed the eyes task to assess ToM, it involved reading complex emotions in pictures and faces showing a small area around the eyes. They found that adults with asperger syndrome and a diagnosis of ASD struggled with the eyes task, this supports ToM deficit as an explanation for ASD.
Evaluate theory of mind.
- False belief tasks lack validity as the task itself requires other cognitive abilities apart from ToM, e.g. memory; some studies gave children visual aids to help them remember and found that younger ASD children often succeeded. Moreover, a child can have a well-developed ToM and struggle with false belief tasks, they can still enjoy pretend-play (German).
- Many of the methods that have been used to study ToM could simply be measures of perspective-taking, e.g. responses to the Sally-Anne study could be explained through the child’s ability to take Sally’s perspective. This hinders the validity of ToM.
- ToM research has been extremely useful in helping to understanding the differing experiences of those on the autistic spectrum.
- Tager-Flusberg suggests that recent research has questioned the assumption that ToM problems specific to ASD and that all on the autistic spectrum suffer ToM problems. ASD has many other characteristics such as superior visual attention and highly systematic reasoning, ToM cannot explain these.
- There is no clear evidence or understanding of how ToM develops.
- The eyes task lacks validity because the experience of looking at a static pair of eyes in isolation is different from real life where we usually have access to additional information.
