cognition and development

Question 1

what does piaget’s theory say about humans?

Answer 1

born with innate abilities and that cognitive development occurs through a combination of these abilities and environmental interactions
discovery learning

Question 2

what is equilibrium?

Answer 2

describes how environmental interactions motivate cognitive developments and the development of schema

Question 3

what are schemas?

Answer 3

they are cognitive frameworks and a way of organising information and understanding the world.

Question 4

what is assimilation?

Answer 4

adding new information to an already existing schema

Question 5

what is disequilibrium?

Answer 5

when an experience does not fit into an already existing schema, causing confusion
the unpleasant feeling creates a motivation to learn and return to a state of equilibrium

Question 6

what is accomodation?

Answer 6

when information doesn’t fit into an existing schema, cannot be assimilated into that schema therefore a new schema has to be created
once the schema is updated to accommodate the new experience, the child return to a state of equilibrium

Question 7

what are the stages of Piaget’s intellectual development?

Answer 7

sensorimotor 0-2yrs 8 months object permanence
pre-operational - 2-7yrs doesn’t understand conservation or class inclusion and is egocentric
concrete operation - 7-11yrs learns conservation, class inclusion but can only be applied to physical objects they see
formal operaiton - abstract thinking - syllogisms

Question 8

what supporting evidence is there for piaget’s theory?

Answer 8

egocentrism - three mountain, a 4yrs is not able to see from a different perspective that the doll was seeing, backing up his stages
conservation - children can’t understand volume of liquid changing shape but is still the same volume as before
class inclusion - more dogs than animals?

Question 9

what are the weaknesses of piaget’s theory?
egocentrism, conservation and class inclusion

Answer 9

conflicting evidence - egocentrism Hughes and Policeman dolls were put in 2 quadrants and children were asked to hide so that the policeman couldn’t see them
90% of children aged 5 gave the correct answer
conservation - beads spread apart and close together, however McGarrigle and Donaldson ‘naughty teddy’ accidentally pushed the beads together, 72% of the children correctly said both rows contained the same amount
class inclusion - Siegler and Sventina found 5yrs were able to learn class inclusion when it was explained to them.

Question 10

what are the problems with Piaget’s methodology?

Answer 10

based on unstructured observations and clinical interviews
may be biased towards Piaget’s subjective interpretations
his situations were complicated or unfamiliar to the children, therefore may not have understood what they were being asked
Piaget argued that the cognitive development came before language development. However, Vygotsky argues it’s the other way round

Question 11

what is Vygotsky’s theory?

Answer 11

describes interactions with the environment, he emphasises social and cultural factors, interactions with others

Question 12

what is a strength of Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories?

Answer 12

RWA, there theories are implemented in schools and how children develop and learn.
plowden report - Piaget theory - discovery learning
scaffolding used to help children cross ZPD to become experts.

Question 13

what is ZPD?

Answer 13

zone of proximal development is the gap between what a children is capable of and their potential intellectual ability that is helped by a teacher or parent.

Question 14

what are elementary and higher functions?

Answer 14

elementary - innate functions, reflexes and sense perception
higher - complex functions such as language and reasoning and understanding.

Question 15

what are the stages of scaffolding?

Answer 15

Demonstration - shown how to do a task
marking critical - highlighting the importance of the task
direction maintenance - encouraging the child
reduction of degrees of freedom
demonstration

Question 16

what is scaffolding?

Answer 16

when someone older helps the child to learn by providing a framework to help them solve a problem or a task

Question 17

what are the strengths of Vygotsky’s theory, ZPD?

Answer 17

studies that support - woods observed children 3-5yrs as they built with the help of a teacher. this task was too difficult for the children to complete by themselves, but simple enough that they could do it with the help of a teacher - support for ZPD

Question 18

RWA for Vygotsky?

Answer 18

there is practical application, teachers use scaffolding strategies to help less-able children
Van Keer and Verhaeghe - 2nd grade tutored by 5th grade children in addition to normal teaching saw greater reading improvement scores than a control group

Question 19

what are the weaknesses of Vygotsky’s theory?

Answer 19

focusing on cultural and social factors only Vygotsky’s theory may be too reductionist and ignore individual differences.
even within culture and social environment, different children will learn at different speeds
suggests that other factors are needed to explain intellectual development - genetic or biological differences in intelligence

Question 20

what is Baillargeon explanation?

Answer 20

challenges Piaget’s with object permanence
babies can develop object permanence at 3 months old, babies don’t pursue hidden objections because they don’t have the motor skills

Question 21

what is the physical reasoning system?

Answer 21

innate mechanism, allows for babies to have a basic understanding of the physical world, with the ability to learn details easily
core knowledge

Question 22

what did Baillargeon use to study the infants understanding of the world?

Answer 22

VOE, violation of expectation
babies do posses the knowledge of the physical world

Question 23

what is VOE?

Answer 23

babies will look at something longer when they don’t fit with their understanding of the physical world
study using the rabbit, babies looked at the impossible event longer than the possible event, supporting Baillargeon’s explanation

Question 24

what are the strengths of Baillargeon’s explanation?

Answer 24

support evidence with study
reliable - VOE studies have been replicated - carrot, truck

Question 25

what are the weaknesses of Baillargeon’s explanation?

Answer 25

conflicting evidence - replicated drawbridge study, but found no difference between the amount if time looked at the possible and impossible event

Question 26

what is social cognition?

Answer 26

social cognition is a person’s understanding of themself as an individual in the context of society and other people.
role playing

Question 27

what is perspective taking?

Answer 27

perspective taking is the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes and see from their point of view. as a child it is harder for them because of egocentrism

Question 28

what are the theories in social cognition?

Answer 28

Selman’s perspective taking
Theory of Mind
Mirror Neurons

Question 29

how did Selman study perspective taking?

Answer 29

Holly injures herself climbing a tree and promises her dad that should wouldn’t climb again. one day her friend’s kitten is stuck up a tree and Holly is the only one who can climb a tree.
Selman asked children: Should Holly climb the tree to save the kitten?

Question 30

what would a child in the undifferentiated perspective taking stage say Holly should do?

Answer 30

Holly should climb the tree, her father would not mind, remembering that those children think that everyone shares the same perspective

Question 31

what would a child in the social informational perspective taking stage say Holly should do?

Answer 31

child understands that Holly’s father might be angry that Holly climbed the three if he doesn’t know why, but if they have the same information then Holly’s father would have let her.

Question 32

what would a child in the self-reflective perspective taking stage say Holly should do?

Answer 32

Holly’s father will understand why she climbed the tree, as finally the child understands that people may have different values that shape their perspective in addition to access to different information. the child can see from different perspectives

Question 33

what would a child in the mutual perspective taking stage say Holly should do?

Answer 33

child describes the situation from a neutral perspective, Holly climbed the tree because she likes kittens even though she promised not to, Holly’s father would not punish her

Question 34

what would a child in the societal perspective taking stage say Holly should do?

Answer 34

children in this stage say that Holly should not be punished for climbing the tree. this is due to wider societal value of caring for animals which both Holly and her father will share because they are within the same culture

Question 35

what are the strengths of Selman’s perspective taking explanation?

Answer 35

RWA - PE understanding the limited perspective taking abilities of children can improve PE by showing which activities are age-appropriate.
Longitudinal study - Gurucharri and Selman followed 48 infants over several years. at different ages the participants’ perspective taking ability was measured using dilemmas. researchers found that they were able to take more perspectives as they got older.

Question 36

what are the weaknesses of Selman’s perspective-taking explanation?

Answer 36

other factors - focusing only on the cognitive ability to take another’s perspective. its too reductionist to be a complete account of social cognition.
cultural bias - most research has been conducted on people in western cultures. Quintana looked at perspective taking abilities in Mexican-American high schools students and found their perspective-taking abilities were different.

Question 37

what is the theory of mind?

Answer 37

it is not a theory, but a concept. referring to our ability to imagine and model the mental states of other people’s minds.

Question 38

what is the test to study a person’s theory of mind? how is it conducted?

Answer 38

sally-anne test: understanding that other people can have false beliefs, suggesting that children develop ToM 3-4yrs.
Sally has a basket and Anne has a box
sally hides the marble in basket and goes away
Anne moves the marble from the basket into her box
then sally returns, where will she look to find the marble?
correct answer: sally’s basket
it requires to put themselves in Sally’s position as she will have a false belief based on the information that is available to her

Question 39

who conducted sally-anne and what type of experiment is it? relate it to ASD.

Answer 39

Baron-Cohen, quasi experiment as either control group, down’s syndrome or autistic children
85% - normally developed answered correctly aged 4
86% - Down’s syndrome answered correctly aged 11
20% - autistic children answered correctly aged 12

Question 40

Autism and theory of mind

Answer 40

difficulties with social cognition, interacting and communicating with other people.
there are problems with theory of mind
people with autism may be unable to understand the minds of other people and their perspective and cannot understand deception and cannot lie to others.
this lack of ToM is called mind-blindness

Question 41

what are the strengths of ToM? supporting evidence

Answer 41

supporting evidence - Baron Cohen findings have been replicated, therefore sally-anne test is a reliable measure of autism.
brain scans Happe et al compared brain activity in autistic children to control during ToM. there was significant activity in left prefrontal cortex, but those with autism had no activity in this area. this supports ToM as an explanation of social cognition and also highlight the neural basis of ToM.

Question 42

what is another strength of ToM? explanatory power

Answer 42

explanatory power - ToM is able to explain the psychological observation that children with autism have difficulties engaging in pretend play. the explanation is that pretend play requires ToM but since autistic children lack ToM they may have difficulties pretending such things, therefore the theory of mind is valid

Question 43

what are the weaknesses of ToM?

Answer 43

conflicting evidence - Tager-Flusberg conducted a review of ToM. these studies show children with autism are more likely to fail ToM tests. but some autistic children pass them. people with autism who have normally functioning ToM.
overlap with other explanations - ToM and perspective taking, might just be the same concept. ToM is redundant and unnecessary.
other factors - social and biological factors are likely to play a part in both the development of ToM and the development of social cognition more generally. ToM is likely to be an incomplete account of social cognition.

Question 44

what are mirror neurons?

Answer 44

when you perform an action, neurons in the brain activate, they fire when they see someone else performing that action as well as themselves performing an action

Question 45

how were mirror neurons discovered?

Answer 45

Rizzolatti observed that in monkeys the same areas of the brain activated when the monkey reached for food as when they watched someone else reach for food.

Question 46

mirror neurons and autism?

Answer 46

mirror neurons are associated with social cognition, autism is associated with difficulties in social cognition
Ramachandran and Oberman propose the broken mirror theory of autism.
the broken mirror theory says autism is caused in part by deficiencies in the mirror neuron system.

Question 47

what are the strengths of the mirror neuron system?

Answer 47

supporting evidence to Rizzolatti, Haker conducted fMRI brain scans while participants watched videos of people yawning.
speculate that empathy via the mirror neuron system is why yawning is contagious
fMRI scans - Dapretto compared brain activity in autistic children to non-autistic children when observing facial expressions

Question 48

what are the weaknesses of the mirror neuron system?

Answer 48

conflicting evidence - some studies doubt the broken mirror theory. the mirror neuron system is heavily linked with motor actions. fMRI scans of people with autism by Dinstein found they had normal mirror neuron activity when observing people perform motor actions, suggesting that those with autism don’t have deficits in their mirror neuron system

Question 49

what are the weaknesses of methodology with mirror neuron system?

Answer 49

methodological concerns about evidence for mirror neurons and theories of social cognition that are based on mirror
generalisation from animal studies - Hickok argues that observations in monkeys are overly generalised to human beings
monkeys watching people perform, but the mirror neuron explanation is then extended to higher cognitive processes in humans, language and ToM that monkeys don’t have