Cognition and Development Flashcards
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
Development is a systematic, structured process. It isn’t the amount of knowledge that distinguishes an older and younger thing, but the qualitative difference in their thoughts. A child’s thoughts change is signified by changes in their cognitive and intellectual development.
Discovery Learning
Learner must be an active participant. Knowledge is not just transmitted verbally, but must be constructed and reconstructed by the learner.
Schema
A schema is a cognitive representation of all we know about an object, person or idea. Our schema become more complex and sophisticated.
Equilibrium
Point of full understanding.
Disequilibrium
Desire to know more about a schema. Asking questions to develop knowledge.
Assimilation
Discover information to add to an existing schema.
Accomodation
Radical change of a schema or creation of a new one.
Stages of Cognitive Development 1936
Structuralist approach, suggesting that we must complete each stage before moving onto the next.
Sensory Motor Stage (Birth-18 months)
Child gains understanding of the environment by using its senses and movement. Develop object permanence.
Object permanence
Ability to appreciate that things we can’t see still exist. Explanation for low separation anxiety in this stage. Observed children looking at objects. If less than 8 months old, when the object was removed they would switch their attention to something else. If older than 8 months, they would search for it.
Pre-operational Stage (18 months- 7 years)
Becomes able to represent objects or events by symbols, signs or language.
Conservation Experiment - Piaget
Two different sized beakers of water. Ask the child which has more water- pre-operational child would say the tall one. Both had same amount. Piaget suggested that this is because they did not have understanding of mass and volume.
Egocentric
Trouble seeing world from any perspective but their own.
Three mountains task - Piaget egocentrism
Placed objects in different locations on a model of three mountains. Children were asked to describe what a doll opposite them can see. They found it difficult to understand and appreciate that the doll would have a different view.
Conservation
Understanding of mass and volume.
Class Inclusion
Find it difficult to understand things can be put in different subsets within their own categories. e.g. they would know that different types of dogs are all dogs. However, when asked whether there was more dogs or animals when shown 5 dogs and 2 cats, they would answer dogs as they wouldn’t understand that dogs are a subset of animals.
Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 years)
The child is decentered (able to take into account multiple views of a situation) and can use more sophisticated mental operations. They are able to conserve, are no longer egocentric and can perform class inclusion tasks.
Formal Operational Stage (12+)
Governed by formal logic and is the most sophisticated stage of thinking. Gain the ability to think in an abstract manner about ideas in their head, such as completing mathematical calculations, thinking creatively, using abstract reasoning, and imagining outcomes to actions.
Piaget Evaluation
+ Given psychologists many insights into the qualities and limitations of child thought.
- However, many replications of Piaget’s methods have shown that he may have underestimated children.
- Piaget’s theory is domain general (all aspects together so cannot explain domain specific (individual processes) development.
+ Considerable evidence to support the theory.
+ Practical applications in education and the development of educational strategies.
- Vygotsky opposed him, suggesting children learn more from others.
- Saw language as another cognitive processes where others see it as key to development.
Samuel and Bryant - Piaget Criticism
Argue that asking the same question twice in conservation experiments is confusing as it causes the child to assume they were wrong.
McGarrigle and Donalson - Conservation Critique
Context of ‘Naughty Teddy’ enabled children to be able to conserve at a younger age.
Sigeler and Svetina - Class Inclusion Critique
Found that the tasks were confusing the children. When clarified, they were able to perform class inclusion at a younger age.
Hughes - decentre
A child could decentre earlier if the three mountains task was more realistic, using 2 dolls and a police officer. They had to position the dolls where the officer would not be able to see them, finding that children as young as 3 1/2 could do it.
Bradmetz - adolescents
May have overestimated adolescents. Not all could perform formal reasoning tasks.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Emphasises the importance of the role of social interaction in learning. Social aspect involves an expert guidign the novice until they have gained the knowledge or skills being taught.
Intermental
Knowledge begins between the more and less expert individuals.
Intramental
Knowledge becomes more within the mind of a newly expert individual.
Zone of Proximal Development
We start on the outside with what we can’t do, then more into what we can do with help, then finally what we can do ourselves.
Scaffolding
Help an adult or more advanced peer will give to a child within the ZPD.
Wood, Brunner and Ross (1976)- scaffholding
- Demonstration- showing the child how to do it.
- Marking crucial features- highlighting important aspects of the task.
- Direction maintenance- encouragement to maintain motivation
- Reduction of degrees of freedom- focus on the tasks and strategies to solve it.
- Recruitment- engaging a child’s interests in an activity.
Vygotsky Evaluation
+ Research support for the Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding.
+ Research has important implications for development and the role of teachers and peers.
- It is difficult to know when to remove the scaffolding.
- Cultural and individual differences in the way and rate at which children learn- e.g. varying school starting age.
Roazzi and Bryant - ZPD
4-5 year olds estimate number of sweets. Those given support estimated faster.
Conner and Cross- scaffolding
Observed mothers and fathers reducing intervention support and help given to their children as they got older and more able.
Violation of Expectation Paradigm
Means what is expected is not what happens. Infants stare longer at things they haven’t encountered before.
Baillargeon and Graber 1987- rabbits
Examined 5.5 month old infants’ ability to represent the height of a hidden object. Infants saw two tests where a rabbit travelled along a track. A screen was placed in front with a window in the centre at the top. In the possible event the rabbit was shorter than the window so wasn’t seen. In the impossible event the rabbit was taller than the window but still wasn’t seen. The infants looked longer at the impossible event indicating they believed the rabbit still existed, knew the height of the rabbit, and expect the rabbit to appear in the window and were surprised that it didn’t.
Baillargeon 2012- Physical Reasoning System
Physical Reasoning System is innate- babies are born with a basic understanding of the physical understanding and the ability to learn more through experience.
Object Persistence
Babies are born with the knowledge that an object remains in existence and doesn’t spontaneously change its structure.
Baillargeon Evaluation
+ Seems to be a better way of assessing object permanence than Piaget’s test as his results could be due to limitations in motor skills and co-ordination rather than lack of object permanence.
+ Concept of PRS explains why children’s understanding of the physical world seems to be universal regardless of experience.
- Difficult to objectively study
understanding in infants.
- Researcher bias
- Behavioural response doesn’t indicate understanding.
- Non-verbal cues from parents.
Physical Perspective Taking
Physically understanding what another person can see.
Social Perspective Taking
Ability to appreciate a social situation from another person’s point of view.
Selman 1971- social perspective taking
Gave children scenarios along with questions required them to take the perspective of others- developed a stage theory to explain the way in which children develop their ability to take different perspectives. Tested 30 boys and 30 girls (20 aged 4, 20 aged 5, 20 aged 6) by giving them task designed to measure role-taking ability.- explain how each person will feel is Holly does or doesn’t climb the tree.
Selman’s Stages of Perspective Taking 1971-1976
- Undifferentiated- 3-6 years- children know that self and others can have different thoughts and feelings but confuse the two.
- Social-informational- 4-9 years- children know that perspectives differ because people have different access to different information.
- Self-reflective- 7-12 years- children can step into another’s shoes and view themselves as others do: they know that others can do the same.
- Third-person- 10-15 years- children can step outside of the immediate situation to see how they and another person are viewed by a third person.
- Societal- 14+- adolescents realise that a third-person perspective is influenced by a broader personal, social and cultural context.
Selman and La Russo 2003- three aspects to social development
- Interpersonal understanding- being able to take on different roles shows understanding of social situations.
- Interpersonal negotiation strategies- development of social skills to avoid conflict
- Awareness of personal meaning of relationships- being able to reflect on social behaviour in the context of life history and nature of relationship.
Selman Evaluation
+ Clear evidence that perspective taking improves with age.
+ Research is useful for understanding atypical development e.g. Autism spectrum conditions.
- Selmans theory may be overly cognitive- no emotion- added after
- Cultural variations
Wu and Keyser- Chinese perspective taking
Chinese children out performed American children in perspective taking tasks.
Theory of Mind
The ability to attribute mental states- beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc- to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, intentions and perspectives that are different from one’s own. The core deficit of autism is the person’s inability to employ a theory of mind. Develops between 4 and 6 years. Ability to understand people’s minds are independent and predict behaviour.
Sally-Anne Test
Measure ToM in young children. Presented with two dolls. Sally puts a marble in her basket and leaves to play. Anne steals the marble and puts it in her box. The children are asked where it was originally and where it is now as controls and where will she look (the belief question). Answering that wrong suggests they lack theory of mind.
Baron-Cohen et al 1983- Sally-Anne Test Original Study
Three groups of children- typically developing children aged 4, children with Down’s syndrome aged 11 and children with autism aged 12. Both typical and Down’s syndrome children answered correctly around 85% of the time, compared to the children with autism with a pass rate of only 20%.
Baron-Cohen et al 1997- The Eyes Test
Developed a new test which is designed for adults. Involved inferring the mental state of a person just from the information in the photographs of a person’s eyes. Hypothesised that adults with Asperger’s Syndrome couldn’t interpret states of mind from eyes. Carried out a natural/ quasi experiment with a matched pairs design- 3 groups of ppts: 16 autistic (13 male, 3 female), 50 typical (25 male, 25 female) and 10 with Tourette’s (8 male, 2 female) all matched on age and normal intelligence. Two clinical groups passed 1st ToM test at 6 years old. Shown 25 photos of eyes in black and white for 3 seconds. The Autistic adults identified the target answer 16.3/25 compared to the typical with 20.3/25 or the Tourette’s group with 20.4/25. At a significance level of p=<0.0001 typical and Tourette’s groups were better than the Autistic.
Baron-Cohen Evaluation
- False belief tasks like the Sally-Anne test lack validity as they may have been confusing.
- Eyes task lacked validty because in reality reading eyes is only 1 element of many non-verbal communication signs. The eyes lacked context too so we didn’t know the persons situation.
- It is hard to distinguish ToM from perspective taking in general.
- Doesn’t explain why Autism occurs
- Contradictory theories about how ToM develops: Perner suggests it is an innate ability which develops over time whilst Wilde Astington suggests it develops as a result of social interaction.
+ Practical applications
Mirror Neurones
A special class of brain cells that fire not only when an individual performs an action but also when the individual observes someone else performing it.
Giacomo Rizzolatti- Mirror Neurones
Implanted electrodes into the brains of macaque monkeys in the 1990s to study activity when clutching food. Noticed that when he reached for his own food the monkeys had activity occur in their premotor cortex.
Marco Iacoboni 2005- Mirror Neurones
Neuroscientist from the University of California- best known for mirror neurone works. Activated when performing and observing behaviour. Shown that mirror neurones may be an important element of social condition and that defects may underlie a variety of mental disorders.
Broken Mirror Theory
Cannot mirror behaviour accurately.
Mirror Neurones Evaluation
+ Evidence from brain scanning shows areas of the brain believed to be rich in mirror neurones very active during social cognition tasks.
- It is difficult to study mirror neurones, scans only show brain activity in general cannot identify role of individual neurones.
- Evidence inconsistent.
+ Link to Adrian Raine APD
- Do they even exist?
- No conclusive evidence for role in social cognition.
Haker et al 2012- mirror neurones fMRI
fMRI with yawning found mirror neurones activated.
