cognition and development Flashcards
what is a schema
a a cognitive representation of all we know about an object person or idea
what is disequilibrium and how do we solve it
disequilibrium is when out schemata no longer makes senses and leads us to an uncomfortable state where we are motivated to discover what we need to know to acheieve equilibrium
what is assimilation
when we discover new information to add to existing schema and change the schema slightly
what is accommodation
when a child must radically change their current schema or form a complete new one
outline Piagets stages of cognitive development
stage 1 is the sensory motor stage (birth-18month)
- child gains understanding of environment using sensory discovery
- object permanence develops at around 8 months
stage 2 preoperational stage (18m-7years)
- child becomes able to represent objects using symbols or signs
- develops rules on mental operations like the conservation experiment
- child is egocentric and has trouble understanding that world from any other perspective
- struggle with the advanced skill of class inclusion meaning children find it difficult to deal with subsets in categories
stage 3 concrete operational stage (7-12years)
- child becomes decentred and is able to account for multiple different perspectives
- child can now conserve
- class include
stage 4 formal operational stage 12-adolescents
- gain the ability to think in an abstract manner by manipulation of ideas
outline conservation experiments
in the conservation test Piaget demonstrates that if you show a child two beakers of water one of which is tall and thin the other short and fat and ask the child which beaker contains the most water they say the tall one even though they both contain the same amount of water
evaluate Piagets theory of cognitive development
+ Piaget’s work has given psychologists many insights into the qualities and limitations of child thought
- Samuel and Bryant argue that asking a child the same question twice in the conservation experiments is confusing as the assumption a child makes is that their first answer must be wrong
- Sigler and Svetina found Piaget’s original class inclusion tasks confusing when they clarified them they found the child was capable of class inclusion and this is realistic as if you are confused in real situations you ask for clarification
+ this theory has practical applications for education as discovery and active learning are seen as very important educational strategies
- Vygotsky proposes that children learn largely from others and Piaget underestimates the role of others in learning from others
- Equilibrium might not be as important as Piaget thought, not everyone feels uncomfortable not knowing
outline Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development
Vygotsky places far more importance on the role of social interaction in learning and that learning involves the expert supporting and guiding the novice until they have gained the knowledge
ZPD is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they can do with help
scaffolding is a term which describes the kind of gelp an adult to more advanced peer provides for a child in ZPD
outline scaffolding in Vygotsky’s theory
a term which describes the kind of help an adult to more advanced peer provides for a child in ZPD
- demonstration like showing them by doing it
- preparation for child helping them with the first step
- indication of materials pointing to what they need to do
- specific verbal instructions to help
- general prompts like advice
evaluate vygostkys theory of cognitive development
+ research support for the role of proximal development as they found that children perform bettween with prompts and therefore scaffolding - Roazzi and Bryant
+ research has important implications for education and the role of teachers and advanced peers in the development of a child’s cognitions
- difficult to determine when to remove the scaffolding and many teachers fail to remove it early enough and encourage independence
- there are cultural variations and individual differences in the way and rate at which children learn and Vygotsky underestimated these differences
outline baillargeons explanations of early infant abilities
object permanence the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen and Baillargeon did a study on object permanence in children
violation of expectation is what is expected is not what happens
the violation of expectation paradigm is the exploitation of the fact children look at things they haven’t encountered before and that violate their expectations longer than things that don’t. This suggests that if children understand the physical world and how it works, they will expect certain things to happen and if these things do not occur then the infant will show a reaction.
Baillargeon’s theory of infant physical reasoning believes that babies re born with a physical reasoning system and it is innate. Therefore babies are born with the most basic understating of the physical world and the ability to learn more details through experience. She argues that babies are born with object persistence and this is the idea that an object remains in existence and doesn’t spontaneously change its physical structure.
outline Baillargeon experiments
one of the test stimuli is a possible event and the other is an impossible event
in the drawbridge study a coloured box was placed in the path of the drawbridge and in the possible event the drawbridge stopped at the point where the path was blocked but in the impossible event the drawbridge appeared to pass through the box and Baillargeon found the infants spent much longer looking at the impossible event and she concluded this indicated surprise and the infants expectations had been violated
Baillargeon and Graber examined 5.5 month old infants ability to represent the height of a hidden object. There were two test events where a toy rabbit travelled along a horizontal track and the centre had a large window where the rabbits ears could be seen which was the impossible event as the rabbit was too short to be seen in the other conditions.
evaluate Baillargeon’s theory of cognitive development
+ 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 coordination rather than a lack of object permanence
+ concept of PRS explains why children’s understanding of the physical world seems to be universal regardless of experience
- it is difficult to objectively study understanding in infants as it is all inferred from behaviour and is subjective
- behavioural response does not indicate understanding although the child stared longer at the impossible it doesn’t mean they understand it isn’t possible and is simply novel
outline selmans levels of perspective taking
Selman was interested in social perspective taking and our ability to appreciate a social situation from another persons point of view
Robert Selman gave children scenarios along with questions that required them to take the perspective of others and based on the answers he developed a stage theory to explain the way in which children develop their ability to take different perspectives
stage 1- is undifferenciated(age 3-6)
- children know that self and others can have different thoughts and feelings but often confuse the two
stage 2- social information (4-9 years)
- children know that perspectives differ beacause peoples have acess to different information
stage 3- self-reflective (7-12 years)
- children can step into anothers shoes amd view themselves as others do and are aware others can do the same
stage 4- third person (10-15years)
- children can step outside of the immediate situation to see show they and another person and viewed by a third person
stage 5- (14-adult)
- adolescents realise that a third person perspective us influenced by broader contexts like culture
what did Selman identify as three aspects to social development
Interpersonal understanding: being able to take on different roles and understandings of social situations
Interpersonal negotiation strategies: the 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 the nature of the relationship
evaluate Selmans stages of perspective taking
+ there is clear evidence that perspective taking improves with age, but there are individual differences
+ this research is useful for understanding atypical development for example children on the autistic spectrum often have difficulties with perspective taking
- Selmans thoery may be overly congitive anf it faisl to consider emotion skills such as the development of empathy and emotional self-regulation however selmans addition of the 3 aspects to social development was designed to plug that gap
- This may be cultural variations in perspective taking as Wu and Keyser found Chinese children outperformed American children in perspective taking tasks
outline theory of mind
Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states like beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge to oneself and understanding that others have different mental states from ones own
According to Simon Baron-Cohen the core deficit of autism in the autistics persons inability to employ a theory of mind
It is argued that a child develops a theory of mind between 4 and 6 years of age and although some evidence has demonstrated that children as young as two have a theory of mind and having a theory of mind is the ability to understand that other people have independent minds of their own
Developing a theory of mind allows the child to begin to understand other people and to predict what other people are likely to do and believe
outline the Sally Anne test and the findings
The sally anne test is used to measure the thoery of mind in young children
The children are presented with two dolls sally who has a basket and anne who has a box. To start with Sally puts her marble in her basket and then goes outside. While she is outside Anne takes the marble and puts it in her box. When sally returns to the rom the child is asked 3 questions
Where will sally look for her marble
Where is the marble really
Where is the marble at the beginning
There were 3 groups of children tested: typically developing children, children with downs syndrome and children with autism. In the first two groups the pass rate was 85% but for the autistic children it was 20%
The most important question is the first and this isn’t he questions that test for the theory of mind and this is why Baron Cohen found it useful in being a diagnostic tool for diagnosing autism but only for younger children
outline the eye tests
Baron cohen developed a new test more suitable to adults to diagnose autism and this task involved inferring the mental state of a person just from the information in photographs of a persons eyes and this test aims to assess theory of mind
Baron Cohen hypothesised that adults with aspergers syndrome couldnt interpret states of mind from reading facial expressions
In the test he carried out a natural experiment having a matched pairs design. 3 groups of ppts 16 autistic 13 male and 3 female, 50 neurotypical 25 male and 25 female, 1o tourettes ppts 8 male and 2 female and they were all matched on intelligence and age.
The ppts were shown 25 photos of eyes and given 3 seconds to pick the word the best describes what emotion the person is feeling
Findings: autistic adults scored 65% and were less likely to identify the right word whereas the tourettes and neurotypical group 82% and 81% and the results were statistically significant and this led Baron to conclude that there is evidence for autistic people dont have theory of mind
evaluate the theory of mind
- False belief tasks like the Sally Anne test lack ecological validity as even some children with theory of mind find the tasks confusing
- The eye tests lacks ecoloigcal validity as in reality you dont just read eyes you read other non verbal cues like body language and the pictures lacked context
- It is hard to distinguish between theory of mind from perspective taking and the confusion of are they independent of each other of part of the same process
- There are contradictory theories about hoe theory of mind develops as 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 for diagnosing Austistic spectrum disorders
outline mirror neurone system
Mirror neurones are special class of brain cells that fire when an individual performs an action and when the individual observes someone else making the same movement
The mirror neurones gives the ability to instinctively and immediately understand what other people are experiencing
Rizzolatti made a discovery of mirror neurones when he had implanted electrodes in the brains of several monkeys to study the brain activity of them and one day as he reached for his food he noticed that neurons begin to fire in the monkeys premotor cortec
Iacoboni has shown that mirror neurones may be an important element of social cognition and that defects in the mirror neuron system may underlie a variety of mental disorders such as autism
evaluate mirror neurones
+ evidence from brain scans shows areas of the brain beleives to be rich in mirror neurons very active during social cognition tasks- Haker et al fMRI and watching mirror neurones work with yawning
- It is difficult to study mirror neurons scans only show brain activity in general they cannot identify the role of the individual neurons in the brain
- There is some evidence for brain abnormalities in Autistic Spectrum disorders but the evidence is inconsistent
+ link to Adriane Raine and APD as an explanation for reduced pre-frontal cortex
- Mixed evidence of structural Brain abnormalities linked to ASC like broken mirror theory
outline the three mountain tasks
the three mountain task to demonstrate egocentrism and the children are shown a model of three mountains each with a different feature- a cross, house or snow and a doll is sat on the opposite side of the model and the infant was asked to describe what the doll could see and if the child was preoperational the wouldn’t be able to appreciate the doll had a different point of view and would describe their own view of the scene
outline the classification experiment
Piaget found that he showed children in the preoperational stage a picture of five dogs and two cats and asked are there more dogs or animals they answered dogs because they couldn’t see dogs as members of the subset animals and the subset dog at the same time
outline Selmans research into perspective taking
Selman tested 30 boys and 30 girls aged 4,5 and 6 (20 each) by giving them a task designed to measure role taking ability. the task is to explain how each person will feel and see if they can take different perspectives into account.
