Cognition and Development

Question 1

Piaget’s Theory (Mechanisms of Cognitive Development)

Answer 1

sees children as scientists - from day 1 actively explore environment 
Schema 
Assimilation 
Accommodation 
Equilibration

Question 2

Piaget’s theory - the stages

Answer 2

Should Piaget Come First?
The sensori-motor stage
The Pre-operational stage
The Concrete-operational stage
The Formal operational stage

Question 3

Vygotsky

Answer 3

agrees with Piaget that children is different to adults BUT thinks that the SOCIAL CONTEXT of children’s learning is important
key role for culture
development is determined by both biological maturation and social interaction

Question 4

Vygotsky - Scaffolding

Answer 4

an approach to instruction that aims to support a learner only when absolutely necessary
e.g. to provide a framework

Question 5

Baillargeon

Answer 5

took a nativist approach to

theory that we are born with innate knowledge

Question 6

Baillargeon and DeVos

Answer 6

Violation of Expectation
to find out if infants know of object permanence in realation to physical properties
large and small carrot sliding along a track hidden at one point
big carrot would be seen behind screen small wouldn’t
the impossible event = the large carrot not appearing
if do have object permanence then show surprise (increases looking)
children a age 3 months demonstrated object permanence
infants looked longer at the large carrot

Question 7

Baron Cohen et al

Answer 7

False belief - Sally Anne task

Question 8

Song and Baillargeon

Answer 8

Violation of Expectation
infants as young at 14.5 months shows more surprise if the women opened the box without the blue hair protruding - even though they ‘know’ the doll is in the plain box they expect the woman to hold a false belief

Question 9

Selman

Answer 9

PERSPECTIVE TAKING
when a child takes someone else perspective it enables them to have an insight into how and what other people thinking
used dilemmas
asked question about dilemmas

Question 10

Winner and Perner

ToM

Answer 10

presented children between 3 and 6 a story about maxi
maxi saw his mum put chocolate in the blue cupboard, she then went out to play. her mum moved the chocolate to the green cupboard. when she came in the children were asked where maxi would look
3 yr olds said green as the didn’t have ToM but by 6 all said Blue because they understood maxi knows differently to them

Question 11

Baron-Cohen et al

Answer 11

wanted to find out whether high function individuals with autistic spectrum might have ToM
three groups of participants
all asked control questions
Most of the ‘normal children’ answered the false belief question correctly
however, only 20% of autistic children answer correctly

Question 12

Baron Cohen at al

Eye task

Answer 12

Pts with ASD = mean score of 16.3 vs normal of 20.3

Question 13

Mirror Neurons - Rizzolatti et al

Answer 13

discovered them be accident when recording activity in the motor cortex of monkeys
found some neurons in premotor cortex were active when monkeys did an action and when they watched somebody doing the same action

Question 14

What are Mirror Neurons?

Answer 14

A neuron which fires both when you perform an action and when you watch somebody else perform that action

Question 15

Iacoboni et al

Mirror Neurons

Answer 15

fMRI study
23 patients
found highest level of mirror neuron activity in the inferior frontal cortex during the intention clip
suggests area in concerned with understanding why a person was behaving in a certain way as that is where all the activity is

Question 16

Binkofski et al

Answer 16

Language acquisition
language = essential for social behaviour
to learn a language you have to imitate - likely to involve MNs
Found evidence of MN in an area of the brain involved in speech production (Broca’s area)

Question 17

Wood et al

Answer 17

first to introduce the term scaffolding to describe the process of assisting a learner through the ZPD

Question 18

Winner and Perner

Answer 18

Maxi and the colour cupboards

Tests theory of mind

Question 19

Baron-Cohen

Answer 19

Sally-Ann test
Test theory of mind
Also looked at autism

Question 20

Wood and Middleton

Answer 20

found that successful scaffolding depends on something called ‘contingent regulations
when mother saw child struggle they gave more explicit instructions
when child was not struggling gave less explicit instructions
shows that the teaching needs to respond differently to a leaner’s response in order to enhance learning