cognition + development

Question 1

Sensorimotor stage (Piaget)

Answer 1

1st stage, 0-2 years. Infants mainly interact with the world by coordinating sensory input with motor actions. 6 sub sections:

1. reflex acts, respond to external stimulation
2. primary circular reactions, baby will repeat pleasure actions, wriggle fingers etc
3. secondary circular reactions, pleasureable actions but may include objects
4. co-ordination secondary schemes, baby shows sign of ability to use their knowledge to reach a goal
5. tertiary circular reactions, intentional adaptations to specific situations.
6. symbolic thought, babies can now form mental representations of objects (schemas)

Question 2

Pre-operational stage (Piaget)

Answer 2

(2-7 years) Have not yet developed a logical understanding of the world.

Divided into two, pre-conceptual (2-5 years)

Centration, tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation at one time.

Transductive reasoning, when a child reasons from specific to specific, drawing a relationship between two seperate events.

Animalistic thinking, inanimate objects have feelings/thoughts (teddies)

Seriation, put things in order based on quantity etc

Intuitive (4-7 years)

Can think in relative terms but find it difficult to think logically. Egocentric, only seeing things from their POV.

Question 3

Conservation (Piaget)

Answer 3

Changing appearance of something does not affect its volume, mass or number. Young pre-operational children make the error that changing the appearance of something changes its properties.

Question 4

Egocentrism + RESEARCH

Answer 4

Seeing things from only your point of view and being unaware that other viewpoints exist.

Piaget - Swiss Moutain scene study (1956) A child is shown a display of three mountains; the tallest mountain is covered with snow. On top of another are some trees, and on top of the third is a church. The child stands on one side of the display, and there is a doll on the other side of it.

At 4, the child would report what they see, not what the doll sees.

At 7, thinking is no longer egocentric as the child can see more than their own point of view.

Question 5

Evaluation of Piaget Swiss moutain study (1956)

Answer 5

It has been suggested that Piaget’s tasks at this stage may have underestimated the child’s abilities.

Like
complicated language, unfamiliar materials, lack of context, and children misinterpreting the experimenter’s intention.

Question 6

Class inclusion (Piaget)

Answer 6

Children can recognise that some sets of objects can be apart of sets of larger classes of objects.

Question 7

Concrete operational stage (Piaget)

Answer 7

(7-11 years) Can succeed at all the tasks they failed in the pre-operational stage.
Learn to conserve, less egocentric (decentring)

Question 8

Formal operational stage (Piaget)

Answer 8

(11+ years) Can think abstractly, solve problems with hypothetical dilemmas, start to have deductive reasoning, idealistic thinking, may also be achieved later in life and isn’t uniform to this age.

Question 9

Evaluation of Piaget’s theories

Answer 9

Strengths

• Widely known
• Schaffer (2004) said that Piaget’s is the most comprehensive account of how children understand the world.
• Huge range of tasks to test children’s abilities.
  Bryant (1995) simple yet ingenious investigation to show the difference between how children and adults think in radically different ways.

Weaknesses

• Underestimated younger children’s abilities - his studies were improved on to be more child friendly.
  Alongside Piaget underestimating younger children is the argument that the methodology he used is not suited for young children.

Hughes (1975) replicated the 3 mountains task but using a game of hide and seek with a police officer. He found 90% of 3–5-year olds could hide a child doll where a police doll could not see it, but they could, suggesting they are not egocentric.

• He used a lot of interviews and observations instead of demonstrations of egocentrism which might have been hard for the children to understand due to their age.
• ‘Naughty teddy’ study Mcgarrigle + Donaldson (1974) did the conservation task. Rows of coins and naughty teddy moves them. Younger children gave the correct answer over 60% of the time because they could understand that ‘teddy’ moved them.

Question 10

Piaget, applications to education

Answer 10

Piaget’s theory suggests that it’s inappropriate to teach children concepts that they are not biologically ‘ready’ to be taught.
This theory leads to huge reforms in Primary education as a result.

Question 11

Piaget sees intelligence as…

Answer 11

a process of individuals learning about the wolrd and how they interact with it.

Question 12

Maturation as a part of intelligence Piaget

Answer 12

Before Piaget, people believed that as children got older, they gained more knowledge before becoming adults.

Piaget said it wasn’t only that the amount of knowledge is different between children and adults but that children think in a different way than adults.

Question 13

Mechanisms of cognitive development

Answer 13

Knowledge was actively constructed using schemas, they act as a shortcut in our minds which allow us to deal with novel situations in the environment.

Question 14

Schemas when born…

Answer 14

Babies are born with a few schemas, sucking, grasping and mental representations of faces.

Question 15

Assimilation + Schemas

Answer 15

At first any new information will try and be understood in terms of a child’s existing knowledge about the world. An existing schema is applied to a new object.

Question 16

Equilibration Definition

Answer 16

If experiences can’t be assimilated then there is an imbalance, this is unpleasant. Therefore they want to restore balance through equilibration.

Question 17

Schemas evidence

Answer 17

Face schemas are innate, research has proven that infants prefer looking at face like stimuli compared to non-face stimuli.

Question 18

Equilibration is difficult to demonstrate

Answer 18

Piaget’s idea of disequilibrium is difficult to prove as the concepts are difficult to operationalize.

Question 19

Baillargeon’s Nativist approach

Answer 19

Baillargeon suspected that newborns and young children had innately driven abilities which couldn’t be proven.

In a way to overcome this, she developed the technique ‘violation of expectation research,’

Question 20

Violation of Expectation (VOE)

Answer 20

Research method, using an infants suprise as a measure of whether what they see is what they expect to see.

3 stages:
Habituation stage - Familarisng with events
Experimental stage - Introduction of impossible event
Recording results - Use of time to show that suprise that expectation is violated

Question 21

Violation of Expectation Studies

Answer 21

Baillargeon + Devos (1991)

Procedure – A small or large carrot slid along a track and passed by a screen with a large window. The track is arranged so that when the large carrot passes by it doesn’t appear in the window. Therefore, this is an impossible event. If the infant has object permanence, then they should show surprise (increased looking)

Findings – Children as young as 3 months demonstrate object permanence when tested in this way compared to Piaget who said object permanence develops at 8 months.

Question 22

Core knowledge theory

Answer 22

Baillargeon’s research has investigated object representation which is a major aspect of core knowledge theory (CKT)

CKT believes that humans are born with a small number of systems to help them represent inanimate objects and their relationships with one another.

Question 23

False Beliefs

Answer 23

Baillargeon also looked at infant’s understanding of false beliefs in others having a sense of fairness.

She believed that infants are born with these mechanisms that guide their development of reasoning.

Question 24

Evaluation of Baillargeon

Answer 24

Controlled research - participants were found through birth announcements in papers, reduces population bias

Parent behaviour being an influence was stopped by asking the parents to close their eyes and not interact with the baby on their lap.

Internal validity may be low, some believe that Baillargeon was overreating in her conclusion of infant’s abilities.

Baillargeon’s research may just demonstrate that Piaget underestimated what infants can do, but not challenge the idea that certain mental abilities appear due to maturation.

Question 25

Selman’s levels of perspective taking

Answer 25

Being able to differentiate between perspectives allows understanding to be enhanced and insights to become progressibely deeper.

Question 26

Perspective taking dilemmas

Answer 26

Selman tested children’s perspective taking by using a series of interpersonal dilemmas. These dilemmas explored

Question 27

Selman’s role-taking theory (5 stages)

Answer 27

Level 0 - Undifferentiated perspective taking = Children recognise that people can have different thoughts and feelings to themselves but might confuse them. (3-6 years)

Level 1 - Social- informational perspective taking = Children get different perspectives may result because people have access to different information. (6-8 years)

Level 2 - Self-reflective perspective taking = Children can step into another persons shoes, have thoughts and do behaviours and can see others can do that too. (8-10)

Level 3 - Third-party perspective taking = Can step out of a 2 person situation and can imagine being a third instead (10-12 years)

Level 4 - Societal perspective taking = Can understand 3rd party perspective taking can be influenced by one or more systems of larger societal values.

Question 28

Selman (1971) experiment

Answer 28

40 children (4-6 years old) to predict a child’s behaviour after being given info about the situation that was not avaliable to the child in question. Younger ones made perdictions based on info they were given. This suggests they are egocentric at this stage, supports Selman’s theory.

Question 29

EVAL SELMAN

Answer 29

There is research support for the theory = Selman + Byrne (1974) 4-10 years old were presented with a interpersonal dilemmas. 4-6 years showed egocentric viewpoints whereas children 6-8 showed evidence of being in the social informational role taking stage.

Perspective taking is important - research suggests that perspective taking skills lead to important social developments. Poor perspective taking could lead to difficulty in maintaining and forming social relationships.

Evidence is correlational, we do not know which is the cause and effect.

Question 30

Practical applications of Selman’s theory

Answer 30

Can be used to to know when to introduce competitive sports to children for perspectives

Question 31

What is theory of mind (ToM)

Answer 31

Individual’s understanding that other people have seperate mental states (beliefs etc) and that other’s see the world from a different point to their own.

Question 32

Early development of ToM

Answer 32

Infants are able to imitate expressions (Meltzoff + Moore)

Infants as young as 3 months follow people’s gaze, they have an understanding of intent.

Therefore, while infants are capable of social interaction, social relationships require ToM. This appears at 3/4 years of age.

Question 33

False beliefs (ToM)

Answer 33

• getting child to watch a scene and being asked to interpret it from the viewpoint of a character in the scene.
• if the children interpret it from their own egocentric viewpoint, they haven’t develop ToM yet.
• usually children at 4 years old cant do ToM tasks but 6 year olds can.

Question 34

Research to support ToM

Answer 34

Wimmer + Perner (1983) used models to act out a story about Maxi who saw some chocolate placed in a blue cupboard. When he was gone, his mother moved it to a green cupbaord and then the children were asked where would Maxi look for the chocolate.

Children 6-8 mostly gave the right answer of blue cupboard but 4 year olds gave the incorrect answer of the green cupboard.

Question 35

ToM and deception

Answer 35

ToM develops children develop the ability to manipulate and deceive others by hiding their emotions and intentions, which can be done from 3 years old.

Question 36

Biologic basis to ToM

Answer 36

Children from different cultures have been found to develop ToM in the same sequence, this suggests a biological basis for the sequence.

Specific brain areas may be associated to developing ToM such as the amygdala.

Question 37

EVAL ToM

Answer 37

Wimmer and Perner would say that younger children can’t passs ToM due to the langauge used, smaller children might not be able to understand it.

Children under the age of 2 tend to fail false beliefs tasks but can understand pretend play.

Link to Piaget egocentrism!

Question 38

ToM as an explanation for Autism (Sally-Anne task show?)

Answer 38

• sally anne test = to see why autistic children have problems seeing things from another perspective but can be talented in other cognitive areas.

sally anne test method - sally puts her ball in the basket, sally goes away, anne moves the ball to her box, where will sally look for her ball?

Question 39

What does the Sally-Anne task show?

Answer 39

False belief task, where will sally look for the marble?

If the child is able to understand that Sally will look for the marble in her own box, they understand she has a false belief.

However, if the child says Anne’s basket, where the child knows it is, they haven’t understood that Sally has a false belief.

Question 40

EVAL ToM as an explanation for Autism

Answer 40

Lack of ToM connects to lots of autism symptoms.

Not being able to understand other’s thoughts could be seen as explaining why autistic children have difficulties communicating.

Not ALL autistic people lack ToM. Meaning it isn’t central.

Question 41

What are mirror neurons

Answer 41

Nerves in the brain that active when actions are performed or observed in others when they do it. Like the observer is doing the action themselves.

Question 42

How were mirror neurons discovered

Answer 42

By Rizzolatti, studying monkeys. When researchers reached for food, neurons fired in the same brain area as when the monkeys did the same movement even though the monkey wasn’t moving.

Question 43

Understanding intention (Mirror Neurons)

Answer 43

research was also done which suggests that mirror neurons lets us understand the intentions of others and their behaviours.

Question 44

Dapretto et al (2006 Mirror Neurons)

Answer 44

Aim = Compare neuron ability in autistic and ‘normal’ children.

Method = 10 Children in each group were observed in fMRI scans looking at facial expressions in 5 different categories.

Findings = Both groups observed and imitated the facial expressions, but children with autism did not show mirror neuron activity.

Conclusion = There are neural differences in the neural pathways between neurotypical and autistic children with autistic children not having the same.

Question 45

EVAL Mirror Neurons

Answer 45

• Generalises monkeys to humans, difference in adult monkeys and adult humans so how can it be related?
• Methodological issues = Studies involving humans have involved indirect methods of studying mirror neurons which are not as reliable.
• Gender differences = Females have a greater social sensitivity, which would mean that there would be differences in the results.

Men had a better preformance when watching a dot but a stronger response when watching hand actions.