Cognition & Development

Question 1

What is cognitive development?

Answer 1

development of all mental processes, in particular thinking, reasoning and our understanding of the world.

-continues throughout the lifespan

Question 2

What is a schema?

Answer 2

a mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing (developed from experience)

Question 3

What is assimilation?

Answer 3

learning when new info or more advanced info about an object, person or idea is acquired, but doesn’t radically change our understanding of the topic, so we can incorporate into the existing schema.

Question 4

What is accommodation?

Answer 4

learning when new info changes our understanding of a topic, causing a new schema to be formed or radically change an existing schema to deal with the new understanding

Question 5

What is equilibration?

Answer 5

occurs when new info is either assimilated or accommodated for, to allow balance and remove unease (disequilibrium)

Question 6

What are the (4) stages of intellectual development?

Answer 6

• Sensorimotor stage (0-2yrs)
• Pre-operational stage (2-7yrs)
• Stage of concrete operations (7-11yrs)
• Stage of formal operations (11+)

Question 7

What is object permanence?

Answer 7

the ability to realise that an object still exists even when not in the visual field
(developed at around 8months, before lose interest once can’t see object, as no longer aware of its existence)

Question 8

What is conservation?

Answer 8

the ability to realise that quantity remains the same even when the appearance changes

Question 9

What is egocentrism?

Answer 9

child’s tendency to only be able to see the world from their own point of view (e.g.: 3 mountains task)

Question 10

What is class inclusion?

Answer 10

an advanced classification skill which we recognise that classes of objects have subsets and are themselves subsets of larger classes (pre-operational struggle to place in more than one class)

Question 11

What is the zone of proximal development?

Answer 11

the gap between a child’s current level of development and their potential with the help of an expert

Question 12

What is scaffolding?

Answer 12

the process of helping a learner cross the zone of proximal development and advance their stage of development (level of help declines as learner crosses ZPD)

Question 13

What is knowledge of the physical world?

Answer 13

understanding of how the physical world works

Question 14

What is violation of expectation?

Answer 14

a method used to investigate infant knowledge of the world, where a child will expect certain things to happen in particular situations, and will show surprise, suggesting they understand

Question 15

What is social cognition?

Answer 15

mental processes we make use of when engaged in social interaction

Question 16

What is the mirror neurone system?

Answer 16

they’re involved in social cognition, allowing us to interpret intention and emotion of others, by firing responses to personal action, and the action of others.

Question 17

How were mirror neurones discovered?

Answer 17

Rizzolatti et al. (2002):
- studying electrical activity in a monkey’s motor cortex when a researcher reached for his lunch.
- monkey’s motor cortex became activated in the same way as when the animal did the same movement.
- the same brain cells fired because the neurones mirror activity in others.

Question 18

What is the ‘broken mirror theory’ of autism?

Answer 18

neurological deficits prevent a developing child from imitating and understanding social behaviour of others as well as social communications.

Question 19

What research support is there for mirror neurones?

Answer 19

Haker et al. (2012):
- scanned brains of people as they watched a video of people yawning.
- levels of activity in areas rich in mirror neurones increased when ppts yawned in response.

Other study:
- increased activity in mirror neurone rich area when ppts tried to understand the intentions behind a hand-grasping gesture.

Question 20

Why is it hard to research mirror neurone activity?

Answer 20

-Animal studies involve implanting electrodes in the brain to study electrical activity in individual neurones.
-this is ethically impossible for humans.

-scanning techniques can be used, but these only measure activity in areas, not individual cells.

Question 21

Describe the strength and weakness of using mirror neurones to explain autism.

Answer 21

+Research evidence:
- brain scans show areas of smaller average thickness of areas associated to be rich in mirror neurones (believed to be part of perspective-taking) in autistic people compared to neurotypical people.

-A systematic review of 25 studies:
- concluded evidence was highly inconsistent and results hard to interpret.

Question 22

What is theory of mind?

Answer 22

the ability to understand that other people may have different thoughts, feelings, ideas, attitudes or knowledge of own.

Question 23

What is autism?

Answer 23

a spectrum condition that affects people in different ways, causing some to find challenge in social interaction/communication and repetitive/restrictive behaviours.

Question 24

What is a false-belief task?

Answer 24

test of a person’s belief about the world/events may be different to what has occurred.
- to pass: predict the actions/thoughts/beliefs of another and understand motivations of another’s behaviour.
- conducted toddlers/ babies to assess their TOM.
- e.g: child guesses what is in a box labelled smarties, open to find pencils. asked what their friend will guess (pass if say friend would guess smarties).

Question 25

What is he Sally-Anne task?

Answer 25

• child is presented 2 dolls (Sally & Anne).
• told that Sally and Anne are in the same room: Sally has a basket and Anne has a box.
• Sally has a red ball which she puts inside her basket, before leaving the room (Anne is alone).
• Anne moves the ball out of the basket and puts it in her box.
• Sally returns to the room and the child is asked where Sally will look for her ball.
• pass: look in basket.
• fail: look in Anne’s box.

Question 26

Describe (2) pieces of research into ToM.

Answer 26

Baron-Cohen (1985):
- Sally-Anne task using child participants who had ASD, Down’s syndrome or were normal: 20% of the ASD group answered correctly compared to 85% of normal children and 86% in the Down’s syndrome group.

Harris (1989):
- children imagine they’re someone else in pretend-play scenarios at the age of 4, which suggests that they are using TOM to put themselves in another person’s place and use imagination to create feelings, ideas and thoughts which are not their own.

Question 27

What are limitations of ToM research?

Answer 27

-Reliance on false belief tasks:
- they require cognitive abilities, e.g: visual memory, so failure of task can be due to a memory deficit, not ToM.
- children who engage in pretend play, which requires ToM ability, but these children struggle with the false belief task.

-Research techniques fail to distinguish between ToM and perspective-taking.
- these are related, but actually different cognitive abilities.
- in Sally-Anne task, child may be switching perspective between Sally and Anne.

Question 28

What is the eyes task?

Answer 28

• used to assess adolescents and adults.
• involves reading complex emotions in pictures of faces showing the eyes.
• found autistic adults without a learning disability struggle.

Question 29

What is perspective-taking?

Answer 29

the ability to appreciate a social situation from the perspective of another.