Cognitive Development

Question 1

What is cognitive development?

Answer 1

• Study of how our thinking and reasoning emerges over time

Question 2

What is the Piagetian perspective on cognitive development?

Answer 2

• Children actively construct their own cognition

- Which leads to stages of development

Question 3

What kind of theory is the Piagetian perspective of cognitive development?

Answer 3

Constructivist

Question 4

What is the Vygotskian perspective on cognitive development:

Answer 4

• We share cognition with animals

- Children’s cognition is also constructed through social interactions

Question 5

WHat is the Zone of Proximal Development?

Answer 5

• Frames development in terms of changing capacities, not just specificially age
• Acknowledges the role of others in our abilities, but also the construction of those abilities

Question 6

Instead of development in stages, what does the Vygotskian perspective suggest?

Answer 6

Development proceeds through changes in levels of ability.

Question 7

Explain the Vygotskian ZPD levels…

Answer 7

Level 1: Child can do it
Level 2: Child can do it with help
Level 3: Child can’t do it

Question 8

What was Piaget interested in?

Answer 8

The emergence of knowledge

Question 9

What are Piaget’s methods?

Answer 9

• Naturalistic observations
• Interviews
• Small samples
• Loosely-described methods
• Subjective interpretations
• Beleived results applied to all children

Question 10

What is cognitive adaptation (Piaget)?

Answer 10

• Changing knowledge structures in response to the environment
• Conceptually like evolutionary adaptation, but not the same process

Question 11

How does cognitive adaptation occur?

Answer 11

• Assimilation and accommodation

- Concepts and categorisation

Question 12

What is Assimilation?

Answer 12

• Incorporate new information into already-existing schemas of thought

Question 13

What is Accommodation?

Answer 13

Modifying already existing knowledge schemas

Question 14

What are Piaget’s Stages of Development?

Answer 14

• Sensorimotor (0-2)
• Preoperational (2-7)
• Concrete operational (7-11)
• Formal operational (11+)

Question 15

What does the sensorimotor stage involve?

Answer 15

• Learning about entities and properties in the world by interacting with objects
• Learning that objects can fall when you push them

Question 16

What does the preoperational stage involve?

Answer 16

• Focussing on one characteristic e.g. spacing and the inability to focus on multiple characteristics of an object or set of objects at the same time

Question 17

What does the concrete operational stage involve?

Answer 17

• children solve the problems that the preoperational can’t but they might not give as many or as sort of rich account compared to an adult

Question 18

What problems are there with perspective taking in the sensorimotor stage|?

Answer 18

• Object permanence

- Imitation

Question 19

What problems are there with perspective taking in the preoperational stage?

Answer 19

• Three Mountains Task

- Appearance-Reality Task

Question 20

What is the Nativist view?

Answer 20

• Knowledge isn’t entirely learned but is rather built into the system

Question 21

What is the Empiricist view?

Answer 21

• Capacities for learning are built into the system

- But knowledge itself is entirely learned

Question 22

What is a concept in philosophy?

Answer 22

A constituent unit of thought

Question 23

What is a concept in cognitive psychology?

Answer 23

An idea that allows us to organise objects, events, etc. on the basis of some similarity.

Question 24

What is the role of categorisation?

Answer 24

• We can learn a lot about cognitive development by looking at how infants categorise the world.

Question 25

What are the 3 characteristics of categories?

Answer 25

• Hierarchical structure
• Prototypicality
• Abstraction

Question 26

How does the hierarchy of concepts develop?

Answer 26

Previously: basic category develops first, followed by super-ordinate and sub-ordinate categories.
Now: From super-ordinate to basic to sub-ordinate.

Question 27

What is the Empiricist Account of categories?

Answer 27

• Infants are able to acquire concepts through perceptual information alone, and they don’t need anything else.

Question 28

What do infants use to form categories?

Answer 28

• Basic Visual Features
• Higher Level Visual Features
• Auditory Cues
• Other Perceptual Cues: touch/texture

Question 29

What does the Empiricist perspective suggest about object permanence through infancy?

Answer 29

0-8m: no search for hidden objects
8-12m: searching for moved objects in their original location
12-18m: don’t track objects that change locations out of sight
18-24m: full object permanence/tracking

Question 30

What constraints are there of the empiricist perspective?

Answer 30

• there is also good evidence that infants represent hidden object, even if they do not search for them.

Question 31

What is core object knowledge?

Answer 31

core system of object representation, centred on a set of expectations about how objects move:

• cohesion
• continuity
• contact

Question 32

What is core number knowledge?

Answer 32

When you change the ratio, infants respond differently, which suggests it’s not just number or numerical magnitudes but it’s the ratio between magnitudes that the system is somehow able to process

Question 33

What is core geometry knowledge?

Answer 33

Using cues to navigate a room.

Question 34

What is core knowledge about Minds?

Answer 34

• Do children know that others have minds?

Question 35

What constraints are there on the nativist perspective?

Answer 35

• How can we measure what is innate?
• How does perceptual experience change or shape innate categories?
• How have innate concepts evolved?

Question 36

Theories of cognitive development are on a continuum from:

Answer 36

Empiricist to Nativist

Question 37

Core Knowledge is a nativist theory that…

Answer 37

Infants have certain kinds of conceptual knowledge that emerges early, and it’s only learned