Cognitive Development Flashcards
Piagetian Theory
Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
- Most influential development psychologist ever
Piagetian Theory
- The child actively constructs knowledge - aka Piagetian Constructivism
- Child as scientist - generate hypotheses, performs experiments, draws conclusions
- Child as motivated, active learner
Stage theorist: development proceeds in a series of distinct, discontinuous stages
- Each stage is a coherent way of understanding the world (each stage is fundamentally different from the last)
- Qualitative change: thinkers in one stage are different kinds of thinkers than in other stages (not just better/worse)
- Domain-general: apply to all aspects of the world
- Invariant order: no skipped stages
Assimilation
Fit new information into existing mental structures (or “schemas”)
Accommodation
Change schemas in response to new experiences
Equilibration
Balance assimilation and accommodation
Information Processing Theories
Mind as computer
- Emphasis on structure (brain, neuronal connections) and processes (use of rules and strategies) involved in thinking
- Given X input and Y output, what must the program be
- Growth is continuous and incremental, is domain-general
Child as limited-capacity processor
- Limited by hardware (memory capacity, processing speed) and software (strategies, info already available)
Child as an active problem-solver
- goals, perceived obstacles, and attainment of goals
Development in Information Processing
Memory development
- Working memory increases in capacity, duration & speed of processing
- Long term memory stores more and more info
Executive function
- Inhibition/ cognitive flexibility improvements
- Prefrontal cortex continues to develop into early adulthood
Core-Knowledge Theories
The mind, like the boy, is a product of natural selection
- Innate knowledge of domains that would have been important in evolutionary history
Child has innate capacities that are domain-specific
- Intuitive/naive theories of how certain domain work, knowledge of what goes in what domain
Child enters world with domain-specific learning structures for rapidly and easily acquiring new information within critical domains
- Child as active, but also specialized, learner
Evidence
- Attentional biases from birth
- Rapid learning without teaching
- Specialized brain areas for processing info from distinct domains
Sociocultural Theories
Learning happens in an interpersonal context (and in the broader cultural context)
- More knowledgeable guide less knowledgeable to a level they could not reach on own
Children’s Nature
- A social being that is shaped by and shapes its cultural context
- The urge to teach and to be taught (active)
- Learning is continuous, quantitative, gradual
- Cross-cultural differences in what is learned
Development in Sociocultural Theories
Intersubjectivity: the mutual understanding that people share during communication; “meeting of the minds”
Joint attention: you and someone else focus on a common referent
Scaffolding: adults repeat and elaborate on what young children say, present info at higher level than they could do on own
Habituation
Getting bored with repeated stimulus
A measure of learning and memory - how quickly habituate related to efficiency of taking in info
- Faster habituation more novelty preference = higher IQ
Statistical Learning
Detecting predictable patterns of associations
- Track regularities, or transitional probabilities of info in environment
- Infants look longer when things disrupt transitional probabilities
Classical Conditioning
Unconditioned stimulus reliably elicits unconditioned response
- No learning here (a reflex)
- When initially neutral stimulus is constantly paired with the unconditioned one this eventually makes the sucking response happen with solely the sight of the nipple
Operant (Instrumental) Conditioning
Learning the relationship between causes and effects
Imitation
Learning by observing and reproducing others’ behaviors
- Newborns imitate facial gestures
- More and more complex actions imitated as infants age
- Infants don’t imitate novel actions blindly - appears rational
- Infants don’t imitate everyone - selective to reliable agents
Sensorimotor Stage (0-2yrs)
Contains 6 distinct stages
Mostly concerned with object concept (how an infant understands the properties of solid objects)
- Object permanence: objects exist outside of infants’ experience with them
Stage 1: Reflexes (0-1 month)
- Reflex most primitive form of schema
- Development: schema modified, improved upon the 1st month
Object Concept: Objects do not exist outside of infant’s interactions with them (sensori & motor)
- Same object (to us) many different objects to infants
Stage 2: Primary Circular Reactions (2-4 months)
- Motor schema from stage 1 are applied to new objects by chance
- Repeated because produce a desired effect - feels good
- Objects still wholly embedded within schema
Stage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions (4-9 months)
- Schema applied to objects outside of their own body
- Through accident and accommodation, new schema are developed
Object Concept: getting better, but objects still embedded in schema
Stage 4: Coordination of Secondary Schema (9-12 months)
- Large # of independent schema get coordinated into a few complex & flexible schema
- Means-ends behavior emerges
- Applying multiple scheme to the same objects allows for object permanence
Object Permanence
- Objects now have enduring properties
- Babies now search for objects that are out of sight (but still weak on ability to integrate schemes)
A-not-B error
- Think object will be where the baby found it before (egocentric, not allocentric)
Stage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months)
Schema used intentionally to help babies understand their worlds; schema now pretty subordinate to objects
- Search for hidden objects
- Pass A-not-B task
- But still fail at invisible displacements
Stage 6: The Invention of New Means Through Mental Combinations (18 months +)
- Schema fully flexible, fully functioning object concept (even invisible displacements)
Symbolic thought develops
- Language, object as symbols - mental representations totally distinct from objects in the world
Piaget summary
Sensorimotor period: development of object permanence through 6 stages
- Reflexes as primitive schema
- Advanced reflexes (schema) used to explore environment
- Schema activated & combined to actively produce events in the world (fail to search for hidden objects)
- Means-ends behavior - (search for hidden objects; fail A-not-B)
- Problem-solving with objects (pass A-not-B; fail invisible displacement)
- True mental representation (pass everything)
- Stage theory: qualitative differences
- Early cognitive is purely sensorimotor (related to senses and motor experience)
- Sophisticated empiricist account: not just building associations, but actively adding to reflexive schema (experience key)
- Domain-general account: applies across all kinds of knowledge
- Constructivist: kids construct rule-based theories of how the world works
- Egocentric: early rules focused on the self (only late stages are allocentric, or make reference to the external world)
Reevaluating Piaget
A-Not-B Error
- Often look toward the correct location while reaching to the incorrect one
Motor Issues
- Babies also fail in coordinated-action tasks that do not require object permanence - Transparent Barrier Task
Memory Issue
- The longer you make babies wait before searching, the more they fail - suggests failure due to sensory memory decay
Inhibitory Control
- Reflex, memory, and repetition issues suggest problems inhibiting a prepotent response
Testing Object Permanence (Baillargeon 1985)
Younger babies (3.5 months) look longer at the impossible event, older babies seem to know what angle the screen should stop at
