cognitive development

Question 1

what are the two main fields of thought in terms of cognitive development?

Answer 1

nature vs nurture

Question 2

how do nativists explain cognitive development?

Answer 2

• infants born with knowledge
• importance of general learning mechanisms that strengthen infant’s mental schemas of the world

Question 3

how do empiricists explain cognitive development?

Answer 3

• blank slate
• specialised learning mechanisms allow children to learn rapidly and efficiently

Question 4

how is the development of object permanance tested in infants?

Answer 4

A-NOT-B ERROR test
hiding a desirable object at location A for several trials and then hiding it at a new location B

Question 5

state the 4 factors which make the A-not-B error more or less likely to happen

Answer 5

• age
• length of delay between trials
• number of hiding locations - if there are more hiding locations the child is less likely to make the A-not-B error. By statistical average – more chances of choosing another location
• number of times object hidden in location-A

Question 6

state 2 pieces of newer evidence which contradict piaget’s theories on object permanence

Answer 6

• Hood and Willatt - found that children as young as 5 months showing OP (Piaget said it wouldn’t develop until 8 months)
• Baillageon Draw Bridge Study - demonstrates evidence of the ‘violation of expectancy procedure’ and that very young infants are able to mentally represent invisible objects

Question 7

state the key piece of research that tested the ‘violation of expectancy procedure’
why was this research so signficant?

Answer 7

Baillageon Draw Bridge study - demonstrated that young infants are able to mentally represent invisible objects, despite even failing the A-not-B task

Question 8

describe the Baillageon Draw Bridge study

Answer 8

In a classic series of tests of object permanence, Renée Baillargeon and her colleagues first habituated young infants to the sight of a screen rotating through 180 degrees.
Then a box was placed in the path of the screen. In the possible event, the screen rotated up, occluding the box, and stopped when it reached the top of the box. In the impossible event, the screen rotated up, occluding the box, but then continued on through 180 degrees, appearing to pass through the space where the box was. Infants looked longer at the impossible event, showing they mentally represented the presence of the invisible box. (From Baillargeon,1987)

Question 9

how do researchers explain why infants might show object permanence with VoE procedure but not A-not-B task?

Answer 9

• Memory limitations – did the child just forget where the object was?
• Immaturity of prefrontal cortex
• Competition between representational system and response system – child just checks object A just out of habit, not meaning to

Question 10

physical knowledge: what are support relations?

Answer 10

support relations - refers to the understanding of how objects interact with each other

Question 11

physical knowledge: when do infants begin to understand the rules of gravity? state a piece of research which demonstrates this

Answer 11

around 7 months
- children of this age surprised to see a ball roll up a slope – Kim and Spelke 1992

Question 12

physical knowledge: when do infants begin to make more complex judgement about support relations, according to baillargeon?

Answer 12

develops between 3-12.5 months - gets progressively more complex

Question 13

physical knowledge: describe Baillargeon’s stages of support relations (4 stages)

Answer 13

• each stage is marked by the detection of a ‘violation’
• 3 months - understanding that objects need contact in order not to fall
• 4 months - understanding that the amount of contact between objects will determine if they fall
• 5 months - understanding that the type of contact (i.e on top of the other object, not attached to its side) will determine if the object will fall
• 125 months - shape of the objects will determine how they interact/if they balance

Question 14

social knowledge: how does an infant’s social knowledge develop (2)

Answer 14

• understand that behvaiour is purposeful
• by end of 1st year - understand that behaviour is related to intention/goals

Question 15

social knowledge: outline the research which demonstrates infant’s ability to understand intention

Answer 15

• Woodward - two podiums, one had a ball and one had a bear, confederate which reach for either of the objects in front of the infant in different critical trials
• infants who see a human arm repeatedly reach for an object in the same location assume that the action is directed toward the object, not the place (i.e repeatedly going for ball on left podium)
• (on second trial, bear and ball would switch podiums) 6-month olds looked longer when the hand went to the new object in the old place (i.e went for the bear now on left podium), than when it reached for the old object it had reached to before

Question 16

social knowledge: does understanding intention only relate to humans?

Answer 16

no, according to research, infants also attribute intention to behaviour to objects - as long as they behave like humans
i.e Johnson found when children interacted with a ‘blob’ that behaved human like, they would demonstrate knowledge of intentioned behaviour e.g if blob turned around, child would follow its gaze.
if the blob didn’t behave like a person they seemingly didn’t ‘understand’ or interact in the same way with the object

Question 17

social knowledge: at what age do infants begin to attribute emotional states to objects?

Answer 17

around 12 months

Question 18

conceptual knowledge: how do children grasp understanding of their environment and how things are related in the world?

Answer 18

conceptual hierarchies

Question 19

conceptual knowledge: what are conceptual hierarchies?

Answer 19

mental groups children form to understand relations in their environment
they develop over infancy starting at first very general (i.e people) to then specific (i.e picasso)

Question 20

conceptual knowledge: what are the three levels of the categorical hierarchies

Answer 20

GENERAL – SUPERORDINATE (LIVING THINGS)
MEDIUM – BASIC LEVEL (BIRDS)
SPECIFIC – SUBORDINATE LEVEL (PARROTS)

Question 21

conceptual knowledge: which level of the categorical hierarchies do infants learn first?

Answer 21

basic level first:
- share many common characteristics
- then use knowledge from this basic level categories to form superordinate and subordinate categories

Question 22

conceptual knowledge: in the first 12 months of life, what tools do infants use to form their categorical hierarchies? (4)

Answer 22

• basic understanding categories
• assistance of adults
• Perceptual categorisation – grouping together objects that have similar appearances (often categorisation based off parts of the objects rather than the whole)
• as they get older - increasingly categorise objects off shape, and then form categories on the basis of function

Question 23

conceptual knowledge: how early in infancy do infants form conceptual hierarchies?

Answer 23

Infants form categories in the first months of life
Even 3- and 4-month-olds can tell cats from dogs

Question 24

conceptual knowledge: research that demonstrates the development of infants’ categorical hierarchies

Answer 24

NB: early infancy - rely on perceptual similarity to form groups
7 month old treated plastic toy birds and airplanes (perceptually similar) very similarly – members of the same category. But by 9-11 months treated toy planes and birds as members of conceptually different categories, despite the fact they looked alike (Mandler & McDonough, 1993)
FORMING CATEGORIES IN THE FIRST

Question 25

conceptual knowledge: research which demonstrates that infants begin to use the basis of function to form conceptual hierarchies

Answer 25

NB: Form categories on the basis of function and use knowledge of categories to determine which type of actions go with types of objects
14-month-olds will mime feeding a drink to a toy rabbit but not a toy motorcycle (Mandler & McDonough, 1998)

Question 26

conceptual knowledge: as a child moves beyond infancy, how do we expect their conceptual hierarchies to change? (3)

Answer 26

• expect the child to be forming more complex categories and general ability to categorise to expand
• expect an increased understanding of casual connections between categories
• expect an increased knowledge of relations among categories

Question 27

conceptual knowledge: what are casual connections?

Answer 27

casual connections - understanding why objects are the way they are e.g birds have wings because they fly rather than just birds have wings and feathers

Question 28

conceptual knowledge: outline the research into infants’ ability to distinguish living and non-living things

Answer 28

• Distinguishing people from non-living things 
  Task used by Poulin-Dubois (1999) to study infants’ reactions when they see people and inanimate objects (in this case a robot) engaging in the same action.
• Both 9- and 12-month-olds show surprise when they see inanimate objects move on their own, suggesting that they understand that self-produced motion is a distinctive characteristic of people and other animals.

Question 29

knowledge of heredity: state the 4 key points about children’s understanding of heredity

Answer 29

• from young infancy children understand that that physical characteristics are passed on from parent to offspring
• related to this general belief in the importance of heredity is one of the most basic aspect of biological belief = essentialism = the view that living things have an essence inside of them that makes them what they are
• children over-extend their knowledge of hereditry and attribute gender differences to inherited essentialism e.g boys ‘boyness’ makes them play with cars
• only by age of 9 or 10 children begin to recognise the influence of the environment on gender differences (Taylor 1993)

Question 30

knowledge of growth and illness: state the 3 key points about children’s understanding of growth and illness

Answer 30

• 3- and 4-year-olds realise that growth is a product of internal processes (Rosengran et al., 1991)
• They know that plants and animals, unlike inanimate objects, have internal processes that allow them to heal – A scratched cat can heal itself but a scratched chair cannot (Backscheider et al., 1993)
• They also understand illness and old age can cause the permanent state of death, from which there is no recovery (Nguyen & Gelman, 2002)

Question 31

knowledge of heredity: what is psychological essentialism?
how does it impact a child’s understanding of the world?

Answer 31

psychological essentialism = view that living things have an essence inside of them that makes them what they are
children extend their knowledge of inheritance to help them understand behaviour and what ‘makes someone the way they are’