Cognitive Development

Question 1

What is cognition?

Answer 1

Describes the mental processes that lead to knowledge, understanding and awareness - covers topics such as attention, learning, memory and consciousness

Question 2

What does cognitive psychology aim to explain?

Answer 2

How we:
1. perceive our environment
2. memorise information
3. use language to communicate
4.interpret the behaviour of other people
5. understand numbers
6. solve problems using logic
7. make decisions

Question 3

What skills are developed over time?

Answer 3

Language, knowledge and procedural skills

Question 4

What four stages in did Piaget say develop adult level cognition?

Answer 4

Sensorimotor (0-2), pre-operational (2-7), concrete operational (7-12) and formal operational (12+)

Question 5

What is each stage of Piaget’s stages characterised by?

Answer 5

Observable skills that children demonstrate at different ages

Question 6

What occurs in the sensorimotor stage?

Answer 6

Children have sensory experiences and can interact with objects. They learn through physical movements and sensations. At first, they cannot distinguish between themself and their surroundings and do not have a solid concept of object permanence.

Question 7

What occurs in the pre-operational stage?

Answer 7

Children start to develop mental imagery and language proficiency. They are egocentric and don’t understand that objects look different from different angles or that people can hold different beliefs. They cannot perform mental operations to solve problems - glass of water example

Question 8

What occurs in the concrete operational stage?

Answer 8

Children begin to understand that their viewpoint is only one of many - they can use logical operations but only when problems are concrete. They cannot solve abstract problems that are not situated in reality

Question 9

What occurs in the formal operational stage?

Answer 9

Adolescents can solve problems on a purely mental level and they can use deductive reasoning and understand abstract ideas. They can understand that problems need to be solved in a systematic way. Less rigid in their thinking - can see multiple solutions

Question 9

How have times changed since Piaget did his work?

Answer 9

Theory first appeared in 1936 and scientific methods and standards have evolved - Piaget studied his three children with no statistics or clear study design

Question 10

What three areas of cognitive development were mentioned in Piaget’s theory?

Answer 10

Object permanence, theory of mind and abstract thinking

Question 11

What is object permanence?

Answer 11

The knowledge that objects are permanently in existence as they do not time travel or teleport - they have temporal and spatial contiguity

Question 12

Why is object permanence an important cognitive skill?

Answer 12

Understanding that objects are continuous is the basis for understanding more complex interactions in the world - e.g. allows us to perceive causal events or intentionally in the movement of simple shapes

Question 13

When does object permanence develop according to Piaget?

Answer 13

Piaget argued that infants do not object permanence until around 8-9 months as he objeservd younger children will not search for an object when it is hidden but it is also possible that younger children cannot yet perform coordinated actions with objects

Question 14

When does object permanence develop according to experimental work?

Answer 14

Infants can understand that objects continue to exist when they are not visible from each earlier in their first year, around 3.5 months - studies using looking times to probe infant’s knowledge without relying on language

Question 15

What can be inferred about looking times?

Answer 15

If they observe different looking times such as longer fixations, then the researcher can infer that the infants can tell the difference between the conditions

Question 16

Why do infants look for longer during the impossible events ?

Answer 16

Infants are often drawn to new and unfamiliar stimuli which is called a novelty preference. They also lose interest in familiar input - they become habituated. It is possible that they show this novelty bias because they are trying to learn new information from an unfamiliar input

Question 17

What did Spelke say about object permanence?

Answer 17

Suggests that we are born with an understanding of object persistence as a form of innate knowledge- it could be a combination of that and Piagets theory - start with innate and expand throughout development

Question 18

What is theory of mind?

Answer 18

Act of attributing distinct mental states to other people

Question 19

When did Piaget say that theory of mind developed?

Answer 19

Around 7 years

Question 20

What is a false belief experiment?

Answer 20

Children listen to a story enacted with dolls and toys. 1. Sally hides chocolate in a cupboard and leaves the room. 2. Anne then moves the chocolate to another cupboard
3. Sally then comes back into the room
Experimenter asks - Where will Sally look for the chocolate?

Question 21

What have current experiments found about when theory of mind develops?

Answer 21

4 years old - tested using the Sally Anne task. Some studies have even observed theory of mind in 15 month old children when the experimental task is simplified

Question 22

In the Sally Anne experiment, what do 4 year olds typically say?

Answer 22

Will look in the fist cupboard - they correctly attribute a false belief to Sally - important developmental shift to a representational model of mind

Question 23

What do 3 years old say in the Sally Anne experiment?

Answer 23

Normally say the second cupboard - possible the task is too demanding for younger children

Question 24

What about the Sally Anne experiment could make it difficult for children?

Answer 24

They need to:
Follow the actions of two characters in a narrative
Appreciate that Sally could not have observed the switch
Remember where the chocolate used to be and where it is at the end
Understand the precise meaning of the question
Younger children may not have the attentional and linguistic resource to cope with these task demands.

Question 25

What is phase1 of Onishi and Baillargeon’s experiment?

Answer 25

1. Familiarisation phase - actor plays with a toy watermelon then hides it inside a green box

Question 26

What is phase 2?

Answer 26

Belief induction - the infants witness a change that results in the actor holding a true or false belief about the toys location

Question 27

In the experiment, what are the false and true conditions?

Answer 27

False - actor does not know the real location of the watermelon
True - actor knows location as all changes occur when the screen is lowered

Question 28

What is phase 3?

Answer 28

Test phase - the actor searches for the object in either the correct or incorrect box

Question 29

What were the findings of Onishi’s experiment?

Answer 29

Infants looked for longer when there was a mismatch between the actor’s actions and the actor’s beliefs - suggests infants expect the actor to search according to their belief about the location

Question 30

What is abstract thinking?

Answer 30

The ability to understand and think about complex concepts that are not tied to concrete experiences, objects, people or situations

Question 31

What does abstract thinking often involve?

Answer 31

Ideas and principles that are symbolic or hypothetical - they are not physical things we can point at

Question 32

Why is abstract thinking important?

Answer 32

Abstract thinking underpins many of our complex abilities such as long term planning, mathematics, problem solving, science and theory building and social interactions

Question 33

Why is anchoring bias?

Answer 33

People often anchor their decisions in concrete data at hand, which could be completely irrelevant to the task e.g. we may be more likely to buy an item on discount if they original price (anchor) is on display

Question 34

What is survivorship bias?

Answer 34

Drawing conclusions from the incomplete data available - focusing on the successful and ignoring the unsuccessful

Question 35

What is an example of survivorship bias?

Answer 35

In WW2, statisticians analysed damage to aircraft that had returned from missions. They recommended adding armour to the areas that showed the least damage

Question 36

When does abstract thinking develop?

Answer 36

Piaget argued around 12 which is supported by evidence that shows that abstract mathematic reasoning improves between 13 and 17 - engage in imaginative play at around 12 months

Question 37

What type of words are the ones children first learn?

Answer 37

Concrete nouns e.g. apple before that and how

Question 38

What is symbolic play?

Answer 38

The non-literal use of objects/actions for fun e.g. pretending a banana is a phone. Use an object as a symbol for something else

Question 39

How is symbolic play typically studied?

Answer 39

By observing interactive play sessions between children and their caregivers. Asked to sit with them and given a diverse set of objects to play with - analysed afterwards as it is filmed

Question 40

What have studies found about symbolic play?

Answer 40

Children start to show basic forms of symbolic play around 12 months e..g imitating their own behaviour out of context which evolves into rich and imaginative play at 22 months

Question 41

What is symbolic play correlated with?

Answer 41

The emergence of language throughout development - more symbolic play is associated with faster language learning

Question 42

What is it possible that symbolic play is a precursor of?

Answer 42

More complex abstract thinking abilities, including language - encourages lots of dialogue suggesting that children have some level of abstract mental imagery much earlier than Piaget predicted