Cognitive Development II

Question 1

What was Piaget’s legacy?

Answer 1

It was a foundation for further investigation of cognitive development.
Piagets ideas have filtered through to modern theories of cognitive development. eg active contruction of knowledge.
And broadly speaking, children’s thinking does pass through stages.

Question 2

What was Piaget’s methods and what were the limitations of these?

Answer 2

Piaget’s theory was based on observations of his own children, in their everyday surroundings. The problems are that there is little scientific control and the issue of response demands.

Question 3

What is the violation of expectation method?

Answer 3

its a method in which you examine a participant’s reaction when something they think is going to happen doesn’t.

Question 4

What has been found when the violation of expectation method has been used on infants?

Answer 4

Infants will look longer at surprising events.

Question 5

How is violation of expectation used with infants?

Answer 5

1. Infant is familiarized with an image or scene.
2. Infant views new images/scenes
   – are they expected or surprising?

Question 6

Drawbridge experiment, who and when?

Answer 6

Baillargeon 1987

Question 7

Method of the drawbridge experiment?

Answer 7

Infants are familiarised with a drawbridge rotating through 180 degrees. A block is then placed behind the drawbridge so it cannot rotate all the way.

Question 8

Results of the drawbridge experiment?

Answer 8

Infants as young as 3.5 months will look longer at the impossible event being that the drawbridge rotates all the way- so they will be surprised that it still rotates regardless of the block.

Question 9

What is the significance of the drawbridge experiment?

Answer 9

It contradicts Piaget’s sensorimotor stage.

Question 10

How does the drawbridge experiment contradict Piaget’s sensorimotor stage?

Answer 10

During the experiment, the obstructing block was out of sight so the infants had to mentally represent the block… Otherwise it would not have been a surprise to them.
Also suggests that infants understand solidity (solid objects can’t pass through eachother).

Question 11

What could the drawbridge experiment suggest?

Answer 11

That babies possibly have an innate understanding of the world.

Question 12

Piaget’s stages were all encompassing- global shifts across all domains of thought. But modern research suggests that the shift to a high stage may be due to what three things?

Answer 12

Task factors

Familiarity and relevance

Inconsistency.

Question 13

What are task factors?

Answer 13

When the performance of the child depends on the task at hand.

Question 14

What should also be considered in relation to task factors?

Answer 14

How the child approaches the task for example, counting objects can help with conservation of number.

Question 15

What is the significance of familiarity and relevance in cognitive development.

Answer 15

Performance on conservation tasks can depend on social and cultural background.

Question 16

Give two examples of how familiarity and relevance can affect cognitive skills and development.

Answer 16

Some cultures value pottery skills and those children succeed at conservation of mass earlier than other children.

Children from inner-city areas were bad at conservation tasks if presented as a science experiment but better is presented as a con artists trick.

Question 17

What is the significance of inconsistency in cognitive development?

Answer 17

Task performance can simply vary from one day to the next.

Question 18

What did Robert Siegler argue in relation to inconsistency in cognitive development?

Answer 18

He argued that children select from a range of strategies when faces with a difficult problem and eventually figure out the best strategy and therefore performance will vary accordingly.

Question 19

In relation to inconsistency in cognitive development, how do we see improvement and development?

Answer 19

There is a gradual increase in probability of success through trial and error, rather than abrupt shifts between stages.

Question 20

What is an alternative perspective of cognitive development?

Answer 20

The information processing view.

Question 21

What in the information processing view of cognitive development?

Answer 21

That cognitive development involved incremental changes in mental processes.

Question 22

What does the information-processing approach view development as?

Answer 22

As general cognitive change.

Question 23

What changes do we see in the short term memory?

Answer 23

We see that short term memory span increases gradually with age.

Question 24

What is ‘span’ when discussing memory.

Answer 24

Span in the number of items that can be held in mind and manipulated.

Question 25

What can digit span be measured by?

Answer 25

Digit span can be measured by how many digits a child can repeat back in the correct order.

Question 26

What is the average digit span of a 2.5 year old?

Answer 26

2 digits

Question 27

What is the average digit span of a 7 year old?

Answer 27

4-5 digits

Question 28

What is the average digit span of a 13+ year old?

Answer 28

6-7 digits.

Question 29

What changes do we see in the long term memory?

Answer 29

With age, children get better at transferring information into their long term memory.

Question 30

What can make memory and remembering easier for children?

Answer 30

Increases in the size of children’s knowledge base makes it easier to acquire new information. Also, if new information can be connected to existing knowledge then it is more familiar and easier to process.

Question 31

What changes do we see in processing speed?

Answer 31

As children get older, they get faster at taking in information and performing mental operations.

Question 32

What did Robert Kail do when researching processing speed?

Answer 32

Robert Kail did a set of cognitive tasks and gave them to 7-22 year olds.

Question 33

What was the first cognitive task in Robert Kail’s experiments?

Answer 33

Mental addition- measured the time to identify whether or not an answer was correct.

Question 34

What was the second cognitive task in Robert Kail’s experiments?

Answer 34

Visual search- Time to locate a digit among a display of other digits.

Question 35

What did the results of Robert Kail’s experiments on processing speed show?

Answer 35

That response time decreased the older the participant was.

Question 36

What changes do we see in attention?

Answer 36

Children develop sustained attention as older children have longer attention spans which means they can concentrate on tasks for longer.

Question 37

Between what ages does attention span during play with toys increase sharply?

Answer 37

2 to 3.5 years of age.

Question 38

What ability helps sustained attention?

Answer 38

Inhibition helps sustained attention as it means the ability to ignore irrelevant, distracting stimuli.

Question 39

When does inhibition improve?

Answer 39

From infancy and onwards.

Question 40

What important aspect did Piaget ignore when researching child development?

Answer 40

Social context, as Piaget viewed the cognitive development of the child in isolation from social and cultural contexts.

Question 41

What is the sociocultural theory?

Answer 41

That there is a profound effect of social context, individual exploration of the world and relationships on a childs thinking,

Question 42

Who devised the sociocultural theory?

Answer 42

Lev Vygotsky.

Question 43

Years of Lev Vygotsky?

Answer 43

1896-1934

Question 44

What is the role of interaction in cognitive development?

Answer 44

The idea that a child might only be able to complete a task if someone is guiding them, eg, a parent might give a child clues on how to complete a puzzle.

Question 45

What is the zone of proximal development?

Answer 45

Imagine a bullseye with the inner circle being ‘What I can do’, the middle ring being ‘WHat i can do with help’ and the outer ring being ‘What i can’t do’. The zone of proximal development is the inner ring, ‘what i can do with help’.

Question 46

What zone is the inner ring?.

Answer 46

The zone of proximal development, or, ‘what i can do with help’

Question 47

What takes place in the zone of proximal development and what changes here over time?

Answer 47

Learning takes place within the zone of proximal development and the level of support is gradually reduced over time as the child gets better at a task.

Question 48

What are the three conclusions to cognitive development II.

Answer 48

1/ Piaget may have underestimated mental abilities- infants can form mental representations?

2/ Development through ‘stages’ varies according to task factors, the childs own experiences and inconsistencies. Much cognitive development involves a gradual change.

3/ A child’s learning takes place in a social environment.