Cognitive Development In Infancy

Question 1

The basics principles of The Piagetian Approach

Answer 1

• qualitative change
• biologically driven
  - maturation
• “The American Question”

Question 2

If you see stages or stairs what does it mean

Answer 2

Is discontinuous and qualitative

Question 3

What does it mean that the Piagetian approach is?

Answer 3

• maturation
  
  • brains develop at different times
  • when you are maturing your environment decides when you move from stage to stage

Question 4

Biologically driven examples

Answer 4

‣ Ex: a kid saying I can count to ten, and have memorized a sequence of sounds but don’t know what it means. Can spit out the numbers but cannot actually count ten pencils.
‣ Ex: having a friend who understands that the cell membrane prevents stuff from coming in and out on the sides, but not how stuff doesn’t just fall out of the bottom. It had to be explained to her that the cell membrane is all the way around it, and a cell isn’t 2 dimensional.

Question 5

The American Question

Answer 5

• The belief that when he comes and speaks in the states that parents will come up and say their child is in a stage, then ask how they can move them onto the next stage. However, he tries to remind parents that its not how do we get ahead faster? But how can we make sure we know what stage our kid is in, how to support and encourage growth without forcing another stage? It is all biologically driven and we can’t force a new stage on them.
- enhancing each stage at a appropriate level as much as we can

Question 6

Sensorimotor stage - reflexive schemes

Answer 6

0-1 months
- all they have is their reflexes
- kicking, sneezing, coughing, and the other infant reflexes. Learning in a basic way

Question 7

Sensorimotor stage - primary circular reactions

Answer 7

• Repeated reactions about their own body
  ◦ The matter of the foot going into their mouth, they don’t understand it but continue to do it because they find it cool. at this age they may not even realize it is their own foot.
  ◦ They want to be bounced a lot, which makes them happy, strengthens their brain, and gives a euphoric feeling

Question 8

Sensorimotor - secondary circular reactions

Answer 8

• 4-8 months◦ Not anymore themselves but around something in their environment, and they continue to do it over and over.
  • What started as moving themselves, often by accident. They then start to realize what they are doing it and tend to keep doing it.
  ◦ Self-efficacy
  ‣ Learn the sense of I made that happen, I can control this and shape my environment. This is a huge think for babies to learn, even if it is small.
  ◦ Imitation
  ‣ By around the age of 4 months they start to be able to imitate things around them. this starts when instead of us trying to get a baby to cry, the baby will smile and try to get the adult to smile.
  • If we are not giving them to attention that they want, they may learn how to manipulate things or fake things to get the parents attention. Her daughter would fake sneeze to get attention. Fake crying or head hitting also occurs, all because they want attention.

Question 9

Sensorimotor stage - coordination of secondary circular reactions

Answer 9

(8-12 months)

• Means -> end actions, physically casuality 
	◦ Start to see parents as a barrier from them having fun. 
			‣ Before the child would want to wave the same thing around multiple times, then it may become moving it to get to something else. Using it to help them transport themselves. Understand if I move this and go here I can get this, or if I go under your leg I can get to the cat. 
			‣ They will love to find boxes or bags and start taking everything else out of it. Once they are able to recognize it they must find it and then take everything out. Or even breaking down lego towers.

Question 10

Sensorimotor stage - tertiary circular reactions

Answer 10

(8-12 months)

		• Motor skills are improving, however meal time can become a challenge. Parents what children to eat neatly but their brains want to experiment and be messy. This stage is experimentation time. Engaging in little experiments and then doing it over and over or then trying other ways to get the same results. Flinging pasta with a finger versus with a fork. 
			◦ They start to love electrical cords, outlets, and buttons/lights

Question 11

sensorimotor stage - mental combinations

Answer 11

• Starting to put together things and doing things like ‘taking care’ of stuffed animals and dolls. They start to realize how there mom takes care of them and want to do the same for their stuffed animals and dolls
◦ Deferred imitation
‣ Imitation that occurs sometimes quite a while after they see it. You will find all of the things they pay attention to it, and then later on imitate it and the parent realizes just how much they have been processing and listening to things.
• Like when they hear a parent cuss and later on cuss, or when they tell on others. Their language may be limited and they want to tell stories, they are story tellers from the start we just may not realize it. If we watch their actions we may realize stories and things that have happened, or things they are excited or sad about.

Question 12

What is the sensorimotor stage

Answer 12

• They are only learning what they experience directly through senses and motor activity
• We enhance learning at this stage by helping them to experience as much of the world as they can, and allowing them to move as much as possible

Question 13

Object permanence - out of sight

Answer 13

• For a baby out of sight literally means not a problem, not in the brain, doesn’t occur. He thought that when the mother leaves the baby thinks that the mother is not going to come back and they no longer exist. This is something where each time they see our mother as a baby we think she is a new person each time we see her. He thinks they eventually recognize, it but not completely convinced it exists
◦ Peek-A-Boo is this -> that every time they see our face they think it is something new. Zetler thinks that this is more of a circular behavior, that they want repetitive action and it to be done over and over.

Question 14

Object permanence - AB errors

Answer 14

• With a key, you hid something under a folder or something, then with them still watching move the object under something else. For whatever reason they will go to the original hiding spot, because that is what is originates with. He believed that it was because they do not necessarily think it exists, but that it is the original association.
◦ The theory that they have enough in their brain they don’t remember the second thing. We now know this has to do with working memory.

Question 15

Object permanence - the potato in the box problem

Answer 15

• Makes it trickier than the AB question. Originally put the potato in the box, but then once they aren’t looking moves it under the rug so that there is a lump under it. The child looks in the box because that is where it is, and does not look under the rug. He says that until they understand this they do not fully understand object permanence. (We now know that he was wrong about all of this), happens around 18 months

Question 16

Information processing approach - sensory memory

Answer 16

Stimuli

		‣ They tend to focus on things we stop focusing on because they have to learn everything 
		‣ What we attend to can move into this, and we have to then pay attention to it for it to turn into the working stage. May be type somewhere but we have to actually be like an unsaved document, there for a period of time but not forever. 
			◦ Capacity 3-7 units
			◦ Duration 0.5 to 3 seconds

Question 17

Information processing approach - working memory

Answer 17

Attention (short term memory)

		◦ Capacity 7-9 chunks
				‣ 911 would be considered part of one chunk, many sets of numbers will go together to be one chunk. Infants do not have chunks and it will also be smaller. 
		◦ Duration 5 - 15 seconds

Question 18

Information processing approach - long term memory

Answer 18

Retrieve info and encoding it

		‣ Might go in and be harder to retrieve back out
			◦ Capacity - infinite 
			◦ Duration - permanent

Question 19

Carolyn Rovee-Collier’s research

Answer 19

• First they will put a mobile around the kid and tie a string to the child’s leg and see if they move it and discover the mobile. They will then tie the string to the mobile so that the mobile will shake when they move their leg. Most of the time they don’t originally know why this happens until they figure it out. A secondary circular reaction.
◦ Then testing to see how quickly the child learns this.

Operant conditioning
Long-term memory

		• Finding out if a child remembers something 
			◦ Several weeks after the first test they will go back and do teh same thing to see if the child remembers it. Hopefully the child will know what it is and immediately start moving their leg to get this reaction and have that joy of moving the mobile.

Question 20

Habituation measures

Answer 20

• A way of assessing how infants of people of any age become used to something
‣ If you are not often in a city at first will jump to cars backfiring and things like that, but later on will not react to it
• Will see changes in things like heart rate and resp rate.
◦ Don’t want to hurt too much so we will show pictures to a child/infant. Then measure how long they look at it without getting bored. Is in a controlled situation. Then give it back and see.
◦ Amount of time to habituate

Question 21

Habituation measures - amount of time to habituate

Answer 21

‣ How long it takes after first seeing or hearing something and when they get used to it. Maybe after a while show different things when they appear to not care as much. Show one cat then when they don’t care, show 5 cats, then show the one cat again and their response will be more and excited.
‣ The time it takes them to respond can be related to their later IQ levels.
• Infants who habituate faster are better at knowing the more relevant factors and seeing what is more important. Can use this to show different members of a species or something like that see how they react. Show a robin, then a wren, then a parrot. Slowly they will look at it less, will be slightly interested but not too much. The ones they see more often they will look at less and less. if you were to throw in a dog their interests will go way up. Did they learn the category?
‣ Will primarily focus on hairlines and eyes of people on the faces.

Question 22

Dishabitutation

Answer 22

‣ This is the reinstatement of previously habituated responses following a presentation of a different stimulus.
• Ex: If you learn to ignore a sound, then if the tone of the sound changes you may pay more attention to it.
‣ Categorical knowledge

Question 23

Novelty preference of habituation

Answer 23

‣ The increase response to something new. Ex: when shown cats over and over the child or infant may stop responding, but if shown a dog there will be a big response.

Question 24

Paired comparison tasks for habituation

Answer 24

‣ When it is compared how long someone looks at something new, versus something that is familiar to them.
• A measure of the recognition of the familiar stimulus.