Exam 1

Question 1

What is a stage theory of cognitive development (criteria)?

Answer 1

View development as proceeding in qualitatively different steps, each one occurring in a set order and typically with an associated age range

Question 2

Piaget – background and theoretical foundation

Answer 2

-Children are active explorers and are not born as tabula rasa
-Impossible to skip stages

Question 3

Piaget – adaptation, assimilation, accommodation, schema

Answer 3

-ACCOMODATION Children integrate their old schemas into newer ones which are more stable
-ASSIMILATION applying old behaviors to new things

Question 4

Key characteristics of Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development

Answer 4

1. Sensorimotor stage - Birth to 2yrs - Says that children lack object permanence and only experiences the world through direct sensations - has 6 substages
   2.Preoperational Stage - 2-6yrs - have object permanence, can pretend, has semiotic function, better language, egocentric
2. Concrete operational stage 6 to 11 or 12 - the conserve (put objects in order), they can make the appearance-reality distinction, better at categories, can do math and conservation task
3. Formal operational stage - 11 or 12 up - can do algebra, formal operations

Question 5

Object permanence

Answer 5

The ability to make mental representations of objects and ideas even when they are not directly in front of us

Question 6

Conservation tasks

Answer 6

Where checkers are layed out at different distances but have the same number. Preoperational kids do not see that density does not equal number but concrete and above generally can

Question 7

Egocentrism

Answer 7

tendency to see the world only through
one’s own perspective. see mountain task

Question 8

Vygotsky – background and theoretical foundation

Answer 8

-helping develop the sociocultural approach to
the study of cognitive development
-we are contextualized by our matrix

Question 9

Zones of proximal development

Answer 9

the range of cognitive functioning a child is capable of.

Question 10

Information processing model

Answer 10

-borrows heavily from computer
architecture
-uses boxes and arrows to describe how different brain stuff work

Question 11

Learning theory

Answer 11

classical, instrumental (or operant), and social ways of learning

Question 12

Brain growth in infancy/early childhood

Answer 12

1. First trimester (embryonic and fetal)
   o Development of NS occurs from “tail” to head.
   o Synapses are developing in the spinal cord by the 5th week of gestation.
   o By 6th week: movement
   o By 10th week: yawning, thumb sucking, swallowing, grasping.
2. Second trimester
   o Reflexes including breathing and swallowing
   o Brainstem
3. third trimester
   o Cerebral cortex develops
   o Habituation and familiarity with mothers voice and oder of her own amniotic fluid
   o Cortex is relatively underdeveloped at birth and matures greatly over the first few years

Question 13

Microcephaly and hydrocephaly

Answer 13

Micro: Samller brain wihtinh brain cavity
Hydrocephaly: too much brain/spinal fluid in head and during cranial development pressure pushes skull out and brain is to big

Question 14

Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”

Answer 14

-use facts
-encourage debate from all views
-question authroity
-Spin more than one hypothesis.
-not to get overly attached to a hypothesis
-use numbers, dont be vauge
-every link in an argument must work
-simpler answer is usually true

Question 15

Reliability and validity of measures of cognitive functioning

Answer 15

Reliability is how repeatable the experiment is (consistency)
Validity how accurate an experiment is

Question 16

Methods of studying cognitive function and development (e.g., lesions)

Answer 16

Lesions can tell us what parts of the brain do what

Question 17

Teratogens

Answer 17

Toxic exposure to toxins can impede neural development (e.g., FASD, mercury, lead)

Question 18

Development of perception, attention, memory in infancy

Answer 18

Children develop these over time

Question 19

Visual preference paradigm

Answer 19

They have a preference for faces

Question 20

Hearing, taste, smell, touch

Answer 20

Hearing: pre-birth, HR changes as function of loudness, by 6mo acuity is like adults, localization of sound improves by 11mo
Taste, Smell, Touch: even newborns show “mature” abilities to make discriminations and show preference, demonstrating sensitivity
out the womb ready to perceive!

Question 21

Nature of visual pattern discrimination, including of faces

Answer 21

They look longer at real faces than scrambled ones

Question 22

Development of perceptual constancy

Answer 22

6- to 8-week-old infants were showing at least some ability to perceive
size constancy and even some 2 year olds can!

door is rectagnle!

Question 23

Depth perception

Answer 23

About the the time a baby can walk, most of them know not to crawl on the glass pane.

Question 24

“Cross-modal” perception (e.g., visual and auditory stimuli)

Answer 24

Babies looked at the screen with the audio compared to the other screen. THey also looked at the model of the pacifier they used

Question 25

Infants and imitation

Answer 25

infants can imitate people as young as 12-21 days old

Question 26

Memory and brain anatomy

Answer 26

o Using these and similar paradigms have demonstrated that even very young infants demonstrate recognition memory… and, for older infants, their performance is associated with performance on IQ tests when they get older

Question 27

Development of attention

Answer 27

Distinct Phases of Attention:
- (Birth-10 weeks): increase in amount of time attending to visual stimulus, infant becomes increasingly alert
- (10 weeks-5mo): amount of time attending to stimulus declines, as infant gets better at disengaging and directing attention to another stimulus…”visual-spatial orienting”
- (6mo-1yr): “Object perception” - analysis and recognition of stimuli, detection of patterns gradually improves; time of attention can increase as infant becomes self-directed

Question 28

Infants’ memory for relationships between behavior and consequence (e.g., “mobile” studies)

Answer 28

o Using instrumental conditioning models, Rovee and Fagan 1976 demonstrated that, by 3 months, infant srecall relationships between behavior and consequence (i.e. kicking and moving a mobile) at least 24 hours later, following training for 9 minuets per day for 3 days

Question 29

Memory for recognition and recall in infancy

Answer 29

RECOGNITION (Fantz, 1964): Visual Paired Comparison task (VPC) where even young infants demonstrate that they can tell when they are presented with a novel stimulus (when familiarized with one stimulus) by looking longer at the new thing (Ex: used to cow, baby carriage image becomes new and interesting)
RECALL (Bauer, 2002): “Elicited imitation task” where infant had to engages in behaviors such as inserting toy into another thing and pressing a plunger to achieve outcome of car rolling out
9mo infants demonstrated recall after 1mo delay

Question 30

Intellectual disability – definition and criteria

Answer 30

o Characterized by deficits in adaptive behavior and cognitive functioning
o Manifests early in the development period
o This manifests in infancy/developmental period
o Full-scale IQ of 70-75 may indicate significant limitation in intellectual functioning.

Question 31

Causes of intellectual disability

Answer 31

o Genetic conditions (DS extra chromosome 21)
o Prenatal and perinatal events
o Teratogens
o Physical injury
o Malnutrition

Question 32

Levels of severity of intellectual disability

Answer 32

Mild 85 percent of ID population
Can generally learn reading, writing and math skills between third and sith grade levels. May have jobs and live independently
Moderate 10% percent of ID population
May be able to learn some basic reading and writing. Able to learn functional skills such as safety and self-help. Require some type of oversight/supervision
Severe 5% percent of ID population
Probably not able to read or write, although they may learn self help skills and routines. Require supervision in their daily activities and living environment
Profound 1% percent of ID population
Require intensive support. May be able to communicate by verbal or other means. May have medical conditions that require ongoing nursing and therapy

Question 33

Semantic memory

Answer 33

Semantic memory is a form of long-term memory that comprises a person’s knowledge about the world. Along with episodic memory, it is considered a kind of explicit memory, because a person is consciously aware of the facts, meanings, and other information that it contains.

Question 34

Object coherence

Answer 34

See rod experiment - This suggested to the authors that infants were surprised to see two
separate rod parts and had likely “expected” to see a single rod.

Question 35

Object identity

Answer 35

:knowing that an object is the same object when you leave and come back to it (Xu and Carey, 1996)
- study where infants were habituated to certain object that were then occluded behind a screen. When it was removed and there was an unexpected outcome:
- 12mo infants looked longer (noticed!) but 9mo did not
- Infants’ knowledge of objects is fragile and emerges gradually…but we may come into the world with some understanding of objects

Question 36

Categorization

Answer 36

o Mentally grouping together objectds
o Infants (3-4) months)will look at novel class of animals longer than novel animals from a familiar class (quinn)
o Subsequent researchers suggest that ability to categorize is very much dependent upon the classes of stimuli used in the paradigm and hwo they are representing (e.g. Baldwin 1993)
o Ability to categorize in an increasingly complex way gradually emerges throughout infancy Booth 2018

Question 37

Knowledge of number

Answer 37

(Wynn, 1992): Habituation task–5-mo-old infants looked at a different “than expected” number (e.g. one star) of objects, vs multiple stars
- infants can also see differences between 8 and 16 dots, but not so much 12 vs 16. Big groups far apart in number they can tell, but not details

Question 38

Statistical learning

Answer 38

Statistical learning involves an individual noticing some regularities or structure in the world. However, the
amazing thing is that infants do this before they’ve acquired language