intro to cognitive development Flashcards
Piagetian perspective
Children are active in the learning and cognitive development that drive stages of development.
Constructivist theory
children construct their own knowledge over time, some others may have a role, associated with piaget
what does piaget believe underpins human development
Reason & science the pinnacle of human development.
what is cognitive development?
Cognitive development is the process by which we develop science and reason.
what are the two processes of cognitive adaption?
assimilation and accommodation
assimilation
Incorporating new information into already existing knowledge structures (schemes of thought – schemas).
accommodation
Accommodation —> Modifying already existing knowledge structures (schemas). building up knowledge of cats and dogs.
how do assimilation and accommodation work together?
Both of these allow us to navigate the world and reduce cognitive load to better interact with the environment.
According to Piaget how do children work with their environment?
the knowledge and knowledge structures you had would change over time, adapting as you encounter more and more of the environment around you. - they would actively engage in this.
modern concepts for how children interact with the environment and learn
concepts and categorisation
concepts
An idea that allows us to organise objects, events etc on the basis of some similarity. Mental representations that support categorisation.
nativism
Ppl can be born with some concepts – some conceptual knowledge is innate.
Empiricist
Concepts form only by experience – born with the ability to construct concepts from perceptual experience.
for cognitive psychologists what is a concept?
an idea that allows us to organise objects and events, supporting categorisation
categorisation
Mediate our interaction with entities/concepts in the world. Helps us to process information as we navigate the world – so we mostly have something to go on when we encounter something new.
types of categorisation
Hierarchical Structure
Prototypicality
Abstraction
What is the hierarchical structure model of categorization?
A model that organizes concepts into a tree-like structure with general categories at the top and more specific ones below.
What are the three levels of the hierarchical structure model?
- Superordinate level (broadest, e.g., “Animal”)
- Basic level (intermediate, e.g., “Dog”)
- Subordinate level (most specific, e.g., “Golden Retriever”)
Which level in the hierarchical model is typically the most useful for everyday thinking?
The basic level (e.g., “dog” instead of “animal” or “Golden Retriever”) because it provides the right balance of generality and specificity.
How does the hierarchical model help with learning and categorization?
It allows for efficient organization of knowledge, making it easier to recognize patterns, retrieve information, and make distinctions between similar concepts.
What is the prototypical model of categorization?
A model that categorizes concepts based on a best or most typical example (prototype) rather than strict definitions.
What is a prototype in categorization?
A mental best example of a category that represents its most typical features (e.g., a robin is a more typical bird than a penguin).
How do we categorize new items in the prototypical model?
We compare them to the prototype; the more similar they are, the more easily they fit into the category.
Why is the prototypical model useful?
It explains fuzzy category boundaries, where some items fit a category better than others, and reflects how people naturally think about concepts.
What is an example of a prototype in everyday life?
A chair is a prototypical example of furniture, while a beanbag is less typical but still belongs to the category.
Abstraction
- A category is the core idea.
- A core idea which has been extracted from the similarities between many entities you have encountered and experienced.
- The core idea will be a summation or average of all the entities.
- You’ve abstracted the similarities from across your many entity experiences to form your core idea or concept.
- This means you’re core idea won’t represent anything that’s actually real – but it represents the core idea you’ve learnt from the similarities between your many entity experiences.
example of abstraction
Picture a monkey
You’ll picture a prototypical example of a monkey that represents your core idea of the concept.
It’s unlikely you’re picturing a specific monkey (unless you have one as a pet…)
Can infants distinguish between basic categories?
Basic categories —> Statistics: Infants looked at bird (new stimuli) 64% while cat (familiar object) 34%. They do this at just 3 months old.
describe the Visual Paired Comparison experiment
- Infant sits on caregiver’s lap in front of 2 different displays presenting different stimuli.
- Experimenter looks through the holes to see where the infant looks and timing how long they look.
can children differentiate between subordinate categories?
yes - they would stair longer at the mammal they had not been shown to yet suggetsing it was new
can infants learn with limited experience?
This suggests that infants do have a concept of mammals which makes the birds look more different than the cake compared to the hippopotamus. They probably didn’t know these mammals too, so learned with limited experience.
Can infants learn abstract categories?
yes when children became familiar with triangles or squares they stared more at the diamond when show this since it was new,
What cues do infants use to form categories
basic visual features: shape colour size
Auditory cues
higher level visual features
touch
what are piagets stages of development?
sensorimotor (birth to 2 years), preoperational (2 to 7 years), concrete operational (7 to 11 years), and formal operational (12 years and up).
Sensorimotor stage (age 0-2 years)
Infants learning about entities and properties within the world.
how do infants learn about the world in the sensorimotor stage
They do this through trial and error of interacting with the world. Learning that objects fall when you knock them off the table. The process of learning that objects still exist when they are out of view – object permanence
what stage are children learning about object permeance?
the first stage - Sensorimotor stage (age 0-2 years)
Preoperational stage (age 2-7 years)
Chn can think symbolically and engage in make believe play, but thinking is egocentric and lacks logic.
what do children struggle with at preoperational stage?
lack conservation
centration
egocentrism
conservation
the ability to conserve characteristics across different situations
Centration
the struggle to de-centre from the here and now and hold multiple aspects
Egocentrism
Difficulty seeing the world from another’s perspective. Piaget explored this with the three mountain task.
Concrete Operational stage (age 7-11 years)
Start to think more rationally. Thinking much more concrete but struggle with abstract concepts.
Formal Operational stage (age 11+ years)
Move towards more adult like thinking – showing the ability to think more abstractly and hypothetically.
Three mountain task
children focus on certain features and then struggle to hold on to different perspectives this test whether they can state what a person will see of the mountains, from a different perspective to them.
when do children pass three mountain task?
concrete opertaional - 7
Appearance reality task
cat or dog with mask on? Struggle until 6 years old.
rock task (rock that looks like an egg) - 29% pass this task
Appearance-Reality Trick Task
hn primed: asked to play a trick on an experimenter. 79% of 3-year-old chn pass the task.
Vygotskian Perspective
We share some cognition with animals, Children’s cognition is also constructed through social interactions. So guidance and instruction provided by the social structures around also help in the process of cognition construction.
Scaffolding
ognition/knowledge construction during development is scaffolded through social interactions and guidance where the child is an active participant within this – but also that not everything to do with cognition is constructed, if we share some cognitive systems with animals it might be that we inherit some aspects of cognition from our ancestors
how do piaget and vgotsky differ?
Piaget focused on individual cognitive stages driven by maturation and exploration, while Vygotsky emphasized the role of social and cultural interactions in learning and development.
how do empiricits think knowledge starts?
Start: Reflexes
- Start the perceptual experience journey.
- Starting to build very simple conceptual knowledge.
how do empiricits think knowledge grows?
Growth: Mobility & experience increases
- Through multiple sensory streams: visual, auditory, haptic/touch.
- Use simple concepts to explore the world more.
- Build on this to construct more sophisticated conceptual knowledge.
Object Permanence Case Study: 0-8 months
Infants do not search for hidden objects.
Object Permanence Case Study: 8-12 months
Searching for moved objects in their original location. Not looking where it has been moved to.
Object Permanence Case Study: 12-18 months
They do not track objects that change location when the object is out of sight. They can now search in the location they see the item being moved to. However, if the location changes when you can’t see the object they can’t track this.
What happened in the habituation phase of the experiment into childrens understanding of object permenance ?
Infants watched a screen rotate back and forth until they became familiar with it.
What was added in the test phase of the experiment into object permenance?
A box was placed behind the rotating screen.
Describe the possible event in the experiment, object permenance.
The screen rotated and stopped when it reached the hidden box, as expected.
Describe the impossible event in the experiment. object permenance
The screen appeared to rotate a full 180 degrees, as if the box had disappeared.
What was the key finding of object permenance study?
Infants looked longer at the impossible event, suggesting they expected the box to still be there.
What does the study suggest about object permanence?
Infants as young as 3–5 months have an understanding of object permanence, earlier than Piaget proposed.
do infants have knowledge of cohesion (objects move as connected & bounded wholes) .
succeed at 2 month olds and as early as 72 hours.
they get confused when the red block moves and they see two disjoined poles and not one joined pole
What is the Sally-Anne task, and what does it test?
The Sally-Anne task is a false belief test used to assess Theory of Mind in children. In the task, Sally places a marble in a basket and leaves the room. Anne then moves the marble to a box. When Sally returns, children are asked where she will look for the marble.
how old can you anticipate false beliefs?
15-month-olds can anticipate false beliefs.
when do you improve on sally ann task?
Performance improves over early childhood – particularly after age 4-5.
false belief task
- familiarise to an adult putting an object in a right box
- adult turns around
- object moves to left
- where does infant think the adult will look?
what does passing false belief task suggest?
Suggesting that maybe there is some core knowledge potentially about other’s mind – as a fairly sophisticated understanding is showing earlier than empiricists would have originally thought.
in false belief task how do we know if children understand?
- surprised) when the adult reaches where the object actually is.
- Suggesting they expected the adult to have a false belief.
when infants were habituated two 16/4 sounds what happened?
- 2-day-old infants that had heard 16 sounds looked longer at 16 objects.
- Infants who had heard 4 sounds looked longer at 4 objects.
