Knowledge Flashcards
Core Knowledge
Child makes tree grow without any adult input - 4yrs old
Children and infants have a surprising understanding of some core domains of knowledge
Early and middle childhood - untutored
understanding of biology - growth and inheritance
Babies - understanding of objects and an intuitive understanding of physics, numbers and simple addition
CORE KNOWLEDGE - understandings had a functional, adaptive role in our EEA
Greek and British empiricists and knowledge
knowledge based on and only occurs from experience - must be perceived by senses to enter the mind
Rationalists and knowledge
some knowledge is available a priori - without having to be taught
Some concepts develop via maturation and not entirely dependent on experiences
Nativists and Empiricists on Knowledge
Nativist and empiricist - knowledge can be thought of like physical stuff - some kind of substance that has to get in your brain
Empiricist - or its already there - nativist.
No nature and nurture - knowledge
Connections are the result of developmental processes
Result from the species-typical development of a child with a human genome and the resources of a species-typical environment
Experience and perceived stimuli can result in changes in the strength of neural connections
Learning
A change in the brain in response to stimuli that are external to the individual, facilitated by psychological mechanisms that were designed for this purpose.
- Not just one kind of psychological adaptation - relies on very different cognitive processes than learning to walk or learning maternal attachment
- Learning is an umbrella term
Many specific learning mechanisms under this term - Learning is not the explanation it is the phenomenon to be explained
Two reasons learning mechanisms are selected for by natural selection
- Taking advantage of regularities in the species-typical environment
Storing info in the environment - not just the genome - may be an efficient way to pass regularity onto the next generation
Over 100 billion neurons but only 30 000 genes in genome
Too many connections for each to be determined by genome
Genome stores info in the environment - if there are regularities that are reliably present in the species-typical environment - efficient to rely on those cues rather than to encode the info in the genome
EXPERIENCE-EXPECTANT LEARNING
- Optimizing the fit with one’s own environment
EEA was not a singular environment
EEA also describes the variance that occurred across environments that our ancestors evolved in
Environments varied with respect to food availability, climate, peace, competition, topographical ecological challenges, fathers presences, non-familial factors
Learning mechanisms allow an individual to optimize his or her compatibility with the current environment.
Adaptive developmental plasticity relies on cues that indicate which life situation and hence which life strategy is optimal for the individual’s conditions
Experience Expectant Learning -
Experience-expectant learning relies on some stimuli that all members of the species encounter in a species-typical environment
Unfolds because of the interplay between reliably present elements of the organism and reliably present elements of the environment
Common in development - Greenough - use environmental info that is ubitquitous - Since the normal environment reliably provides all species members with certain experiences … many mammalian species … take advantage of such experiences to shape developing sensory and motor systems
Developmental theorists - inherit environmental resources
inherit species-typical environment - environment that provides the features the genome needs/expects in order to develop typically
EX. vertical and horizontal lines or terrestrial light - neural development prepares an organism to react to these reliably present stimuli
EX. chicks
2 day old - find pick up and eat mealworms given normal developmental circumstances in a species-typical environment
If chicks are fitted with shoes after hatching - cant see its feet - oblivious to mealworms
Visual access to feet is part of species-typical environment
in order to develop the ability to perceive and pursue mealworms, a chick must be able to see his own toes because a chick’s toes resemble mealworms in size, color, and segmentation
EX. cat needs to see vertical and horizontal lines for normal development of its visual system
In species-typical environment - cat’s visual system will develop typically
EX. Human babies with cataracts - failure to view patterned light - deviation from norms
Sensitive period:
The time period in development during which a specific kind of learning takes place most easily.
Not as extreme as a critical period - rounder edges - no specific day when its done
Easier at a certain age, gets a little harder as you go
Experience-Dependent Learning
Experience-Dependent Learning:
A learning mechanism that responds to individual-specific information.
learning mechanisms designed to optimize the relationship between one’s brain and one’s own idiosyncratic environment
Not just learning attachment but who one’s mother is
Learn not just language in general but specifically one’s local language
EX. Rats - compared brain development in rats reared in a complex, interesting environment to rat pups who were reared in a simple, deprived environment
Reared in an environment with physical challenges and objects to explore made more dendritic extensions on their neurons, more synapses on each neuron, more synapses overall, and developed a thicker cortex and they were better at learning new things later in life
EX. Violinists and cellists (who use their left hand to manipulate strings) - compared to other musicians have more cortical cells in the brain area controlling the left hand - motor cortex and receiving sensory information from the left hand
Those who can read Braille have more cortical cells dedicated to the hand they use to read it with
Relationship btw experience-dependent learning/ expectant and critical periods
Experience-dependent learning is less likely than experience-expectant learning to be restricted by critical or sensitive periods.
Constraints on learning
In order to learn, a machine needs to have a lot of initial structure, something people in the field of development refer to as constraints on learning.
Constraints on learning are the biases, heuristics and privileged hypotheses that an animal uses when acquiring information about the world. The acquisition of knowledge requires structures prepared to acquire knowledge
Evidence shows that not all behaviors are equally trainable using operant conditioning:- mind is not a blank slate - ANIMALS
Reward of seeing a male stickleback fish - condition another male to bite a glass rod but not to swim through a hoop. Conversely, the reward of seeing a female stickleback - condition a male stickleback to swim through a hoop but not to bite a glass rod
A pig or a raccoon can be taught to carry a token and exchange it for food, but if the distance is too long, the pig may stop and try “rooting” and the raccoon may stop to wash his tokens, both species-typical behaviors associated with food
A chimpanzee trained to perform for food may begin making food calls that interfere with her performance
Most or all animal learning is a result of constraints on learning constraints on learning do not just make learning faster; they are actually necessary for learning to happen
Constrained knowledge acquisition
Constrained knowledge acquisition is rapid because the number of hypotheses that have to be tested is limited.
(For example, if you are trying to learn who your mother is, it is best to focus on the people in your environment and save time by ignoring furniture, appliances, and pets)
more constrained knowledge acquisition is, the faster the learning.
fewer constraints there are, the slower learning becomes until it is impossible.
Prepared Learning
Garcia - revealed evidence that the mind might not be a blank slate, equally able to learn whatever association or pairing a teacher might want to teach.
Studying the effects of radiation during the 1950s, rats, when he noticed that a rat seemed to develop an aversion to a food if two things were true:
(a) the rat ate the food just prior to being exposed to radiation
(b) the food was previously unknown to the rat prior to radiation
Relative to those rats who had not been exposed to radiation, those who were radiated drank less sweetened water, and the more radiation the rats were exposed to, the less sweetened water they drank.
The effect, Garcia reasoned, occurred when the radiation-induced nausea was associated with the novel taste of sweetened water. In more natural circumstances, experiencing nausea after eating usually meant that something was poisonous
why were Garcia’s findings surprising? what is prepared learning?
- learning after a single exposure had not yet been documented
- Unusually long delay between the stimuli.
Traditionally the two stimuli that were to be associated with one another were presented within milliseconds.
Evidence of prepared learning: learning that is easier to induce than a random paired association would be because of its importance in our evolutionary history
Violation of the assumption of equal associations
Classical conditioning model assumed that any two stimuli could be paired. A learned food aversion, Garcia discovered, is selective
When Garcia exposed the rats to radiation, which led to nausea, and paired that unpleasant stimulus with a red light, the rats never learned to avoid the red light, but they did learn to avoid food when it was paired with nausea, a learning mechanism that clearly served a valuable function in the EEA.
In another condition in the experiment, Garcia paired sweetened water with an electric shock, but the rats could never learn this association to avoid the sweet water. Instead, they tried to avoid the location in which they got shocked. In contrast, rats could learn to associate the shock with the red light
Perspectives on Knowledge Acquisition
What would Associationists say?
Blank-slate associationist views dominated - until 1970s
Watson and Skinner - malleable infant mind - appealing
humans, like dogs, rats and pigeons, have associationist learning mechanisms.
Parent who takes his child to a store, where the child finds and requests a desired item. The parent initially says no, but the child cries, begs, and escalates her display until it becomes a tantrum. Embarrassed by the child’s display, the parent capitulates and buys the item.
Reward for the child’s behavior - the tantrum - behavior increases
Perspectives on Knowledge Acquisition - What would Piaget say?
Interested in knowledge acquisition - described it in terms of development that was associated with the child’s age
Child encounters various events and stimuli through each stage of development - actively construct meaning of these events and stimuli
Same event could be meaningless or unnoticed by a child at one stage of development but meaningful to the point of developing the cognitive scheme for an older child
Accomodation - events incompatible - update current knowledge to cope with new info- learning process
What would Systems Theorists Say?
Developmental resources - describe everything that is inherited - info in the environment and the brain that is designed to learn from it
Includes info thats reliably recurring - experience-expectant
Idiosyncratic information - experience-dependent depends on
Core Knowledge
Privileged domains of knowledge that children acquire easily by virtue of the developing cognitive preparedness that is specific to those domains
Domain Specificity
Domain Specificity - Specialized psychological processes that have been shaped by natural selection and focus on areas of knowledge that were fitness-relevant in the EEA.
Knowledge acquisition in one domain can be independent of knowledge acquisition in another domain
- Domain as a knowledge system that includes information about what entities are included in the domain
- Rules that describe how the entities in the domain behave.
3.The domain also has limits; it involves knowledge of what entities are excluded and does not offer help in making inferences outside of the domain
Knowledge is domain specific - Human cognition, according to the core knowledge view, is a collection of domain-specific systems of knowledge
Different machinery for language, faces, math
Core domains of knowledge are thought to be human universals, akin to the universality of language acquisition in humans
Intuitive Physics:
Intuitive Physics: Knowledge about physics and objects that develops early in human infants. Infants’ knowledge about objects greatly exceeds Piaget’s estimate.
Object Permanence
Continuity
Contact
Cohesion
Support and Gravity
Object Permanence
Piaget believed that infants younger than 8 months of age did not have object permanence
5m - turn off lights - looking at an attractive object and room goes dark - baby may reach out and search for object - explores place last seen
6m - hears sound of familiar large object - reach out with two hands, small object - one hand
Infant has representation and practical information
Piagets - UNDERESTIMATE
–Methodological limitations
==Recent work - Violation of Expectations Paradigm
If infants respond differently to possible events than to impossible events, this is evidence that an expectation has been violated.
researchers found evidence that infants do have object permanence at 3½ months of age. They have a mental representation of an object, even when the object is out of sight
Continuity - Intuitive physics
Spelke - infants have expectations regarding the continuity, contact, and the rules governing cohesion of objects.
CONTINUITY: Objects are expected to have continuity, meaning that if they travel from one point to another, they must occupy every point in between
Possible event vs. impossible event
Look longer at impossible bc they expect the ball to occupy the space - dishabituated
4M
Contact - Intuitive Physics
The rules of contact require that one object be in contact with another in order to have an influence on its movement.
Infants watched a ball start to move from a stationary state after it had been hit by a moving ball. In another condition, a ball started to move just before it was hit by the moving ball. Six-month-old infants who saw the ball move without contact looked longer.
27-week-old infants watched a launch event in which a small block moved until it was in contact with another block, at which point it stopped and the second block moved off - second contact with no movement - dishabituation for those who saw the launch
first event the infants had perceived a causal relationship, but not in the second event
For objects you infants expected that they have to come into contact to alter behavior but this expectation of contact is not applied to humans
Cohesion - Intuitive physics
3M - Infants also expect objects to have cohesion, meaning they have to remain a unified whole, not crumbling or coming apart when moved.
infants saw a hand come down and grasp the top of the object and then lift the entire object.
Other infants saw the hand come down and grasp the top of the object, - part of the object came along with the hand, and part remained where it was, violating the expectation of cohesion
Looked longer in second
Support and Gravity - Intuitive physics
3m: infants are surprised if unsupported objects don’t fall
5m: infant expects the support to come from underneath
6.5m: infants expect support to contact most of the object’s lower surface
the fact that 3-month-old infants accept a tiny corner of support or contact with the side of the object as support cannot be explained by associationist learning - why?
The infant has never seen an object supported via such contact. There is clearly development unfolding, but the developmental pattern cannot be explained by experience
Occlusion Milestones
2.5 m - responsive to violations of occlusion, containment and covering although variables differ
—Minnie mouse puppet - disappear behind one screen and reappear from behind a different screen - surprised they never appeared in btw
Okay for objects behind occluders to be invisible, but objects that are not behind occluders should be visible.
3.5m should be able to see the tall toy behind the short occluder - only an occlusion event
7.5m perceive height and apply it to a containment event
Occlusion Event:
Occlusion Event: An event in which an object becomes invisible as it moves behind a nearer object, the occluder.
Containment Event:
Containment Event: An event in which an object moves into a container, possibly out of sight.
Covering Event:
Covering Event: An event in which an object becomes occluded as it is hidden by a rigid cover.
Containment Milestones
2.5 m some understanding of containment events
–Surprised if experimenter place an object into a container and then move the solid container leaving the hidden object behind,
–A solid container that holds an object should carry the object with it
7½ months of age that height is seen as informative in containment
– Infants watched as an experimenter lowered a cylinder into a tube. The cylinder was taller than the tube, so should not have been hidden within the tube, but when it was hidden, infants did not show longer looking times until 7½ m
The variables that infants will consider when making predictions…
The variables that infants will consider when making predictions about objects vary between event categories:
An infant can start using height in judgements about one event category weeks or even months before they use it in judgment about another event category.
Height use in different events
Height in occlusion at 3.5m
Containment at 7.5m
Covering at 12m
Covering Milestone
If the tube is lowered onto the cylinder, so that the infant is seeing a covering event rather than a containment event, it is not until 12 months of age that the infant is surprised when the taller cylinder is completely hidden by the shorter tube
Evidence of domain-specific reasoning
- ## Apply rules and use informative variables for each event category independentlyFor example, if they understand that height is important for occlusion events, they may not appreciate that height is important during containment events.
- Infants’ concepts in the area of intuitive physics are applied very narrowly
Developing infant does not apply the above rules, or any rules, to reasoning about liquids or small particles.
Development of Object permanence progressed through the stages - Piaget - Substage 1 & 2
TRACK MOVING OBJECT
Substages 1 and 2 of the sensorimotor period - birth-4m, the infant will try to fixate and track a moving object
object disappears from view, the infant loses interest rather immediately. If she persists by continuing to look at the spot where the object disappeared, it is only for a moment. In other words, there is no evidence that the infant holds a representation of the object after it is out of view.
when does object permanence reach adult form according to Piaget?
- not until 18m that this concept reached adult form
Development of Object permanence progressed through the stages - Piaget - Substage 3
ANTICIPATORY EYE MOVEMENTS
Substage 3 - 4-8m, the infant is quite skilled at tracking moving objects with her eyes.
anticipatory eye movements, predicting the soon-to-be location of a moving object. In this substage, an infant can and will reach for an object that is partly occluded but will still not reach for an object that is totally covered by a blanket.
The infant will not lift an object toward herself even if she already has it in her grasp when it becomes occluded by a blanket
The infant will, however, reach for the object if it is covered by a transparent covering, such that she can still see the object
Development of Object permanence progressed through the stages - Piaget - Substage 4
A NOT B ERROR
In substage 4, from 8-12m,
She can now grasp and retrieve hidden objects.
A-not-B error: You hide an attractive toy under one of two washcloths. The infant grasps and retrieves it. Again, you hide it under the same washcloth; again, the infant finds it. You repeat this a couple more times. Now, while the infant is watching you and watching the attractive toy, you put that toy under the other washcloth.
The infant does not, and apparently cannot, find the toy that was hidden in plain sight. Instead she looks under the original washcloth again and again.
Piaget concluded that although the infant has a representation of the object (which allows the initial successful searches), that representation is somehow not clear, conscious, and adult-like
Development of Object permanence progressed through the stages - Piaget - Substage 5
VISIBLE DISPLACEMENT
In substage 5 from 12 to 18m - The a-not-B error is resolved and infants will search for an object in its most recently observed location.
There is still one limitation: the child can understand visible displacement, when she sees you move the object from one hiding place to another, but not invisible displacement.
Hide an object while she is watching and then secretly move the object from that spot, she will persist in looking for the object where she last saw it.
Faced with clear evidence that the object is not there anymore, she is incapable of expanding her search. Piaget believed that in this stage the infant is developing a distinction between the object and her own actions upon it.
Development of Object permanence progressed through the stages - Piaget - Substage 6
INVISIBLE DISPLACEMENT
In substage 6, that is, ages 18 to 24m, all of the above difficulties are resolved.
By 2 years of age, most children can search systematically through a series of possible hiding places for a hidden object. Finally, Piaget credits the child with having a persisting representation of the object.
Infants show an early understanding of space and spatial locations.
Sandbox Experiment
Lanmarks at what age?
5-month-old babies use spatial location, not appearance, shape, or color, to define an object.
Watch experimenter dig hole in sandbox and bury an object
Dig to retrieve object - 4 times
5th time - dug up item from a different location
Infants surprised - increased looking time even if 6inch away
No surprise if taken from the same location
Ability to use landmarks to locate objects as early as 6m - land mark must be obvious and located close to the hidden object
Toddlers can and will use the geometry of room as a spatial cue but will not use other clues such as color
Hide a toy in one of 4 corners in room
Adults who know where the object is and disoriented before they search are correct 57% of time - all walls same color
Search opposite corner when they are incorrect
Infants do the same - use the geometry of the room to inform their search
Similar pattern for adults
Coloured wall fixes problem for adults (96% correct) but not for infants - same effect as when walls were all the same color
Dead Reckoning
The ability to continuously keep track of one’s location relative to the starting point and thus return directly- straight line - to the starting point.
Children show some degree - how bees and ants navigate space - take most direct route back
Self-locomotion matters - toddlers watch as someone hides toy in one of two holes
Could only reach by moving - Those who had moved on their own - more likely to reach for correct location than peers who were carried
Landmark
2yr - toy hidden in sane - toddlers were led to a different location following an indirect route with no land marks - return to toy was better than chance
Stars - Cross Species Navigation
Some birds use the stars
Magnetic poles - Cross Species Navigation
bats, sea turtles, and other birds use the magnetic poles of the earth to guide their migration.
The Sun -Cross Species Navigation
Starlings and ants use the sun to navigate.
Scents - Cross Species Navigation
Salmon use scents to get back to their spawning grounds.
Cross Species Navigation
Within each species, the navigational strategy is universal, but a reliable cue used by one species can be completely ignored by another
cannot be explained by the same weak general-purpose learning mechanisms in each species.
Children’s Understanding of Biology
Evidence of a non-tutored intuitive understanding of biology - early to middle childhood
Understanding of the types of objects (plants and animals) that are included in the domain and an understanding of biological processes such as inheritance, growth, nourishment, and death.
Learn about children’s understandings through…
- INDUCTION - Generalize to an entire category from a single instance
—if a child learns that baby horses drink milk from their mothers and then infers that baby mice, deer, and dogs also drink milk from their mothers, the child is revealing that he can generalize a fact within a category. If he then asserts that baby lizards, snakes, and birds do not drink milk from their mothers, he is revealing his category boundary by not extending his inference past the category of mammals. - Transformation
–Could a cat become a skunk if we painted a stripe down its back and gave it a stink pouch? - Explore children’s understanding of biological processes
—Children understand that unlike artifacts, which are made by people, living things come from other living things that resemble them
Preschoolers have a theory of Inheritance
baby dogs come from dogs and baby cats come from cats.
Even if children do not have a complete idea of the laws that govern inheritance, they understand that offspring (dogs, cats, or even flowers) inherit properties (like color and size) from their parents and that this inheritance is lawful.
Children believe that a child will resemble a parent with respect to biological traits but not with respect to social characteristics
—–Has a white stomach inside that helps him stay health
—–Has a white stomach inside that helps him be happy
Ken Springer (1996) - story about child…
Ken Springer (1996) - story about child who was born into one family and adopted by another. The children were asked about whether the character in the story would resemble his adoptive or his biological family.
Children tended to predict that with respect to physical traits such as hair color and height,
the character would resemble his biological family, while with respect to psychological or behavioral traits, he would resemble his adoptive family
Distinction btw psychological and behavioral traits develop by 7 yrs
Solomon, Johnson, Zaitchik, and Carey (1996)
story about a boy who had a biological father and an adoptive father.
The biological father had one characteristic, say green eyes, and the adoptive father had a different characteristic, say brown eyes.
The child was asked which color eyes the boy would have
Younger than 7 predicted that the boy would have the same eye color as his adoptive father.
Starting at around age 7, children predicted that the boy would have the characteristics of his biological father.
They believed that children resemble their parents, but their understanding of the processes of inheritance changed
Gelman and Wellman (1991, e.g.) conducted a series of inheritance experiments in which animals were “adopted” by other animals.
Children were asked to consider what would happen if a baby kangaroo was adopted and reared by goats. Would it grow up to be a kangaroo? Seven-year-old children tended to base their answers on nature: Being reared by goats does not make a kangaroo any less of a kangaroo
The 4-year-olds in the study were less sure and were more likely than older children to base their answers on nurture: Whoever is reared by a goat is a goat.
Growth
Know that living things grow and that non-living things do not and even believe that growth distinguishes animals and plants from non-living things
understanding of growth is not adult-like since young children reject the idea of qualitative change ) as well as the idea that very small animals such as worms grow
Children 4-6 saw a picture of either a flower, baby animal or a brand new artifact
Then they were asked to choose a picture that showed what that target object would look like some time later.
The children chose the image of the same-size object in the artifact condition but chose the image of a larger object in both the animal and the plant condition.
Authors took these results as evidence that the children understood that young living things, but not artifacts will grow
Regrowth
children as young as 4 years old understand that re-growth is expected after a living thing (but not an artifact) is damaged
a prerequisite of growth is food for animals and water for plants
young children ages 4 and 5 understand that growth is beyond intentional control: You do not have to want to grow in order to grow and wanting to not grow will not keep you from growing.
Even the desire for growth on the part of the person providing the food does not impact growth
An Intuitive Understanding of Death
young children develop an understanding of death before the age of 4.
children as young as 4 were able to make a distinction between animals that were asleep and animals that were dead.
GROWTH SUMMARY
4 year olds understand that young animals and plants grow
Children as young as 4 understand re-growth - healing
Understand food and water necessary for growth
Growth is beyond intentional control
Intuitive Biology Across Cultures
across cultures, children have a concept of species and apply essentialist thinking to species by the age of 4 to 5 years
Atran’s research with these two populations showed that in both groups, children used the same categories and the same levels to make inferences between categories of animals.
Both populations of children used species-level groupings to make biological inferences, and this preference was more important than perceptual similarities
Experience cannot account for these results since the level of deprivation North American children have with respect to biology would predict perceptual groupings, rather than the taxonomic groupings that he found.
Cultural Differences in the Intuitive Understandings of Biology - goldfish experiment
Experience with a living creature has an influence on a child’s knowledge about that creature, knowledge about similar creatures, and the ability to make predictions about living creatures in general.
Inagaki - children who raised goldfish and children who did not. After some experience, children who raised goldfish knew more about goldfish, both in terms of their visible and their invisible characteristics. Knew more about frogs and were able to make reasonable predictions about what goldfish and frogs would do in novel, hypothetical situations - used goldfish to make predictions about frog behavior
Atran - biological understandings in urban and rural areas
urban group - less experience with biological entities, while the latter two groups dealt with living things on a daily basis
The experimenters told the children novel facts, things they did not know before, about animals (e.g., humans or bees), plants (e.g., goldenrod), and non-living things (e.g., water).Would they generalize these new properties to other animals, plants, and non-living objects.
Only urban children showed a developmental change in terms of seeing animals as alive
Two rural viewed animals as alive from a young age - more mature understanding of biology at a younger age - earlier understanding of kinship among biological kinds
Younger rural children more willing to make inferences
All cultures have a way of discussing numbers…
comparing numbers
adding and subtracting at least small numbers
develop a basic understanding of numbers at the same age cross-culturally
Numerosity
Dishabituated when the number of objects changed
Looking time increased as the number of objects changed as long as the numbers were 1,2,3
Even in the first week of life
6m - numbers of events - habituate to a small number of EVENTS OR ACTIONS then dishabituate when the number of events changes - number of jumps
ACROSS MODALITIES - And by 6 months, infants can apparently represent numbers abstractly allowing them to match across modalities: Infants who heard two drumbeats looked significantly longer at an array of two objects, whereas those who heard three drumbeats looked significantly longer at an array of three objects
Ordinality
Understanding of greater than and less than
Develops by 18m - Strauss and Curtis - touch screen and taught infants to touch the side of the screen showing the greater number of dots
Once trained - saw a new array showing a novel number of items
Had they learned the number, rather than the ordinal relationship, they should touch the familiar number.
In contrast, had they learned the ordinal relationship, they should touch the side with the greater number of dots (or smaller number of dots, depending upon their training condition).
Learned ordinal relationship
Arithmetic
–Screen rose in front of the object occluding it completely
–A hand carried a second example of the same object behind the screen and exited empty-handed, leaving the infant to infer that the second object was deposited behind the screen. When the screen dropped, infants showed surprise (measured in looking time) if they saw an unexpected number of objects
Looked for a significantly shorter amount of time if the screen was dropped and the expected two objects were revealed
Seeing one object should be less surprising than seeing two if perceptual similarity were driving the expectation.
Two Systems of Numbers
Large and approximate
Small and precise - 1,2,3
Two Systems of Numbers- Large and approximate
6m - some competency with estimating the magnitude of larger numbers - Habituation paradigm - When habituated to an array of 8 (or 16) items, they looked at the numerically novel test array of 16 (or 8) items longer
—–Can discriminate a 1:2 ratio but not a 2:3 ratio
10m - can discriminate 2:3
Two Systems of Numbers - Small and precise - 1,2,3
6m - fail to discriminate 1:2 if small amounts of numbers
Choose one of two containers of crackers after they had watched the experimenter put one cracker into one container and two crackers into the other.
10 -12m always chose the container with the greater number of (now hidden) crackers, even though they only saw them one at a time.
made errors with any greater numbers, failing to choose the container with more crackers in the three vs. four, two vs. four, and even one vs. four conditions
Cant make the comparison between small numbers and large numbers
UPPER LIMIT OF 3 in young infants’ numerical representations
–Attractive items were hidden sequentially in a box and then infants were allowed an opportunity to search for the items.
If one item went into the box, the infant retrieved one item and then stopped - did this up to 3 at 4- the infant would likely retrieve just one item and then stop
The one-to-one principle
Each item in the array gets a unique number label.
The stable-order principle
The number labels should be spoken in the same order each time one counts.
The cardinal principle.
The number label given to the last item in the array is the total; that is how many items have been counted.
The abstraction principle.
You can count anything, whether it is big (elephants) or small (peas). You can even count actions (jumps) or something abstract (ideas).
The order-irrelevant principle
Regardless of what order you count things in, you should end up with the same total.
When do children start following counting rules
An array of objects is displayed in front of the child, and the child watches as a puppet counts the items. Gelman and Gallistel found evidence that children are beginning to understand and use these rules as early as 2½ years of age, and by 5 years of age, children mostly follow the first two rules.
Consistent use of the first two principles increases over these years from 30% at three years of age to 90% at four years of age to 100% at 5 years of age
What Would Piaget Say About Core Knowledge?
Piaget work contrasts core knowledge - often becomes the null hypothesis
- limited cognitive sophistication with respect to knowledge
- No domain- specific knowledge
—- view of cognitive development described changes in the way children process information, not development in domains of knowledge.
—–Very young children have knowledge about physics, space and numbers that far exceeds what Piaget would have predicted - Limited to what they can see
—–Preschoolers understanding - perceptually dominated - child categorizes animals that appear similar - NO
——Contrary - categorize birds together ex. Bat flamingo experiment - Precausal - children should not be able to reason about cause and effect in any domain - nor should they be able to distinguish physical causes —–food from intentional causes - wanting to grow
—–Digestion, growth, inheritance and death should be incomprehensible to young children, but they are not. - NO numerical ability until developed an understanding of numbers when they began to understand symbolic representation, in the preoperational stage beginning at the age of two years
What would associationists say about core knowledge?
domain-general capacity of people (and other organisms with a brain) to learn to associate one feature with another.
A child is thought to learn by making association - null hypothesis
domain-specific learning is not completely incompatible with associationist learning mechanisms such as classical conditioning and operant conditioning
EX. Teaching a raccoon to wash a token in order to earn food is still operant conditioning. It is just that teaching behaviors that are naturally, for the raccoon, within the domain of food preparation is much easier than teaching the raccoon to sit, root, or stand on two feet in order to earn food.
Cross-Species Comparison - Numbers
Rats who are trained to press a lever a certain number of times will subsequently make responses that are near that number, and the error
——Mistakes are proportional to the target - 50 - off by 1, 100 off by 2 - evidence they are using the large number system
Rhesus monkeys also show evidence of this core number system representing approximate magnitudes.
—rained to touch a number of items in ascending order
—-Good at touching these two arrays in ascending order even though they had never seen these numbers before
–The monkeys’ reaction times and accuracy were a function of the ratio between the two arrays: The bigger the ratio, the faster and more accurate they were - consistent with infant research
-Evidence that rhesus monkeys have the second core number system representing a small number of individual items
experimenter sequentially placed one to four apple slices in a hiding place. Monkeys always selected the larger quantity of apple slices with any number up to three but were at chance with three vs. eight or four vs. eight, like infants had been with their crackers.
Ordinality - Cross-Species Comparisons
other mammals and some birds can acquire this concept only after hundreds of trials and sometimes years of training
human cognition is different from these animals with respect to the concept of ordinality and that humans are prepared to acquire this concept.
adaptive problem of dealing with real-world objects, many species face essentially the same problems. The cognitive solutions might be expected to be the same, at least for terrestrial animals. Indeed, there is evidence that many land vertebrates show cognitive development that is similar to the object understandings of human infants
Land animals seem to have object permanence
