Learning about the physical world Flashcards
Who is the father of the field of cognitive development?
Jean Piaget
What did Piaget propose?
- Children’s thinking is qualitatively different from adults’ thinking (not only quantitative - amount of knowledge)
- Cognition grows and develops through a series of stages
According to Piaget, what are the four Stages of Cognitive Development
1- Sensorimotor (birth to 2yo)
2- Preoperational (2 to 7yo)
3- Concrete operational (7 to 12yo)
4- Formal operational (12+)
When does object permanence develop?
around 8 months old
How do we know if object permanence has been developed when hide object in front of a baby
If doesn’t look for object or gets upset = no object permanence
If looks for object = developed object permanence
What is A-not-B-error
tendency to reach for a hidden object where it was last found rather than in the new location where it was last hidden
What does A-not-B-error show and when does it normally disappear?
Shows that initial object permanence is fragile
-Disappear around 12 months
Symbolic thought
The ability to think about objects or
events that are not within the immediate environment
What are examples of egocentrisms (preoperational)
-difficulties taking another person’s spatial perspective
-egocentric speech
What would be a sign a progress in egocentrism (preoperational phase)
increase in children’s verbal arguments: Means that a child is at least paying attention to another perspective
What concept is referred to in Piaget’s conservation task
Centration: tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event to the exclusion of other relevant
features
Reversibility, Seriation and Cognitive maps are examples from which stage
Concrete Operational Stage
How can we describe the Formal Operational Stage
Ability to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically
What happens by the end of the sensorimotor stage?
achieve object permanence
Name some weaknesses of Piaget’s Theory
- Piaget didn’t use scientific method to develop theory
- Theory depicts children’s thinking as more consistent than it is
- Children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized* Theory is vague about the mechanisms of cognitive growth
- Theory underestimates the contribution of the social world to
cognitive development
Nativist view of cognitive development
Children have innate, specialized cognitive mechanisms that provide
them with basic knowledge in domains of evolutionary importance
What is the Violation-of-Expectation Paradigm
Ex. Infants as young as 3.5 months old looked longer at the impossible event (drawbridge going through a box) than the possible event
-Indicates that infants as young as 3.5 months:
* have object permanence
* understand that solid objects can’t go through another solid object
Ex.2. infants look longer at object suspended in midair - innate understanding of gravity
innate approximate number sense
Cognitive system that allows infants to intuitively estimate numbers and
magnitudes
At what ratio can infants of 6 months old and 9 months old see the difference in the number of dots
6 month olds : 2:1 can detect the difference between 20 dots and 10 dots
9 months old: discriminate displays in a 3:2 ratio (e.g. 12 vs. 8 dots)
9-month-olds divide objects into 3 broad categories:
people, animals and inanimate objects
When do children start learning category hierarchies
By 2-3 years of age, form category hierarchies
Around what age do children start differentiating people, animals, and
inanimate objects
By 9 months of age
True or false: Nativists suggest that infants are a lot less cognitively capable than Piaget thought
False. The opposite.
What are the major criticisms of the nativist view
Perceptual features of stimuli
* Infants may look longer at certain stimuli because they are more visually
interesting (i.e., more complex or novel), and not because they have innate
expectations about the stimuli
Learning from the environment
* 3 month olds have learned a lot about the world in about 810 hours of awake
time
To recap: what are the three main theories/views to describe congnitive development
1- Piaget’s theory
Cognitive development occurs in qualitatively, distinct stages
2- Nativist view
Emphasizes innate knowledge and specialized learning mechanisms in
domain of evolutionary importance
3 - Learning view
- Children learn a great deal from the environment through trial and error
and statistical learning
- Quality of home environment affects cognitive development
What does the Dawbridge study show?
Infants as young as 3.5 months old looked longer at the impossible event than the possible event.
Understanding of solid object innate
What are the 2 factors reflected in HOME study and which one is most important
Parenting quality and stimulation of environment, parenting quality is most important
