Learning about the physical world

Question 1

Describe Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Answer 1

• Children are mentally and physically active from birth. This activity leads to development
• Children learn important lessons on their own
• Children are intrinsically motivated to learn and didn’t need rewards
  
  • The new abilities are applied as soon as possible
  • The lessons and experiences are reflected in order to develop understandin
• Children have schemas
  
  • Assimilation
  • Accomodation
  • Equilibrium

Question 2

Assimilation

Answer 2

Child interprets something new within their pre-existing knowledge.

Question 3

Accommodation

Answer 3

Child changes schema as a result of new knowledge

Question 4

Equilibrium

Answer 4

The balance between assimilation and accommodation

Question 5

Continuity in Development

Answer 5

• Quantitative change
• Developmental change is incremental and gradual

Question 6

Discontinuity in Development

Answer 6

• Qualitative Change
• A new kind of structure or process emerges that was not there before

Question 7

What characteristics does Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development have?

Answer 7

• Stage theory
  
  • This is a qualitative (discontinuous) change. Children move from one stage to the other.
• Domain general
  
  • The theory applies to all domains.
• There are brief transitions between stages
• The theory is invariant:
  
  • All children go through the same stages, in the same order and in the same way

Question 8

What are the stages in Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development?

Answer 8

• Sensorimotor (0 to 2 yo)
• Preoperational (2 to 6 yo)
• Concrete Operational (7 to 11 yo)
• Formal operational (12 to adulthood)

Question 9

Sensorimotor

Answer 9

• Interact with the environment
• Piaget claimed that infants had no awareness of the existence of objects as something independent from their own actions
• The had no object permanence. In other words, the moment the object would disappear from their view, they would forget about it.
• They only notice object permanence when they are 9 months old (stage 4 of sensorimotor stage)

Question 10

Preoperational

Answer 10

Starts representing the world symbolically.

Important limitations:

egocentrism, centration

Question 11

Concrete operational

Answer 11

Learns rules, logic, cannot think in a purely abstract sense.

Question 12

Formal operational

Answer 12

Transcend the concrete situation and think about the future.

Question 13

What study lead Piaget to think that infants had no object permanence?

Answer 13

A study made by him, infants were shown a toy. This toy was then hidden under the right cloth multiple times. The baby would over and over lift the cloth to find the toy. The test was, the toy was hidden in the left cloth instead. The baby still reached for the right cloth.

(9 months old)

Question 14

Describe an alternative study to test object permanence

Answer 14

Renee Baillargeon (1985-1987)

Violation of expectations:

• Show an event to the babies until bored
• show two different events:
  
  • one possible
  • one impossible

In this case, the babies would see a plaque move 180 degrees (habituation).

Then a rod was put at the other end.

Possible event, the plaque will stop because of the rod

Impossible event, the plaque will pass the rod.

Question 15

Carrot Study

Answer 15

Baillargeo and Devos (1991)

• tall and short carrot
• slide W3E1 31
• infants of 3.5 months looked longer at impossible event

Question 16

A no B error

Answer 16

Even though babies lift the wrong cloth to find the toy, they look at the correct response first. This lead to thinking that babies wanted to please the experimenter by lifting the other cloth.

Topal et al. (2008)

Same task where a toy is hidden and the infant has to uncover it but with 3 conditions:

• communicative (engage with the baby)
• non communicative (do not engage with the baby but the experimenter is visible to the baby)
• non social (the experimenter is invisible to the baby)

They looked correctly to location B more often as the social interaction dicreased.

Question 17

Egocentrism

Answer 17

• Perceive the world solely from one’s perspective
• Talk about what they know
• Spatial
  
  • Children will always use themselves as reference point
  • The 3-Mountain task by Piaget, lead him to think this

Question 18

What evidence (if any) there is about perspective-taking by preschoolers?

Answer 18

• They talk differently to younger kids than to adults
• When they show a toy, they turn the toy to face you
• They turn a picture so that the person can see it properly

Question 19

Describe a study that is similar to the 3-Mountain task but that is more age appropriate.

Answer 19

Broke (1975)

• Kids were asked to turn the truck to show what another character was seeing.
• displays slide W3E1 48, 49
• Results:
  
  • children were accurate with the scenes
  • children made more mistakes with the 3-mountain task

Question 20

Centration

Answer 20

• Young children often focus on a single feature of an object or event
• Understanding of concervation
• When the liquid on a recipient was move to a larger recipient, children would have to say if it was the same amount or not
• Children would focus on one feature (how tall the glass was)
• Children lacked the mental operators necessary to consider the relations between different sets of properties

Question 21

Compensation

Answer 21

Change on one dimension compensates for a change in other dimensions

Question 22

Reversibility

Answer 22

Change can be reversed and situation can be returned to original state.

Question 23

Alternatives to Centration proof

Answer 23

Maybe kids were just answering what they were thought was expected from them.

If the change was made by a third person or actor, the kids would answer correctly.

See slide W3E1 57,58

Question 24

Babies and Physics

Answer 24

1) Continuity. Objects exist continuously and cannot move from one location to another without travelling the intervening path.
2) Solidity. Physical objects are solid. Each object occupies a unique part of space. Objects cannot interpenetrate each other.
3) Contact. Objects cannot influence other objects without touching them. When one object hits another, it should move.
4) Gravity. Unsupported objects fall toward the ground.
5) Inertia. Objects do not change their motion abruptly unless they are acted on by another force.

Question 25

How did researchers mapped the ages at which infants understand physical concepts?

Answer 25

By using violation of expectation paradigms.

Question 26

Causality

Answer 26

A leads to B

or

a change in A leads to a change in B

Question 27

Do infants understand causality?

Answer 27

Young infants understand that their behaviour can cause outcomes and they modify their behaviours as a result.

Question 28

What study supports the fact that young infants understand that their actions affect the world?

Answer 28

Rovee-Collier and Sullivan (1980)

• 3 months old
• Reinforcement period:
  
  • Gently connected to a mobile using a ribbon

Question 29

Mechanistic of causality

Answer 29

When adults see one ball hit another, then the second ball moves, they

• represent two events:
  
  • A moves and hits B
  • B moves
• The first ball caused the second one to move
  
  • spacial continuity
  • temporal continuity

Question 30

What study checks if infants understand mechanistic cause?

Answer 30

Alan Leslie made a series of studies that check this:

see W3E3 slides 15- 37

Question 31

Do infants differentiate between a causal and a non-causal event?

Answer 31

Yes, see study 1 from Leslie

Question 32

Do infants perceive causality as two events or just as one continuous event?

Answer 32

They perceive two events! See study 2 by Leslie

Question 33

Do infants perceive Direct Launch as Causal?

Do they see A causes B or A then B?

Answer 33

They see it as A causes B (see study 4 from Leslie)

Question 34

Does experience help infants to represent cause?

Answer 34

Yes, see slides W3E3 37 - 46

Question 35

Why do we categorize?

Answer 35

Categorization allows us to put together objects or things.

This allows us to understand and manage the world.

Question 36

Concept

Answer 36

A concept is a mental representation that encapsulated properties, features and structures that exist among members of a category.

Question 37

True or False

The ability to categorize depends upon concepts.

Answer 37

True

Question 38

How do we study categorization in infants?

Answer 38

1. Habituation paradigm
2. Object-examining paradigm

Question 39

Categories can be broken into a hierarchy, name the different “levels” of categorization.

Answer 39

• Superordinate
• Basic
• Subordinate

Question 40

Give an example of a category that is a super