learning goals weeks 13-18 Flashcards
- Understand the problems with attempting to define categories.
Attempting to define categories can be difficult sometimes because different things can fit into different categories, there are sometimes fuzzy categories, and things can fit into more than one category.
- Understand typicality and fuzzy category boundaries.
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Typicality - how easily a category fits into a concept
Ex. an apple in the fruit category is very typical, whereas a pumpkin in the same category is not typical.
Fuzzy category boundaries - hard to define boundaries for certain objects because they can fall into many categories, or some categories that are difficult to define, ex. furniture.
- Learn about theories of the mental representation of concepts.
Exemplar theory - your concept from a category relies on different examples you’ve seen overtime. Ex. for the category of dogs, you would remember different examples of dogs you’ve seen before (ex. Labs, chihuahuas, etc.) and think of them as the category as a whole.
Prototype theory - every concept from one category merges into one and represents the entire category. Ex. every single kind of tree you’ve ever seen merges into one idea- or prototype in your brain and this serves as the entire concept in your head. You would have a concept of one tree with all characteristics you’ve ever seen in one representation.
- Learn how knowledge may influence concept learning.
Knowledge influences concept learning since we all learn in different ways. Our different points of view will lead to us categorising things differently. For example, I would place a tomato in the fruits category, but someone else may place it in the vegetables c
- Be able to identify and describe the main areas of cognitive development.
Reasoning, intelligence, language, and memory
- Be able to describe major theories of cognitive development and what distinguishes them.
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Piaget’s stages: children develop in cognitive stages
Sensorimotor: children aged birth to 2 years, infants learn about the world by interacting with it
Preoperational: language develops here 2-7 years old
Concrete operational: children aged 7-12 where they can investigate concepts but not understand abstract concepts yet
Formal operational: people aged 12+ where they can solve complex problems, reason, and use logic.
Sociocultural theory - SES and other other social factors contribute to cognitive development
Learn how knowledge may influence concept learning
The knowledge approach to concepts emphasizes that concepts are meant to tell us about real things in the world, and so our knowledge of the world is used in learning and thinking about concepts
An important aspect of people’s knowledge about categories is called psychological essentialism
Know the basic symptoms of ASD
Usually emerges in the first 3 years and persists throughout a person’s life
The presence of difficulties in social interactions and communication combined with the presence of repetitive/restricted interests, cognitions and behaviours
Slowed processing of faces
Distinguish the components of the social brain and understand their differences in ASD
The social perception of the social brain = the initial stages in the processing of information that culminates the accurate analysis of the dispositions and intentions of other individuals
Brothers had suggested the social brain→ a set of interconnected neuroanatomical structures that process social information, enabling the recognition of other individuals and the evaluation their mental states (eg intentions, dispositions, desires and beliefs)
Consists of the amygdala, the orbital frontal cortex (OFC), fusiform gyrus (FG), the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) region, etc
Amygdala helps us recognize the emotional states of others
fMRI and ERP have been used to understand people with autism’s social brain
Individuals with ASD
Display reduced sensitivity to biological motion (children)
Have reduced activity in the STS during biological motion perception
People at an increased genetic risk for ASD but who do not develop symptoms of the disorder (eg unaffected siblings of individuals with ASD( show increased activity in this region→ hypothesized to be a compensatory mechanism to offset genetic vulnerability
People with autism do not have a “functioning” social brain
Give examples of the role and function in each of the three areas described
Intrapersonal→ emotions help us act quickly with minimal conscious awareness (eg disgust)
Emotions prepare the body for immediate action
Emotions influence thoughts
Emotions motivate future behaviours
Interpersonal→ expressed both verbally through words and non-verbally (eg communication throughout humans)
Emotional expressions facilitate specific behaviours in perceivers
Emotional expressions signal the nature of interpersonal relationships
Emotional expressions provide incentives for desired social behaviour
Social referencing→ a process whereby infants seek out information from others to clarify a situation and then use that information to act (eg visual cliff experiment)
Social and cultural→ hungry→ goes to the store to buy food
Identify the five features that distinguish emerging adulthood from other life stages
The age of identity explorations The age of instability The self-focused age The age of feeling in-between The age of possibilities
Explain research approaches to studying aging
Cross-sectional studies provide information with age-group differences
Both life course and life span researchers generally rely on longitudinal studies to examine hypotheses about different patterns of aging associated with the effects of biogenetic, life history, social and personal factors
The psychometric approach has identified two categories of intelligence that show different rates of change across the life span
Subjective age is a multidimensional construct that indicates how old (or young) a person feels and into which a person categories him/herself
Asking people how satisfied when they are own aging assesses an evaluative component of age identity
Measures of global subjective well-being assess individuals’ overall perceptions of their lives
Hedonic well-being refers to the emotional component of well-being and includes measures of positive and negative affect
The pattern of positive affect across the adult life is similar to that of global well-being
Average life expectancy
Compare and contrast satisfaction and satisfactoriness
Satisfactoriness (competence)
Satisfaction (fulfillment)
The individual is motivated to maintain contact with the environment and the environment is motivated to retain the individual; if one of these dimensions is dis-correspondent the individual is motivated to leave the environment/the environment is motivated to dismiss
Discuss why the model of talent development offered in this module places equal emphasis on assessing the person and assessing the environment
Theory of Work Adjustment
Provides a useful organizational scheme for this treatment by outlining critical dimensions of human individuality for performance in learning and work settings (and in transitioning between such settings)
Places equal emphasis on assessing the individual (abilities and interests) and the environment (response requirements and reward structures)
Understand the issue of an “ability threshold” beyond which more ability may/may not matter
Certain intelligence metrics may indicate an ability threshold, where assessment and criterion measures show no variance and thus no covariance past a certain point (eg IQ > 137)
For this reason once an ability threshold is crossed more ability does not matter and will not translate into increased performance
Ability thresholds may be falsely indicated in cases where appropriate assessment methods lack sufficient scope in the extreme range being observed (eg gifted/intellectually talented populations)
Modern methods which measure g in its full scope can correct for these errors
