Lecture 3: Cognitive Development Flashcards
Jean Piaget
- Father of field of cognitive development
- In 1920, worked at the Binet Institute on intelligence tests (convert IQ tests into french)
- at the time, it was thought that essentially children were just dumb adults.
- Piaget intrigued by children’s wrong answers (there were patterns to their answers)
- Piaget proposed that:
- Children’s thinking is qualitatively different from adults’ thinking
- Cognition grows and develops through a series of stages
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
4 stages:
2-7-11
Properties of Piaget’s Stage Theory
- Children at different stages think in qualitatively different ways
- Thinking at each stage influences thinking across diverse topics
- Brief transitional period at the end of each stage (they are in that stage until they are no longer in that stage - very brief transition period)
- The stages are universal (not culture dependent) and the order is always the same!!
Sensorimotor Stage - general info
Sensorimotor stage (<2 years)
* Infants live in the here-and-now (no concept of past or future)
* Gain knowledge about the world through movements and sensations
* Learning is mainly focused on causality (learning about cause and effect).
* Kind of movement the baby wil engage in depends on the period its in (regardless of the stage, still differences within the stage)
Detailed explanation of sensorimotor stage
0 - 4 month olds: Interact with world via reflexes and repeat pleasurable actions
* Indicates interest in own bodies
4 - 8 month olds: Repeat actions towards objects
to produce a desired outcome (if pleasurable they will repeat over and over again).
* Indicates interest in the world, beyond own body
* Allows for formation of connections between own actions and consequences in the world
8 - 12 month olds: Combine several actions to achieve a goal (more sophisticated - they have a goal in mind)
* Indicates that actions are clearly intentional (requires coordination of several movements)
* Emergence of object permanence
12 - 18 month olds: Trial-and-error experiments to
see how outcome changes
* Keep repeating an action to see if something changes/learning about the event. Indication that kids are trying to learn from the world by taking on the role of discovering and learning
* E.g. Varying the height from which an object is dropped
* Allows for greater understanding of cause-effect relations
18 - 24 month olds: Mental representation
* Fully developed object permanence as indicated by
deferred imitation (copy someones actions or words not immediately after, either hours or days later).
* Allows for symbolic thoughts
Object Permanence
- Understanding that objects continue to exist even though they can no longer be seen or heard (peak-a-boo)
- Develops around 8 months
- Tested by seeing how a baby reacts to an object being hidden
Object Permanence Test
- hides the object, does not know where it is.
- but after 8 months, it will move the cover over and point at object.
Object permanence conclusions
- Knowing that objects continue to exist even though they can no longer be seen or heard
- Develops around 8 months
- Tested by seeing how a baby reacts to an object being hidden
- If doesn’t look for object or gets upset = no object permanence
- If looks for object = developed object permanence
- 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
- Evidence that initial object permanence is fragile
- Disappears around 12 months of age
A-not-B Error
- looks for object in old location even though watched the person put it in new location
Preoperational Stage
Preoperational Stage (Ages 2 – 7)
* Capacity for Symbolic thought (mental representation): The ability to think about objects or events that are not within the immediate environment
- Enables language acquisition (we see a huge vocabulary spurt).
- Ability to use symbolic representation
- Evidenced through ability to engage in pretend play and drawing
Preoperational Stage
- Egocentrism: Perceiving the world solely from one’s own point of view (difficulty understanding what the world is like for other people).
- Examples:
- difficulties taking another person’s spatial perspective
ie: Spatial perspective task: switched where he was sitting but the model was the same - observes different things and when asked what the other person is seing he answers with what he can see…
- egocentric speech: looks like they are having a convo but the content is often not at all related. each kid is having a monologue essentialy to each other. - Sign of progress = increase in children’s verbal arguments - Means that a child is at least paying attention to another perspective
Egocentric Speech
- Jenny: My bunny slippers are brown and red. And they have eyes and ears and these noses that wiggle.
- Chris: I’m going to the beach.
- Jenny: We bought them. My mommy did. We couldn’t find the old ones. These are like the old ones. They were not in the trunk.
- Chris: I’m going to build a sand castle. A big one!
Preoperational Stage
- Centration: tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event to the exclusion of other relevant features
- difficulties with conservation concept: merely changing the appearance of an object does not change the objects’ other key properties
Piaget’s Conservation Task
Many variations of this task
Concrete Operational Stage
Concrete Operational Stage (Ages 7-12)
* Less egocentric so can think about others’ perspective
* Can reason logically about concrete objects and events (passing the conservation task too)
- Decentration: understanding that something can stay the same in quantity even though it looks different
- Reversibility: the capacity to think through a series of steps and then mentally reverse direction, returning to the starting point
- Seriation: the ability to order items along a quantitative dimension, such as length or weight
* Cannot think in purely abstract/hypothetical terms (need a physical object) - without the physical object (cookies vs fraction) it is harder for them to logic.
Formal Operational Stage
Formal Operational Stage (Ages 12 and Up)
* Can think abstractly (cognitive capacity to reason)
- Allows them to be interested in politics, ethics, science fiction, and to reason scientifically
* Ability to engage in deductive and scientific reasoning
* Not universal
- Not all adolescents or adults reach it
Piaget’s Pendulum Problem
- Test of deductive reasoning
- Determine the influence of weight and string length on the time it takes for the pendulum to swing back and forth
- Unbiased experiments require varying only one variable at a time
- Children under 12 perform unsystematic experiments and draw incorrect conclusions (not able to do experiment explained below).
is it the lenght of the string or the weight that has more of an affect on the pendulum???
- they need to conduct an experiment… to figure this out.
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development (Summary)
Sensorimotor (birth – 2 years old):
* Rely on senses and actions to learn about the world and are particularly interested in causality
* By the end of this stage, achieve object permanence
Preoperational (2-7 years old):
* Symbolic thought
* Thinking characterized by egocentrism and centration
Concrete Operational (7-12 years old):
* Begin to think logically about concrete objects
* Can see the world from other perspectives
* Understand that events are influenced by multiple factors
Formal Operational (12 years old and up)
* Can think systemically and abstractly
***review practice question: child hides their face behind their hands and believes that others cannot see them –> this is characteristic to the preoperational face??
Piaget on How Children Learn
- Children’s progress through stages is governed by brain maturation as well as exposure to certain concepts (essentially developing nature + nurture)
- Children actively shape their knowledge of the world
- Not passive
- Children have ideas about the world, perform experiments, and draw conclusions from observations –> learn from the outcome of their experiments. - Children are capable of learning on their own
- Do not depend on instruction from others - Children are intrinsically motivated to learn
- Do not require rewards from other people
Piaget was avant-guard and very influential
Strengths of Piaget’s Theory
- Provides a good overview of children’s thinking at different ages that is largely accurate
- Exceptional breadth:
- Spans the lifespan
- Examines many cognitive operations and concepts
Applications of Piaget’s Theory to Education
- Children’s distinctive ways of thinking at different ages need to be considered in deciding how to teach them
- E.g., cannot teach kids in concrete operational state about calculus (no point - they have not reached ability to do this yet).
- Children learn best by interacting with the environment
- Hands-on learning
- Experiments
Weaknesses of Piaget’s Theory
- Theory depicts children’s thinking as more consistent than it is (and he thought it developes much less incrementaly then it really does)
- Stage theory inadequately explains individual differences in cognitive development
- Theory is vague about the mechanisms of cognitive growth
- Children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized
- Theory underestimates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development (kids are hugely influenced by their caregivers and world)
- New theories have emerged to address some of these…
Information Processing View
- Children’s cognitive growth occurs continuously, in small increments
- Cognitive development arises from children gradually overcoming their processing limitations via improvements in cognitive skills
- Especially improvements in executive functioning skills
Executive Functions
- Executive Functions: Abilities involved in controlling and coordinating attention and behaviours involved in goal-directed actions
- 3 basic skills:
1. Inhibitory control: ability to ignore distraction and to resist making an automatic response in favour of another response
2. Working memory: ability to hold information in mind and manipulate it
3. Cognitive flexibility: ability to selectively switch mental processes to generate an appropriate response, such as switching between rules and tasks (any task switching that relies on inhibitory control).
Day-Night Stroop Task
- Assesses inhibitory control
- Slowed reaction time on incongruent trials (e.g. “day” in response to moon) vs. congruent trials (e.g. “night” in response to moon)
Dimensional Card Sorting Task
Assesses cognitive flexibility (simmilar to Wisconcin card sorting task)
* Requires children to sort cards based on one rule and then to sort based on a new rule
(ie: sort by colour, sort by animal…)
Development of Executive Functions
- Big improvements between ages 3-6
- E.g. 3 year olds typically fail dimensional card sorting task but 4 year olds and older can adapt sorting to the new rule
- this is the age that kids love to play simon says… this is why they love it (challenging for them to inhibit the action when they don;t hear simon - for 6 years old this is too easy because cognitive function has improved).
- Improvements also continue into adolescence
- Due to brain maturation, especially in the prefrontal cortex
- age of 2/3 - we start to see synaptic pruning (decline in neural connection)
- We see differences in kids because the brain is maturing at different rates.
Implications of Executive Functioning Differences (Study)
- Childhood differences in executive functioning predict many important adult outcomes (assessed outcome at age 32)
- Study: Children with worse executive functioning at age 5 had worse outcomes as adults, controlling for intelligence and childhood SES
- more likely to be dependent on substances and less healthy, lower income and socioeconomic status, more likely to have criminal record.
Drawbridge Study (used to find the new age for when object permanence is established).
- Results: 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 (way younger than piaget):
- have object permanence
- understand that solid objects can’t go through another solid object (physical law about the world).
- Implications: Suggests that understanding of physical properties of solid objects is innate
Infant Understanding of Gravity
- Do infants understand gravity?
- Study: Violation of expectation paradigm with 3 month olds:
- test: either saw a heand reach out and place a box vs impossible event: place a box past a support but then the box would not fall.
- Which event do the infants look at longer? Look longer at the box suspended in the midair because it is inconsistent with their knowledge
Infants’ Understanding of Numbers
- Do infants have a basic concept of numbers?
-
Study: Habituation paradigm with 6 month olds
- Habituation: shown a series of displays containing 16 dots
- Dots of different sizes and arrangement on each display
- Habituation: shown a series of displays containing 16 dots
- Test:
- Same number: 16 dots
- New number: 8 dots
Expected to look longer at the 8 dots
Approximate Number Sense (ANS)
- easier to be right using the approximate number sense (ANS) in larger ratios as opposed to smaller ratios
Foundations of Differences in Math Ability
- Research shows a positive correlation between infant ANS and preschool math ability
- Suggests that ANS lays the foundation for later math ability (not the only factor in math ability)
Statistical Learning in Infancy
- Study: Habituation-paradigm with 2 month olds
- Habituated to sequence of 3 pairs of shapes
- First shape in a pair always came before the second shape in the pair (always presented in the same order). - Test: Showed familiar sequence or novel sequence
- Familiar sequence: same pairs of shapes
- Novel sequence: randomly ordering the same shapes (no pattern) –> same shape but completely random assortment.
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
- Scaffolding should be geared towards ZDP
- ZDP: The difference between what a child can do without help and what they can achieve with scaffolding from a caregiver
- just outside of what a kid can succesfully accomplish themselves but not too far that they can’t accomplish it with help.
HOME – Emotional Support Items
Image of infant/toddler checklist
Highlighted = the ones that convey emotional support the most
HOME – Cognitive Stimulation Items
Highlighted = the ones that convey cognitive stimulation the most
Poverty Matters
- Children in low SES households tend to score lower on IQ and academic achievements tests
- average of children with low SES = scoring lower for reading and math abilities - Due to numerous factors:
- Inadequate nutrition can interfere with brain development
- Greater chance of conflict between caregivers which results in emotional distress which interferes with learning (stress & conflict)
- Lower quality home environment (lower emotional support and cognitive stimulation)
- Higher SES is positively correlated with HOME
Home Environment and SES
- SES moderates the impact of home environment on IQ
- For low SES families, differences in IQ are almost completely explained by family environment, with genes playing almost no role
- For high SES families, differences in IQ are almost completely explained by genetics
- Suggests that low SES children do not get to develop their full genetic cognitive potential
- Good home environment = more likely to reach the full genetic potential
Number of Risk Factors Matters Most
- The more environmental risk factors in a child’s environment, the lower the child’s IQ score
- Indicates that the number of risk factors present matters more than the presence of any particular risk factor
- low SES family does not guarantee low IQ —> it is just harder (general trend)
