Lecture 3 - Cognitive development 2

Question 1

Kelman and Spelke?

Answer 1

• habituated 4 month old infants to a rod with an occluder in the middle
• infants then habituated
• they dishabituate to a broken rod but not one that’s intact
• this suggests that they were perceiving the object as being whole without ever seeing it being whole
• this means they have some representation of the object

Question 2

Speke’s theory of core knowledge?

Answer 2

• believes that infants have many core capacities available to them
• these cannot be seen in search paradigms but can be observed with looking measurements

Question 3

What are the 4 core cognitive capacities?

Answer 3

1. agents and actions
2. object representation
3. number
4. space

Question 4

Actions?

Answer 4

• if infants see a hand moving to grab something and then change goals they look for longer
• but we must keep in mind that looking times are a fragile measurement - effects are small and some inferences have been oversold

Question 5

Objects?

Answer 5

• infants perceive the unity of a partly hidden object by analysing the movements and configuration of its visible surfaces

Question 6

Drawbridge study?

Answer 6

• infants shown miniature drawbridge that flipped up and down with nothing in its path = habituation trials
• some infants saw a possible event = the drawbridge began to flip and then stopped as if impeded by the box
• others saw an impossible event: the drawbridge began to flip and continue as if unimpeded by the box
• results:
  -> dishabituation
  -> infants spent more time looking at the impossible event
  -> this suggests that that they knew the box existed even when they could not see it

Question 7

Criticisms of the drawbridge study?

Answer 7

• individual variation: in the drawbridge study only fast habituators show the effects
• need for careful control: when habituated to the impossible event, babies looked longer at the possible events: just interested in novelty?

Question 8

Number?

Answer 8

• do 6-month-olds have an ‘approximate number’ system for distinguishing between large sets?
• each habituation set varies the size and layout of the dots but keeps their numbers constant
• each test set keeps constant the display density
• result: 6 month-olds looked longer at the new number than at the old number, therefore they can discriminate between a set of 8 and a set of 16
• they cannot discriminate between 8 and 12 in this way, so it is only approximate

Question 9

Criticisms?

Answer 9

• infants may have been responding not to a number but to ‘contour length’
• if during habituation, infants were paying attention to contour length then in the test they could of looked longer at the novel number purely because it had a very different contour length - not because they perceived number

Question 10

Space?

Answer 10

• the Blue Wall study
• if they loose their sense of direction, rats can use geometric information to reorient themselves, so can human adults, what about young children?
• result: children search at geometrically correct corners equally often, not so often at other 2 corners
• Spelke concludes that they have a geometric module for reorientation, which is impervious to colour information

Question 11

Criticisms?

Answer 11

• the room used was very small so not surprising that an infant can search in that small area
• toddlers do use colour for reorientation in a large room

Question 12

Gopnik?

Answer 12

• argues that very young infants think like scientists
• they are observing the statistics of their environments: forming and testing hypotheses and revising their theories on the basis of new data
• contrast with Piaget who thought young children were irrational and illogical

Question 13

Inferring causality?

Answer 13

• Are 3-4 year olds able to learn about causes? (Gopnik & Sobel 2000)
• Children are given experience of objects (‘blickets’) which had a new causal power: the ability to make a machine (‘blicket detector’) light up
• Child is shown that 2 of these make it light up & play music and 2 don’t
• Then told ‘this one is a blicket’, can you show me another blicket?
• Results: they choose the one with the same causal powers on 74% of the trials

Question 14

Spelke vs Gopnik

Answer 14

• Spelke:
  -> knowledge is innate
  -> knowledge is domain specific
  -> learning as consolidation & enrichment of the starting position
  -> learning through language & symbol systems
• Gopnik:
  -> some innate knowledge
  -> knowledge is not domain specific
  -> learning can fundamentally alter the existing understanding
  -> learning through exploration & seeking out evidence