Midterm 2 Flashcards
what are three benefits to knowing about developmental theories?
1) provide a framework for understanding important phenomena –> organize understanding of many individual cognitive changes
2) raise crucial questions about human nature –> motivate new research (that supports/denies/refines theories)
3) lead to a better understanding of children
what does Piaget’s theory about removing objects from an child’s sight?
removing an object from an infant younger than 8 months sight should lead the infant to act as if the object never existed - don’t realize that hidden objects still exist
others have challenged this and said that they do understand hidden objects still exist but it’s because they lack the memory or problem-solving skills necessary to retrieve hidden objects
what was the experiment that supported Piaget’s claim about infants and objects that are out of sight?
Munakata tested whether 7 mo failure to reach for a hidden object was due to their lacking the motivation or the reaching skill to retrieve them vs. not knowing they exist
they placed an attractive toy under a transparent cover instead of an opaque one and in this situation infants quickly removed the cover and regained the toy –> supports page’s original interpretation by showing that neither lack of motivation nor lack of ability to reach for a toy explained why infant’s failed to retrieve hidden objects
what was Diamond’s experiment on Piaget’s theory?
he used an opaque (solid) covering like piaget and varied the amount of time between when the toy was hidden and when the infant was allowed to reach for it
6 mo could find the toy if allowed to look immediately
7 mo could wait 2 seconds and still find it
8 mo could wait 4 seconds…etc
indicated that memory for the location of hidden objects as well as the understanding that they continue to exist is crucial to success in the task
what is cognitive development?
growth in:
- perception
- attention
- language
- problem solving
- reasoning
- memory
- conceptual understanding
- intelligence
what is social development?
growth in:
- emotions
- personality
- relationships
- self understanding
- agression
- moral behavior
no one theory has captured the entirety of child development, there’s too much to cover
what are the 4 influential theories of cognitive development?
1) Piaget’s theory
2) Sociocultural theories
3) Core-knowledge theories
4) Information-processing theories
5) dynamic-systems
what is the main question addressed in Piaget’s theory?
- nature-nurture
- continuity/discontinuity
- the active child
what is the main question addressed in the information-processing theory?
- nature-nurture
- how change occurs
what is the main question addressed in the sociocultural theory?
- nature-nurture
- influence of the sociocultural context
- how change occurs
what is the main question addressed in the dynamic systems theory?
- nature-nurture,
- the active child
- how change occurs
why does Piaget’s theory have longevity?
1920: the first cognitive development theory
- it conveys the texture of children’s thinking at different ages
- breadth: all encompassing
- offers intuitively plausible depiction of nature and nurture
what are Piaget’s 3 fundamental assumption about children?
1) they are mentally and physically active from the moment of birth and their activity greatly contributes to their own development
2) children learn many more important lessons on their own rather than depending on instruction from adults or older children
3) children are intrinsically motivated to learn and do not need rewards from other people to do so - when they acquire new capability they apply it as often as possible and they reflect on the lessons of their experience
what is Piaget’s theory often labeled as?
contructivist
because it depicts children as constructing knowledge for themselves in response to their experiences
what are the three most important of the child’s constructive processes according to Piaget?
1) generating hypotheses
2) performing experiments
3) drawing conclusions
“the child as a scientist”
what incident highlights Piaget’s third basic assumption?
a kid counts pebbles in a row and gets 10
he counts them in the other direction and gets 10
he puts them in a circle and counts 10 again
what incident highlights Piaget’s second basic assumption?
1) a kid is holding a box and a doll, he reaches out his arm and let’s them fall - he varies the position of the fall
2) when the object falls in a new position, e.g. on a pillow, he lets it fall a couple more times on the same place to study the spatial relation
what topics did Piaget’s theory address?
- infant cognition
- language development
- conceptual development
- mathematical and scientific reasoning
- moral development
what was Piaget’s stance on nature and nurture
Piaget believed that nature and nurture interact to produce cognitive development
nurture includes parents, caregivers, every experience a child encounters
nurture includes a child’s maturing brain/body, their ability to perceive/act/learn from experience, their tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent knowledge
a vital part of children’s nature is to respond to their nurture
how are two ways that nature and nurture interact to form cognitive development?
1) adaptation
2) organization
what are the main sources of continuity in Piaget’s theory?
1) assimilation
2) accommodation
3) equilibrium
work together from birth to account for continuities
what is assimilation?
the process by which people incorporate incoming information into concepts they already understand
ex. a two year old sees a man who’s bald on top of his head and has long frizzy hair on the sides - the kid starts yelling “clown” because the man looked enough like a clown that the kid could assimilate him to his clown concept
what is accommodation?
the process by which people improve their current understanding in response to new experiences
ex. the kid’s dad explains that even though the man’s hair looked like a clown, he wasn’t actually a clown because he wasn’t wearing a funny costume/doing silly things - the kid uses their new information to accommodate his clown concept to the standard one = allows other men with bald spots and long hair to pass by
what is equilibrium?
the process by which children balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding
what are the three phases of equilibrium?
1) children are satisfied with their understanding of a particular phenomena (equilibrium)
2) when new information leads kids to perceive that their understanding is inadequate - they recognize the shortcomings in their understanding of the phenomenon but cannot generate a superior alternative(disequilibrium)
3) they develop more sophisticate understanding that eliminates the shortcomings of the old one = more advanced equilibrium
what are the central properties of Piaget’s stage theory?
1) Qualitative change
2) Broad applicability
3) Brief transitions
4) Invariant sequence
what is qualitative change?
Children of different ages (and at different stages) think in different ways
a 5 year old judges morality in terms of consequences
an 8 year old judges it based on intent
what is broad applicability?
the type of thinking at each stage influences children’s thinking across diverse topics and contexts
what are brief transitions?
before entering a new stage, children pass through a brief transitional period in which they fluctuate between the type of thinking characteristic of the new more advanced stage and of the old less advanced stage
Transitions to higher stages of thinking are not necessarily continuous.
what is an invariant sequence?
everyone progresses through the stages in the same order without skipping any of them
The sequences of stages are stable for all people through all time. Stages are not skipped.
what were Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development?
1) sensorimotor stage
2) preoperational stage
3) concrete operational stage
4) formal operational stage
what is the sensorimotor stage? when does it take place?
the first stage of Piaget’s developmental theory
birth - 2 years
- an infant’s knowledge is tied to their sensory and motor abilities which they use to explore/perceive the world
- these abilities allow them to learn about objects and people and construct concepts like time, space, causality
- live in the here and now: their knowledge is bound to their immediate perceptions/actions
- fail tests of the object concept
what is the proportional stage? when does it take place?
second stage of Piaget’s developmental theory
2-7 years old
- Objects and events are represented by mental symbols
- able to represent their experiences in language and mental imagery
- allows them to remember experiences for longer periods and form more sophisticated concepts
- can’t perform certain mental operations: considering multiple dimensions simultaneously (the pouring the water into a taller glass and thinking there’s more = fails test of conservation)
what is the concrete operational stage? when does it take place?
third stage of Piaget’s developmental theory
7-12 years old
- children can reason logically about concrete objects and events: understand pouring water into a taller glass doesn’t mean there’s more)
- cannot think in purely abstract terms of generate systematic scientific experiments to test their beliefs
- Fails to engage in systematic hypothesis testing
what is the formal operational stage? when does it take place?
final step in Piaget’s developmental theory
12 years and beyond
- children can reason abstractly and hypothetically
- can perform systematic scientific experiments and draw appropriate conclusions from them - even when the conclusion differs from their prior belief
how much does the weight of the brain change between 0-3 years old?
triples in weight
children’s thinking grows especially rapidly in the first few years
what did piaget believe was the foundation of intelligence?
reflexes
- visually track objects in front of them
- suck on objects placed in their mouths
- turn towards a noise
what is adaptation?
Children respond to the demands of the environment in ways that meet their own goals
babies suck on everything the same way when they’re born no matter what it is - after a couple weeks they suck on a nipple different than a finger or pacifier
children accommodate their actions to the parts of the environment with which they interact
what is organization?
Children integrate particular observations into a body of coherent knowledge
organize seperate reflexes into larger behaviors which are mostly centered on their own bodies - ex. instead of being limited to grasping and sucking separately, they can integrate them and grasp and object then bring it to their mouth to suck on it
their reflexes serve as building blocks for more complex behaviors
what is repetition?
infants become increasingly interested in the world around them and objects/events beyond their own bodies
a signal of this shift is repetition of action son the environment that produce pleasurable or interesting results (shaking a rattle)
what is substage 1 of the sensorimotor stage? when does it happen?
Reflexive Activity
birth to 1 month
- Building knowledge through reflexes (grasping, sucking)
- No attempt to locate objects that have disappeared
what is substage 2 of the sensorimotor stage? when does it happen?
Primary Circular reactions
1-4 months
- Reflexes are organized into larger, integrated behaviors (grasping a rattle and bringing it to the mouth to suck)
- Still no attempt to locate objects that have disappeared.
what is substage 3 of the sensorimotor stage? when does it happen?
Secondary Circular Reactions
4-8 months
- Repetition of actions on the environment that bring out pleasing or interesting results (banging a rattle).
- Search for objects that have dropped from view or are partially hidden
what is substage 4 of the sensorimotor stage? when does it happen?
Coordination of Secondary Reactions
8-12 months
- Mentally representing objects when objects can no longer be seen, thus achieving“object permanence.”
- Search for completely hidden objects but makes “A-not-B error.”
what is object permanence?
the knowledge that objects continue to exist even when they are out of view
Piaget thought that through the age of 8 months, infants lack object permanence - they are only able to think about the objects that they can perceive at the moment
what is A-not-B-error?
in this error, once 8 to 12 month olds have reached for and found a hidden object several times in one place (location A), when they see the object hidden at a different place (location B) and are prevented from immediately searching for it, they tend to reach where they initially found the objects (A)
what is substage 5 of the sensorimotor stage? when does it happen?
Tertiary Circular
12 to 18 months
- Actively and avidly exploring the possible uses to which objects can be used: “child as a scientist” (bang things, pour things out, dump paper into toilet)
- Ability to follow visible displacements of an object - consistently search for an object at it’s current hidden location (look at B not A)
what is substage 6 of the sensorimotor stage? when does it happen?
Symbolic Thought
18-24 months
- Able to form enduring mental representations, as demonstrated by“deferred imitation,”the repetition of others’ behaviors minutes, hours, or days after it has occurred
- Ability to follow invisible displacements
what is deferred imitation?
the repetition of other people’s behavior minutes, hours, or even days after it occurred
what are the trends visible in Piaget’s account of cognitive development during infancy?
1) at first infant’s actives are centered on their own bodies - later they include the word around them
2) early goals are concrete (shaking a rattle and listen to its sound) but later goals are more abstract (verifying heights from which objects are dropped and seeing how the effects vary)
3) infants become increasingly able to form mental representations, moving from “out of sight,out of mind” to remembering a playmate’s actions from yesterday
what is Piaget’s preoperational stage?
ages 2-7: the development of symbolic representations, that is, the use of one object to stand for another (2-7 years)
limits:
- egocentrism
- centration
what is symbolic representation?
the use of one object to stand for another
ex. using a card as an iPhone
- as they develop they rely less on self-generated symbols and more on conventional ones (wearing an eyepatch when being a pirate, a stick becomes a horse)
- heightened symbolic capabilities also evident in growth of drawing (flowers have leaves)
what is egocentrism?
limitation of looking at the world only from one’s own point of view
ex. preschooler’s difficulty in taking other people’s spatial perspectives
experiment: had 4 year olds sit at a table in front of a model of three mountains of different sizes and were asked to identify which of the several photographs depicted what a doll would see if it were sitting on chairs at various locations around the table - solving this required children to recognize that their own perspective wasn’t the only possible one and to imagine what the view would be from another location - most can’t
ex. communication: often talk right past each other, only focused on what they’re saying
ex. when they say things that require knowledge that they have but their listeners clearly don’t (when they tell a teacher “he took it from me”)
over the course of the preoperational stage egocentric speech becomes less common - sign of progress is verbal quarrels because it indicates that a child is paying attention to the playmate’s perspective/comments - they’re also better able to envision spatial perspectives
what is centration?
focusing on a single, perceptually striking feature to the exclusion of other relevant but less striking features
ex. if more weight is on one side of the scale but closer to the center and on the other side it’s less weight but it’s on the edge - the kids will say that the side with more weight will go down and completely ignore the distance of the weights from the fulcrum
ex. conservation concept
what is the conservation concept?
that merely changing the appearance or arrangement of objects doesn’t necessarily change other key properties such as quantity of the material
center their attention on the single, perceptually salient dimension of heigh or length and ignore other relevant dimensions - their egocentrism leads them to fail to understand that their own perspective can be misleading
have a tendency to focus on static states of objects (appearance of objects after transformation) and ignore the transformation that was performed
what are three variants of the conservation concept?
1) conservation of liquid quantity (taller, narrower glass has more orange juice)
2) conservation of solid quantity (long thin clay has more clay than short thick one)
3) conservation of number (spread out coins are more than compact ones)
all employ a three phase procedure
what is Piaget’s concrete operational stage?
ages 7-12: Stage in which logical thinking begins - begin to reason logically about concrete features of the world
Exemplified by the conservation concept. Children understand the conservation concept when they understand that changing the appearance or arrangement of objects does not change their key properties - they’re able to consider multiple dimensions (also passed the balance scale problem)
this advanced reasoning is limited to concrete situations - thinking systematically and reasoning about hypothetical situations is still hard
ex. pendulum problem
what is the pendulum experiment
tests concrete operational stage
a kid gets multiple strings and weights and is told to perform experiments that indicate which factor(s) influence the amount of time it takes the pendulum to swing through a complete arc
most kids begin by thinking the heaviness of weights is the most/only important factor –> most concrete operation reasoners design biased experiments from which no valid conclusion can be drawn (put a heavy weight on a short string and drop it from a lower position then a light weight on a long string dropped from a lower position) –> when the heavier string goes faster they conclude that just as they thought the heavier one goes faster
this premature conclusion reflects their limited ability to think systematically or to imagine all possible combinations of variables (don’t consider that the faster motion might be related to string length or height rather than weight)
what is Piaget’s formal operational stage?
ages 12 and beyond: the ability to think abstractly and reason hypothetically and engage in scientific thinking
ex. when presented with the pendulum problem, they see that any of the variables might influence the time it takes for the pendulum to swing through an arc so you have to test the effect of each systematically
Piaget believed this stage isn’t universal - not everyone reaches it
what are the weaknesses in Piaget’s theory?
1) the stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it is
2) infants and young children are more cognitively competent that Piaget recognized - greatly underestimated their abilities - used really hard tests like making the kid wait to look for hidden object
3) understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development - focuses only on how children come to understand the world in their own efforts
4) it’s vague about the cognitive processes that give rise to children’s thinking and about the mechanisms that produce cognitive growth - what makes children think a particular way? what produces changes in their thinking?
what are some of the questions that developmental psychologists address with respect to infant’s learning?
1) what age the different forms of learning appear
2) in what ways learning in infancy is related to later cognitive abilities
3) the extent to which infants find some things easier or more difficult to learn
what does piaget think our innate cognitive capacities are?
reflexes + motivation
core knowledge: evolved, special-purpose learning mechanisms
habituation
the occurrence of habituation in response to repeated stimulation reveals that learning has taken place - the infant has formed a memory representation of the repeated and now familiar stimulus
the speed at which an infant habituated is believed to reflect the general efficiency of the infant’s processing of information
what indicated the general efficiency of an infant’s processing of information?
the speed with which an infant habituates
duration of looking
degree of novelty preference
infants who habituate relatively rapidly take short looks at visual stimuli and/or who show a greater preference for novelty stimuli tend to have higher IQs when tested as 18 year olds
what is differentiation?
extracting from events in the environment the relation between those elements that are constant - a key process in perceptual learning
ex. infants learn the association between tone of voice and facial expression because in their experience a pleasant happy or eagerly excited ton of voice occurs with a smiling face
what are affordances?
the possibilities for action offered, or afforded, by objects and situations - perceptual learning
ex. the discover that small objects, but not large ones, afford the possibility of being picked up, that liquid affords the possibility of being poured/spilled
infants discover affordances by figuring out the relations between their own bodies and abilities and the things around them
relationship between learning and sight/sound
learning is not required to detect an event involving sight and sound as unitary
ex. a baby naturally perceives a single, coherent event the first time he sees and hears a crystal goblet crashing to the floor
BUT
one dos have to learn what particular sights and sounds go together so only through experience does the baby know that a particular tinkling sound means a glass is being broken
statistical learning in infants
when the order of appearance of one or more of the shapes the infants looked longer when the structure inherent in the initial set was violated (if the cross always followed the square but then they changed it to a circle after the square)
newborn infants track statistical regularities which suggests they’re available at/before birth
statistical learning has been important in language learning - infants proper patterns that have some variability over patterns that are simple = Goldilocks effect
what is the goldilocks effect?
avoiding patterns that are either too easy or too hard while continuing to focus on those that are just right given the infant’s learning abilities –> suggests that infants allocate attention differently to different learning problems, preferentially attending to those patterns that are the most informative
what are the types of learning?
1) habituation
2) perceptual learning
3) statistical learning
4) classical conditioning
5) instrumental conditioning
6) observational learning/imitation
7) rational learning
what is classical conditioning?
Ivan Pavlov
a form of learning that consists of associating an initially neutral stimulus with a stimulus that always evokes a particular reflexive response (ringing a bell and salivating dogs)
ex. when a baby’s sucking motions begin to occur just at the sigh of the bottle of milk
what is an unconditioned stimulus?
a stimulus that evokes a reflexive, unlearned response
the nipple in the infant’s mouth
what is an unconditioned response?
a reflexive response that is elicited by the unconditioned stimulus (the sucking reflex)
what is the conditioned stimulus?
the neutral stimulus that is repeatedly paired with the unconditioned stimulus (the bottle/breast)
repeatedly occurs just before the unconditioned stimulus(the baby can see the bottle before receiving the nipple)
what is a conditioned response?
the originally reflexive response that comes to be elicited by the conditioned stimulus (anticipatory sucking movements now begins soon as the baby sees the breast or bottle - the sight of the bottle has become a signal of what will follow)
what is instrumental conditioning?
aka operant conditioning
involves learning the relationship between one’s own behavior and the reward or punishment it results in
what is positive reinforcement?
part of instrumental conditioning
a reward that reliably follows a behavior and increases the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated
ex. push a lever which causes a toy train to move along a track
ex. 2 m.o. had a string tied around their ankle and when they kicked it made the mobile above them move
what is a contingency relation?
related to positive reinforcement
if the infant makes the target response, then he or she receives the reinforcement
what were the results of the instrumental conditioning mobile experiment
1) 3 m.o. remember the kicking response for about 1 week whereas 6 m.o. remember it for 2 weeks
2) infants younger than 6 m.o. remember the kicking response only when the test mobile is identical to the training mobile whereas older infants remember it with novel mobiles
imitation box experiment
kids as young as 6-9 moths imitated touching their foreheads to a box if they saw a model doing it
however if they model was clutching a shawl and saying they were cold, the kid would touch the box with their hand because they reason that the model would’ve touched it with their hand if they could’ve - based on intentions
imitation dumbell experiment
if 18 m.o. saw an adult trying but failing to pull apart a small dumbbell toy, the infants when given the toy would pull the two ends apart imitating what the adult had intended to do, not what they had actually done
established that infants’ imitative actions are limited to human acts because when a different group of 18 m.o. watched a mechanical device w/ pincers grasp and either pull apart or slip trying to, they rarely attempted to pull apart the dumbbell themselves
what is the mirror neuron system?
first observed in nonhuman primates
this system becomes activated when the monkey engages in an action or when the macaque merely observed another monkey/human engaging in an action, as though the macaque itself were engaging in the same action
what is rational learning?
it involves integrating the learner’s prior beliefs and biases with what actually occurs in the environment
violation-of-expectation paradigms
ex. in a box filled with balls, 70 are blue and 5 are white. when the experimenter draw out 4 white and 1 blue ball the kids stare longer at that than when it’s 4 blue and one white because they realize the odds are likely that 4 white balls got pulled - however when the balls came from somewhere else, like experimenter’s pocket, they weren’t surprised
what is the violation-of-expectancy
a procedure used to study infant cognition in which infants are shown an event that should evoke surprise or interest if it violated something the infant knows or assumes to be true
what experiment is proof against Piaget’s theory of object permanence?
when a baby is shown an attractive toy and then the room is plunged into darkness, the baby will reach to where they last saw the object indicating that they still expect it to be there- they reach for objects they can’t see!
what was the violation-of-expectancy experiment done by Baillargeon?
1) kids watched a solid screen rotate back and forth 180 degrees
2) a box was placed in the screen’s path
3) the possible event the screen rotated upward, occluded the box, and stopped when it contacted the box - in the impossible even the screen continued to rotate a full 180 degrees appearing to pass though the space occupied by the box
infants as young as 3.5 looked longer at the impossible even than the possible one
researched rationed that the full rotation would be more interesting or surprising than the partial rotation only if the infants expected the screen to stop when it reached the box and the only reason for them to have had that expectation was if they thought the box was still present - that is that they mentally represented an object they could no longer see
results also indicate that the infants expected the box to remain in place
what is class inclusion?
a child is shown two pink circles and four blue circles under them
Piaget’s question: are there more blue circles or more circles all together? (mess up)
Marksman’s question: are there more baby circles or more circles in the family? (get it right)
the child says there’s more blue circles - in order to realize there’s more circles total than blue circles, you have to shift your attention - the ability to shift attention is not the same as creating logic
what is u shaped development?
u shaped development - two things are developing at the same time - the thing that helps development is delayed in its onset
conservation?
when you show two rows of identical things and ask which has more, the kid says they’re the same - but when you spread one row and ask again, the kid will say the spread out row has more
when someone asks you the same question twice, the second time you might think they’re asking you for something else - maybe that’s what’s happening and it’s not that the kids don’t know they are still the same
u-shaped development
what was the McGarrigle & Donaldson experiment done on conservation?
“Oh look! It’s naughty teddy! He’s going to spoil the game!”
they have a reason for why the rows are spread apart and don’t look the same - now the children will show perfect conservation because they can blame them looking different on naughty teddy - really the problem is conversational problems, not conservation
empirical evaluation of conservation?
Between-concept changes not stage- like:
1) Successful conservation of liquid, solid, and numeric quantity do not rise (or fall) together as if they were part of a general pattern of thinking (Siegler, 1981)
2) Characteristic errors on one type of conservation (e.g., liquid) do not reliably predict types of errors on other types of conservation (e.g., number)
Within-concept changes not stage-like:
1) Even within a particular conservation task (e.g., numeric quantity), children’s errors do not follow a set sequence
- regressions are common
- “stages”are skipped
- frequency of correct responses often emerge
gradually
children and controlling variables of experiments?
Children are terrible experimenters; they do not learn to control variables systematically on their own (Klahr, 2004)
you remove the barrier and the child has to guess how far the ball will go - steep ramp/shallow, smooth vs. rough surface, if the second part of the ramp is inclined or not - child needs to decide which variables are important or not - after weeks of children interacting with this problem, kids that weren’t getting feedback never showed any evidence of improvement of isolating the variables that effected the problem - if they did get feedback and were taught the experimental benefit, they got better over time
Piaget and older children’s abilities
Very greatly overestimated older children’s abilities
1) formal operations do not appear to emerge spontaneously as children act of the world
2) regardless of age, people reach equilibriation
children and detailed understandings of things?
children are very seldom interested in attaining detailed causal understanding (though they do believe it exists) - they’re satisfied with the basic understanding of things
ex. helicopter rotors: what people think they know vs. what they actually know
Piaget’s shortcomings
- mischaracterized cognitive change as stage like
offered no insight into how change occurs - underestimated preschoolder and infant thinking
- overestimated adult thinking
Piaget’s theory and the child as a scientist?
- construct their own knowledge from experimenting on the world.
- learn many things on their own without the intervention of older children or adults.
- are intrinsically motivated to learn and do not need rewards from adults to motivate learning
Counter-evidence
- Piaget generally underestimated preschoolers’cognitive abilities by using needlessly misleading tasks
- Even using Piaget’s tasks, changes in performance were not stage-like
what were the three critisisms of Piaget’s theory?
1) Sociocultural approach:
• Children’s thinking is affected by social interactions
2) Core Knowledge approach:
• Infants and young children have and use a lot of innate mental machinery for complex abstract thought
3) Information processing approach:
• Children’s thinking is a computational process
• Children’s thinking is not as consistent as the stages suggest.
what was the sociocultural approach?
Lev Vygotsky portrayed children as social beings intertwined with other people who were eager to help them learn and gain skills
child as an apprentice
who was the inventor of the sociocultural approach?
Vygotsky
child as an apprentice in the sociocultural approach
- Some of children’s abilities are culturally-dependent
- Some cognitive change originates in social interaction
- Children are both learners and teachers.
Vygotsky on Piaget’s theory?
Vygotsky, unlike Piaget, thought that abstract thinking could not develop on its own, but required language and Western schooling
- To test this, Vygotsky tested peasants in Uzbekistan, varying in age, sex, and exposure to the new schools that had been established
- Of these variables, only schooling correlated with abstract thinking
Vygotsky’s schooling experiment
Unschooled Adult Peasant:
ex. Cotton can grow only where it is hot and dry. In England it is cold and damp. Can cotton grow there?
“I don’t know”
no attempt to link these abstract ideas through logic
without the Soviet schools these are the kind of people that we have running around - maybe it’s that the people who don’t trust the Soviet’s - not because of differences in cognitive abilities, but in differences of the origin of the questions - so the people that are in the school’s and trust the Soviet’s will answer more logically while the adults that don’t go to school are the one’s that don’t trust the Soviet’s
what is a counter-factual?
“If Juan and Jose drink a lot of beer, the mayor of the town gets angry.
Juan and Jose are drinking a lot of beer now. Do you think the mayor is angry with them?
Kpelle woman: “No - so many men drink beer, why should the mayor get angry?”
this is called a counter-factual: because infact the mayor of the town is unlikely to get mad because most men drink beer so why would the mayor get mad
what are types of social interactions?
1) indirect social supports
2) zone of proximal development
what are types of indirect social supports?
1) Joint attention
2) Social referencing
3) Social scaffolding
what is joint attention?
Infants and social partners focus on common referent
ex. a baby is interacting with their mom, their mom is labeling things in their environment - Dr. Hopper says that something is a “dax” so you look up to see what it is - you can’t base what something is based off of what you hear and see at the same time - like if mom is on the phone talking about yoga but the baby is looking at an eraser….
what is social referencing?
Children look to social partners for guidance about how to respond to unfamiliar events
ex. use other people as a tie breaker between things they think are mutually likely
what is social scaffolding?
More competent people provide temporary frameworks that lead children to higher- order thinking.
ex. breaking up a word so that a kid knows how to read it
what is the zone of proximal development?
The range between what children can do unsupported and what they can do with optimal social support
ex. if you can put together kids that are at different developmental stages then you get magic - this is the same idea that’s behind peer tutoring
what is the empirical evaluation of social support?
1) Social support is often a necessary but insufficient condition for cognitive development (Siegler & Liebert, 1983)
ex. would give a conservation problem to a kid and then to Bob Liebert - Liebert would give the correct answer in a very authoritative voice - if the social interaction is doing it’s work then the children should be getting better - this didnt happen: the kids just ignored the higher order thinking because they thought it was dumb
2) zone of proximal development is almost impossible to falsify- you can never know what that range of that child’s cognitive system is, you have to infer it after the fact
3) Peers can be terrible teachers because their confidence outweighs their competence (Levin & Druyan, 1993)
ex. kids were asked if the ball on the inner or outer circle would go faster - if they leave at the same time and arrive back at the same time that means that the outer person was running faster - but kid’s don’t say that……if you pair them up with a kid who got the answer right with someone who got it wrong - it’s more likely that the kid who got it wrong will convince the kid who got it right that the are wrong because the smarter kid isn’t confident in their answer - then kids were actually put on the inside and the outside and they could tell that they had to walk faster on the outside and understand the concept for weeks on end
counter-factual syllogism vs. ordinary syllogism?
counter - factual: If Juan and Jose drink a lot
of beer, the mayor of the town gets angry.
Juan and Jose are drinking a lot of beer now.
Do you think the mayor is angry with them? (people need schooling)
ordinary: If the horse is well fed, it cannot work very well.
Today, Rama’s horse was well fed.
Can it work very well today? (people get these regardless of schooling)
what is the counter evidence of Vygotsky’s theory?
- Social interactions aren’t as supportive as hypothesized
- Peers can be terrible teachers
- Some forms of syllogistic reasoning seem to be universal and not require schooling
what are the contemporary and classical theories or development?
contemporary: formation-processing theories and core knowledge theories
classical: Piaget & Vygotsky: false (P) or difficult to falsify (V)
how do modern theories of development differ from classical theories?
- No heroic theorists
- No canonical texts
- Family resemblance structure
- Still evaluating…
what is the information processing approach?
- Child as Computer
- Concerned with the development of domain-general processes
• learning,
• memory,and
• problem-solving skills. - Provides detailed description of the steps involved in thinking (like a computer program)
domain general processing
what is domain general processing?
whatever the content is, it’s the same kind of process - it’s the same for writing at essay vs love note vs fiction novel
example of information processing approach
kid asks dad to unlock the basement door. dad asks why. kid says because she wants to ride her bike. dad says her bike is in the garage. the kid says but her socks are in the dryer.
what are the three major principles of the information processing approach?
1) Thinking is information processing
2) Change is produced by a process of continuous self- modification: the computer learning how to play chess - records probability of opening moves against victory
3) The steps of change can be precisely specified by identifying mechanisms of change
what changes during the information processing approach?
1) SPEED of memory processes change with practice
the speed is based on soft ware, not hardware
- Associating events with one another
- Recognizing objects as familiar
- Generalizing from one instance to another
- Encoding (representing features of objects and events in memory)
2) RULES and STRATEGIES
- Rules are are like lines of code in a computer program; children add and subtract rules over development (balance problem with different weights and different locations on the see saw)
- Strategies are flexible approaches to solving problems; strategies compete with another over development (ex. how would a computer solve 7+6)
what is the power law of practice?
increase in processing speed: the curve is a power function - it’s important because we know from Ebbinghouse that there’s a power law of practice - it sugests that practice is what causes the change in processing speed
what are the stages of moral reasoning based on the information processing approach?
1) blind obedience
2) fear of punishment
3) maintaining relationships
4) laws/duties
5) universal principles
what is the core-knowledge approach?
Child as Primate Scientist
- Children have innate cognitive capabilities that are the product of human evolutionary processes.
- Focus on human universals (e.g., language, social cognition, biological categorization, using numbers)
- Children are much more advanced in their thinking than Piaget suggested.
what are children’s domain specific theories in the core-knowledge approach?
Children actively organize their understanding into informal causal theories:
- psychology
- biology
- physics
summary of cognitive theories of development
Bottom Line:
- Post-Piagetian theories deal with different aspects of development
• sometimes conflict between approaches, sometimes
greater conflict within an approach
- Most researchers view different approaches as complementary
- No Grand Unified Theory (yet)
what is language?
- A type of communication
- but not just any type of communication
- Language involves symbolic reference and generative grammar
what is indicative reference?
Indicative reference involves responding distinctively to stimuli in the presence of an observer
ex. Vervet monkeys make distinctive calls depending on whether the predator is a snake, a leopard, or an eagle; for the other monkeys, these calls indicate the presence of a certain predator - they only make these sounds when another vervet monkey is around - if the vervet monkey made the snake sound then all the other vervet monkeys would run up into a tree as if they knew a snake was around - then for an eagle they’d lie down low or go down into a hole, idk
what is symbolic reference?
Symbolic reference involves an arbitrary sign that stands for a class of objects that may or may not be present
ex. A boy can say “wolf” to refer to one wolf (”help! wolf!”), several wolves (”observe the wolf in his natural habitat”), or no wolves (”Yup, I’m a wolf scout”).
gives enormous flexibility to language - a huge advancement - vervet monkey doesn’t have the capacity to say something with the lack of a stimuli - ex. if they found magos they wouldn’t be able to call oo oo and make all the other monkey’s hide so he could eat them all
what is generative grammar?
A generative grammar is a set of rules that determines the form and meaning of sentences
- A discrete combinatorial system (vs. blending) gives rise to infinite creativity
- The grammar conveys meanings apart from the meanings of the words themselves
ex. Dog bites man vs. Man bites dog
in order to tell the difference between these you have something in your mind other than words = grammar
definition of language?
a code for combining referential symbols expressed in sounds/images
Skinner’s theory on language?
B.F. Skinner was confident that language could be explained by reference to just those principles of behavior formulated on the basis of results with animal subjects.
For example, if a reinforcer is delivered frequently with high intensity it should increase the likelihood of behavior.
if you want a rat to get through a maze, whenever it gets to a critical turn you give it food of high value
Chomsky’s theory on language?
Chomsky: To say that each bit of verbal behaviour is under stimulus control is a scientifically empty claim, because some stimulus can be posited to occasion any response
he says the rules of language aren’t like learning to run through mazes - completely rips apart Skinner’s theory
difference between Skinner and Chomsky’s theories on language?
if your kid gives you a really nice picture:
Skinner: “nice, nice, nice”
Chomsky: “crooked, isn’t it?” or “remember that camping trip we took last summer?”
just made of ways of trying to explain the reason between the stimulance and the verbal response which is what skinner is trying to do - but Chomsky says that’s crazy you can’t do that because you have to link them through some abstraction
what is the language acquisition device?
Chomsky:
- Grammatical rules are aspects of the human mind that link spoken sentences to the mind’s system for representing meanings. (words are similar but not the same)
- All generative grammars are based on fundamental rules that are innate properties of the human mind
- The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) was Chomsky’s shorthand for universal grammatical rules and for the inborn mechanisms that guide children’s learning of the unique rules of their culture’s language.
there are certain universals that all languages have in common (marking the doer, marking what is being done) = all languages have a universal grammer
what is the structure of language composed of?
mouth/ears –> phonology –> lexicon, morphology, syntax –> semantics –> beliefs/desires
language is a code and not just a stimulus - then you can understand how humans are able to reflect an infinate number of meanings when the stimulus is very narrow
what is phonology?
rules that define the sound pattern of a
language
which sounds are relevant?
what is lexicon?
stored entries for words, including irregulars
what is morphology?
rules for forming complex words, including regulars
what is syntax?
rules for forming phrases and structures
what is semantics?
meanings expressed through language
the meanings of all sentences
what is evidence of grammatical rules in children?
shows a picture of a bird and says it’s a “wug” —> then they show to wugs and ask “now there are two…” and the kid says “wugs” which shows that the kid has a rule for inflecting/changing a regular noun or verb
what is inflectional morphology?
Rule for regulars: “The past tense of a verb may be formed from the verb followed by the suffix -ed”
being able to take morphemes and add them to words to create “wugs” “wuging” etc.
walk –> walked
bod –> boded
Jabberwocky
a case of grammar without meaning - it sounds like english - how is possible that has no intrinsic meaning sounds like grammar?
this doesn’t actually make any sense but it follows grammar rules - the idea is that as long as you can plug sentences in to generative grammar then you can tell if it’s following rules or not
what is the support for Chomsky’s theory on language?
1) Genetic disorders affect specific aspects of language (e.g., affecting vocabulary but not syntax, or vice-versa)(if LAD is real then it’s composed of parts that are encoded by our genes)
2) Specific aspects of language are also disrupted by specific brain damage
3) Language learning goes through a universal sequence of development (we don’t learn language, we grow language -if language is something that grows then children in all languages should have some similar aspects of development)
4) Young children invent grammar when it is lacking in the environment (even in an environment without grammar, children will develope it anyways)
5) Language, like many other innate abilities, seems to go through a “critical period” (example of experience-expectant)
6) Only humans are capable of acquiring language
what is specific language impairment?
(Gopnik & Crago, 1991)
a problem with inflectional morphology - being able to take morphemes and add them to words to create “wugs” “wuging” etc.
Among 31 members of the KE family spanning 3 generations, 50% were impaired (as if the syndrome were controlled by one dominant gene or string of genes sitting next to each other on the chromosome = Mendelian distribution)
members were taken a stretch of genes on chromosome 7 (SPCH1) correlated perfectly with existence of impairment
SPCH1 known to affect axon pathfinding, production of kinases, and growth and differentiation
all this suggests that there is something biological in this production of language
