P3: Cognition and Development. Flashcards
Paper 3 - Option 2: Cognition and development. The specification.
Cognition and development: subject content.
Cognition and development
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development: schemas, assimilation, accommodation, equilibration, stages of intellectual development. Characteristics of these stages, including object permanence, conservation, egocentrism and class inclusion.
Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development, including the zone of proximal development and scaffolding.
Baillargeon’s explanation of early infant abilities, including knowledge of the physical world; violation of expectation research.
The development of social cognition: Selman’s levels of perspective-taking; theory of mind, including theory of mind as an explanation for autism; the Sally-Anne study. The role of the mirror neuron system in social cognition.
PC: T1. Piaget’s theory of Cognitive development: Describe the basic assumptions of the cognitive approach.
Basic Assumptions
Mediational processes occur between stimulus and response:
Behaviorists rejected the idea of studying the mind because internal mental processes cannot be observed and objectively measured.
However, cognitive psychologists regard it as essential to look at the mental processes of an organism and how these influence behavior.
Instead of the simple stimulus-response links proposed by Behaviorism, the mediational processes of the organism are important to understand. Without this understanding, psychologists cannot have a complete understanding of behavior.
Psychology should be seen as a science:
Cognitive psychologists follow the example of the behaviorists in preferring objective, controlled, scientific methods for investigating behavior.
They use the results of their investigations as the basis for making inferences about mental processes.
Humans are information processors:
Information processing in humans resembles that in computers, and is based on based on transforming information, storing information and retrieving information from memory.
Information processing models of cognitive processes such as memory and attention assume that mental processes follow a clear sequence.
For example:
Input processes are concerned with the analysis of the stimuli.
Storage processes cover everything that happens to stimuli internally in the brain and can include coding and manipulation of the stimuli.
Output processes are responsible for preparing an appropriate response to a stimulus.
PC: T1. Piaget’s theory of Cognitive development: Describe cognitive development and Piaget’s theory.
What Is Cognitive Development
Children grow and develop rapidly in their first five years across the four main areas of development. These areas are motor (physical), language and communication, cognitive and social/emotional.
Cognitive development means how children think, explore and figure things out. It is the development of knowledge, skills, problem solving and dispositions, which help children to think about and understand the world around them. Brain development is part of cognitive development.
As a parent, it is important to foster your child’s cognitive development as soon as he/she is born because doing so provides the foundation for your child’s success in school and later in life. For example, research shows that children who can distinguish sounds at six months of age are better at acquiring the skills for learning to read at four and five years of age.
Piaget: Contribution & basis:
Jean Piaget (1896–1980) is considered by many to be the most influential psychologist to study human cognitive development. Indeed, the structure of the UK education system is largely based on his findings.
Prior to Piaget, children were viewed as smaller versions of adults. Their thinking was seen as different in quantity but it was not fully appreciated that it was thequalityof their thinking that mattered most. For example, you will recall the learning theory (behaviourist) approach which suggests that our learning is the sum of stimulus response connections.
Piaget’s investigations demonstratedhowchildren’s thinking varied from adults rather than howmuchit varied. The characteristics described by Piaget were influential in the development of education systems across Europe, not only in the age bands for different types of schools but also in the methodology used by educational practitioners to teach children.
Belief and conclusions on the theory:
Piaget believed that cognitive development results from the interaction of innate abilities and environmental events. He also thought that knowledge is actively discovered and that intelligence exists as a state of equilibrium, when the individual is able to cope with thedatathey are assimilating. Intelligence is therefore not static but continually changes by adapting itself to new environmental stimuli.
Piaget was originally a biologist and approached the process of cognitive development from this perspective. He explained cognitive development by applying the ideas that biologists use to explain physical development.
Piaget’s theory was created through a series of experiments, which allowed him to conclude that cognitive development occurs through the “interaction of inborn abilities and environmental events that proceed through a series of stages of intellectual development”.
Piaget therefore saw intelligence as a process, with individuals learning about the world around them and how to interact with it, and intelligence being a state of balance achieved by an individual when they are able to deal adequately with the environment around them.
PC: T1. Piaget’s theory of Cognitive development: Explain how Piaget developed his theory.
Jean Piaget was a renowned psychologist and cognitive theorist in the 20th century who focused on child development. His theories came from observing children and recording their development.
He brought attention to the idea that children are not just small adults, and he argued that the way they think is fundamentally different.
Piaget believed that children act as “little scientists,” exploring their environment to gain understanding. He thought that children do this naturally, without any adult intervention. He put forth the idea of distinct developmental stages through which children learn language, memory, and reasoning.
This article explains Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development, key concepts, and how people can use them to help children learn and develop.
PC: T1. Piaget’s theory of Cognitive development: Explain Piaget’s concepts of schemas, assimilation, accommodation, adaptation and disequilibrium/equilibrium.
Piaget’s concepts of schemas, assimilation, accommodation and disequilibrium/equilibrium.
(1). Schemas (In relation to Piaget’s theory):
You met the idea ofschemain your study of memory in Unit 2. In that context, it was used to explain why eyewitnesses’ memories are not always accurate. We use our schemas to aid us in remembering: we have expectations and we use them to interpret and process what we see. Schemas play a similar role in cognitive development: if our schemas are not adequate they are changed. The starting point is the schemas (often called reflex schemas) which are present at birth.
(2). Assimilation, accommodation and adaptation:
Three concepts are crucial in understanding Piaget’s theory as to how mental processes develop:
Assimilation - refers to fitting new experiences into existing schemas.
Accommodation -refers to altering existing schemas to fit in with new experiences.
Adaptation -refers to accommodation and assimilation working together.
Functional invariants & variant structures:
Functional invariants: - structures that stay the same throughout the development process, which assist in the discovery and understanding of knowledge. There are two of these:
1.The process of adaptation – involves accommodation and assimilation.
- The process of equilibration – involves swinging between equilibrium and disequilibrium.
Variant structures: - structures that change and develop as knowledge is discovered. There are two of these:
1.Schemas – units of intelligence/ ways of understanding the world.
- Operations – strings of schemas assembled in a logical order.
(3). Disequilibrium/equilibrium:
When a person’s mental processes cannot cope with new experiences they are said to be indisequilibrium; when accommodation has occurred,equilibriumis restored.
The process of swinging between equilibrium and disequilibrium is calledequilibration.
In psychology and in the theory of disequilibrium and accommodation,equalibriumrefers to a person’s background knowledge (schema) that allows the individual to understand the new information through assimilation.Assimilationis a process of applying and understanding new information with existing knowledge without needing to change the existing knowledge. In this sense, the new information and existing information are considered to be in an equilibrium state.
For example, a child may learn that an apple is round, has red skin and white flesh, and has a sweet scent. When he or she sees a fruit on the dining table that suits all the criteria, he or she will understand it is an apple with his or her existing knowledge. This process is called assimilation, or putting new information in a new situation into the existing schema.
Disequilibrium Psychology
In psychology,disequalibriumrefers to when the new information cannot fit into the existing schema. When this situation happens, equilibrium occurs. When this happens, one can decide whether a new concept should be built (accommodation), or whether the existing schema can be modified to allow the new information to fit in.
In context:
Firstly however, it is important to identify a babies earliest schemas which are produced before the later stages of cognitive development.
A baby’s earliest schemas are inborn reflexes, such as sucking.
These give babies something to interact with the environments and thus help discover knowledge with. Early schemas are external and physical, while later schemas are more internal and cognitive (mental). These are the earliest forms of thinking, over time they become less reflex and more deliberate and under the infant’s control.
} Cognitive development can be seen through the example of the innate schema of sucking. – At first babies suck everything they come into contact with in the same inborn manner. This is called assimilation (part of the process of adaption, as we have seen) and involves fitting new environmental experiences into existing schemas. If this is possible, infants are in a state of equilibrium (part of the process of equilibrium), a pleasant state of balance.
} When infants find something new so that they cannot suck in the usual way, such as drinking from a cup, they experience disequilibrium (the other part of the process of equilibrium), an unpleasant state of imbalance. Children are naturally motivated to return to the balanced state of equilibrium, achieved by accommodation of the new experience (the other part of the process of adaption).
This involves altering existing schemas to accommodate (fit in) new experiences, such as using new lip shapes to drink/ suck out of different things.
} Therefore, cognitive development involves constantly swinging between equilibrium and disequilibrium, through continuous series of assimilation (fitting knowledge into new schemas) and accommodation (altering schemas to fit in new knowledge). When new schemas are formed, assimilation allows for the practice of the new experiences until they are automatic. This process continues through life, but is most apparent on the first 15 years.
PC: T1. Piaget’s theory of Cognitive development: Describe Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.
Piaget recognised that children appear to go through stages in their cognitive development. He proposed that these stages are universal across cultures and that all children go through the stages in the same order.
Piaget proposed four major stages:
Sensorimotorstage(birth to 2 years)
Pre-operational stage (2–7 years)
Concrete operational stage (7–11 years)
Formal operational stage (11+) years
Piaget described the characteristics that are possessed (or not possessed) by children at each of these stages.
- The Sensorimotor stage (the first stage: birth to 2 years).
At the start of this stage, babies only ‘think’ when perceiving or acting on objects. They have no internal representation of objects or events that adults would recognise as thinking. Therefore, when an object or events that adults would recognise as thinking. Therefore, when an object is not being perceived or acted on, it does not exist – that is, the baby has no object permanence. Infants at this point are highly egocentric, as they have no understanding of the world other than their own, but gradually during this stage they come to realise what objects exist and events occur independent of their behaviour; they can then be said to have acquired object permanence.
Initially between one and four months of age, babies will look at the place where objects disappear from for a few moments, but will not search of them. Then babies start to reach for partially hidden objects – suggesting that they realise that the rest of the object is attached to the visible part. At the age of one, babies search for hidden objects, but only where they were last seen. Object permanence is not fully formed until two years of age.
The other development in the sensorimotor stage is the is the establishment of the general symbolic function (GSF). – This occurs in the final part of the stage, involving the development of mental images to represent objects that children have experienced. Children are no longer dependant of physical manipulation of objects to ‘think’ about them; they can ‘think” inside their heads, making a transition of schemas to being internal rather than external.
As you will see, thesensorimotorstage can be subdivided into six sub-stages, each based on a new skill as shown in Table 1.1.
Table 1.1Sensorimotorsub-stages:
Sub-stage: Skill: Age (months):
1. Reflexes. 0–1
2. Primary circular reactions. 1–4
3. Secondary circular reactions. 4–8
4. Coordination of reactions. 8–12
5. Tertiary circular reactions. 12–18
6. Early representational thought. 18–24
- Pre-operational stage.
During the pre-operational stage the GSF continues to develop.
The term ‘pre-operational’ is used here because of the child’s reliance on how an object ‘seems’ rather than using logical principles (mental operations). This leads to some significant problems with reasoning. For example, a child might point to an apple and say ‘apple’ but also say ‘apple’ when pointing to an orange: he or she has associated apples with being a ‘round fruit’ and so oranges must also be apples. If Mummy goes into hospital to have a baby and then Daddy goes into a hospital then he also is going to have a baby.
This lack of reasoning is characterised by:
centration
transductive reasoning
animistic thinking
seriation.
Notice that the pre-operational stage can be divided into pre-conceptual and intuitive sub-stages:
Pre-operational stage (2 to 7 years):
} Centraction – children cannot classify things in a logical manner. (See above as well).
} Transductive reasoning – relationships between two objects are based o a single attribute, for example a dog has four legs, a cat has four legs, therefore a cat is a dog and vide versa.
} Animalistic thinking – the belief that inanimate objects are alive.
} Seriation – children find it hard to put items in order, for example of size; theycan perceive only biggest or smallest.
Conservation:
During this stage children have problems with conservation, which is the ability to realise that the physical properties of an object, such as volume, stay the same despite the object changing its appearance.
Centration could explain the lack of conservation ability because a child cannot attend to two physical attributes at the same time. For example, if you pour liquid from one vessel into another and the vessels differ in width, you will see the liquid change in appearance. The level of the liquid will rise if the second vessel has a narrower width (see Figure 5.7 in your textbook).
As an adult you know that the height has increased but the width has decreased so the volume stays the same. A pre-operational child can only focus on one attribute and so thinks because the liquid in the second vessel has an increased height it must have a larger volume.
Egocentrism:
Children in the pre-operational stage are highly egocentric, viewing the world from their own viewpoint; this results in inabilities in their reasoning.
The ‘three mountains‘ task classically allowed children to demonstrate their level ofegocentrism.
Brief description: Children were shown a 3D model of three mountains, each with a different object on top. They were asked what the view would be like for a ‘doll’ placed at different positions around the model. The child is demonstratingegocentrismif they describe, or choose a picture, showing their own viewpoint rather than the doll’s.
- Concrete operational stage
During the concrete operational stage children start to develop mental structures called ‘operations’. However, children can only perform these mental operations if they have objects physically present, which is why the stage is called ‘concrete’.
Conservation requires the ability to carry out mental operations and during this stage children develop this ability as long as they have access to physical objects. The ability to conserve the different physical characteristics is acquired in the same order for every child. This step-by-step acquisition is calleddecalage. There can be inconsistenciesbetweenabilities as well aswithinabilities; for instance, a child may master classification but not all of conservation.
Class inclusion:
Class inclusionis about being able to see that objects can belong to different categories at the same time. For example, if you had 12 flowers made up of four daffodils and eight roses and you were asked if there were more flowers or more roses, you would answer more flowers. A child who can’t accomplish class inclusion would say more roses. This is not due to the fact that they don’t know what a rose or a daffodil is or that they don’t know what constitutes a flower. Nor is it due to an inability to count.
As with conservation tasks, the ability to decentre is required before a person can be successful in class inclusion tasks. One has to consider two aspects of the objects at the same time to work out that ALL the flowers include the roses AND the daffodils but the roses are just one group of flowers.
The ability to carry out class inclusion tasks develops as children become able to classify objects as belonging to two or more categories at the same time.
Children lose theiregocentrismas they progress through the concrete operational stage. This is calleddecentring.
Some types of conservation are mastered earlier than others and the other in which this occurs is invariant (the same for everybody):
· Liquid quantity develops by age 6-7.
· Substance/quantity and length by 7-8 years.
· Weight by 8-7 years.
· Volume by 11-12 years.
- Formal operational stage:
In the formal operation stage children can manipulate abstract ideas and so can now manage hypothetical situations. They can accomplish mental arithmetic and tackle inferential reasoning.
The age at which people complete this final stage varies enormously and it is said that some never complete it at all.
Formal operational stage (11+ years):
Manipulating objects concerns first operations, but children in the formal operations stage can now perform second-order operations where they manipulate ideas.
Hypothetical situations can be thought about – that is, possibilities, not actualities. Children develop the ability to manipulate things in their head without any need for an object to be physically viewable, for example mathematical sums can be performed mentally without any need for physical manipulation of objects.
- Inferential reasoning can now also take place where conclusions can be drawn about things that haven’t actually been experienced. For example, if a child knows that person A is taller than person B and that person B is taller than person C, it can be concluded that person A is taller than person C even though persons A and C have never been experienced together.
Abstract reasoning of concepts and ideas with no physical presence also becomes apparent and children can consider possible outcomes of situations rather than having to rely on previous experience. This is important for being able to form long-term plans and goals.
This stage is not as uniform as others. Some reach it by the age of 15, others by age 20, some maybe not at all, and different individuals develop formal operations in different areas of ability and experience. This stage therefore seems not to be as genetically controlled as others. Some researchers believe as few as one third of people reach this stage.
PC: T1. Piaget’s theory of Cognitive development: Outline the characteristics of object permanence, conservation,egocentrismand class inclusion.
The chrarasterstics of object permanence, conservation, egocentrism and class inclusion.
- Object permanence:
The main development during thesensorimotor stageis the understanding that objects exist and events occur in the world independently of one’s own actions (‘the object concept’, or ‘object permanence’).
Object permanence means knowing that an object still exists, even if it is hidden. It requires the ability to form a mental representation (i.e. a schema) of the object.
For example, if you place a toy under a blanket, the child who has achieved object permanence knows it is there and can actively seek it. At the beginning of this stage the child behaves as if the toy had simply disappeared.
The attainment of object permanence generally signals the transition from the sensorimotor stage to thepreoperational stage of development.
Blanket and Ball Study:
Aim: Piaget (1963) wanted to investigate at what age children acquire object permanence.
Method: Piaget hid a toy under a blanket, while the child was watching, and observed whether or not the child searched for the hidden toy.
Searching for the hidden toy was evidence of object permanence. Piaget assumed that the child could only search for a hidden toy if s/he had a mental representation of it.
Results: Piaget found that infants searched for the hidden toy when they were around 8-months-old.
Conclusion: Children around 8 months have object permanence because they are able to form a mental representation of the object in their minds.
Evaluation: Piaget assumed the results of his study occur because the children under 8 months did not understand that the object still existed underneath the blanket (and therefore did not reach for it). However, there are alternative reasons why a child may not search for an object rather than lack of understanding of situation.
- The child could become distracted or lose interest in the object and therefore lack the motivation to search for it, or simply may not have the physical coordination to carry out the motor movements necessary for the retrieval of the object (Mehler & Dupoux, 1994).
The A-not-B Error:
The A-not-B error occurs when infants search for a hidden toy at the incorrect location when presented with two possible locations (Piaget, 1954).
The toy is repeatedly hidden at location A. After a short delay, infants are then allowed to reach for and retrieve the toy.
After a few trials the toy is then clearly hidden in location B. After a short delay, they are then allowed to reach for the toy.
Infants 8 to 10 months of age consistently reach to location A despite clearly seeing the toy hidden at location B.
Critical Evaluation:
There is evidence that object permanence occurs earlier than Piaget claimed. Bower and Wishart (1972) used a lab experiment to study infants aged between 1 – 4 months old.
Instead of using a Piaget’s blanket technique they waited for the infant to reach for an object, and then turned out the lights so that the object was no longer visible. They then filmed the infant using an infrared camera. They found that the infant continued to reach for the object for up to 90 seconds after it became invisible.
Again, just like Piaget’s study there are also criticisms of Bower’s ‘reaching in the dark’ findings. Each child had up to 3 minutes to complete the task and reach for the object. Within this time period, it is plausible they may have successfully completed the task by accident.
For example, randomly reaching out and finding the object or even reaching out due to the distress of the lights going out (rather than reaching out with the intention of searching for an object).
- Conservation:
During this stage children have problems with conservation, which is the ability to realise that the physical properties of an object, such as volume, stay the same despite the object changing its appearance.
Centration could explain the lack of conservation ability because a child cannot attend to two physical attributes at the same time. For example, if you pour liquid from one vessel into another and the vessels differ in width, you will see the liquid change in appearance. The level of the liquid will rise if the second vessel has a narrower width (see Figure 5.7 in your textbook).
As an adult you know that the height has increased but the width has decreased so the volume stays the same. A pre-operational child can only focus on one attribute and so thinks because the liquid in the second vessel has an increased height it must have a larger volume.
- Egocentrism:
Children in the pre-operational stage are highly egocentric, viewing the world from their own viewpoint; this results in inabilities in their reasoning.
The ‘three mountains‘ task classically allowed children to demonstrate their level ofegocentrism.
Brief description: Children were shown a 3D model of three mountains, each with a different object on top. They were asked what the view would be like for a ‘doll’ placed at different positions around the model. The child is demonstratingegocentrismif they describe, or choose a picture, showing their own viewpoint rather than the doll’s.
More recent studies have attempted to ask questions more clearly and to present situations to which children can relate more easily.
Evaluation:Policeman Doll Study:
Martin Hughes (1975) argued that the three mountains task did not make sense to children and was made more difficult because the children had to match the doll’s view with a photograph.
Hughes devised a task which made sense to the child. He showed children a model comprising two intersecting walls, a ‘boy’ doll and a ‘policeman’ doll. He then placed the policeman doll in various positions and asked the child to hide the boy doll from the policeman.
Hughes did this to make sure that the child understood what was being asked of him, so if s/he made mistakes they were explained and the child tried again. Interestingly, very few mistakes were made.
The experiment then began. Hughes brought in a second policeman doll, and placed both dolls at the end of two walls, as shown in the illustration above.
The child was asked to hide the boy from both policemen, in other words he had to take account of two different points of view.
Hughes’ sample comprised children between three and a half and five years of age, of whom 90 percent gave correct answers. Even when he devised a more complex situation, with more walls and a third policeman, 90 percent of four-year-olds were successful.
This shows that children have largely lost their egocentric thinking by four years of age, because they are able to take the view of another.
Hughes’ experiment allowed them to demonstrate this because the task made sense to the child, whereas Piaget’s did not. Suggesting that differences in ‘meaning’ children ascribe to situation might cause them to pass or fail task.
Egocentrism, inpsychology, thecognitiveshortcomings that underlie the failure, in bothchildrenand adults, to recognize theidiosyncraticnature of one’s knowledge or the subjective nature of one’s perceptions. Such failures describe children at play who cover their eyes and joyfully exclaim to their parents, “You can’t see me!” Likewise, they describe adult physicians who provide their patients with medicaldiagnosesthat only another doctor could understand.
- Class inclusion:
Class inclusionis about being able to see that objects can belong to different categories at the same time. For example, if you had 12 flowers made up of four daffodils and eight roses and you were asked if there were more flowers or more roses, you would answer more flowers. A child who can’t accomplish class inclusion would say more roses. This is not due to the fact that they don’t know what a rose or a daffodil is or that they don’t know what constitutes a flower. Nor is it due to an inability to count.
As with conservation tasks, the ability to decentre is required before a person can be successful in class inclusion tasks. One has to consider two aspects of the objects at the same time to work out that ALL the flowers include the roses AND the daffodils but the roses are just one group of flowers.
The ability to carry out class inclusion tasks develops as children become able to classify objects as belonging to two or more categories at the same time.
Children lose theiregocentrismas they progress through the concrete operational stage. This is calleddecentring.
Concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years):
Conservation is an example of an operation, with concrete operational children able to understand the relationship between the whole of something and its parts.
Some types of conservation are mastered earlier than others and the other in which this occurs is invariant (the same for everybody):
· Liquid quantity develops by age 6-7.
· Substance/quantity and length by 7-8 years.
· Weight by 8-7 years.
· Volume by 11-12 years.
This step-by-step acquisition of new operations is called decalage (as stated above).
With conservation, decalage is horizontal, as there are inconsistencies within the same kind of ability or operation – for example, a seven year old can conserve number but not weight. There is also vertical decalage, which refers to inconsistencies between different abilities or operations – for example, children may master all kinds of classification but not all kinds of conservation.
PC: T2. Baillargeon and early infant abilities: Explain Baillargeon’s theory about early infant knowledge of the physical world.
Baillargeon’s theory about early infant knowledge of the physical world.
Renée Baillargeon was born in 1954 and so had the advantage of not only knowing about Piaget’s theories but also being familiar with the research carried out by others in evaluating Piaget’s ideas.
She was interested in the age at which children acquired object permanence. She devised the ‘violation of expectation’ technique that tests at what age children develop object permanence.
Baillargeon used inventive methods as it is very difficult to assess what young infants know and do not know, due to their inability to coherently explain their thoughts. In addition, infants cannot always demonstrate their knowledge and understanding in their behavior, because their motor skills are not developed sufficiently.
Baillargeon agrees with Piaget’s theory in that she suggests that a child’s understanding occurs through the primitive innate knowledge being challenged through experience of the world. However, as with Piaget she might be misinterpreting a child’s behaviour.
PC: T2. Baillargeon and early infant abilities: Explain the role of Core Knowledge Theory (CKT).
The role of Core Knowledge Theory (CKT).
The experiments you have just read about demonstrate that children do have an ability to appreciate object permanence. They also show that children are born with a number of systems ofcore knowledgewhich allow appreciation of the relationships between inanimate objects.
This basic understanding of the physical world includes such properties as the following:
Solid objects cannot pass through each other; they each occupy their own space.
Objects move from A to B in space and they have continuity of motion.
These rules are rather primitive at birth and become more sophisticated as the child develops.
Baillargeon’s core explanation for core knowledge was that: humans have an innate understanding of inanimate objects and their relationships with each other.
Baillargeon’s research has helped to investigate a major aspect of the core knowledge theory, that of object representation.
The CKT believes that humans are born with a small number of systems of core knowledge that serve to represent inanimate objects and their relationships with each other.
– The idea of object representation is that infants have an inborn ability to perceive the boundaries of objects, to be able to still perceive objects when they move partially or completely out of view and to be able to predict the movements of objects.
- So just like animals such as horses have an innate ability to stand and walk, humans are seen to have an innate ability to understand objects. Thus humans are seen to possess and understanding of object permanence at a far younger age than Piaget believed, possibly even from birth, and this understanding allows them to quickly learn from environmental experiences, which has an evolutionary survival value
Recent research, however, has cast doubt on the conclusions drawn by Baillargeon, thus reducing support for CKT and the idea that children from a very early age posses a sense of object permanence.
PC: T2. Baillargeon and early infant abilities: Explain the use of Baillargeon’s violation of expectation in research to ascertain early infant abilities.
The use of Baillargeon’s violation of expectation (VOE) in research to ascertain early infant abilities.
Violation of expectation technique (VOE).
Theviolation of expectation technique (VOE)relies on the fact that children will look for a longer time at novel objects than at familiar objects. The technique involves a child being repeatedly shown an unfamiliar scenario until they start to look away, demonstrating that it is no longer a novel experience. Like other research, this shows that children demonstrate object permanence at a much earlier age than was suggested by Piaget.
Baillargeon and her co-workers devised several ‘magic’ tricks to discover whether children showed surprise when they saw the impossible happen. If children acted with surprise they assumed that this was because they knew the difference between what was possible and impossible.
- Research showed that infants would continue to look at the unlikely occurrence for longer and infants as young as 3 and a half months of age would be able to begin to comprehend the object permanence and not look at the event for such a long time.
It is easier to understand these experiments by watching them in action. YouTube has several videos, including:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1VK2iawS34(3:30; Minnie Mouse doll experiments)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwgo2O5Vk_g(2:34; ramp set-up)
Several different set-ups were used:
A drawbridge that moved through 180 degrees. A box was used as an obstacle to the drawbridge. The ‘magic’ situation was to show the drawbridge still able to move despite the box being in the way.
A truck rolling down a ramp; again, a box is used as an obstacle.
A tall and a short carrot passing behind a screen with a window in it. Figure 15.12 in your textbook illustrates this set-up.
A Minnie Mouse passing behind a screen and re-emerging on the other side. Figure 15.13 illustrates the variations on the Minnie Mouse set-up.
Each of these experiments relies on the same premise, i.e. that one trial demonstrates an impossible set-up. For each one the observer is looking for any sign that the child appreciates that an impossible event is occurring.
Baillargeon’s explanation for early infant abilities – a theory that sees children as able to understand the properties of objects and their relationships to each other from an early age.
Baillargeon was inspired by research that appeared to suggest children develop object permanence at a much earlier age than Piaget believed, such as Bower & Wisheart’s (1972) study, as explained above, that find nine-month-old babies show surprise when toys disappear, Baillargeon was able to assess Piaget’s beliefs about the ages at which children reach various levels of cognitive development by creation of her violation of expectation technique (VOE).
- Baillargeon, either solely or in collaboration with others, has gone on to perform a series of experiments based upon her violation of expectation technique (VOE) that uses scenarios familiar to or understandable by very young infants to consistently find results that challenge Piaget’s ideas and suggest that children much younger than he thought demonstrate object permanence – and have an intuitive knowledge concerning the properties of objects and their relationships to each other.
PC: T2. Baillargeon and early infant abilities: Evaluation of Baillargeon’s theory.
Evaluation of Baillargeon’s theory.
Cashon and Cohen (2000) – familiarised eight-month-old infants with one of four Baillargeon-type scenarios, which involved a screen rotating in either a 180 or 130 degree arc and a block that was either placed in the path of the rotating screen or was absent from the scenario. It was found that infants looked for longer at scenarios that were more interesting (had more visual novelty) than ones that were ‘impossible’ which reduces support for the idea that young infants have object permanence and that humans have an innate understanding of object representation as proposed by the CKT.
Research evaluation:
Schöner and Thelen (2004) – also believe that Baillargeon drew conclusions that went beyond thedata.
For instance, they point out that in the drawbridge study it could be the extra movement that exists in the ‘impossible’ situation that attracts children. So it might be confoundingvariablesthat are influencing the outcome rather than a true measure of a child’s ability in terms of object permanence and knowledge of the physical world.
*Nonetheless, Baillargeon’s technique is viewed as aparadigm method;this means that it is an accepted method of assessing children’s understanding of the physical world. Baillargeon’s methods have achieved consistent results and the CKT is now widely accepted as a valid explanation.
(Note: when evaluating Baillargeon’s work, remember to mention the paradigm method in conclusion to your evaluation, as this is the crux consequence of her research.
Additional evaluative points:
· Investigating the cognitive developmental abilities of infants is problematic as such children cannot communicate verbally what abilities they have. Therefore Baillargeon’s paradigm technique is extremely useful, as it allows insight into what skills very young children possess.
· Research based on their Baillargeon’s methodology produces consistent results and the CKT (central knowledge theory) has come to be widely accepted as a valid explanation.
– However, some believe Baillargeon draws conclusions that go beyond what the data shows, as stated above with Schöner and Thelen (2004). And therefore (from the research stared above) what Baillargeon sees as evidence of infants having innate knowledge of object representation may actually be just the effect of confounding variables, this research is supported by Cashon and Cohen (2000).
· Aguair and Baillargeon’s (1999) (see example in online textbook) Minnie Mouse study is a clever method of investigating the inability of children under three months of age to show surprise at the failure of the tall carrot to appear in the window in the upper half of the screen in Baillargeon and DeVos’s (1991) study.
– Baillargeon wondered whether children of that age did not have a sense of object permanence or instead had not learned that when an object moves behind something that obscures its bottom half, the height of the object determines whether it will be visible in the top half of the window. In the Minnie Mouse study only her bottom half should be visible, something that two-and-a-half-month-old children understood, suggesting that they did not have a sense of object permanence.
Subsequent points:
The VOE technique relies on the premise that children will look for longer at novel situations than familiar ones.
Minnie Mouse passes behind a screen with windows in it and it is set up so that she appears to disappear when she shouldn’t. Children looked longer at this impossible set-up, demonstrating that they knew she did exist and should have been visible. Children showed this response at an earlier age than Piaget had suggested that object permanence develops.
Core knowledge theory is that humans are born with a small number of systems of core knowledge that serve to represent inanimate objects. In relation to object permanence, infants have an inborn ability to perceive boundaries of objects, so that they can continue to perceive that object even if it is partially or totally out of view.
A paradigm is when there is universal acceptance of a particular way of thinking. Baillargeon’s VOE technique has been taken on board in psychological research as an acceptable way of assessing children’s understanding of the physical world.
Cashon and Cohen suggested that children were looking at situations longer due to their interest rather than to their novelty. This challenged the idea that children possessed object permanence at this early age.
Both Piaget and Baillargeon’s theories support the idea that a child’s understanding occurs through primitive innate knowledge being challenged through experience of the world.
Summary of Baillargeon and early infant abilities.
In this topic you have seen how Baillargeon devised the technique of violation of expectation. Using this, children were shown to have object permanence abilities at an earlier age than suggested by Piaget’s theory. Baillargeon used the core knowledge theory to explain how it is possible for humans to possess object permanence at birth.
A criticism of Baillargeon’s technique was that children are keener to watch some situations due to their interest rather than simply their novelty. This means that children are not necessarily showing object permanence in her VOE technique.
PC: T3. Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development: Describe/ outline Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development.
Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development.
Piaget was criticised for ignoring the social situation within which children’s cognitions develop. Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), on the other hand, saw that the influence of culture is crucial to cognitive development and believed that children benefited from aid being given to scaffold their learning.
Vygotsky and cognitive development:
In 1990, Freund carried out an investigation where children had to decide which items of furniture belonged in a certain area of a doll’s house. Some children had an earlier experience of working on a similar task with theirmotherwhereas other children worked alone with no prior experience. Freund discovered that the children who had prior experience of performing a joint task with their mothers did better than the children who carried out the task totally alone.
Vygotsky and Piaget’s theories are in agreement that knowledge is constructed from a child’s active interaction with their environment, but Vygotsky mainly saw cognitive development as a cultural construct – that is, affected by the learning of norms and attitudes of whichever culture a child is raised within.
- For Vygotsky, therefore, cognitive development is a social process and he aimed to explain how higher mental functions – reasoning, understanding, etc. – arise out of children’s social experiences by considering development mainly in terms of cultural and interpersonal levels.
The first thing that might have struck you is how long ago Vygotsky’s theory was first developed. Vygotsky lived in the first few decades of the twentieth century but his work wasn’t widely known until the 1970s. When you look into his theory you will appreciate its continuing relevance despite its being nearly 100 years old. Vygotsky died young and so did not have time to fully develop his own theory, unlike the long working life experienced by Piaget.
Vygotsky’s work has therefore been thoroughly researched and developed by other psychologists, especially Jerome Bruner who is largely responsible for the concept of scaffolding, which you will meet later in this topic.
Vygotsky’s theory agrees with Piaget’s that knowledge is constructed through interactions with the environment. However, it differs in that it proposes that cognitive development is a social process.
- Vygotsky saw the interactions of children with their caregivers as a way for them to acquire cultural attitudes and beliefs, inheriting a number of cultural tools.
The cultural level:
Children are seen as benefiting from the knowledge of previous generations, which they gain through interactions with caregivers, thus passing cultural attitudes and beliefs from one generation to another, developing them further, then handling them on to the next generation.
For Vygotsky, the most essential cultural tool is language.
The Interpersonal level:
At the interpersonal level, culture and the individuals meet. Cognitive development occurs first on a social level, through interaction between people (interpsycholgical). Even higher-level cognitive functions and concepts were seen by Vygotsky as originating through interactions between individuals.
The basis of Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development – is that an explanation of the growth of intellect that sees intellectual growth as a social process where cognitive functions arise from children’s interactions with others.
Summary of internalisation and social nature of thinking:
The ability to think and reason by and for oneself is called inner speech or verbal thought. Infants are born as social beings capable of interacting with others, but able to do little practically or intellectually by themselves. Gradually, children become more self-sufficient and independent, and by participating in social activities their abilities develop.
For Vygotsky, cognitive development involves active internalisation of problem-solving processes, taking place as a result of mutual interaction between children and people they have social contact with. This therefore replaces Piaget’s ‘child as a scientist’ idea (that children construct and test out their own theories about the world) with the ‘child as an apprentice’ idea, where cultural skills and knowledge are gained through collaboration with those who possess them.
PC: T3. Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development: Outline Vygotsky: similarities/ differences to Piaget’s development beliefs .
Difference:
Unlike Piaget’s notion that childrens’ development must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky argued, “learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function” - In other words, social learning tends to precede (i.e., come before) development.
Similarity:
Like Piaget, Vygotsky could be described as aconstructivist, in that he was interested in knowledge acquisition as a cumulative event - with new experiences and understandings incorporated into existing cognitive frameworks. However, whilst Piaget’s theory is structural (arguing that development is governed by physiological stages), Vygotsky denies the existence of any guiding framework independent of culture and context.
PC: T3. Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development: Explain what is meant by thezone of proximal development.
Vygotsky was best known for his sociocultural theory. He constructed the idea of azone of proximal development,which are those tasks which are too difficult for a child to solve alone but s/he can accomplish with the help of adults or more skilled peers.
The zone of proximal development:
This sensitivity to the child’s abilities relies on recognising thezone of proximal development(ZPD)described by Vygotsky. - This refers to recognising where the child is in its accomplishments, i.e. what he or she can do with no help, what requires a little help and what is beyond the realm of possibility and so needs to be carried out by someone else.
Vygotsky’s theory talks about ‘experts’ helping the child, but this does not need to be a person who knows a lot more than the child; in fact, the closer that person is to the child in terms of knowledge the more likely they are to offer the appropriate assistance.
This means that the ‘teacher’ can be a peer, if they have progressed that bit more than the ‘learner’. If the ‘teacher’ is an adult whose knowledge is far superior, then they must be able to empathise with the learner and put themselves in the learner’s shoes to appreciate their present position.
The mantra for Vygotsky’s theory is ‘what a child can do with help today it can do on its own tomorrow’. If you do everything for a child it will never learn to do things for itself; if you give a child tasks beyond its scope then frustration will ensue. The intelligent aspect of this is to pitch activities for children just right to fall within the child’s ZPD.
SLT states that learning is accomplished throughmimickingsomeone else’s behaviour, therefore you would not instruct at all but just allow the child to watch as you tie your laces. You might slow the process down and ensure that the child is paying attention to what you are doing, but you would not allow the child any part in the task. After a number of demonstrations you would then expect the child to be able to perform the whole task in one go.
The problem with this approach is that it is not efficient in learning a complex task involving several sub-steps. To allow a child to achieve each sub-step in an incremental way is both more efficient and reduces frustration which might lead the child to give up on the task.
The Zone of proximal development, in short is the distance between current and potential ability. Cultural influences and knowledgeable others push children through the ZPD and on to tasks beyond their current ability.
Research support:
- Wood and Middleton (1975) – observed mothers using various strategies to support four year olds in building a model that was too difficult for the children to do themselves. Mothers who were most effective in offering assistance were ones who varied their strategy according to how well a child was doing, so that when a child was progressing well they gave less specific help, until the child made progress again. – this highlights the concept of the ZPD and shows that scaffolding (involves children being assisted by mentors who give clues as to how to solve problems rather than giving actual solutions) also is most effective when matched to the needs of a learner, so that they are assisted to achieve success in a task that previously they could not have completed alone.
The use of ZPD shows that it is most effective when matched with other learning techniques such as scaffolding, these can then also be tailored to the needs of the learner.
· Studies have shown that full demonstrations are less effective for children, because the adults are imposing a solution on to the children with too difficult verbal.
Instructions and too many details. From this it was then seen that children learned better when given more independence, and where the mothers only provided assistance when the children got stuck. This made it easier for the children to not find the situation so imposing, and still have guidance when they need it.
This use of ZPD supports Vygotsky’s theory – that knowledgeable tutors can help to assist learners on to a higher level of learning.
PC: T3. Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development: Explain the role of scaffolding in developing a child’s cognitive ability and the role of language.
The role of scaffolding in developing a child’s cognitive ability.
- Scaffolding:
Vygotsky’s Scaffolding concept isa theory that teachers can use as a tool for growth. It focuses on the learner’s ability to grow through the guidance of a more informed individual. Working in collaboration with a guide or with a peer group can help students achieve independent learning.
Scaffolding sees cognitive development as being assisted by sensitive guidance, with children being given more clues as to how to solve a problem, rather then being given an actual solution.
With scaffolding, learning first involves shared social activities until individuals can self-scaffold, with learning eventually becoming an individual, self-regulated activities.
Several processes have been identified that help create effective scaffolding:
1. Ensuring a task is easy.
2. Gaining and maintaining a child’s interest in the task.
3. Demonstrating the task.
4. Keeping a child’s level of frustration under control.
5. Stressing elements that will help create a solution to a task.
In context:
In the teaching of tying shoelaces, scaffolding is achieved by breaking the task down into steps and then intervening at each step in a sequential manner.
This gives the child support when it needs it and takes it away when it is no longer needed. Without the support the child would fail; if the support was never removed the child would not be forced to try it alone and so learn the task.
Hopefully you have not had too many experiences when a teacher did not provide suitable scaffolding, but you should now be able to see the relevance of Vygotsky’s theory. For example, scaffolding is a much safer approach to teaching someone to drive than the SLT approach.
Research:
- McNaughton & Leyland (1990) – observed mothers giving increasingly explicit help to children assembling progressively harder jigsaws, which illustrates how scaffolding and sensitivity to a child’s ZPD aid learning.
- The role of language:
Both Piaget and Vygotsky commented on how language is related to cognitive development and, as you might expect, the two theories differ.
Piaget felt that cognitions precede language and so he did not put emphasis on advancing cognitive development by encouraging language. Vygotsky, on the other hand, saw language as an important element in allowing cognitive development to progress.
Vygotsky identified pre-intellectual language and pre-linguistic thought occurring before the age of 2 years; the two then merge, with speech and thinking becoming interdependent and thinking being internal conversation.
Stages and concept formation:
As with Piaget, Vygotsky recognised stages in cognitive development. He described stages of concept formation quite similar to Piaget’s stages:
- vague syncretic.
- complex.
- potential concept.
4.mature concept.
Vygotsky (1934) gave children blocks with nonsense symbols on them and they had to work out what the symbols meant. Four different approaches were observed, from which Vygotsky proposed four stages concept formation.
Detail of the four stages of concept formation from the textbook table:
Vague Syncretic = Trial-and-error formation of concepts without comprehension of them. Similar to Piaget’s pre-operational stage.
Complex = Use of some strategies to comprehend concepts, but not very systematic.
Potential concept = More systematic use of strategies, with one attribute being focused on acts time – for example: weight.
Mature concept = Several attributes can be dealt with systematically – for example: weight and colour. Similar to Piaget’s formal operations.
Semiotics – The use of signs and symbols:
Semiotics involves the use of signs and symbols to create meaning. Vygotsky saw semiotics as assisting cognitive development through the use of language and other cultural symbols, which act as a medium for knowledge to be transmitted, turning elementary mental functions into higher ones.
- At first, children use pre-intellectual language for social and emotional purposes, where words are not symbols for they represent but instead reflect properties of the objects, with pre-linguistic thinking occurring without the use of language.
- From around two years of age, language and thinking combine so that speech and thought become independent (dependant on each other), with thinking thus becoming an internal conversation.
Such development occurs in severe phases:
1. Social speech (birth to 3 years) – involving pre-intellectual language.
2. Egocentric speech (birth 3-7 years) involving self-talk/thinking aloud.
3. Inner speech (7+ years) – Where self-talk becomes silent and internal, and language is used for social communications.
