Quiz 3 Flashcards
executive function (EF)
set of processes involved in regulation of thoughts and behaviors
- e.g., dealing with new information
- stable across the lifespan
information-processing skills in EF
- Speed of processing
- Working memory
- Inhibition
- Cognitive flexibility –> Switching to different tasks
speed of processing
- reaction time
- Similar developmental trajectory in multiple tasks
- Myelination is possibly a contributor to the increase in processing speed
working memory
- Not only storing short-term but also “working” with the information
- how much information should stay
- memory span
- role of knowledge
- span of apprehension
memory span
- Capacity of short-term store
- Number of items recalled in order
- Increases with age
span of apprehension
number of objects or pieces of information that a person can process at once after a brief presentation
inhibition
active suppression process
- Resist certain responses
- ability increases with age
- Harder in the evenings vs. mornings –> Ability to resist depletes with our energy levels because of the amount of effort required to inhibition
EF can be impaired by
- Lack of sleep, exercise
- Stress, loneliness
resistance to interference
susceptibility to distractions
- can be shown in dual tasks –> One task interferes with performance on the second task
central components of attention
inhibition, resistance to inference –> selective attention
inhibition and resistance to interference tasks
- Day/Night Stroop Task –> Say “day” when you see the moon, say “night” when you see the sun
- Language Stroop Task –> Say the color of the words, not what the words say
- Tapping Task –> Tap once when I tap twice, and vice versa
- Simon Says –> Perform an action only when you hear “simon says”
EF and brain development
- Prefrontal cortex (PFC) development contributes to better success at EF tasks
- Development time –> One of the last areas to reach maturity; Rapid growth from birth to 2 years
- Mismatch –> Limbic system (e.g., amygdala) develops quicker than PFC lobes –> Risk-taking, sensation-seeking behaviors
patients with PFC dysfunction
- Difficulty planning and concentration
- Disorders (e.g., OCD)
- Card sorting task difficulties –> Lack of cognitive flexibility
EF stability
- EF abilities are heritable and stable over time
- Some interventions can enhance EF abilities –> Pretend play, Parenting practices, Training programs, Exercise
- Cultural Variability
cognitive strategies
goal-directed mental operations aimed at solving a problem
main types of cognitive strategies
- math
- memory
- problem-solving
- rehearsal
- organization
- clustering
How do children use strategies?
- When confronted with a cognitively effortful task
Older children:
- More likely to use strategies
- Select more effective ones
- Perform better on tasks
Younger children:
- Can be taught strategies and improve performance
- E.g., asking to rehearse → more words remembered
- Performance is still lower and does not transfer to new tasks
rehearsal
repeating the target information
- Amount of rehearsal use increases with age
type of rehearsal changes
- Passive –> ~one item at a time
- Active –> Multiple items at a time
organization
noticing and organizing meaningful conceptual relationships between items
clustering
recalling items from the same category
- increases with age
clustering and children
- increases with age
- Preschool children (3-4 years old) cluster at chance
- Preschoolers can be taught to cluster (just like rehearsing)
- Older children would still perform better vs. taught preschoolers
- Poor transfer to new sets of items/situations
factors in strategies
- mental capacity –> Strategies are effortful
- knowledge base –> Knowledge/comfort of conceptual categories
- metacognition –> Being able to recognize one’s own thought patterns
strategies and culture
- Strategies effectiveness can vary by culture
Memory Strategies (e.g., rehearsal, organization)
- More helpful for industrialized societies –> With list-learning tasks, children from industrialized societies perform better than children from non-industrialized
- Results change if the task format changes –> With contextualized tasks (e.g., story format), no differences in recall
Kurtz et al. (1990)
- American and German second-third graders
- German children use more memory strategies
- Interpretation: caregivers’ behaviors and attitudes
- German caregivers –> Buying more strategic thinking games, Training, Homework checks, Direct instruction
strategies use in the real world
- School-related tasks:
How to study for tests, remember important information - Children’s strategies in everyday contexts:
Playing video games, playing games with caregivers
problem-solving
involves having goals, obstacles, strategies for overcoming the obstacles, and an evaluation of the results
- Infants become more efficient as they solve multiple similar problems
- Problem-solving is dependent on context, knowledge, and motivation
When does problem-solving ability emerge?
When infants show goal-directed behavior
Chen et al. (1997)
- 1-year-olds
- Shown a toy with a string attached to one side and cloth under
- Solution: pull the correct cloth, pull string, get toy
language
system of communication using arbitrary sounds or symbols
- Express feelings, thoughts, experiences
language is uniquely human
- Symbolic → sounds (or movements) represent something independent
- Grammatical → system of rules, syntax
- Culturally defined → particular language varies by culture
functions of language
- Instrumental → express needs
“More milk” - Regulatory → tell what to do
“Get me juice” - Interactional → contact others, form relationships
“I love you” - Personal → express opinions, feelings
“I am a good person!” - Heuristic → gain knowledge
“What is this?” - Imaginative → create environments, tell stories
- Representational → convey facts
language hierarchy
(from smallest to largest)
Sound units: phonemes → meaning units: morphemes → words: semantics → structure of phrases: syntax → structure of larger tests: discourse
infants are universal listeners
- Discriminate native vs. nonnative phonemes
- Such ability declines after 1 year
- Specialization in native phonemes occurs
- Bilingual infants decline slower
phonology
sounds of language
babbling
- ~6 months
- Infants producing sounds like “bababa”
- Intonation gradually matches the native language
- Directs social interaction –> Caregivers respond more to more complex sounds
- Children with hearing impairments babble using gestures
babbling development
- Stage 1: reflexive crying and vegetative sounds (0-8 weeks)
- Stage 2: cooing and laughter (8-20 weeks)
- Stage 3: vocal play (16-30 weeks) –> Cooing to babbling, consonants
- Stage 4: reduplicated babbling (25-50 weeks)
- Stage 5: Jargon (9-18 months) –> Complexity, non-repeated consonants and vowels
morphology
the structure of language
morphemes
smallest units of meaning
- “Ed” means past tense, “s” means plural
free morphemes
stand alone (e.g., dog)
bound morphemes
have to attach (e.g., “ed”)
morphological development
- free vs. bond morphemes
- overregularization
phonological development
- infants are universal listeners
- babbling
overregularization
- At ~20 months
- Applying a learned rule incorrectly, “overdo”
- E.g., adding “ed” to irregular verbs like “goed”
- Occurs in other languages
- By age ~3
tests to measure morphological development
- MLU = Mean length of utterance –> Average number of morphemes used in a sentence; A measurement of linguistic development
- Wug Test –> How can you know whether children understand morphological rules?
syntactic development
- Officially starts at 18 months (two-word sentences)
- holographic speech –> holophrases, telegraphic speech, complex speech
syntax
grammatical rules, how words combine into sentences
- We might not know the rules explicitly; Might not be able to state the rule used
holographic speech
- holophrases
- telegraphic speech
- complex speech
holophrases
- One-word sentences
- “Mommy?” “Cookie?”
- Used for different purposes –> Question, request, convo start
telegraphic speech
- ~18 months
- Abbreviated
- Content heavy
- Leaving some words out
- “Give milk”
complex speech
- ~3-4 years
- Longer sentences
- Recognize correct word order:
- SVO
- “John hit the ball” vs. “Hit John the ball”
complex speech development
- Presented with:
SVO: “Ernie meeking the car”
SOV: “Ernie the cow taming”
VSO: “Gopping Ernie the cow” - 2 year olds sometimes correct VSO/SOV (~50%)
- 4 year olds very likely to correct VSO/SOV (~90%) –> Sensitivity to correct word order; And comfort with correcting someone’s grammar
- Earliest types of complex speech (~age 3)
- More complexity (~age 4)
- negatives
- questions
- passives
Earliest types of complex speech (~age 3) for complex speech development
- Object complementation –> Sentences with direct objects; “Look at me hit the ball”
- “Wh” embedded clauses –> “Do you want to play when we get home?”
- Coordination of sentences –> Using “and”; “I tripped John and he fell”
More complexity (~age 4) for complex speech development
- Subordinate and main clauses
- Using “if”, “because”, “although”
- “I will go to the park if Jesse goes”
How to assess syntactic development?
Look at the common grammatical forms and see how children use them at different ages
negatives in complex speech
adding “no” or “not” to different locations in sentence
questions in complex speech
“outside?” → “where daddy?” → “why?”
passives in complex speech
4-5 year olds in English
- earlier in other languages
semantic development
early words:
- Important objects
- Important people
- Social interaction relevant terms
E.g., hello, bye
- More nouns
- word spurt
- fast mapping
semantics
meaning
first words
~12 months
word spurt
rapid word learning
- Some suggest that it is gradual
- 50 words by 18 months
fast mapping
map (connect) novel word to novel objects; rapid learning of new words from clues (e.g., context)
fast mapping study –> Mervis & Bertrand (1994)
- 32 toddlers (16-20 months)
- Shown a familiar object
- Asked to pick an item
- Half learned after only a few exposures
- Larger vocabularies
- Others learned after a few months (after word spurt)
factors in fast mapping
- Joint Attention –> More likely to learn when adults point/look at the object
- constraints on meaning: whole object assumption, taxonomic assumption, mutual exclusivity assumption
- sentence context
whole object assumption
when hearing a new word, children assume it refers to a whole object, rather than its part
taxonomic assumption
when hearing a new word, children assume it refers to things that are similar
mutual exclusivity assumption
words refer to different things
- 3-year-olds
- Knew the word “cup”, but not “tongs”
- When shown both and asked “Show me the dax” → pick tongs
sentence context
syntactic frames provide cues to meaning
- Also known as “syntactic bootstrapping”
- “A” before nouns, “she” before verbs
“A” signals that “blicket” is a proper noun, a name for an object
“Some” signals quantity
- Intransitive vs. Transitive Frames –> “A boy and a girl are gorping” signals that they are both doing something (together)
taxonomic assumption experiment –> Waxman & Kosowski (1990)
- 3-4-year-olds
- Novel noun condition –> “See this? This is a cham. Can you find another cham?”
- No-word condition –> “See this one? Can you find another one?”
- Children interpret new nouns as names for kinds of objects, not thematic groupings (though they do form thematic groupings)
sentence context experiment –> Naigles (1990)
- Stimulus: shown two actions (causative and non) simultaneously and heard transitive (duck is gorping the bunny) or intransitive frame (they are gorping)
- Test: shown same actions separately and asked to find “gorping”
- Results: 1-2-year-olds who heard a transitive looked at a causative action (and vice versa)
- Implication: structure of the sentence affects an interpretation
errors in word learning
- overextention
- underextention
overextention
extending meaning too far
- Example: calling a cat a “dog”
- Fix through accommodation
I.e., change the schema
underextention
very limited use of meaning
- Example: calling “dog” only the family dog
- Fix through assimilation
I.e., add new information to a schema
pragmatics
use of language properly in a social context (also “get things done”), ability to fit different situations
- Appropriate level of information
- Turn-taking
- Tone adjustment
- Peer or boss
- Appropriate nonverbal cues
- Understanding rhetorics
collective monologue
a form of egocentric, unsocialized speech in which children talk among themselves without apparently communicating with each other in a meaningful way; that is, the statements of one child seem unrelated to the statements of the others
- Preschoolers (3-4-year-olds) in social situations attempt to communicate
- Yet have egocentric perspective → Piaget
- This affects conversations as well
- Messages do not land
- Often not a problem for children
Collective monologues example:
- Child A: “I drive my truck over here, and then I drive beside your plan and I fill it up”
- Child B: “My plane’s coming in for a landing. I push your truck over pffff”
miscommunications
Despite the mistakes/miscommunications, children, interestingly, rarely correct them and act as if all is good even though they sometimes see the ambiguity
miscommunications experiment –> Beal and Flavell (1982)
- Kindergarten children given ambiguous instructions for making a block building –> Looked puzzled and hesitated in selecting blocks
- Yet when building was completed –> Said that it was just like the model (which it was not); And that instructions had been adequate for reproducing the model (which they had not)
metacommunication
ability to monitor/correct speech
- Increases significantly between K-2nd grade (8 year olds)
- Show less omissions, ambiguities, rely less on contextual support
who to trust experiment –> Koenig (2004)
- 3-4-year-olds
- Listened to two informants
- One labeled familiar objects correctly, another did not
- After shown novel objects and heard a label from the informants
- “This is a dax” or “This is a wug”
- Children as young as 3 years old trusted the accurate
language debate –> Team B. F. Skinner
- Language is learned by reinforcement
- We are rewarded for producing words
- We imitate the speech of people around
language debate –> Team N. Chomsky
- Language related areas develop actively during childhood
grammar/phonemes are built-in or acquired with minimal exposure - Language is based in the genes
Cultural Transmission of Social Essentialism by Rhodes et al. (2012)
- The Role of Generic Language Use in Transmission of Essentialism
- Categories (e.g., gender)
- Stereotypes, bias
- Prejudice
- Across many communities (e.g., rural and urban)
- Examined toddles (4-year-olds)
Study 1
- Novel social category “Zarpies”
- Storybook
- Generic vs. not generic description –> Zarpies are scared of ladybugs vs. This Zarpie is scared of ladybugs
- Questioning on essentialism beliefs –> Properties innate? (inheritance);
Extend to other members? (induction);
Membership explains property? (explanation)
Study 2
- Effects quickly over time
- Results: can be quick
Study 3
- Examine caregivers
- Explain “Zarpies”
- Observe how caregivers - explain to children
- Those exposed to the essentialist explanation used more generic language
- Biological categories
- Contribute to learnings and survival:
If this tiger is dangerous, another is too;
Baby tiger grows into a bigger one;
Inherent properties learning (stripes)
theories of language development
- behavioral
- nativist
- social interactionist
behavioral theory of language development
reinforcement, imitation
Speech streams are complex
- Pauses between words are not reliable
- Some pauses occur mid-words
E.g., “Be_tween”
- Some pauses do not occur consistently between words
E.g., “pretty baby” is like “prettybaby”
parsing
- Statistical learning
- How do infants parse a steady speech stream?
- Saffran, Aslin, and Newport (1996): 8-month-old infants learned to recognize “bidaku” within a string of other nonsense
nativist theory of language development
innate/prepared language
- Noam Chomsky –> language acquisition device
- Universal grammar/language share:
Extensive vocabularies with categories
Words can be organized into phrases
Use suffixes and prefixes
social interactionist theory of language development
Innate component and highly environmentally dependent
- Similar to nativist, with more emphasis on social environment
- Importance of shared attention –> Language is “carefully presented” to children by other people around them, and catered to their needs
- Gestures –> The more children used gestures at 14 months of age, the larger their vocabularies were at 54 months
- Child-directed speech
problem with behavioral theory of language development
- Children produce new, non-imitated sentences
- Children often not praised for correctness, but for meaning
problems with nativist theory of language development
With no environmental input, the language is limited
language and brain
- Tends to be left lateralized
- Wernicke’s Area = involved in speech production
- Broca’s Area = involved in speech comprehension
- Much of what we know is from lesions and aphasia studies
generativity
- Universal grammar
- Pidgin
- Creole
- Nicaraguan Sign Language
Pidgin
a communication system created by adults not sharing a common language
- Lacks grammar
Creole
if pidgin is the first language of the community (children), creole emerges
- Has grammar
- Often in one generation
Nicaraguan Sign Language
- School for special needs opening in 1977
- Children with hearing impairments developed a simple system to communicate in school and outside
- Over multiple cohorts, it has developed into a full complex language which is now NSL
child-directed speech
Features:
- Higher acoustic frequency
- Wider range of frequencies
- Greater incidence of rising contours
- Short, grammatical sentences
- Also known as infant-directed speech or IDS
- Infants more attentive to adults using IDS as opposed to ADS
- Deaf infants more attentive to I-D signs than A-D signs
- Infants can discriminate sounds better in I-D than A-D speech
- I-D speech used to regulate infant’s behavior and emotions
literacy
learning the principles of reading and writing
- ~4 years old
numeracy
numbering, numerical relations, counting, math operations
- ~4 years old
- Related to literacy
- Can also be learned informally at first
- Includes such skills as counting, addition, subtraction
- Counting helps with understanding abstraction, comparisons:
One-to-One Principle
Stable Order Principle
Cardinality Principle
- Mental number line and differentiation between the numbers by age 6
- Reversible Thinking
- Estimation and number patterns by ~5
- SES is related to the rate of learning
emergent literacy
pre-reading and pre-writing skills
- Print-related skills:
Phonological awareness (sounds)
Letter knowledge
- Oral language skills:
Reading aloud
Conversations with caregivers
Language Exposure & Literacy
- The more language exposure, the better
- Exposure varies based on SES, Education
- Children who had more conversations at home showed higher activation in Broca’s area in fMRI
One-to-One Principle
only one number is assigned to each object
Stable Order Principle
follow the same order
Cardinality Principle
the last number represents the quantity of the set
Reversible Thinking
understanding that subtraction cancels out addition; by age 5
Simultaneous Bilingualism
learning both languages at once
- Code Mixing
Code Mixing
mixing both languages
Sequential Bilingualism
acquiring a second language after mastering the first language
perks of bilingualism
- More dense gray matter in language related areas (IPL → inferior parietal lobe)
- Better executive function, goal maintenance –> Some studies do not find these effects
- Better Theory of Mind
Frank et al.
The Pirahã
- Hunter-gatherer tribe
- Monolingual
- Amazonian rainforest
Experiment 1
- Explore Pirahã numbers
- “One”, “two”, “many” reported in the past
- Asked (N = 10) to describe quantities
- Spools of thread
- From 1 to 10 or 10 to 1
- “How many is it?”
- Found no consistent words
- Some terms change based on context
Experiment 2
- Explore numerical cognition in Pirahã
- Perception and memory tasks
- N = 14
- Variety of matching tasks (5)
- Showed a quantity of spools and asked to pull the same of balloons
- Drop some in the cup (more memory)
- Near perfect performance
- Despite not having words for exact quantities
- Know exactness vs. approximate
- Varied performance on memory tasks
Language plays a fundamental role
- Encoding of information (e.g., quantity, color)
- However, the underlying cognitive processes are not affected directly by speakers of different languages
(WCST) Card Sorting Task
- The Task: Participants are presented with a deck of cards that vary in color, shape, and number of figures.
- The Goal: They must sort the cards into piles based on a rule that is initially unknown, but learned through feedback after each sort.
- The Change: The rule (e.g., sorting by color, shape, or number) changes after a certain number of correct sorts, requiring participants to adapt their strategy.
- Feedback: Participants receive feedback after each sort, indicating whether the card was placed in the correct pile or not.
- Assessment: The WCST assesses executive functions such as:
Abstract Reasoning: The ability to understand and apply rules.
Cognitive Flexibility: The ability to shift cognitive strategies and adapt to changing rules.
Working Memory: The ability to hold and manipulate information in mind while performing the task.
Set-Shifting: The ability to switch between different cognitive sets or rules.
Children effectively complete WCST at age…
~10-12 years
what WCST looks like for people with PFC dysfunction
often reveals difficulties with cognitive flexibility, set-shifting, and perseveration, leading to repeated errors in sorting cards based on changing rules
Shtulman & Walker (2020)
- Reasoning
Children’s “Little Scientists”
- Intuitive Theories = using ideas and cultural input to explain and predict events, not precise
- Helpful, but can prevent the learning of science
Main ideas
- Children construct theories about the world
- Revise theories
- Recognize when evidence is inconclusive
- Track patterns
- Concepts
Learn if something is hot, but not it’s temperature
“plants are not alive”
e.g., “the earth is round but has a flat top”
List of Concepts (we need more information on):
- Physics
Matter, Heat, Motion, Earth
- Biology
Life, Inheritance, Illness, Evolution
What to do!
- Giving specific examples
- Challenging misconceptions
- Explain the exact process
- Properties of germs and pathways to infection
- Not just dos and don’ts
- Start explaining when younger vs. older
smallest unit of sound
phonemes
smallest unit of meaning
morphemes
