Quiz 4 Flashcards
cognition
using perception to make inferences about the core nature of stimuli
Understand:
- Objects, quantities → knowledge
- Form categories
core knowledge
theory that infants are born with some understanding in several areas
- Upon these, new skills are built
3 aspects of core knowledge
1) Object representation
2) Number and quantities
3) People and their actions
object representation
nature of the objects; how they should exist, move interact, look
object constancy
object does not change in size or shape depending how one views it
object cohesion and continuity
objects are seen as wholes with distinct boundaries
Infants shown an image of a rectangle occluding a bar
2.5-month-old infants are surprised at:
- If an object is moved without anyone moving it
- Object remains still when something pushes it
- object cohesion and continuity
6.5-month-olds know that…
objects cannot remain still in “mid-air”
- object cohesion and continuity
horizontal decalage
in which an ability develops at different rates in different context
object permanence
object still exists even if it is hidden
- At 4 months, infants attempt to retrieve an object if it is hidden, but only if the object is partially visible
- At 6 months, infants will search for a hidden object only if they are moving in the direction of the object
- At 8 months, infants retrieve a hidden object successfully but, cannot if the object was hidden in one location and later moved to another (A not B Task)
numerosity
ability to quickly determine the number of items in the set without counting
cardinality
basic understanding of “less than” or “more than”
Can infants tell the difference between two arrays that differ in the number of objects they contain?
- 10-12-month-olds saw different numbers of crackers put in two boxes
- They could crawl to whichever box they pleased
- Consistently crawl to the one having more
- Can do 1 vs. 2
- Can do 2 vs. 3
- Do not discriminate above that (no 3 vs. 4 or 2 vs.4)
- The pattern is similar to the rhesus monkey
Wynn (1992)
- Violation of Expectation Method
- Showed 5-month-olds sequences of events of a mouse being shown then a screen closing so that they cannot see the mouse and adding a second mouse then removing the screen to show either 1 or 2 mice
- Possible (1 + 1 = 2)
- Impossible (1 + 1 = 1)
- Infants looked longer at the impossible
- 3-day-old chickens show a similar pattern
infants can discriminate cardinality in:
- preferential-looking at a visual scene
- auditory sequences
- sequences of events
core knowledge criticisms
Violation of Expectation Method use
- A lot of studies rely on this method
- Not everyone believes that systematic changes in looking time reflect underlying cognitive abilities
Necessity
- There is no need to postulate innate knowledge of physical laws
- Infants are born with perceptual abilities and acquire knowledge of objects through experience
Memory
- The looking preference patterns (e.g., longer looking at impossible events) can be the result of the need for more processing time for memory encoding
Woodward & Gerson (2014)
Action production and goal analysis of action links
- Neonatal imitation
- Anticipation of endpoints of action trajectories
- Infants’ motor system is active during observations of actions of others
Infants analyze actions in terms of intentional relations:
Visual habituation studies
- 3-month-olds look longer at actions that disrupt the goal rather than go along
Grasping a ball
- 9-month-olds show this pattern for more complex, indirect actions
Using a tool to get the object
Experimental
- 11-month-olds show analysis of actor’s goal to create visual predictions about their future behavior
Neuro
- 9-month-olds show different activation when viewing goal-directed actions vs. movements
Why infants analyze actions of others
- Social cognition
- Social information processing
Create timely, appropriate response to social partners
- Theory of Mind development
Performance on action analysis tasks in infancy predicts performance in understanding of psychological processes of others at 4 years of age
Infants’ actions are goal-directed
- Aiming the reach in anticipation of moving object position of contact
- Preshape their hands in anticipation of object’s size and orientation
- Speech of reach depends on whether they want to throw or put an object into the box
Infants’ actions and actions of others
- If infants receive training on a goal-directed action, they are more likely to interpret others’ actions with the same object as goal-directed
E.g., use velcro mittens as a tool to grab objects
E.g., to use the cane as a tool
- Active training is more likely to have an effect than observational learning alone
Motor processes’ role in action understanding
Mirror neurons
- Cells in the motor cortex that fire when performing and observing an action explored in monkeys and adults
- Yet to explore this system in infancy
- EEG rhythms are similar when adults watch and perform an action
Similar for infants
The magnitude of the pattern is influences by motor development
- Sensitive to goal-directedness vs. simple movements
social cognition
thinking about one’s own thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors, as well as those of other people
- Deals with how thought processes (cognition) work in a social context
Social Cognition
thinking about one’s own thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors, as well as those of other people
- Deals with how thought processes (cognition) work in a social context
basic social-cognitive abilities
- View self and others as intentional agents; with goal-oriented behavior
- Understand intentions; consider others’ perspectives
Intentional understanding can be seen early on → Carpenter et al. (1998)
- 14-18-month-olds
- Shown intention and accidental behavior sequences
- When given a chance to imitate, 14-month-olds prefer to imitate intentional behaviors (~2x as much)
- Infants differentiate intentional vs. accidental actions
early orientation to social others
- Newborns prefer listening to the language of their caregivers vs. foreign
Heard in the utero - Newborns orient to the human face and learn to seek caregivers’ faces
- Prepared (by prenatal experience) to attend to caregivers and others
social learning
acquiring information from others
- direct teaching
- observational learning
social brain hypothesis
humans evolved the ability to better learn from others
- Enhanced skills at both competing and cooperating
- The rapid acquisition/transmission of material culture
bandura’s social cognitive theory
voracious (indirect) learning through observation, explicit reinforcement not necessary (e.g., conditioning) to learn about the social world
- bobo doll experiment
Bandura’s Theory: Cognitive Factors Contributing to Social Learning
- symbolization
- forethought
- self-regulation
- self-reflection
- vicarious learning
symbolization
ability to think about social behavior in words and images
forethought
anticipate consequences of our and others’ actions
self-regulation
ability to adopt standards of behavior
self-reflection
analyze thoughts and actions
vicarious learning
ability to learn new behavior by observing others
Bandura’s Theory: Subprocesses of Observational Learning
- attentional processes
- retention processes
- production processes
- motivational processes
attentional processes
have to watch the behavior
retention processes
have to remember the behavior
reduction processes
have to have the motor/cognitive skills to repeat the behavior
motivational processes
have to want to perform the behavior
forms of social learning (in order of simple to more complex)
- Local enhancement
- Mimicry
- Emulation
- Imitation
- Teaching (instructed learning)
local enhancement
- Notice activity at a certain location
- Move to that location
- Discover a useful similar behavior through trial-and-error
- Monkeys and nut-cracking
Notice other cracking nuts at a location with many stones
Learns to crack nuts
mimicry
duplication of behavior without understanding the goal
Example:
- A 2-year-old child steps on a scale, looks at the scale face, and steps off, just like Dad does
- Same behavior, but the goal is not understood
emulation
understanding the goal and engaging in similar behavior to achieve that goal
- Without necessarily reproducing the exact actions of the model
Example:
- Simon sees June sifting sand to find seashells
- Simon starts throwing handfuls of sand out
- This would separate sand and seashells
- Achieving the same goal
- No reproduction of the behavior
imitation
the same actions are used to achieve the same goal
Example:
- A child watches an adult open a latch and push a button to open a box to get a piece of candy
- The child understands the adult’s goal and repeats the same actions with the same results
Requires:
- Taking the perspective of the model
- Understand the goal
- Reproduce actions
- Understand the causal relationship between behavior and the goal
teaching (instructed learning)
learn the adult’s understanding of the task, compare it to yours, reproduce the behavior in the appropriate context, understand the purpose, and internalize the instruction, not just repeat the behavior
Example:
- Basketball
- Putting a ball in a basket in certain situations is a goal in the game
- Monkeys can toss the ball by learning by instruction
- But it is not the same as knowing to do so in certain situations → instructed learning
Requires:
- Complex perspective-taking
- Joint attention
- Theory of Mind
age differences in social learning: 2-year-olds
Tend to emulate
- Goal emulation
- Different actions
- As early as 14 months
Use head to press button
age differences in social learning: 3-5-year-olds
- Tend to imitate
- Same action and goal
Imitation increases and emulation decreases as children enter the preschool years
Gergely et al. (2002) –> context differences in social learning
A model shows an action of pressing a button with their head
If model has hands free:
- Infants press with head
- Show imitation
If model has hands occupied:
- Infants press with hands
- Show emulation
overimitation
At ~3 years, children imitate both relevant and irrelevant actions
Example:
- Shown how to reach a toy using a rake with some irrelevant actions (e.g., tapping)
- 2-year-olds copied all actions
- Chimpanzees: only copied actions relevant to the goal
- Social implications
overimitation less likely when
- Know the task beforehand
- Model provides unreliable information
- Different context when observing vs. performing the task
- Model speaks a different language
- Age: older children
overimitation possible explanation
- we overimitate to maintain social ties
- 4-6-year-olds more likely to imitate a human vs. a robot
- 2-year-olds more likely to imitate a live socially responsive human vs. a video
And more likely to imitate an interactive live video vs. a non-responsive recording
overimitation benefits
- Can allow us to avoid the pitfalls of individual learning
- Can help learn an array of skills quickly
- Heuristic for learning about cultural artifacts and their uses
- Natural Pedagogy
natural pedagogy
a human adaptation permitting fast and accurate transmission of information between individuals
social neuroscience
explores neurological basis for social learning and cognitions
mirror neurons
- Fire when performing or watching someone perform an action
- May play a role in observational learning
- See an action → motor-related neurons fire → neurological system underlying social learning
- “Able to recognize when another is doing something that the self can do”
mirror neurons in humans
- Fire when we see another person expressing an emotion
Disgust
Pain - Fire when goal-directed and meaningless actions are observed
Monkeys only for goal - More sensitive?
E.g., finger movements
Codes for movement
Important for imitation
Buccino et al. (2004) –> mirror neurons and imitation
- Explored mirror neurons in imitation
- Participants watched an expert playing guitar chords
Results:
- Mirror neurons are active when watching
- More active when tried to imitate chords
mirror neurons and children
- EEG in 3-year-olds –> Fire when watching and performing hand movements
- fMRI in 10-14-year-olds –> Fire to emotional expressions
- Newborns –> Not much evidence;
EEG in 9-month-olds when reaching for objects and watching
Ramachandran & Oberman (2006)
Mirror neurons are the neural basis for:
- Identifying with others
- Empathy
- Perspective-taking
- Imitation
- Understanding intentions
Theory of Mind abilities among the ASD population could be associated with deficits in the mirror neuron system
self-concept
the way one defines themselves
- Cognitive development
- Goal-directed behavior
- Social and emotional development
- Makes humans unique
- Awareness of one’s thoughts –> Ability to reflect
- Sense of self –> Ability to distinguish self from others
- Self-motivated actions –> Ability to identify actions as intentionally motivated
- Evaluate self and others’ actions –> Becomes self-aware and other-aware
looking-glass self
our self-concept is a reflection of how others see us
- We base our judgments of ourselves based on how others respond to us
Piaget’s proposal of development of self-concept
- Gradually recognize themselves as different from objects around
- Fully developed by 18-24 months
Rochat & Striano (2002) –> testing development of self-concept
- Show infants
Video of themselves vs. videos of other infants - Measure looking times
- 3-month-old infants show discrimination
- Suggests a primitive form of self-recognition in infancy
I-Self
implicit, ~15-18 months; no self-awareness, distinction between self and others
- I can cause things to happen
Me-Self
explicit, ~18-24 months; conscious awareness
- Idea of me
How can we tell if infants developed a me-self?
Visual self-recognition test
- Placing a mark on the infant’s forehead
- Observe their reaction when seeing their image in the mirror
- 15-month-olds touch the mark
Vs. touch the mirror
- Shows first signs of self-recognition
- Not all show so early, but by 18 months, 75% show
importance of self-concept
- Influence social, emotional, and cognitive development
- Acquisition of social knowledge and competence
- Peer relations
- Gender identity
- Empathy
other markers of self-concept development
- Toddlers use first-person pronouns: I, me, my, mine
Linguistic distinction between self and others
Late in 2nd or early 3rd year - Inner speech
- Mirror self-recognition
- Pretend play
- Neuroscience: the degree of self-representation in 15-30-month-olds relates to maturation of a portion of the left hemisphere
theory
a coherent framework for organizing facts
Casey et al. (2011)
- Delay of gratification task at 4-years-old
- Follow-up tests of impulse control at 20-years-old
Impulse control task at 40-years-old
- Experiment 1: go/nogo task
“Adult” reward → social (e.g., happy face)
- Experiment 2: fMRI
Go/nogo task
- See happy face → press button
- See fearful face → withhold pressing button
Results
- Experiment 1: those who had more difficulty delaying gratification at 4 had more difficulty suppressing the response at 40
- Experiment 2 (fMRI):
Low delayers → low activity in the prefrontal cortex
Involved in inhibition
Low delayers → high activity in the ventral striatum
Involved in reward processing
Implications
- Experiment 1:
Resistance to temptation is a stable characteristic
Predictive validity of delay of gratification
- Experiment 2:
Resisting temptation supported by ventral frontostriatal circuitry
Activity is different in low delayers
- Connect to Tang et al.
belief-desire reasoning
we predict what others do based on what we understand their beliefs and desires to be
basic skills needed for Theory of Mind
- Treating others as intentional agents
- Taking perspective of another
others skills for Theory of Mind
- Shared attention
- Referential communication
- Imitating intended vs. accidental actions
- Helping (e.g., meeting the goal of other)
false-belief task
a common way to measure Theory of Mind
- The toy is hidden in one location while Sally and Ann are present
- Sally leaves
- Ann changes the location of the toy
- Question: When Sally is back, where would she look?
- Correct answer: in the original location
- 3-year-olds → fail
- 4-year-olds → pass
- Similar patterns across the globe
other false-belief tasks
Unexpected contents (also known as Smarties Task)
- Show children a box of Smarties (a type of candy with a distinctive box children are familiar with)
- Ask: “What do you think is in the box?”; answer: smarties, candy
- Show that it actually contains pens
- Ask:
What did you think was in the box before?
Memory
- What would Jim think is in the box?
False belief
- The correct answer is Smarties, but 3-year-olds say pens
why 3-year-olds fail the false-belief task
Forget initial belief
- However, 3-year-olds have little difficulty remembering past images, perceptions, and pretenses
- But have difficulty remembering past beliefs, specifically
Lack conceptual structure
- Not enough to navigate beliefs
- Have representational deficit
- Theory of mind deficit
Dealing with two representations of a single object at once
- Get contradictory evidence
- Dual-encoding hypothesis and scale models
- Support for dual representation → Gopnik & Astingto (1988)
Across similar tasks requiring dual representations, children fail/pass at a similar rate
Suggesting that a single, domain-general mechanism underlies representational abilities
Lack of executive function
- Basic cognitive abilities (e.g., planning)
- Flynn et al. (2004)
3-year-olds did a series of false-belief and executive function tasks
- Once every 4 weeks 6 times
- Results: most children performed well on executive function before the performed well on false-belief
Lack of inhibition
- It is difficult for younger children to withhold certain responses
- Mean Monkey
3-4-year-olds
Monkey puppet asks what stickers they liked, then took them away
4-year-olds quickly understood that you need to say the opposite
3-year-olds kept telling the truth
factors in Theory of Mind
- Quality of attachment
- Parenting styles
- Caregiver-child communication
- Language skills
- Caregiver warmth
- Use of mental state talk
Talking about what they and their children are thinking - Family size
Children from larger families perform better on false-belief tasks
family size and Theory of Mind
Siblings influence explanation
- Interactions with siblings facilitate more complex reasoning
- Some studies find that only having older siblings has this effect
- Ability to pretend to play with
Competition explanation
- Since older siblings can be bigger/stronger, there is a need to develop latent to win the social competition
Theory of Mind in infancy
Repacholi & Gopnik (1997)
- 14- and 18-month-olds
- Tested for food preferences between crackers and raw vegetables
- They then watched as the experimenter tasted both foods and expressed likeness (“mmm” or disgust (“ew”)
- The experimenter then asked, “Can you give me some?”
- 14-month-olds gave the food they liked
As if the experimenter preference is the same as their own
- 18-month-olds gave the food experimenter liked
Their likes can be different from other person
implicit vs. explicit false-belief tasks
- Most false-belief tasks are explicit
Require a verbal response - Using implicit tasks can reveal that infants might know more than they can verbalize
- Measuring looking
- Clements & Perner (1994)
Younger children look at the correct response
The initial location of the object
The implicit Theory of Mind in infants
- Infants have some implicit understanding of others’ minds before they can act (explicitly) on that knowledge
- This experiment received a lot of replications
With some showing effects as young as 7 months old
- And some failed to replicate, too
Suggesting the effect is elusive
neuroscience and Theory of Mind
- Show evidence for Theory of Mind continuous development
Richardson et al. (2018)
- Networks associated with Theory of MInd in adults are in place as early as 3 years old
- Bilateral temporoparietal junction
- Age difference in ease of activation
3 and 7 years old
Correspond to behavioral data of solving false-belief tasks
animals and Theory of Mind
Like 3-year-olds, chimpanzees cannot solve explicit false-belief tasks
But they can solve implicit false-belief tasks
Chimpanzees can tell the difference between accidentally dropping food vs. withholding on purpose
intelligence
thinking and acting in ways that are goal-directed and adaptive
high intelligence scores correlate with
- School performance
- Learning technology skills
- Social adjustment
psychometric approach to intelligence
- Intelligence can be described in terms of mental factors
- Tests can be constructed to assess these factors
- Factors are related mental skills that (presumably) affect thinking in a wide range of situations
- Factor analysis
factor analysis
Verbal factor
Subskills correlate:
- Vocabulary
- Reading comprehension
- Story completion
- Verbal analogies
Spatial factor
Subskills correlate:
- 3D rotation
- Maze learning
- Form-board performance
theories of intelligence
- Guilford (1988) → 180 unique intellectual factors
- Spearman’s g (1927) → general and specific intelligence (2 factors)
- Cattell (1971) → fluid and crystallized intelligence (2 factors)
Fluid → biologically determined
E.g., memory span
Crystallized → cultural context and experience determined
E.g., verbal comprehension - Jensen (1998) - Positive Manifold
High correlations between various types of intelligence measures evidence for g
Correlations (verbal and nonverbal) gets stronger with age
Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon –> IQ
- In 1904 in France
- Purpose: assess school-related abilities
- Children who benefit from standard vs. special education
- Mental Age (MA) vs. Chronological Age (CA)
- MA → if the number of items the child passes is the average
- Number a 12-year-old does, then MA is 12
- MA > CA = “bright”; MA < CA = “dull”
modern IQ tests
- Many IQ tests exist today
- Do not rely on MA vs. CA
Standford-Binet
- In 1916, Lewis Terman
- General reasoning, fluid reasoning, knowledge, quantitative processing, visual/spatial processing, working memory, and more specific tasks
Wechsler Scales
- In 1940, David Wechsler
- WPPSI → for preschoolers
- WISC → for children
- WAIS → for adults
- Children’s IQ test scores are compared vs. the average scores of children their own age
can we measure IQ in infants?
Developmental Quotient (DQ) Tests
- Bayley Scales of Infant Development
- Gesell Developmental Schedules
- Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale
- Based on sensory and motor abilities (some cognitive)
- Standardized, reliable
example of items in DQ tests (Bayley Scales)
- 1-3 months: responds to sound of a bell; vocalizes once or twice; displays social smile
- 5-7 months: smiles at mirror image; turns head after fallen spoon; vocalizes four different syllables
- 9-12 months: responds to verbal requests; stirs with spoon in imitation; attempts to scribble
- 14-17 months: says two words; shows shoes or other clothing; builds a tower of three cubes
IQ influence
- IQ test scores have been shown to predict:
School grades, achievement test scores, and years of education
Occupational success
Performance or earnings in complex jobs - The predictions are not perfect
- Correlations range from .5-.7 for school grades, achievement tests, and education
- Self-discipline can predict school grades better than IQ
IQ implications
- School grades, test scores, occupational success, earnings
Longevity
- Higher IQ at 11, more likely to live to 76 years of age
- Better physical health
- Better mental health
No set explanation, but could be that:
- Genes associated with IQ are also associated with longevity
- Intelligence, health, aging relate to the mitochondria
- Education
- More aware of risks (e.g., smoking)
hereditary factors in IQ
- Identical twins’ scores are more similar than fraternal
- Adopted children’s scores are more similar to their biological than adoptive parents
- Cultural biases may yield:
Higher scores for economically advantaged children
Lower scores for economically disadvantaged children and minority ethnic groups
Ethnic groups differ in how much experience they have taking standardized tests - Culture-fair tests
Including test items that are based on common, cross-cultural knowledge and experiences
Example: Raven’s Matrices (nonverbal test)
IQ tests and minority children
- SES is a major factor
- English proficiency
- Stereotype threat
Anxiety, lower performance connected to awareness of stereotype - Voluntary vs. involuntary minority status
- Bias in testing
Experience with tests
Testing environment
Ability to follow-up - Pygmalion Effect
Children internalizing teacher’s expectations
Pygmalion effect
Children internalizing teacher’s expectations
- Self-fulfilling prophecy, internalization of expectations of an authority figure
Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968)
- Elementary teachers told that some students are expected to “bloom”
- Random names
- “Bloomers” scored higher on IQ compared to other students
stereotype threat
- One source of the indifference in IQ scores between cultural minorities and the majority
- People are aware of the stereotypes about them
E.g., lower performance on IQ tests, math tests
Steele & Aronson (1995)
- African American & European American students
- Either told they are taking an IQ test or not told
- African American students scored higher when they were not told it was an IQ test
testing considerations
- Specify cognitive processes involved
- Use multiple tasks with the same individual
- Culture-appropriate tests
- Procedures that probe reasoning behind answers
information-processing approach to intelligence
Basic-level processes
- Speed of information processing
Reaction times
- Working memory
Digit span tasks
- Executive function
Categorization
Inhibition
Resistance to interference
Higher-order abilities
- Strategies
Plan operations and anticipate consequences
- Knowledge base
Understanding of the topic in question
- Metacognition
Understanding of their own cognitive abilities
E.g., monitoring one’s own task performance
- Speed of information processing and working memory distinguishes
LD from non-LD children
Reading abilities
Varies with IQ
- Suggesting a single underlying mechanism
