studies

Question 1

Piaget (1930):

Answer 1

): conflict exisiting cognitive schema conflict with reality)-disequilibruim. Use accommodation to modify schemas to restore equilibrium. If no schema there assimulate a new schema.
Domain-general. Linear path of learning. Innate, constructionist
The balance scale problem (understanding centration). See if children have underlying mental processes to understand this using weights on a see-saw. He constructed 4 conditions: equal weight distance, uneqaual distance equal weight, unequal weight equal distance, unequal. Could work out strategies children use by what questions they answer right. Stages:
• Stage 1: Sensorimotor Intelligence (0-2 years) Cognitive development: adults understand that an object still exists out of sight, Piaget proposed before 8 months, you cant understand this
• Stage 2: Preoperational Thought (2-7 years)
• Stage 3: Concrete Operational Thought (7-11 years)
• Stage 4: Formal Operations (11 to adulthood)
☹understates contribution of the social world
☹ it is also vague about cognitive processes that produce cognitive growth
☹ are stages going to be that clear cut?
☹ no vaiirability between children, what about ones with cognitive development.

Contrary evidence to stage 1: Drawbridge tasks: impossible events is more similar to habituation that possible event, still impossible to look at 5 months, found later with 3.5 month old infants. Infants aged 4 looked reliability longer at impossible events, similar results aged 2 ½ months- knowledge about objects, notions of impenetrability and force

Question 2

Cashon and Cohen (2000)

Answer 2

found that if infants were habituated to impossible event, looked longer at possible event: they like novelty

Question 3

Seigler (1996):

Answer 3

): overlapping waves theories. Critiqued the Piageten stage theory, saying intra-individual variability (don’t always perform your best). Develop faster in some domains, however Piagetian theory must develop in same speed across all. Domain-specific. Development is u-shaped.depicts development in stages, but brief periods of transition. Have various strategies even if one works well to compete for dominance. Four mechanisms of development: automatization (when used to need to be conscious for process now becomes automatic), encoding (people have difficulty encoding things against their beliefs), generalization and strategy construction (making a new approach to something)

Question 4

Siegler and Jenkins (1989)

Answer 4

Microgenetic study. 4/5 year olds came in for 11 weeks, 3 sessions a week. Each child used at least 6 strategies to count. E.g. sum strategy (count from 1 with fingers), min-strategy (counting from largest number). Generlisation occurred gradually, use other strategies as a fallback.
☹ difficulty with practice effects, hard to see real behiour with demand charatceristics

Question 5

Sielger and Stern (1998)

Answer 5

found that nearly 90% of 2nd graders could not yet report a new strategy they use to solve maths

Question 6

Fodor (1983):

Answer 6

In three modules:
• Domain specific (system constrained in terms of range of info it can access)
• Encapsulated(each module works independently, unaffected by operation of other modules)
• Automatic (fast and unconscious processing)

Question 7

Vygotsky:

Answer 7

: zone of proximal development- actual ability +ability when scaffoleded. Mainly agreed to Piaget, greater importance on socio-cultural factors. Domain-general.
Micro genetic bethod based on Vygotskys work
☹ domain-general, hard to explain uneven cognitive profiles

Question 8

Neuropsychology

Answer 8

if cognitive processes are dissociated it must imply at least partially domain specific.

Question 9

: Carruthers (2006):

Answer 9

Modularity suggests cognition is made up of domain-specific modules (domain specificity of function, mandatory operation, fixed neutral architecture, characteristic/specific breakdown patterns, characteristic developmental pace/ sequencing_ interprets behavior in terms of mental state

Question 10

• Spelke and Kinzler (2007)

Answer 10

Core knowledge theory. said humans are endowed with 5 domain-specific core knowledge systems (modules) from early infancy. New skills can be built on these foundations. actions, objects, number, space, social partners

Question 11

:Connectionist model

Answer 11

Made up of units which are represented as circles. Specific type of processing stimulates certain types of neural netowrks. Organized in layers to roughly show layers of the brain. Has parallel processing .
Domain-general learning. Munkatas work predicts a u-shaped trajectory

Question 12

Spelke 1994:

Answer 12

young infants have knowledge (expectations) regarding aspects of the following domains:
- physics (how objects interact)
- psychology (what people know) - number
- geometry
he had had three claims: principle of cohesion, principle of continuity and principle of contact

Question 13

Baddleys (2000)

Answer 13

influential model focuses on the functions of working memory (looks at central executive, phonological loop [more important when language develops, more words can say quicker can learn others], episodic buffer and visuospatial sketchpad)

Question 14

Williams syndrome

Answer 14

1/7500-1/2000. Characteristics include: full prominent lips, wide mouth, short nose… often have deletion of approx. 26 genes therefore can look from birth. Hypersensitivity, tendency to fixate on faces, smile frequently, anxiety, distractibility and hyperactivity, more empathetic, sensitive, gregarious (outgoing). Low IQ of about 55, although particular strengths/weaknesses, visuospatial and numerical skills are impaired, language and social cognition intact?

Question 15

Guarnea et al:

Answer 15

7 year olds with SLI and controls, no differences in accuracy/speed. They have poor grammar/vocab

Question 16

Fantz (1960)

Answer 16

Fantz looked at infant recognition memory e.g. visual paired-comparison task (habituate an infant to stimulus, then present infant with habituated item and a new one, see which one they look at more. Should look at new one as novelty preference). Shown from 3 months.

Question 17

DeCasper and Fifer (1990)

Answer 17

used a pacific sucking method to asses recognition memory in 1-3 day old infants, infants could choose to hear mother or strangers voice by sucking rate. Learnt to suck at rate to hear mothers voice at 12 hours

Question 18

Morgan and Hayne (2006)

Answer 18

) tested recognition memory in 1 and 4 year olds, presented visual displays with two identical pictures. Familiarization lasted 5/10/30 s. Recognition tested after: no delay/24 hour delay/ 1 week delay. 1 year old can remember items immediately if seen for 10 seconds or 30seconds, can recall after 1 day if see for 30s. 4 year olds recall in all conditions bar 5 seconds and a week later.

Question 19

Kelly et al (2005)

Answer 19

itested preference for faces of different races in neonates and 3-month-old infants
(Caucasian, Chinese..Newborn infants do not look preferentially at own- or other-race faces
Three-month-old infants look preferentially at own-race faces when paired with other-race faces

Question 20

Bucciarelli, Colle and Bara (2003):

Answer 20

each child saw video tape of mini stories, followed by a thought bubble above the speakers head, the child has 4 options to pick from. Look at understanding of irony, looking at non-ironic inference
Relevance: We achieve communication by recognizing speaker intentions. 70% 3 year olds understood non-inferences, 65% of 6 year olds understand non-ironic inference and 75% understand irony

Question 21

Liebal, Behne, Carpenter &Tomasello (2009)

Answer 21

Two experimenters, each do different task with 18 month old infant, (one puzzle, one tidying up game) find missing puzzle piece in middle of the floor. The kids interpreted it as who came out, e.g if puzzle experimenter put last piece in puzzle, if tidy up person they pack it away.

Question 22

Identity achievement

Answer 22

Post-exploration, committed to values and goals. Sense of well-being from knowing where you are going in life.

Question 23

Identity moratorium

Answer 23

A delaying or holding pattern, yet to make clear commitments. Still exploring and trying to find values and goals to guide them.

Question 24

Identity foreclosure

Answer 24

Committed to values and goals without exploring alternatives. Accept a ‘ready-made’ identity that has been chosen for them (by parents, religious leaders etc.)

Question 25

Identity diffusion

Answer 25

Lacking direction. Neither committed to goals not actively seeking them.

Question 26

O‘Neil 1996

Answer 26

2 year olds asked a parent to help retrieve a sticker, which they dropped in one of two locations, in box (eyes were closed when it was hidden). Parents either saw which box it was hidden in or didn’t . Child was able to point, or say ‘lorry one’, showing they are aware if someone has/hasn’t seen where the sticker is

Question 27

Croydin et al

Answer 27

use breyon faces task, found recognition impairment in ASD, severity of ASD correlated with performance

Question 28

Karmiloff-Smith (1997

Answer 28

suggested that normal levels of performance may be achieved through an atypical processing strategy in Williams syndrome, use featural processing instead of hoolisitc/configural processing in typical adult

Question 29

Rakover, 2002

Answer 29

This “inversion effect” is thought to result from disruption of configural processing; leaving featural processing relatively unimpaired and WS don’t show this

Question 30

Liang et al

Answer 30

: assessed people with WS, saw had phoneme deletion (removal of initial phoneme from single syllable word). Grammar however (syntax and morphology) is perfect. Can use TROG test. Seem to have good receptive vocab. Face-processing and TOM are seen as strengths.

Question 31

Tager-Flusberg and Sullivan (2000)

Answer 31

found that ToM development is delayed relative to CA (chronological age) and MA (mental age) , BUT… When event understanding and cause-and-effect-reasoning controlled, only a small sub-group of WS show ToM deficits

Question 32

Busby and Suddendorf (2005) asked 3- & 4-year-olds

Answer 32

asked 3- & 4-year-olds:
– “Can you tell me something that you did yesterday?”
– “Can you tell me something you are going to do tomorrow?”
– Accuracy/plausibility of responses rated by parents
– Significant group differences in accuracy of responses
– 4-year-old’s significantly more accurate for both past & future
– Past & future develop in parallel and are correlated
– Suggests past and future rely on the same underlying system/process

Question 33

Atance and Meltzoff (2005

Answer 33

aimed to test anticipation of future events (without need for inhibitory control)
• Children shown photos of various locations and asked to pretend they were going to visit them
• Asked to choose an object to take with them and justify choice
• 4- and 5-year-olds chose correct item significantly more often than 3-year-olds
• 4- and 5-year-olds used significantly higher proportion of “future talk” than 3-year-olds (e.g., “I might get cold”)
• Responses may rely on semantic knowledge rather than episodic future thinking (see Atance & Sommerville, 2014)
• Applies particularly to item choice; arguably less applicable to justification of choice
• Moreover, the situations were hypothetical and implausible
• At best, the task measures general imaginative abilities (evidence for developments in scene construction?)

Question 34

Tulving’s (2005

Answer 34

) “spoon test” . a gilr dreams about her favourite pudding but cant have it cause no spook, next night nputs spoon under her pillow. Such future-oriented action = evidence of mental time travel

Question 35

Suddendorf et al. (2011)

Answer 35

Key choice task:– spoon-test-type experiment
Children had to choose an appropriately shaped key (star, circle, square, or triangle) to open a box with a square keyhole they had seen earlier. 3-year-olds performed at chance; 4-year-olds performed above chance
At least two reasons why children may fail:
– Failure to imagine themselves in the future situation and plan/act accordingly
– Failure to remember the relevant past experience

Question 36

Atance and Sommerville (2014)

Answer 36

presented children with a problem in one room, then took them to another room to play unrelated games for 5 minutes
Then offered choice of objects (one of which could be used to solve the problem)… In room 2, kids asked: Which one they would like to take back to the first room and why, memory control question (What was on table in Room 1?”)
Knowledge control question (shown all objects from Room 1 & 2; which room 2 object is needed to fix the face?)
• % of correct object choices
– 3-year-olds: 47%
– 4-year-olds: 46%
– 5-year-olds: 75%
• % passing memory control questions but making incorrect object choices
– 3-year-olds: 23%
– 4-year-olds: 29%
– 5-year-olds: 15%

Question 37

Mahy (2015)

Answer 37

The pretzel task: Mahy (2015) asked 3- to 7-year-olds what they preferred now: pretzels or water (baseline)
• Then told them it was story time and they could eat as many pretzels as they wanted – to make them thirsty
• Then asked them to pretend they were coming back tomorrow and asked if they wanted water or pretzels tomorrow
• Then gave them water to drink – so no longer thirsty
• Then asked again if they wanted water or pretzels tomorrow
• There was no effect of age, even some 7 year olds would say next day theyd want water.

Question 38

Developmental Amnesia

Answer 38

have selectively impaired episodic memory, despite developing normal IQ, personality, and semantic memory (e.g., Vargha-Khadem et al., 1997) Caused by relatively selective damage to the hippocampus following childhood hypoxic-ischaemic episodes

Question 39

Famous case is “Jon

Answer 39

26 weeks premature, suffering severe oxygen deprivation, 50% smaller hippocampus than normal (est. in adulthood); VIQ = 108, NVIQ = 120! Severe deficit in EM (but not semantic memory) according to self-report, behaviour, and standard tests.Problems: way-finding, forgetting object locations, memory for everyday events, detailing daily activities
Performs very poorly on standard tests of episodic memory, but not semantic memory, but has access to a small number of autobiographical episodic memories (Maguire, Vargha-Khadem, & Mishkin, 2001)
• Recalled memories associated with residual hippocampal functioning
• Significantly better at both scene construction and EFT than acquired amnesia patients
• Replicate behavioural findings with Jon – scene construction normal, but fMRI reveals differences…
• Most regions activated normally in Jon, but: No activation of hippocampus and significantly more activation in frontal cortex
• Mullally et al. argue Jon using a semantic-based strategy to perform well despite atypical underlying competence
• Good enough to succeed on the task, but not to construct scenes in everyday life necessary for EM and navigation

Question 40

Quine, (1960)

Answer 40

said the induction problem, if someone another language says “kuri” what does it mean? Could mean dog, could mean its barking, could mean dogs ear…

Question 41

The whole object assumption

Answer 41

idea that if children hears a new word it will apply to the whole of the object rather than part. Some argue that Korean and mandarian speaking children use moe verbs than English speaking children (bloom et al, 1993), children learning languages like Japanese and madairian in which the hear more verbs (nouns omitted more frequently) show tendancy to map new words on to objects rather than actions (lmai et al, 2005, 2008). Argue that a number of assumptions thst guide childrens acquistions of word meanings. Restricted to language learnings/word learning.

Question 42

Gaze following and word learning

Answer 42

16-19 month olds: when child is engaged with novel object, experimenter looks somewhere else and says ‘modi’ for example. Child looks up and sees where the experimenter looks to label the object rather than the novel object playing with. (Tomasello & Barton, 1994: Study 2) all 24-mth-olds understood that novel referent e.g. dax refers to object adult looking for rather than objects they have rejected

Question 43

Matthews & Bannard (2010

Answer 43

preschoolers are able to generalise abstract syntactic patterns from this learned material, based on semantic ‘fit’ (e.g. a piece of ‘brick’). Evidence that young 2-yr-olds produce and comprehend basic sentence structure with familiar verbs but not with novel verbs

Question 44

Gertner, Fisher & Eisengart (2006

Answer 44

Children at 1 year 9 months v Heard: Active transitive sentence frame with novel verbs (e.g. ‘the frog is kradding the monkey’) Saw: Two novel actions simultaneously, one in which the frog acted on the monkey and one in which the monkey acted on the frog). Proportion overall looking time: were more likely to look that clip which matched the audio stimulus. Interpretation: had productive knowledge of the mapping between English NOUN-VERB-NOUN and sentential meaning.

Question 45

What age is early childhood

Answer 45

2-6

Question 46

what age is middle childhood

Answer 46

6-11 years

Question 47

how do we refer to age

Answer 47

years;months,days

Question 48

how socio cultural theories explain devleipment

Answer 48

guided participation, social scaffolding, internalsiation

Question 49

key sociocultural concepts

Answer 49

zone of proximal devlopment, micro-genetic method

Question 50

information processing theories

Answer 50

computer analogy

Question 51

Siegler and Jenkins (1989)

Answer 51

4/5 year olds, 11 weeks, 3 sessions per week. most children use 6 strategies. sum-strategy and min-strategy, slowly get more

Question 52

strengths of information processing theories

Answer 52

Like Piaget) deal with how complex thinking develops out of simpler thinking;
Ø (Unlike Piaget) concerned with explaining performance (i.e. how this will vary for a given concept / domain depending on the task);
Ø (Unlike Piaget) precise and focused on the actual steps of cognition;
Ø Focus on pinpointing mechanisms underpinning development change;
Ø Attempts to identify specific cognitive processes (from perception through to concept-learning, strategy choice);
Ø Develop well-specified models of development;
Ø Attempts to explain how processes are inter-related

Question 53

Weaknesses of information processing theories

Answer 53

Models only show that domain could in principle be learned in a certain manner by children.
Ø Tend to be of specific behaviours. However, a few attempted to model cognitive system as a whole (e.g. Lockhart & Craik, 1990, Canadian J of Psych);
Ø Often failed to consider physical and social environment (e.g. Mexican-heritage children in USA are
more likely to attend to multiple simultaneous events than are European-American children, e.g. Correa-Chavez, Rogoff & Mejia Arauz, 2005). What about development in domains which cannot be logically decomposed?
Ø However, some have modelled certain social phenomena, e.g. play entrance

Question 54

info processing theories

Answer 54

Ø Computer analogy (‘box-and-arrows’, ‘input’ / ‘output’, storage, serial vs. parallel)
Ø Child Development is continuous (not stage-like)
Ø Key concepts: processing capacity, strategy
choice.
Ø Key methodologies: task analysis
Ø Focus on the mechanisms of development.
Ø Development as self-modification

Question 55

connectionism

Answer 55

Units = roughly analogous to neurons. Units are usually represented by circles. Connectionist models are organized in layers of units, roughly analogous to the layers in the brain.
input units - through which a member of a network receives information (like sensory neurons).
output units -through which a member of a network sends information (like motor neurons).
Parallel processing
Patterns of connectivity are crucial
Weighting of connections are crucial
Weightings (or strength) of connections change through learning
Distributed representations (i.e. knowledge or ‘representations’ to not reside on a particular ‘location’)Can generalize to novel stimuli (at least some models)
Threshold effects can lead to apparently ‘sudden’ behavior change (though learning is gradual and continuous).
Can simulate U-shaped (non-linear) learning.

Question 56

information processing theories

Answer 56

seiglers overlapping eaves theory, computer analogy, connectionism

Question 57

Ghim (1990)

Answer 57

habituated 3-4 month old infants to a square

In test, they looked less at an illusory square suggesting that they perceived its form

Question 58

Kellman & Spelke, 1983)

Answer 58

Following habituation to a rod moving behind a box, 4 month-old infants looked longer at the broken rod suggesting they had perceived a while rod in habituation

Question 59

Baillargeon & De Vos (1991)

Answer 59

found longer looking at the ‘unlawful’ event in 3.5 month old infants
Suggests that they understand about
Physical world
Dimensions
Occlusion

Question 60

Sugita (2008

Answer 60

) raised infant monkeys without exposure to faces for 6-24 months
Received a rich visual environment, but no exposure to faces
Following deprivation period, monkeys were exposed to either human or monkey faces, showed recognition just needed to fine-tune the skills- took longer to look longer deprivation

Question 61

linguistic nativists theories

Answer 61

Argue that a number of assumptions (also called constraints or biases or principles) guide children’s acquisitions of word meanings
restricted to language learning - or even just word learning (e.g. Markman, 1992)
1) The whole-object assumption (Markman, 1991)
2) The mutual exclusivity assumption (also called the novel name–nameless category principle) - a given entity will have only one name (Markman, 1991)
3. Taxonomic assumption (=Words refer to objects of the same type).
dog = all dogs but not dog food, dog leads etc
.
Ø Dual-route (e.g. Pinker, 1991)
1. Regular morphemes = grammar / syntax route
2. Irregular morpheme = rote-learning.
Syntax is seen a system of abstract rules, completely separate from the lexicon.
Ø The basic principles of syntax are innate and underlie all languages. This is called Universal Grammar (UG

Ø Thechildonlyneedsaminimalamountoflanguage input in order to ‘trigger’ the relevant innate syntactic knowledgeàvery early development
Ø Syntacticacquisitionshouldbeall-or-nothing

Question 62

linguist nativist problems

Answer 62

1. Do constraints explain word learning or simply describe it?
2. Are constraints innate?
   • Constraints might be learnt via linguistic experience (Merriman & Bowman, 1989; Mervis, 1987
3. Are constraints specific to language?
4. How do children learn non-object words?

Question 63

socio-pragmatic/usage based theories

Answer 63

Argue that socio-cognitive development is critical for word learning.
These include following the cue of the speaker’s focus of attention and intention-reading.
1)Triadic Interaction
a) child, b) adult and c) object or event
2)gaze following and word learning

Syntax is closely intertwined with the lexicon.
Ø Syntax can be learnt using learning mechanisms which are used in other cognitive and social domains (e.g. Tomasello, 2000), such as:
1 Pattern (statistical) learning.
2 Schema combination.
3 Generalisation based on semantic similarity

hechildneedsalotofinput,inordertodevelop
‘’productivity’ with syntax; Abilitytouseandinterpretsyntacticrulesdependson the particular lexical items used.

Question 64

Bannard & Matthews (2008)

Answer 64

heard
• Frequently occurring chunks (e.g. sit in your chair) • Infrequent sequences (e.g. sit in your truck)
Ø Correct repetition: more likely to frequent sequences than to repeat infrequent sequences correctly.
Ø Duration: 3-year-olds were significantly faster to repeat the first three words of an item if they formed part of a chunk (e.g., they were quicker to say “sit in your” when the following word was chair than when it was truck).

Question 65

pragmatic language

Answer 65

How language is used and interpreted in a contextually appropriate manner for the purpose of social interaction
Contextually appropriate -> adapting to what your listener knows, using the appropriate language register.
For the purpose of social interaction -> conversation, gossip, jokes, relaying past events etc.
Interactionbetweenstructurallanguage(lastweek’s lecture) and social cognition (next week’s lecture).

Question 66

Discourse contingency

Answer 66

bility to develop / expand partner’s previous turn by commenting / elaborating.

Question 67

what age can repair conversations when listener is confused

Answer 67

24 months but develops throughout preschool

Question 68

executive functions

Answer 68

Aspects of memory, control and flexibility needed for
planning and considering consequences to actions.
Consists of:
a) Inhibitorycontrol:theabilitytosuppressanautomatic
but inappropriate response (e.g. the ‘Simon Says’ game). b) Working memory: the ability to hold information in short-
term memory whilst simultaneously performing some type of calculation with this. i) Verbal working memory; ii) Visuo-spatial working memory.
c) Mentalsetswitching/cognitiveflexibility:theability to switch between processing information according to one type of rule to being able to process the information information according to another type of rule.

Question 69

Neil and Chong 2001

Answer 69

Q1: How did you find out the water was plain? 3s 47% correct, 82% 4s,
Q2: Show me how you found out the water was plain. 62% 3s, 94% 4s
4-year-olds can identify (and predict) what information is received from which senses. 3-year-olds cannot.

Question 70

how old of you understand people have goals

Answer 70

6 months

Question 71

how old do you appreciate failed goals

Answer 71

18 months

Question 72

Level 1 perspective-taking:

Answer 72

You and I see different things

Question 73

level 2 perspective taking

Answer 73

• You and I see the same thing in different ways

Question 74

First-order Theory of Mind:

Answer 74

Attributing beliefs
• To properly test, need a case where belief is different from reality (False belief)
• Smarties (unexpected contents)
• Sally/Anne task (unexpected transfer)

Question 75

when do you start talking about past/future and when does it reach 50%

Answer 75

preschool, age 4

Question 76

Busby and Suddendorf (2005)

Answer 76

“Can you tell me something that you did yesterday?”
“Can you tell me something you are going to do tomorrow?” 3/4 years

Accuracy/plausibility of responses rated by parents

No age group differences in production of coherent events for past or future (all ages could produce a coherent response), but…
Significant group differences in accuracy of responses
4-year-old’s significantly more accurate for both past & future

Past & future develop in parallel and are correlated

Suggests past and future rely on the same underlying system/process
Not clear that task requires mental time travel - Semantic memory/future thinking may be sufficient
Do children really need to imagine themselves in the future/remember their personal past?

Question 77

Croydon et al. (2014

Answer 77

Used a variant of the Benton faces task
7- to 12-year-olds with ASD, plus matched typical children
Found: significant recognition impairment in ASD
Severity of ASD correlated with face recognition performance

The more severe the ASD features, the worse the face recognition