Theories of Cognitive Development

Question 1

cognition

Answer 1

• The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experiences, and the senses
• Includes knowledge, problem-solving, attention, reasoning, and memory

Question 2

theories of cognitive development

Answer 2

• Number of theories have been proposed describing the ways infants acquire and build on their cognitive resources
• Each make different statements about ages and mechanisms, and takes a position on the 7 themes of developmental psych
• Theories: Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, Information-processing theory, Sociocultural theory, dynamic systems theory

Question 3

con-specifics

Answer 3

• other members of the species

- will be referenced in the sociocultural theory

Question 4

why are theories useful?

Answer 4

• Provide grounding for us to be successful in scientific enquiry
• Provide a framework for understanding important phenomena and events
• Raise questions about human nature
• Lead us to a better understanding of infants
• Help us identify what we do and don’t know -> help us generate new research hypothesis and questions

Question 5

Jean Piaget

Answer 5

• Swiss developmental psychologist (1896-1980)
• First began publishing work in the 1920’s
• Studied his own children to come up with developmental theories
• The most influential developmental psychologist (“the father of developmental psychology”)
• Studied children’s development from egocentrism to sociocentrism
• Divided cognitive development into 4 stages (discontinuous theory)
• Piaget argued that kids form schemata (organizational frameworks about knowledge) to help them move from 1 stage to the next

Question 6

pros and cons of Piaget studying his own kids

Answer 6

• Pros: more natural environment, can observe children at all hours of the day, no attrition, know their typical and atypical behaviour, knows their biological and experiential background
• Cons: bias (underestimated children’s abilities), restricted sample (hard to generalize), low sample size (2 kids -> little power to detect developmental changes)

Question 7

limitations of Piaget’s work

Answer 7

• studied his own kids
• his theory is a stage theory, but development is more of a transition (like the change of seasons) than a sudden change (like moving from grade 2 to grade 3)
• Underestimated children’s abilities (ie. Symbolic function may occur earlier, but we may not be able to see it due to limited motor/verbal ability rather than limited cognitive ability)
• Described many of children’s behaviours, but didn’t explain how their cognitive systems work (Information-processing theories are the answer to this problem)
• Underestimated the role of socialization on children’s developments -> emphasized child’s individual actions/role in development (“little scientists”) (Sociocultural theory is the answer to this problem)
• Underestimated the complex relationship between thought and action in young children (Dynamic-system theories are the answer to this problem)

Question 8

stages in Piaget’s theory

Answer 8

• Stage 1: sensorimotor stage -> Birth-2 years (or until child can communicate in full sentences)
• Stage 2: preoperational stage -> 2-7 years
• Stage 3: concrete operational stage -> 7-12 years
• Stage 4: postoperational stage -> 12 years-adulthood

Question 9

schemas

Answer 9

• Depending on how much experience/data points they have, they may develop slightly inaccurate frameworks about each concept
  However, the more experience they gather throughout the lifespan, their schemas have to change in order to include new information -> “assimilation”
  When you get a data point that won’t fit into an existing schema, you have to create a new schema to understand it -> “accommodation”

Question 10

sensorymotor stage

Answer 10

• Birth-2 years (or full sentences)
• Kids learn about the world through their senses or their manipulation of the world using their motor abilities
• Even rudimentary reflexes (eg. Sucking) develop rapidly in the first months of life
• Infants increase motor movements that produce pleasant sensations (and vice versa)
• substages: reflexive schemas -> circular reactions -> mental representations

Question 11

reflexive schemas

Answer 11

newborn reflexes (birth-1 mo)

Question 12

circular reactions

Answer 12

• motions that initially occurred by chance, but which are repeated because of their pleasurable outcomes
• Primary: repetitive actions centers on the infant’s own body (ex. Passing hand in front of face)
• Secondary: repetitive actions centered on something in the environment (ex. Flicking light switches on and off)
• Tertiary circular reactions: involve a child’s body and an external object, but the repetitive actions vary in some way -> experimentation/”Little Scientists” (ex. Dropping a spoon from different heights to see the changes)

Question 13

mental representations

Answer 13

• Signal the end of the sensorimotor period and entrance to the preoperational stage
• Mental representations include:
• Object permanence: mentally representing an object when it disappears (understanding that it continues to exist even when they can’t see it)
• Differed imitation: imitating a con-specific at a much later time -> can mentally represent that action and reproduce it at a later time

Question 14

milestones of sensorimotor stage

Answer 14

• gain object permanence, but it’s fragile

- begin exhibiting the A-not-B error

Question 15

A-not-B error

Answer 15

• If an object is hidden under a blanket repeatedly, infants will learn to look there
• When they watch the object move to be under a different blanket, they fail to look in the new location
• This happens around 8-12 months
• Children aren’t easily calmed down by the object once it re-emerges, and often continue to look for the object in location A even though it’s emerged from location B

Question 16

preoperational stage

Answer 16

• Onset of speaking/2 years – 7 years
• After they acquire language, infants move to the preoperational stage of cognitive development
• 2 substages:
• Symbolic function substage (age 2-4)
• Intuitive thought (age 4-7)

Question 17

symbolic function substage consists of

Answer 17

• Pretend play: either alone, with peers, or with caregivers -> Tells us that kid’s mental representations are strong – they’re capable of relatively complex social interactions even if the child hasn’t experienced them before (Ex. Role playing, imaginary friends)
• Symbolism: children can recognize that one thing can be a symbol for another (ex. that a drawing of an object can represent an actual object)
• Egocentrism: children’s inability to recognize other individual’s thoughts, beliefs, desires, etc. And recognize that they differ from their own (fail theory of mind tasks)
• Centration: Focusing on one perceptually salient aspect of stimulus and ignoring other aspects
  (Ex. Conservation tasks: kids focus/centrate on the height of the water and ignore the volume and fact that no water was added)
• Animism: attributing animate roles to inanimate objects
  (Ex. Saying they tripped on the sidewalk because the sidewalk was mad at them and tripped them)
• Transductive reasoning: flawed logical reasoning; results in overgeneralization of knowledge (ex. “My dog is brown, so all dogs must be brown”)

Question 18

information-processing theories

Answer 18

• Attempt to explain how cognitive systems work rather than focusing on the interaction between cognition and action
• Argue that humans process information – they don’t just respond automatically to stimuli
• Think about cognitive systems as being like a computer processor -> take in information/input -> process/store it -> output/action
• Argues that the child is a “little problem solver” -> performs operations on info and act on it

Question 19

mechanisms of change (info-processing)

Answer 19

• Piaget correctly identified some limitations of young children
• Information-processing theories explain these limitations from a cognitive perspective
• The developing brain:
• Can only hold a certain amount of information at a time
• Can only process information at a certain speeds
• Has limited strategies for problem-solving

Question 20

development of the 3 types of memory

Answer 20

• One way infants become more adept problem-solvers is that their memories get better
  1. Sensory memory
• Ex. Retinal cells still firing after you’ve looked at a bright light; pain cells still firing to create a sting after you’ve been slapped even after what slapped you is gone; the ability to hear the echo of the voice of someone you’re speaking to even after they’ve stopped
• Lost if not attended to
  2. Working memory
• With attention, information can go here
• Is worked on through maintenance rehearsal
• Lost if not encoded or rehearsed
  3. Long-term memory
• Gets here once it’s encoded, but can still be forgotten

Question 21

3 processes that work to improve memory and cognitive skill

Answer 21

1. Basic processes
   - Association
   - Recognition
   - Recollection
   - Generalization
   - Encoding (some details are remembered, while others are not)
2. Strategies
   - Rehearsal
   - Selective attention – develops with age
3. Content knowledge: learning more about how the world works by acquiring more knowledge

Question 22

2 processes that increase memory and processing speed

Answer 22

• Myelination (increase in speed)
• Synaptogenesis (increased space/connectivity)
• Areas of the brain that are being used heavily will experience synaptogenesis rather than synaptic pruning

Question 23

sociocultural theory

Answer 23

Emerged from the fact that Piaget understated the role of socialization on children’s development
Socioculturalists believe that while children are responsible for their environment (active child), caregivers and peers also play a crucial role

Question 24

Lev Vygotsky

Answer 24

• Russian psychologist (1934-1987)
• Unknown outside Russia until the late 20th century
• proposed sociocultural theory

Question 25

Piaget vs. Vygotsky

Answer 25

• Piaget viewed child as a scientist; Vygotsky viewed child as a teacher/learner
• Piaget focused on solving physical and logical problems; Vygotsky focused on socially relevant events
• Piaget was more discontinous, Vygotsky was more continuous

Question 26

mechanisms of change (sociocultural)

Answer 26

• Unlike information-processing theories, sociocultural theories focus on how children use people around them to develop cognitively
• Intersubjectivity drives learning (Ex. Joint attention)
• Social scaffolding: when parent, caregiver, or peer provides support/help so that the child can complete a task they wouldn’t be able to complete without help

Question 27

intersubjectivity (and its 2 types)

Answer 27

• Attending to the same person/event/stimulus as a social partner
• Begins early in infancy with joint attention
• Dyadic joint attention (2 partners focusing on each other)
• Triadic joint attention (2 partners focusing on a stimulus/event)

Question 28

development of joint attention

Answer 28

• For the first 6 months of life, infants predominantly engage in dyadic joint attention
• Sometime after 6 months, they begin to better engage in directed triadic joint attention
• Ex. Pointing as a cue for triadic joint attention (less complex)
• Ex. Gaze following (12 months): following the partner’s gaze without any physical cue as to what to look at (more complex)

Question 29

language development

Answer 29

• One of the crucial aspects of sociocultural theory is the movement from parent-directed to child-directed speech
• Young infants rely on parent instructions
• As they begin developing language, older infants begin linguistically directing their own activities -> “private speech”
• Self-praise is a hallmark of private speech
• Eventually, after infancy, children internalize this language as thought

Question 30

zone of proximal development

Answer 30

• Where most leaning takes place
• Like 3 interconnected circles -> what child can do, what child can do with help, what child can’t do
• Where learning takes place is in what child can do with help zone -> no learning takes place in other 2 zones because one zone has been mastered already and the last zone is out of reach at the moment

Question 31

dynamic systems theory

Answer 31

• Emerged from Piaget’s underestimation of the complex relationship between thought and action in young children
• There is a circular relationship between young children’s thoughts and their actions
• New actions produce more complex thoughts
• More complex thoughts produce new actions
• Development is a complex network of thought and action…
• Striking evidence of dynamic systems theory comes from the intersection between cognition and motor behaviour -> ex. Crawling
• Infants are surprisingly precise in their knowledge of their own capabilities (they can use their knowledge of their own limitations to produce action)
• Centrality of action: action contributes to development throughout life

Question 32

dynamic systems study example

Answer 32

• Karen Adolf: slide study
• Investigates how children can make decisions on behaviour based on their own limitations
• Ex. Children were aware of their limitations and knew whether they should slide or walk down a slope of varying degrees (and whether they should crawl or walk up a slope of varying degrees)
• They demonstrated more hesitation at the slope of 20 degrees, even though it wasn’t the steepest, because they were deciding which motor action would be best for this situation -> they know that they may be able to succeed by crawling or walking

Question 33

cultural tools

Answer 33

• sociocultural theory
• products of human ingenuity that enhance thinking (symbol systems, artifacts, skills, values, and so on) and are a part of a certain cultural context.

Question 34

info-processing theory: task analysis, basic processes, and overlapping waves theory

Answer 34

• task analysis: identifying goals, relevant information in the environment, and potential processing strategies for a problem.
• basic processes: The simplest and most frequently used mental activities, like association, recall, generalizing, etc.
• overlapping-waves theory: An information-processing approach that emphasizes the variability of children’s thinking. Proposes that children use strategies, and as they age, they rely on increasingly more advanced strategies

Question 35

equilibrium

Answer 35

• goes along with assimilation and accomodation in Piaget’s theory
• The process by which children (or other people) balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding.
• When satisfied with understanding -> equilibrium. When you encounter new information that makes you realize your understanding is inadequate -> disequilibrium. This forces you to develop a more sophisticated understanding in order to return to equilibrium.
• Ex. Kids start out believing that animals are the only living things -> then realize plants are living too -> have to understand why in order to reach equilibrium