W3L2 - 2 to 7 years – Development of “Tools” for Thought Flashcards
Background information of early and middle childhood - Body
- Growth
- 6 cm per year
- Weight
- 2.25 kg per year
- Muscle mass
- Increase (Boys have a greater number of muscle cells and are typically stronger than girls)
- Baby fat:
- Decreases
Development of Gross and Fine Motor Skills
Gross
- Smoother and more coordinated
- Boys usually outperform girls (disappears quickly)
Fine
- Improvement during middle childhood
- Myelination of the central nervous system
- Girls usually outperform boys on fine motor skills (disappers quickly)
Background information of Exercise and Sport in growth
- Involvement in daily sport in US schools decreased from 80% (1969) to 20% (1999)
- Contributes to low activity and obesity in children
What are some problems with obesity in children
Overweight Children: Risk factor for adult obesity
- Medical: Pulmonary problems, diabetes, high blood pressure
- Psychological: Low self-esteem, depression, exclusion from peer groups
What are the conservation tasks
- Numbers (dots spread out)
- Volume (liquid in 2 containers)
- Mass (Flatten)
Summary of concrete operatios. What did piaget think about children’s cognition in pre-operational.
- Preoperational: One Focus
- Concrete Operation: Multiple Focus
C (on) C (re) TE + SD
- ) Egocentricism Decline
- ) Conservation = Decentration + Reversibility
- ) Transformations
- ) Classification
- ) Seriation
- ) Deductive reasoning
What is element of concrete operation 1: Decline in egocentric-ism
Differentiation of one’s own perspective from the perspectives of others
- Realization that one’s own thoughts and feelings are not necessarily shared by others (ToM-like)
What is element of concrete operation 3: transformations
Ability to think and reason about change processes.
What is element of concrete operation 4: classification
Multiple classification: ability to classify objects as belonging to two or more categories at the same time.
What is element of concrete operation 5: seriation
Ability to sort by sequence
What is element of concrete operation 6: deductive reasoning
Draw logical inference on 2 pieces of information
What did Piaget use as an index of cognition and why is it flawed?
Piaget showed that children had undeveloped cognition but he looked at abstract ideas as an index
(For e.g., tasks such as beaker are not contextualized)
What are 2 nonlinguistic symbols in children. What do these represent.
- Usage of Symbols as Information
- Drawing
Children non linguistic symbol 1: Using symbols as information. What do they involve and how does maps relate to it?
Involves mastery of symbolic creations of others and creation of new symbolic representations
Maps: Children must acquire dual representation
- Understanding that information can be represented mentally in two ways at the same time:
- Real object
- Symbol for something other than itself.
What does the scale model task in children demonstrate
Dual Representation
- Asked to use a scale model to locate a hidden toy in a room.
- 2.5yo fail; 3 yo ok
What is the caveat of scale model task
- Not necessary to form a symbol-referent relationship between the model and the room
- Some children led to believe that the room had been shrunk
Children non linguistic symbol 2: Drawing. What are their drawing skills compared to cognitive skills
Common symbolic activity
- Children’s artistic ideas often outstrip their motor and planning (cognitive) capability
Children non linguistic symbol 2: Drawing (Tadpole)
Representation of humans. Universal and common.
Children non linguistic symbol 2: Drawing (Houses)
This child’s drawing relies on some well-practiced strategies, but the child has not yet worked out how to represent complex spatial relationships
Children non linguistic symbol 2: Drawing (Extraordinary)
Nadia good drawing at 4, gone by 25.
What are the 3 general categories children normally sort into
- ) Inanimate objects
- ) People
- ) Living Things
How do children form categories:
Figure out how things in the word are related to one another is by dividing objects into CATEGORY HIERARCHIES
What are category hierarchies. (Subtypes)
- ) Super-ordinate
- ) Basic
- ) Subordinate
When do infants form categories. And How?
First months: Perceptual categorization
- Similar appearances
- Based on parts of objects (color, size) rather then on the object as a whole
How do infants approaching 2 years form categories?
- ) Overall shape
- ) Basis of function, and can use their knowledge of categories to determine which actions go with which type of objects
What do infants require to understand to work out categories
- Understanding of category hierarchies
- Understanding of causal connections
- Both involve knowledge of relations among categories
Which category do infants learn first
Basic
- Superordinate: No common characteristics
- Subordinate: Hard to discriminate
What additional category do sometimes infants form
Child-Basic Category (between basic and sub-ordinate “things that roll instead of balls”)
- Usually with assistance from adults, infants form sub and superordinate
How does causal inference help in categoires
Helps children learn and remember new categories
- E.g: Hearing that “wugs” are well prepared to fight and “gillies” to flee helped preschoolers categorize novel pictures like these as “wugs” or “gillies.”
Do infants have imaginary friends?
63% of children at ages 3-4 and again at 7-8 had imaginary friends (ordinary/fanciful)
What is associated and not associated with infants’ imaginary friend
Associations:
- First-born/Only children
- Little TV
- Verbally skilful and ToM
Not associated with:
- Personality
- Intelligence
What are infants’ knowledge of living things
- Fascinated with living things
- Demonstrate a variety of immature beliefs and reasoning
- Till Age 5: Can’t humans are animals
- Till Age 7-9: Can’t plants are alive
- Till Age 10: Can’t believe plants and animals serve a purpose
- Knowledge of people and non people
- 9- and 12-month-olds show surprise when inanimate objects (robot) move on their own
- Understood self-produced motion is characteristic of living things
- Sophisticated enough to reference invsibile process
- 9- and 12-month-olds show surprise when inanimate objects (robot) move on their own
How do we examine biological processes knowledge in children? Do they understand biological process from other processes?
Preschooolers:
- Understand that biological processes differ from psychological and physical ones
- Extent can be understood by examining ideas about (1) Inheritence (2) Growth (3) Illness
infant’s knowledge of Inheritance and Heredity
Preschoolers know physical characteristics tend to be passed on from parent to offspring
- At times their belief in inheritance is too strong, and they deny the influence of the environment
- Essentialism: Living things have an essence inside to make them who they are (“Dogness” in “Dog”)
infant’s knowledge of Growth, Illness, Healing
- Growth is a product of internal processes.
- Living things (Plants and Animals)
- Internal processes to heal
- Understand its limits and that illness and old age can cause death.
- Living things (Plants and Animals)
What is the difference between nativisits and empiricists
Nativists:
- Born with a biology module (evolutionary)
- Spelke (2007)
Empiricists
- Biological understanding comes from personal observations and information they receive from other people and their culture
- Piaget
