Week 3 - Cognitive Development & Understanding Flashcards
Piaget’s view of children’s nature
“Scientist in the crib”
- mentally and physically active from the moment of birth –> development
- learn many important lessons on their own, rather than from direct instruction
- motivated to learn and do not require rewards to do so
- new abilities are applied as soon as possible
- lessons and experiences are reflected on in order to develop understanding
Assimilation
Child interprets something new within their pre-existing knowledge
Accommodation
Child changes schema as a result of new knowledge
Equilibrium
Balance of assimilation and accommodation
Children’s acquirement of schemas according to Piaget (steps)
- Assimilation
- Accommodation
- Equilibrium
Piaget’s stages
- Sensorimotor stage
- Pre-operational stage
- Concrete operational stage
- Formal operational stage
Sensorimotor stage
- birth-2yo
- child begins to interact with environment
- Infants do not have an awareness of objects as independent from their own actions
- Do not have object permanence
- Do not understand that objects continue to exist even when out of sight
Sensorimotor stage test by Piaget
- Piaget observed infants reactions to events in which objects are hidden
- Beginning at about 9 months of age, infants start trying to obtain the object (however do make A not B error)
Challenges to Piaget’s Conclusions About Object Permanence
- behavior that indicated object permanence was obtaining a hidden object
- did observe other behaviors that might suggest that infants know that objects continue to exist
- Maybe younger babies know that the
object is there, but they can’t coordinate
the actions necessary to get it
Alternative Object Permanence Test
Violation of Expectations
Violation of Expectations
Babies are habituated to an event
• At test, slight modifications are made
• One possible event and one impossible event
• Check to see if dishabituate more strongly to the impossible event
Sliding bridge and cylinder experiment
- Habituation: bridge moving up and down with no object
- Possible event: bridge stopped by hidden cylinder
- Impossible event: bridge goes through hidden cylinder
- Results: Infants as young as 3.5 months of age look reliably longer at the impossible event; 3mo do not
Sliding carrot experiment
- Habituation: short carrot through occlusion and tall carrot through occlusion
- Possible event: short carrot not visible through carved out occlusion
- Impossible event: tall carrot not visible through carved out occlusion
- Results: Infants as young as 3.5 months of age look longer at the impossible event
A not B error
infants search for object in the wrong location
Alternative interpretation of A not B error; Experiment
- 10mo
- 3 conditions: communicative test, non-communicative, nonsocial
- performed better with no social interaction
- Conclusion: A not B error may be due to both constraints on the motor system and behavior of adults
Pre-operational stage by Piaget
- 2-6/7 years of age
- start understanding symbolic representations
- Important limitations:
• Egocentrism
• Centration
Egocentrism
Perceive the world solely from one’s perspective
• Communication: Take the one that looks like Mommy’s!
• Spatially: Reference with regards to oneself
- Three mountain task
Evidence for Perspective-Taking in Preschool-Aged Children
- 4-year-olds speak differently to 2-year-olds than they do to adults
- When asked to show a toy to an adult, children as young as 1.5 years old will turn the front side to the adult
- When asked to a show a photo to an adult, nearly all 2- and 3-year-olds show the front side
Three Mountains Task: Alternative Explanations
- 3- and 4-year-old children
- Saw a toy fire truck
- There was a second toy fire truck on a revolving table
- Saw Grover in a toy car, asked child to turn firetruck how Grover sees it
- Children were highly accurate with the scenes with the toys
Centration
- Young children often focus on single feature of an object or event
- Understanding of conservation
Conservation tasks by Piaget
- identical liquid quantity in different size containers
- changing shape of identical clay
- identical amount of objects more or less spaced out
Centration: Alternate Explanations
- Children are sensitive to what they think others want from them in the task
- Why would an adult change something and then ask you about it, unless they wanted you to give a different answer?
- When adult didn’t move the objects on purpose (teddy bear moved them), children answered correctly
Continuity
- Objects exist continuously and cannot move from one location to another without travelling the intervening path
- understand at 2.5 months
Solidity
- Physical objects are solid. Each object occupies a unique part of space. Objects cannot interpenetrate each other.
- understand at 2.5 months
Contact
- Objects cannot influence other objects without touching them. When one object hits another, it should move.
- basic understanding at 2.5 months, more sophisticated at 6 months
Gravity
- Unsupported objects fall toward the ground.
- understanding at 5-7 months
Inertia
- Objects do not change their motion abruptly unless they are acted on by another force.
- understanding at 5-7 months
Mobile, crib, ribbon experiment (causality)
(3-month-olds) Reinforcement periods: - Gently connected leg to mobile with a ribbon - Kicking moved the mobile Non-reinforcement periods - Ribbon disconnected from mobile
Mechanistic Causality
When adults see one billiard ball hit another and
then the second ball starts to move, they represent:
(1) Two events
(2) That the first ball caused the second ball to move,
as long as
(a) Spatial contiguity
(b) Temporal contiguity
Study: Do Infants Differentiate Between a Causal and a Non-Causal Event?
7- to 8-month-olds • Randomly assigned to one of two habituation conditions: (1) Direct Launch (2) Delayed Launch At test, watch one of two films: 1) No reaction 2) No prior movement Found could differentiate between direct launch (causal) and delayed
Study: Do Infants Perceive Direct Launch as Two Events?
7 mo
2 conditions:
- habituated to block moving, on test block moved opposite way
- habituated to direct launching, on test direct launch in reverse
Results: greater habituation for direct launching meaning perceive as 2 events
Study: No, For Serious, Do Infants Perceive Direct Launch as Two Events
7mo
2 conditions:
- habituation: block changes color; test: direct launch
- habituation: direct launch; test: direct launch
Result: are actually perceiving 2 events
Study: Do Infants Perceive Direct Launch as Causal?
A causes B or A then B
__
Do Infants Perceive Mechanistic Cause?
7-month-olds perceive that a one block caused another to move under similar conditions to adults
Study: Does Experience Help Infants to Represent Cause?
4.5-month-old infants
Randomly assigned to:
1. Wear red sticky mittens/balls with velcro
2. Wear boring red mittens/balls glued to tray
- Infants sat on caregiver’s lap and were given 4 green
balls
- Infants get to play with the toys for 3 minutes
Results: Infants who get experience with casual relationships between the objects they are watching represent cause
BUT
The representation is not strong
–> The effect goes away if infants wear blue mittens
and play with yellow cubes
Categorization
- grouping like things
• Categories help us to manage and understand the world - depends on concepts
Concept
mental representation that encapsulates properties, features, and structures that exist among members of a category
How Do We Study Categorization by Infants?
- Habituation paradigm
• Object-examining paradigm
Types of categories
Superordinate (ex: animals) 3/4 mo
Basic (ex: dog) 3/4 mo
Subordinate (ex: poodle) 6/7 mo
Study: When Can Infants Form Basic Categories?
3/4 mo
habituated to look at cats or horses
Results:
- horse: spent more time looking at cats, giraffes, and zebras
- cats: spent more time looking at horses and tigers, but not female lions
NOTES:
- can tell different types of horses/cats apart
- prefer looking at cats than horses
Categorization by Preschoolers according to Piaget
only rely on visual features
Categorization by Preschoolers
Children younger than 7 can categorize based on non-observable features
By age 4:
• Children use the function of an artifact to categorize it
• Understand that dogs are animals with dog insides, not just animals that have four legs and bark
Induction
making inferences beyond the available evidence
Study: Induction by Preschoolers
3- and 4-year-olds
• Showed them two objects and taught them a fact about each
• Showed a third object that looked like one object but belonged to the same category as the other
• Asked them which of the two facts applied to the new object
- if you don’t use same label, same results
Results: Preschoolers can draw inferences based on
categories
Types of properties
- Generalizable
- non-generalizable
Second Study: Induction by Preschoolers
Preschoolers and second
graders
• Show them a picture of an object and teach them a
fact
• Sometimes those facts are generalizable Sometimes they are not
Results: Both preschoolers and second graders very
rarely generalized non-generalizable facts & were
sensitive to categories when generalizing
