Week 5 (Conceptual Development & Theory of Mind)

Question 1

One of the main factors in the new approach to cognitive development in children are changes in ________________ _______________. For example, working memory, inhibition, and reaction time.

Answer 1

information processing

Question 2

With better information processing resources, children can do _______ with the knowledge they have.

Answer 2

more

Question 3

One of the main factors in the new approach to cognitive development in children are changes in ________________ and _______________.

Answer 3

experience and knowledge

Question 4

___________ ____________ is when a serious attempt is made by a young child to perform a task that is behaviourally inappropriate for the object because of a mistaken difference in the perceived and actual size of the objects involved.

Answer 4

Scale error

Question 5

A child tries to enter and drive miniature toy car which is much smaller than their own body. This is an example of a _________ __________.

Answer 5

scale error

Question 6

_____________ _____________ is the cognitive ability to relate one concept to another that represents it in some way.

Answer 6

Symbolic reasoning

Question 7

DeLoache (1987) held an experiment called the scale model task, where 2.5- and 3-year-olds were tasked to find a doll in a room after being shown the location of the doll in a miniaturised model of the room. 2.5-year-olds searched the room at random whereas 3-year-olds were able to find the doll.

This shows that 3-year-olds were able to perform ___________ ____________.

Answer 7

symbolic reasoning

Question 8

_____________ ______________ refers to the ability to mentally represent both the symbol itself and its relation to the referent.

Answer 8

Dual representation

Question 9

The incredible shrinking room experiment (DeLoache et al., 1997) showed that children aged 2.5 were capable of symbolic reasoning when shown a machine seemingly able to shrink objects and rooms.

This shows that there’s a possibility that they treat the previously miniaturised room as a __________ __________ rather than a ___________ ___________.

Answer 9

generic symbol, specific symbol

Question 10

A __________ __________ is when an item represents another specific item. For example, when seeing a picture of your parents, it represents your parents rather than just being a picture.

Answer 10

specific symbol

Question 11

Jean Piaget theorised that changes in children’s conceptual development was due to progressing through ___________, as aligned with his theory.

Answer 11

stages

Question 12

A modern view of children’s conceptual development is that concepts change due to _____________ ____________.

Answer 12

knowledge acquisition

Question 13

Frank Keil studied conceptual development in children and found that younger children focused on more ____________ ___________ (common, but not essential aspects of a category) to define concepts, whereas older children focused more on ____________ ____________ (essential aspects of a category).

Answer 13

characteristic features, defining features

Question 14

14-month-olds are able to differentiate typical __________ ___________ (like answering a phone or looking at a mirror) with ___________ __________ (like eating grass or food from a bowl on the floor).

Answer 14

human activities, animal activities

Question 15

Many of our concepts are interrelated, it is believed that children organizes their knowledge into theories and ____________ ____________. A lot of different parts make up a concept which are embedded in causal frameworks.

Answer 15

embedded concepts

Question 16

Susan Carey tested children (4-, 7-, and 10-years-old) on their concepts of animals. They were given several example objects such as “dog” and “table” and were asked if that object had a certain property such as “eating”.

By 4 years, it was found that the children never attribute animal properties to non-animals, hence it suggests that they are (able/not able) to distinguish between animals and non-animals.

Answer 16

able

Question 17

Susan Carey tested children (4-, 7-, and 10-years-old) on their concepts of animals. It was found that the 4-year-olds were more focused on the ______________ _____________ of the animals, whereas the 10-year-olds focused more on the ____________ ____________ of the animals.

Answer 17

characteristic features, defining features

Question 18

Susan Carey tested children (4-, 7-, and 10-years-old) on their concepts of animals. It was found that by 10 years, children had a developed a theory of what animals are based on ___________ __________ such as eating, breathing, and having offspring.

Answer 18

biological properties

Question 19

______________ ____________ _____________ is the ability to understand that other people’s actions (and other external manifestations) in terms of their internal mental states.

It is an ability we use constantly to try to understand why other people do what they do and to make sense of our social world.

Answer 19

Theory of Mind

Question 20

____________ are the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often with an amusing effect.

Answer 20

Malaprops

Question 21

Theory of Mind is an ability we use to decipher ____________ ___________ and ___________ ____________.

Answer 21

facial expressions, body posture

Question 22

The theory of mind is called a theory as it calls on unobserved entities and laws to explain what is observed. It is ____________ and makes _____________.

Answer 22

testable, predictions

Question 23

One of the precursors in neonates are ____________ in newborns, whereby infants, as young as 42 minutes or in an average 32 hours, are able to mimic an adult’s facial expression.

Answer 23

imitation

Question 24

When an infant is able to interact with another adult, the infant does ____________ ______________/_____________ between themselves and others. It gives the infant a foothold into the social world and recognise that there are others just like themselves.

Answer 24

innate mapping/equivalence

Question 25

In the development of theory of mind in children, children begin to learn what the ___________ ___________ of one's own mental state looks like, for example, what do they need to do if they want something.

Answer 25

outer expression

Question 26

In the development of theory of mind in children, children begin to project their _____________ ____________ from themselves to others. "When I see you act in a certain way, I project onto you the ____________ _____________ that would have led me to perform that behaviour."

Answer 26

mental state

Question 27

An experiment by Johnson et al. (1991) tested the preferences for faces in infants. It was found that newborns track a normal schematic face __________ than a scrambled or a blank face. This suggests that infants have __________ attention to people, suggesting that they have ________ opportunities to learn about them.

Answer 27

longer, increased, more

Question 28

The theory of mind component of visual perception in infants can be measured by looking at the ______ of the infants. If an infant follows someone's ________, it is likely that they've understood that they are looking at something that the infant's want to see. 7-month-olds were unable to perform this, however, 10- and 12-month-olds were able to.

Answer 28

gaze

Question 29

The toy hammer test (Sigman et al., 1992) tested if 24-month-old typically developing children were able to display _____________, or the ability to understand the basic emotions of others. The child's attention, behaviour, and facial affect were measured and it was found that the typically developing 24-month-olds paid attention to the distressed adult.

Answer 29

empathy

Question 30

___________ ____________ refers to an infant's ability to look at another person (usually a parent or caregiver) for information on how to behave in a new situation.

Answer 30

Social referencing

Question 31

In the modified visual cliff experiment (Sorce et al., 1985), infants tend to look at adults/parents for emotional cues in ____________ situations. Experienced crawlers used the mom's facial expressions as social referencing, when the mom showed fear, they did not cross; when the mom showed joy, they proceeded to cross.

Answer 31

ambiguous

Question 32

Woodward's experiment (1998) used the violation-of-expectation paradigm to determine if 6-month-olds were able to understand the desires or preferences of others. The infants were habituated with the adult choosing a ball instead of a teddy bear. When the toys were swapped, infants looked _________ when the adult reaches for the teddy bear instead of the usual ball. This suggests that infants were (able/not able) to understand the desires/preferences of the adult.

Answer 32

longer, able

Question 33

In an experiment by Repacholi and Gopnik (1997), infants between 14- and 18-months-old were asked to choose between crackers and broccoli, with the majority choosing crackers. The experimenter then expressed preference towards the opposite item (broccoli) and disgust towards crackers, then asked the child to give them either the crackers or broccoli. At 14 months: 85% of kids gave crackers At 18 months: 30% of kids gave crackers This suggests that infants still have some ___________ to understand that people's desires/preferences can differ from their own.

Answer 33

inability

Question 34

The Sally-Anne task assesses a child's ability to understand how others might behave when they hold ____________ or ___________ beliefs. The child is required to reason that Sally should attempt to find her toy inside the original location that was placed, rather than the place where it was placed by Anne.

Answer 34

inaccurate or false