Week Six - Cognitive Development II

Question 1

What is theory of mind?

Answer 1

The ability to reflect on own thoughts and realise they aren’t necessarily the same as others

Question 2

When did Piaget suggest TOM develops?

Answer 2

around 8 years but recent research says earlier

Question 3

An understanding of the TOM begin with ?

Answer 3

Joint attention

Social referencing

Question 4

What is ‘understanding false belief’?

Answer 4

Ability to understand that someone else may have a. false belief - key development in understanding others minds

referenced by sally box in marble task

Question 5

An ability to reason about false belief may reflect what?

Answer 5

The emergence of a representational theory of mind

- the understanding that the mind is a representational device and may misrepresent

Question 6

2 major differences between adolescent and adult thinking?

Answer 6

Relativistic Thinking:
- where knowledge depends on context and the persons own subjective perspective (adults more likely to realise it depends, whereas adolescents will take it on face value)

Dialectic Thinking:
- detecting and reconciling inconsistencies (recognising that a problem is multifaceted, consider various possibilities, solicit others advice, might not be making the perfect decision)

Question 7

What is the Domain-general approach to cognitive development?

Answer 7

Development is driven by underlying changes in nature of children’s cognition

Question 8

What is the domain-specific approach to cognitive development?

Answer 8

Different mechanisms assumed to drive development in different domains of knowledge

Question 9

What are neo-piagetian approaches to cognitive development?

Answer 9

Modern views that still believe in stage-like and transitioning through stages driven by fundamental changes in structure of cognition

Question 10

What did Vygotsky’s SCT propose about cognitive development?

Answer 10

That is progresses within their zone of proximal development

Question 11

Vygotsky said that knowledge is?

Answer 11

Relocated to the mind of child (from teach to child)

Question 12

What is reciprocal teaching?

Answer 12

Child plays role of teacher

Question 13

What is the core knowledge approach?

Answer 13

DOMAIN SPECIFIC

Children develop specialised ways of learning about specific domains

Children start of developing own naive theories and replace with more complex

Develop different understanding as they need to

Question 14

What is the information processing approach?

Answer 14

DOMAIN SPECIFIC

Child is seen to process stimuli.

Analyses the individual processes involved in specific cognitive tasks eg spelling a new word

Cognition is seen as a complex system of storage and retrieval and other cognitive processes

development is continuous

Question 15

What is attention?

Answer 15

The ability to focus on the most relevant stimuli in the environment

Improves markedly during middle childhood and more during adolescence

Question 16

What can habituation tell us about memory?

Answer 16

That newborns can remember if tested for long times

Question 17

Operant conditioning and memory?

Answer 17

Positive reward can show that infants can learn/memorise

- context dependent

Question 18

Infants can form memories, but?

Answer 18

They must be non-verbal

Question 19

Memories can develop via what 3 mechanisms?

Answer 19

Memory strategies
General knowledge
Metamemory

Question 20

What are memory strategies?

Answer 20

Techniques used for improving storage and retrieval (used more in middle childhood)

• rehearsal
• organisation
• elaboration

Young children can do it (mnemonics) but just don’t

Question 21

How does general knowledge help memory?

Answer 21

The more we know - the more we can learn/remember

constructive memory: we use our knowledge to encode and retrieve complex information (helpful but can be problematic)

Question 22

What do we have better memory for?

Answer 22

Things we are expert in

Question 23

What is metamemory?

Answer 23

Knowledge about your own memory in general which improves with age

Those who overestimate own memory are more motivated to improve, and do, than those who don’t

Question 24

Short term memory in adolescence?

Answer 24

Significantly increases

• able to hold more information
• increased processing capacity

Question 25

What are cognitive mechanics?

Answer 25

Basic memory processes that decline in later adulthood

Question 26

What are cognitive pragmatics needed for?

Answer 26

Needed to solve intellectual problems with culture-based knowledge and skill

Question 27

What is cognitive plasticity?

Answer 27

The ability of other neurons to take over the function of lost or damaged neurons

Question 28

Influence of crystallised and fluid intelligence as we age?

Answer 28

We see increases in crystallised and decreases in fluid

Question 29

What are some age-related brain changes?

Answer 29

Less blood flow
NT change
Organic brain syndromes