Wk10 Live lecture

Question 1

What are 3 categories of objects?

Answer 1

Inanimate objects
Animals
People

Question 2

How do children distinguish between animals and people?

Answer 2

People are like animals but they are similar to us, they have mental states, and display people-specific behaviours

Question 3

How do children distinguish between inanimate objects and animals?

Answer 3

Animals move, eat, drink, and breathe etc.

Question 4

What evidence did Ricard and Allard provide in support for children’s understanding of separate categories of objects?

Answer 4

Found that 9/10 month old infants behaved differently in the different conditions.

They would approach and touch the inanimate objects/live rabbit.

They would smile at the unfamiliar person.

They would attend more to the person/rabbit than the toy.

Question 5

Why would children attend more to the person/rabbit?

Answer 5

Living things capture their attention more and they monitored the live things more than the object because they behaved on their own accord.

Question 6

What are categories based on?

Answer 6

Infants create categories based on how similar things look to each other (perceptual categorisation)

Question 7

What does the term habituation refer to?

Answer 7

We look at the length of looking times of infants to understand what infants are interested in

Question 8

What did Behl-Chadha find about 3/4 month infants categorisation in familiarisation and preferential tests?

Answer 8

Shorter looking times at pairs of familiar mammals. Suggests children are bored and everything they are seeing is part of the same category

Infants had longer looking times in the preference testing phase. Suggests that they look longer at an object from a novel category.

Question 9

What did Landau (1998) find about how infants categorise objects between 2-3 years old?

Answer 9

Children base their categorisation decisions on shape rather than size or texture.

Question 10

What are 3 levels of categories?

Answer 10

Basic
Superordinate
Subordinate

Question 11

Can infants categorise objects using causal information?

Answer 11

Yes. Causal explanations of physical features can lead to better categorisation than physical descriptions alone.

Question 12

When can children categorise objects?

Answer 12

Early in infancy

Question 13

What is categorisation often based of in early infancy?

Answer 13

Perceptual similarities

Question 14

How can older children categorise objects?

Answer 14

Children form more complicate category hierarchies and use verbal explanations and causal reasoning to inform category organisation

Question 15

When can infants perceive causal connections between physical events?

Answer 15

6 months old - infants understand that moving objects can collide with stationary objects causing them to move.

Question 16

Have blicket test studies found that toddlers can infer causal relations between things even if they aren’t shown direct information?

Answer 16

Yes. A study using a blicket detector test found that 24 month olds figured out how to turn the blicket detector on by placing the blicket on top of it.

Question 17

What have findings from more complicated blicket tests found?

Answer 17

Children can hypothesise about inconsistent causal relations. Children who generated more causal function explanations engaged in more hypothesis-testing behaviours

Question 18

Why might causal reasoning not always happen?

Answer 18

Children are prone to fantasy thinking when causal explanations are not obvious.

Thinking is not always logical.

Question 19

Can children understand why events in the world occur from a young age?

Answer 19

Yes. By 6 months old infants are attentive to cause and effect relations between objects.

By 24 months, toddlers can infer causal relations based on indirect and probabilistic evidence

Question 20

Can pre-schoolers demonstrate scientific thinking?

Answer 20

Yes, pre-schoolers can generate hypotheses to explain inconsistent cause and effect relations which shows scientific thought.

Question 21

How do children begin to understand spatial information?

Answer 21

Crawling and toddling stimulates processing of spatial information

Question 22

What did Hermer and Spelke do in their disorientation task?

Answer 22

They tried to disorientate toddlers.

The child would observe a toy hidden in the room. They were then spun around with their eyes covered.

Question 23

What were the findings from the disorientation task?

Answer 23

Children used geometric cues (length of walls) to find the hidden object.

Different coloured walls confused this age groups - the children did not know where to find the toy.

Question 24

What were the conclusions from Lingwood’s virtual maze study?

Answer 24

As children get older they can use landmarks to locate objects.

By 12 years old, children are good at learning complicated routes.

Question 25

How did Lingwood’s virtual maze study work?

Answer 25

Experimenter demonstrated the route once and then children were asked to complete the maze by themselves.

Question 26

What did Lingwood find about the age at which children could successfully navigate the maze?

Answer 26

8 year olds struggled.

10 year olds managed the maze 50% of the time

12 year olds managed the maze 70% of the time

Adults managed the maze 75% of the time

Question 27

What do habituation studies look at?

Answer 27

Children looking times

Heart rate changes

Question 28

How do children below 6 months understand time?

Answer 28

They remember temporal order

They can discrimination between short and long durations

Question 29

How do 4 year olds understand time?

Answer 29

Children can distinguish between recent vs less recent events

Question 30

Can 4 year olds clearly understand past and future?

Answer 30

No. They get confused

Question 31

How do 6 year olds understand time?

Answer 31

6 year olds have a better sense of timing of future events (seasons, daily routines)

Question 32

How do 8 year olds understand time?

Answer 32

8 year olds have a better sense of when past events occurred

Question 33

How can we assess children’s level of understanding of time when they are above 4 years old?

Answer 33

Ask them to give verbal responses

Question 34

What studies are used to look at how very young infants understand time?

Answer 34

Habituation studies

Question 35

How well can infants understand numbers?

Answer 35

At first infants can only distinguish between large number differences (e.g. 1 dot vs lots of dots)

By 9 months they can distinguish less obvious differences

Question 36

What did Starr et al (2013) find out about infants numerical abilities?

Answer 36

Number sense at 6 months predicts mathematical abilities at 3.5 years

Longer looking at numerically changing vs numerically constant displays indicates better number sense

Question 37

Can young infants count?

Answer 37

Yes. Wynn did a puppet study and found that at 5 months children have some knowledge of counting because they looked longer when things did not add up

Question 38

What do nativists propose about our understanding of concepts related to objects, space, time, and number?

Answer 38

We have an innate understanding because it is important in our evolutionary history.

We have specialised modules in the brain which could explain early emergence and rapid development of understanding of these concepts.

Question 39

Is there evidence for the nativist explanation for conceptual development?

Answer 39

There is little evidence that there are specialised areas of the brain that activate when concepts are being developed/used.

Strong evidence for spatial processing. Brain imaging studies have shown that the hippocampus plays an important role in encoding information about locations.

Question 40

What do empiricists propose about how understanding of concepts related to objects, space, time and number?

Answer 40

We understand concepts from our own experience and teaching.

Experiences develop the complexity of connections within the brain.

Question 41

Is there evidence for the empiricist explanation to conceptual development?

Answer 41

Some evidence of cultural differences.

Question 42

When can infants understand the relative position of objects in space, numerical differences, counting, and time?

Answer 42

By 6 months

Question 43

When can children use geometric cues and landmarks to locate objects?

Answer 43

First few years. Takes longer to navigate more complicated routes.

Question 44

When do children understand past and future time?

Answer 44

Over early and middle childhood