THEORIES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: Why developmental theories?
1. They provide a framework for understanding important phenomena (when objects are removed from an individual = out of sight, out of mind)
2. Raise crucial questions about human nature
3. Motivate new research studies that lead to a better understanding
Why not just one theory?
Because development is so complex no single theory accounts for all of it.
-theories of cognitive development and social development, for example, focus on different capabilities
Questions addressed by Piagetian Theory
Main questions answered:
-Nature/nurture
-Continuity/discontinuity
-The active child
Jean Piaget (direct observation of children)
Jean Piaget`s theory remains the standard against which all other theories are judged
-Constructivist theory: children construct an understanding of their world based on observations of the effects of their behavior (their interactions with the world)
Chi
Cognitive Structures
For example, inter-related memories; a script on how to act
-inter-related memories, thoughts, strategies
-scheme
-used to make sense of experiences
-``Script``
-sensorimotor action pattern
Schemes
Mental representations
-symbolic (i.e. in-visioning the number 5)
>>images, concepts
-operational (i.e. the operational multiplication, 5x5)
>>strategies, plans, rules
Cognitive Growth
When things make sense...``harmonious state of affairs``
Cognitive equilibrium...when things don`t make sense??
Cognitive Disequilibrium: Organization
Internal rearrangement and linking together of schemes
-Looking; reaching; grasping; and sucking (as a way to explore any object within their environment)
-visually directed reaching (``looking+reaching+grasping``)
Cognitive Disequilibrium: Adaptation
Assimilation (applying what you know to a new situation)
-existing schemes used to interpret novel information
-new information absorbed into existing scheme
Accommodation (changes one`s view to better match reality)
-creation of new scheme or alteration
Sources of Continuity/Discontinuity: Progressive Changes in Cognitive Structures
Quality of thinking is tied to age range
When qualitative change occurs, the infant/child enters a new stage of development
Invariant (it needs to pass through them; cannot skip) developmental sequence:
-Sensorimotor
-Preoperational
-Concrete operations
-
Sensorimotor Stage
Birth to age 2
Build newborn reflexes (sucking, rooting, etc) into symbolic activity
6 sub-stages:
-marked by an increase in complexity of cognitive activity
-only a marker
>>sequential rather than age defined
Object Permanence
Understanding that objects exist independent of our ability to perceive them
Sub-stage 1 (1-4 months)
>>``out of sight, out of mind``
Sub-stage 2 (4-8 months)
>>search for partially concealed objects
Sub-stage 3 (8-12 months)
>>search for concealed object
A-not-B Task
Show the infant an attractive toy
Hide the toy under one of two cloths (A)
Then move toy to the other cloth (B) as infant watches
Allow the infant to choose and they will choose A, where they found the object previously
*
Piaget`s account
*
Physical behav
Challenges to Piaget`s Conception of Infancy
Neo-nativists
-idea that much of cognitive knowledge is innate, requiring little specific experiences to be expressed
Critique of Piaget: Object Permanence
Baillargeon (1987)
-The habituation/dis-habituation paradigm
-Possible vs. Impossible event
-Infants showed more interest in impossible event (they looked longer because they found it more interesting; had core-knowledge of properties and they knew that o
Core-Knowledge Theories
Emphasize the sophistication of infants` and young children`s thinking in areas that have been important throughout human evolutionary history
Two characteristic features of research inspired by core-knowledge theories:
-focuses on areas that have been im
A. View of Children`s Nature
Like Piagetian and information-processing theories, core-knowledge theories depict children as active learners, constantly striving to solve problems and to organize their understanding into coherent wholes.
However, core-knowledge theorists view children
Preoperational Stage
A mix of impressive cognitive acquisitions and equally impressive limitations
-a notable acquisition is SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION, the use of one object to stand for another, which makes a variety of new behaviors possible (if you can symbolically represent
Concrete Operations Stage
Children begin to reason logically about the world; they can solve conservation problems, but their successful reasoning is largely limited to concrete situations
*
thinking systematically remains difficult
*
Inhelder and Piaget`s Pendulum Problem
-compar
Formal Operations Stage (thinking abstractly)
-Cognitive development culminates in the ability to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically
-Individuals can imagine alternative words and reason systematically about all possible outcomes of a situation
For example, ``if all blue people live in red
Information-Processing Theories: View of Children`s Nature
Information-processing theorists view children as undergoing continuous cognitive change
The term continuous applies in two senses:
-important changes are viewed as constantly occurring, rather than being restricted to special transition periods between s
1. The Child as a Limited-Capacity Processing System
Underlying many information-processing theories is the metaphor of the child as a computation system
Cognitive development arises from children`s gradually surmounting their processing limitations through:
-increasing efficient execution of basic processe
2. The Child as Problem Solver
The assumption that children are active problem solvers is central to information-processing theories
Problem solving involves a goal, a perceived obstacle, and a strategy or a rule
Children`s cognitive flexibility helps them pursue their goals
Processing
Sociocultural Theories & Approaches
-Focus on the contribution of other people and the surrounding culture to children`s development
-Emphasize GUIDED PARTICIPATION, more knowledgeable individuals organize activities in ways that allow less knowledgeable people to engage in them at a higher
Lev Vygotsky
-Lev Vygotsky is considered to be the originator of the sociocultural approach to cognitive development
-Vygotsky`s work created a stir because his view of children`s nature was so diffrent from Piaget`s
Vygotsky`s Theory
-presents children as social bein
Vygotsky: Tools of Intellectual Adaptation
-Infants born with a few elementary mental functions: attention, sensation, perception and memory
-these are transformed into more sophisticated mental processes he called `higher mental functions`
Cultural Tool
Number Naming System
English: rote memory 1
Intersubjectivity
The mutual understanding that people share during communication
-serves as the foundation of human cognitive development
-JOINT ATTENTION: a process in which social partners intentionally focus on a common referent in the external environment (ability to
Social Scaffolding
-more competent people provide a temporary framework that supports children`s thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own
-the quality of scaffolding that people provide tends to increase as people become older and gain experience
Scaffolding and Autobiographical Memory
-autobiographical memories are explicit memories of events that took place at specific times and places in the individuals past
-when discussing past experiences with their young children, some parents encourage them to provide many details about past eve
DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE AND SYMBOL USE: Symbols
-systems for representing thoughts, feelings, and knowledge and communicating them to others
-the creative and flexible use of symbols is the capacity that sets humans apart from other species
1. Language Development
-By 5 years of age, children have mastered the basic structure of their native language, whether spoken or manually signed (vocab and ideas are smaller/less complex)
2. Non-linguistic Symbols and Development
Using language involves:
-Language comprehension: refers to understanding what others say (sign or write)
-Language production: refers to actually speaking (sighing or writing) to others
The Components of Language
Generativity: using the finite set of words in our vocabulary, we can put together an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of ideas
Required Competencies for Learning Language
-Phonological development: the acquisition of knowledge about phonemes, the elementary units of sound that distinguish meaning
-Semantic development: learning the system for expressing meaning in a language, beginning with morphemes, the smallest unit of
Metalinguistic Knowledge
-Adults, unlike young children, also have some understanding of the properties and function of language (metalinguistic knowledge)
-An example of metalinguistic knowledge is knowing that only certain word combinations are acceptable as sentences.
What is Required for Language?
-What does it take to be able to learn a language in the first place?
-Full-fledged language is achieved only by humans, but only if they have experience with other humans using language for communication
A Human Brain
The key to full-fledged language development is in the human brain:
-Language is a species-specific behavior-only humans acquire a communication system with the complexity, structure, and generativity of language
-Language is also species-universal-virtua
Brain-Language Relations
Language processing involves a substantial degree of functional localization in the brain
-the LEFT HEMISPHERE (where language is processed) shows some specialization for language in infancy, although the degree of hemispheric specialization for language
Critical Period for Language Development
To learn language, children must also be exposed to other people using language-spoken or signed (need to engage in language)
Sometime between age 5 and puberty, language acquisition becomes much more difficult and ultimately less successful
Critical (sen
Bilingual Children
They are better at cognitively inhibiting themselves (suppressing one language, while using another)
-more than half of the world`s children are exposed to more than one language
-children who are acquiring two languages do not seem to confuse them
-they
Test of the Critical-Period Hypothesis
-Performance on a test of English grammar by adults originally from Korea and China was directly related to age at which they came to the US and were exposed to English
-The scores of adults who emigrated before the age of 7 are indistinguishable from tho
A Human Environment
-Infant-directed talk (IDT) is the distinctive mode of speech that adults adopt when talking to babies and very young children (a slower speech; babies like this type of speech)
-It is common throughout the world, but it is not universal
-Its characterist
The Process of Language Acquisition
-Acquiring a language involves both comprehending what other people communicate to you and producing language of your own.
-Infants know a great deal about language long before their linguistic productions
Categorical Perception of Speech Sounds
-Both adults and infants possess categorical perception of speech sounds (the perception of speech sounds as belonging to discrete categories)
-The two phonemes /b/ and /p/ occur along an acoustic continuum except that they differ in voice onset time (VOT
Categorical Perception of Speech by Adults
-When adults listen to a tape of artificial speech sounds that gradually change from one sound to another, such as /ba/ to /pa/ or vice versa, they suddenly switch from perceiving one sound to perceiving the other
Categorical Perception of Speech by Infants
-the baby has learned to turn his head to the sound source whenever he hears a change from one sound to another
-a correct head turn is rewarded by en exciting visual display, as well as by the applause and praise of the experimenter
Developmental Changes in Speech Perception
-Infants`ability to discriminate between speech sounds not in their native language declines between 6 and 12 months of age
-6 month olds from English speaking families readily discriminate between syllables in Hindi and Nthlakapmx, but 10-12 month olds d
Sensitivity to Regularities in Speech
-in addition to focusing on the speech sounds that are used in their native language, infants become increasingly sensitive to many of the numerous regularities in that language
Stress Patterns: an element of prosody
Distributional properties: in any lang
Babbling
-Sometime between 6 and 10 months of age, infants begin to babble by repeating strings of sounds comprising a consonant followed by a vowel
-a key component of the development of babbling is receiving feedback about the sounds one is producing
-congenital
Silent Babbling
-Babies who are exposed to the sign language of their deaf parents engage in `silent babbling`
-A subset of their hand movements differ from those of infants exposed to spoken language in that their slower rhythm corresponds to the rhythmic patterning of
Early Interactions
Even before infants start speaking, they develop interactive routines similar to those required in the use of language for communication
-Turn taking: apparent in simple games like ``Give and Take``
-Intersubjectivity:the sharing of a common focus of atte
First Words
-infants recognize words, then comprehend them, then begin to produce some of the words they have learned
-by 5 months of age, infants can pick their own name out of background conversations
-at 7 to 8 months of age, infants readily learn to recognize new
The Problem of Reference
-Once infants can recognize recurrent units from the speech they hear, they must address the problem of reference, the associating of words and meaning
-Infants may begin associating highly familiar words and referents by 6 months of age
-By 10 months, ch
Semantic Development
-Naming explosion
-rapid increase in vocabulary at about 1 and a half years
-by 2 years-900 words
-by 6 years-8000 words
What Kinds of Words do Children Learn First?
-Nelson (1973)
-Mothers diarized first 50 words learned
-Majority were general or specific nominals
-Recent Studies
-Challenge assumption that
object words
predominate (BUT)...
Errors in Early Word Use
Overextension
-use of one word for many things
-ex: ball= ball, balloon, marble, apple, spherical water tank
-moon= moon, lemon slice, circular chrome dial on dishwasher, half a cheerio
Underextension
-use of single word for a very specific thing
-ex: inf
Adult Influences on Word Learning
-A spurt in vocabulary growth typically occurs at around 19 months, although there is great variability
The rate of vocabulary development is influenced by the sheer amount of talk that they hear
-Caregivers play an important role in word learning by plac
One Word at a Time: The Holophrastic Period
Holophrase: single word that seems to represent thought or idea (ex. ``down`` or ``me``)
-``down!`` vs. ``down?`` vs. ``down.``
-lessons in communicative competence
Meaning from Context
-Children use PRAGMATIC CUES, aspects of the social context used for word learning
-These include the adult`s focus of attention and intentionality
-Children also use the linguistic context in which novel words appear to help infer their meaning
Syntactic
Pragmatic Cues- Holophrases to Simple Sentences: The Telegraphic Period
Telegraphic Speech- two word utterances with content rather than function words
-exceptions include no, you, more, off
-varies in meaning according to context
Semantic relations:
-agent+action----> mommy come; daddy sit
-action+object----> drive car; eat
Conversational Skills
-Much of very young children`s speech is directed towards themselves
Collective Monologues
-the content of each child`s turn
C. Current Theoretical Issues in Language Development
1. Nativist Views
-Maintains that using a language requires
a set of highly abstract, unconscious rules -
a
universal grammar
that is innate and common to all languages
-Argues that the cognitive abilities that support language development are highly spec
Nativist Views Con`t
-Noam Chomsky (1968)
-Language Acquisition Device (LAD)-theoretical tool to explain an in-nate device
Claims:
-Universal features
-Innate language hypotheses
-Language as system of abstract rules
Nativist Views
-Universal features
-Set of common principle
2. Interactionist Views
-Maintains that virtually everything about language development is influenced by its communicative function.
-Suggests the basic fact that the main purpose to which infants and young children apply their steadily increasing language skills is communicatin
II. Nonlinguistic Symbols and Development: Using Symbols as Information
-Involves the mastery of the symbolic creations of others and the creation of new symbolic representations
-To use symbolic artifacts like maps, children must have acquired dual representation, which is the understanding that the artifact is represented m
Scale Model Task
-In a test of young children's ability to use a symbol as a source of information, a 3-year-old child watches as the experimenter (Judy DeLoache) hides a miniature troll doll under a pillow in a scale model of an adjacent room.
-The child searches success
CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT: Concepts
-General ideas or understandings that can be used to group together objects, events, qualities, or abstractions that are similar in some way
-Crucial for helping people make sense of the world
Perspectives on Concepts
-Nativists argue that innate understanding of concepts plays a central role in development (very little understanding)
-Empiricists argue that concepts arise from basic learning mechanisms (you need experience)
Understanding Who or What
A. Dividing Objects into Categories
B. Knowledge of Other People and Oneself
C. Knowledge of Living Things
Dividing the objects children encounter in the world into categories helps children answer two questions:
-What kinds of things are there in the wor
A. Dividing Objects into Categories
Beginning early in development, children attempt to understand what kinds of things there are in the world by dividing the objects they perceives in three general categories:
-inanimate objects
-people
-living things
A major way in which children form cat
Object Hierarchies: 1. Categorization of Objects in Infancy
-Infants form categories of objects in the first months of life.
-A key element in infants' thinking is perceptual categorization, the grouping together of objects that have similar appearances.
>>Infants categorize objects along many perceptual dimension
2. Categorization of Objects Beyond Infancy
-As children move beyond infancy, their ability to categorize expands greatly.
Two of the most important trends:
-increasing understanding of category hierarchies
-increasing understanding of causal connections
>>both involve knowledge of relations among
Category Hierarchies
Often include three main levels:
-a general one, the superordinate level (e.g., PLANT)
-a very specific one, the subordinate level (e.g., OAK)
-one in between, the basic level (e.g., TREE)
Children usually learn the basic level category first, because obj
Casual Understanding and Categorization
-Understanding causal relations - why objects are the way they are - helps children learn and remember new categories (the more children that understand the cause, the better they are at understanding)
-Hearing that "wugs" are well prepared to fight and
Knowledge of Other People and Oneself
-Children as young as 3 have a naive psychology, a commonsense level of understanding of other people and oneself
-At the center of naive psychology are two concepts that people commonly use to understand human behavior: desires and beliefs
Three Properties of Naive Psychological Concepts
1. They refer to invisible mental states (knowing the intentions of others)
2. The concepts are all linked to each other in cause-effect relations
3. They develop early in life
1. Infants` Naive Psychology
-Infants think about other people in terms of invisible constructs by 1 year of age and possibly earlier.
In the first half of the second year, toddlers begin to show a grasp of several ideas that are crucial for psychological understanding:
-Intention: t
2. Development Beyond Infancy
-A theory of mind is a well-organized understanding of how the mind works and how it influences behavior.
-Two-year-olds: understand the connection between other people's desires and their specific actions, but show little understanding that beliefs are a
Testing Children`s Theory of Mind
-The Smarties task is frequently used to study preschoolers' understanding of false beliefs.
-Most 3-year-olds answer like the child in the cartoon, which suggests a lack of understanding that people's actions are based on their own beliefs, even when tho
Explaining the Development of Theory of Mind
1.There is a theory-of-mind module (TOMM), a hypothesized brain mechanism devoted to understanding other human beings.
2.Interactions with other people are crucial for developing theory of mind.
3.General information-processing skills are necessary for ch
Autism and False-Belief Tasks
-Children with autism continue to find false-belief tasks very difficult to solve even when they are teenagers.
-They have trouble establishing joint attention with other people and show less distress than other children when other people appear distresse
The Growth of Play
-Pretend play: Make-believe activities in which children create new symbolic relations, emerges at about 18 months of age.
>>Includes object substitution, a form of pretense in which an object is used as something other than itself.
-Sociodramatic play: A
Imaginary Companions
Taylor (1999) found that as many as 63% of the children she interviewed at ages 3-4 and again at 7-8 have imaginary companions at one or both ages.
-Imaginary friends included ordinary but invisible children as well as fanciful creatures.
Children with im
1. Distinguishing People from Nonliving Things
-Task used by Poulin-Dubois (1999) to study infants' reactions when they see people and inanimate objects (in this case a robot) engaging in the same action.
-Both 9- and 12-month-olds show surprise when they see inanimate objects move on their own, sugge
Understanding Biological Processes: Inheritance
Preschoolers know that physical characteristics tend to be passed on from parent to offspring, and that certain aspects of development are controlled by heredity rather than environment.
-At times their belief in inheritance is too strong, and they deny t
How do Children Acquire Biological Knowledge
Nativists and empiricists have very different ideas regarding the growth of children's biological standing.
-Nativists: people are born with a biology module
-Empiricists: children's biological understanding comes from their personal observations and from
Understanding Where, When and How Many
-Making sense out of our experiences requires accurately representing not only who or what was involved in an event, but also where, when, why, and how often the event occurred.
-Understanding of space, time, causality and number begin to develop in the f
Space
-Both nativists and empiricists agree that certain parts of the brain are specialized for coding particular types of spatial information.
-Both sides of the brain are involved in spatial thinking, although the right and left sides differ with regard to th
Representing Space Relative to Oneself
According to Piaget, the only spatial representations
possible during the sensorimotor period are
egocentric representations
-The location of objects are coded relative to the infants' position when they learned the location.
-
Self-locomotion
seems to pl
Representing Space Relative to the External Environment
-Children use landmarks as early as 6 months of age, and by age 5 they can represent an object's position in relation to multiple landmarks.
-The degree to which people develop spatial skills is strongly influenced by the importance of these skills in the
Causality
Nativists and empiricists disagree about the origins of the understanding of physical causes.
-Nativisits argue that infants possess an innate causal module or core theory.
-Empiricists propose that infants' repeated observations of the environment produc
1. Casual Reasoning in Infancy
-By 6 months of life, infants perceive causal connections among some physical events, such as those involving collisions (an object hitting another object; dis-habituate meaning that they are surprised)
-Imitating Sequences of Events
2. Development of Casual Reasoning Beyond Infancy
A common theme that characterizes many particular developments in the understanding of causality beyond infancy is the continuous expansion of children's ability to identify causal relations even when the causes are not immediately apparent.
-Older toddle
Toddlers Problem Solving
-Choosing the right tool for getting the toy required children to understand the importance of both the length of the shaft and the angle of the head on the shaft.
-Older toddlers' greater understanding of these causal relations led them to more often use
Number
The nativist/empiricist debate is also in play with regard to the concept of number.
-Nativists argue that children are born with a core concept of number.
-Empiricists argue that children learn about numbers through the same types of experiences and lear
1. Numerical Equality
Perhaps the most basic numerical understanding is that of numerical equality, the realization that all sets of N objects have something in common.
-Infants as young as 5 months appear to have such a sense of numerical equality, at least as it applies to s
2. Infants Arithmetic
-In certain experiments, infants show surprise
when the objects are added or subtracted behind a screen and then the screen is removed to reveal the wrong number of objects.
-infants looked longer at the impossible event, suggesting that they were more su
Infants Understanding of Addition
However..
-The experimental findings have not always been replicated, and the fact that infants' competence is limited at best to small sets of objects has led some researchers to conclude that the infants' competence reflects perceptual rather than arith
Subitizing
-It has been argued that infants rely on
subitizing
, a process by which adults and children can look at a few objects and almost immediately know how many objects are present.
3. Counting
-By age 3, most children can count to 10.
-Most preschoolers seem to understand the basic principles underlying counting, including one-to-one correspondence, stable order, cardinality, order irrelevance, and abstraction.
-Conceptual Counting Knowledge
-C