HEV-Chaper 5 & 6- Psych 210 PDF

Preview

Summary

chapter notes textbooks...

Description

Chapter 5 Infancy: Cognitive Development 



Piaget labelled children’s concepts of the world schemas. A schema is a mental structure that categorizes knowledge so that information that is similar is grouped together. o He hypothesized that children use assimilation to absorb new information into existing schemas. When assimilation does not allow the child to make sense of novel events, children try to modify existing schemas to fit the newly acquired information through accommodation. Piaget (1963 [1936]) hypothesized that cognitive processes develop in an orderly sequence of stages. Some children may advance more quickly than others, but the sequence remains constant (Flavell, Miller, & Miller et al.,2002; Siegler & Alibali, 2005).

Jean Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development Sensorimotor Birth–2 years At first, the child lacks language and does not use symbols or mental representations of objects. In time, reflexive responding ends, and intentional behaviour begins. The child develops the object concept and acquires the basics of language. Preoperationa 2–7 years The child begins to represent the world mentally, but thought is egocentric. l The child does not focus on two aspects of a situation at once and therefore lacks conservation. The child shows animism, artificialism, and objective responsibility for wrongdoing. (See Chapter 7 for more information about animism and artificialism.) Concrete 7–12 years Logical mental actions—called operations—begin. The child develops operational conservation concepts, can adopt the viewpoints of others, can classify objects in series, and shows comprehension of basic relational concepts (such as one object being larger or heavier than another). Formal 12 years and Mature, adult thought emerges. Thinking is characterized by deductive logic, consideration of various possibilities (mental trial and error), abstract thought, operational older and the formation and testing of hypotheses.

The Sensorimotor Stage 

Piaget’s sensorimotor stage refers to the first 2 years of cognitive development, a time during which infants progress from responding to events with reflexes, or ready-made schemas, to goal-oriented behavior. Piaget divided the sensorimotor stage into six substages. In each substage, earlier forms of behavior are repeated, varied, and coordinated.

Simple Reflexes  

The first sub-stage covers the first month after birth. It is dominated by the assimilation of sources of stimulation into inborn reflexes such as grasping or visual tracking. At birth, reflexes seem like automatic responses but even within the first few hours, neonates begin to modify reflexes as a result of experience. For example, infants will adapt their pat terns of sucking to the shape of the nipple and the rate of flow of fluid.

Primary Circular Reactions 

   



The second sub-stage, primary circular reactions, lasts from about 1 to 4 months of age and is characterized by the beginnings of the ability to coordinate various sensorimotor schemas. Infants tend to repeat stimulating actions that first occurred by chance. For example, an infant may lift its arm repeatedly to bring it into view. Primary circular reactions focus on the infant’s own body rather than on the external environment. In terms of assimilation and accommodation, the child is attempting to assimilate the motor schema (moving the hand) into the sensory schema (looking at it). But the schemas do not automatically fit. Several days of apparent trial and error pass, during which the infant seems to be trying to make accommodations so that they will fit. By the third month, infants may examine objects repeatedly and intensely. It seems that the infant is no longer simply looking and seeing but is now “looking in order to see.” Another example is that an infant will learn to suck its thumb at first by accident. With repetition, it brings its thumb to its mouth repeating the movement until it becomes proficient. Piaget considers the desire to prolong stimulation to be as “basic” as the drives of hunger or thirst.

Secondary Circular Reactions 



The third sub-stage lasts from about 4 to 8 months and is characterized by secondary circular reactions, in which patterns of activity are repeated because of their effect on the environment; the focus of attention shifts from their bodies to external objects and environmental events. Infants may now learn to pull strings in order to make a plastic face appear or to shake an object in order to hear it rattle. Babies at this stage are first interested in the game peek-a-boo as the caregiver’s face appears behind their hands.

Coordination of Secondary Schemas  



In the fourth sub-stage, infants ages 8 to 12 months no longer act simply to prolong interesting occurrences. Now they can coordinate schemas to attain specific goals. Infants begin to show intentional, goal-directed behaviour in which they differentiate between the means of achieving a goal and the goal or end itself. For example, they may lift a piece of cloth to reach a toy that they had seen a parent place there earlier. In this example, the schema of picking up the cloth (the means) is coordinated with the schema of reaching for the toy (the goal or end). This example indicates that the infant has mentally represented the toy placed under the cloth. Other examples are reaching for a bib



at feeding time or hiding from Mom at bedtime. During the fourth sub-stage, infants also gain the capacity to imitate gestures and sounds that they had previously ignored. The imitation of a facial gesture implies that an infant has mentally represented his or her own face and, through feedback from facial muscles, can tell what parts of the face he or she is moving.

Did You Know? For 2-month-old infants, “out of sight” is “out of mind.” Infants delight at playing peek-a-boo because once you disappear from view, they don’t realize you still exist!

Tertiary Circular 



Reactions In the fifth sub-stage, which lasts from about 12 to 18 months of age, Piaget looked on the behaviour of infants as characteristic of budding scientists. Infants now engage in tertiary circular reactions, or purposeful adaptations of established schemas to specific situations. Behaviour takes on a new experimental quality, and infants may vary their actions dozens of times in a deliberate trial-and-error fashion to learn how things work. Examples include putting shapes into a shape sorter toy or putting puzzle pieces together.

Invention of New Means through Mental Combinations   



The sixth sub-stage lasts from about 18 to 24 months of age. It serves as a transition between sensorimotor development and the development of symbolic thought. External exploration is replaced by mental exploration. At about 18 months, children may also use imitation to symbolize or stand for a plan of action. Piaget noticed that at the age of 18 months, his own children studied various problematic situations for a few moments rather than engage in trial and error learning. For example, each child grasped a stick that was outside of its playpen, turned it upright, and brought it into the playpen with little overt effort. They apparently mentally represented the stick and the bars of the playpen and then perceived that the stick would not fit through as it was. They then needed to rotate the mental image of the stick until they perceived a position that would allow the stick to pass between the bars and were able to do so. Other examples during this stage include playing the role of mother or father, playing other dress-up games, and using their imagination.

Development of Object Permanence 

Object permanence is an important aspect of sensorimotor development. Object permanence is the recognition that an object or person continues to exist even when out of sight. For

  

   



  

example, your textbook continues to exist when you leave it in the library after studying for a test, and an infant’s mother continues to exist even when she leaves the child at daycare. Object permanence requires that the child be able to form a mental representation of that object. The development of object permanence is tied into the development of infants’ working memory and reasoning ability (Aguiar & Baillargeon, 2002; Saiki & Miyatsuji, 2007). Newborns show no tendency to respond to objects that are not within their immediate sensory grasp. By the age of 2 months, infants may show some surprise if an object (such as a toy duck) is placed behind a screen and then taken away so that when the screen is lifted, it is absent. However, they make no effort to search for the missing object (see Figure 5.1). Through the first 6 months or so, when the screen is placed between the object and the infant, the infant behaves as though the object is no longer there. Apparently, they do not yet reliably mentally represent objects they see. For 2-month-old infants, “out of sight” is truly “out of mind. By about the sixth month, some interesting advances occur in the development of the object concept (Piaget’s sub-stage 3). For example, an infant at this age will tend to look for an object that has been dropped, behaviour that suggests some form of object permanence. We have reason to believe that a 6-month-old perceives a mental representation (image) of an object, such as a favourite toy, in response to sensory impressions of part of the object. This perception is shown by the infant’s reaching for an object that is partly hidden. By 8 to 12 months of age (Piaget’s Object Permanence sub-stage 4), To the infant who is in the early part of the sensorimotor stage, out of sight infants will seek to is truly out of mind. After a sheet of paper is placed between the infant and retrieve objects the toy. in the toy. Using similar evidence, Piaget concluded that the infant that have been completely hidden. At this point, infants might start to cry if they go to sleep without their favourite blanket or stuffed toy. But in observing his own children, Piaget (1963 [1936]) noted an interesting error known as the A-not-B error. Piaget repeatedly hid a toy behind a screen (A), and each time, his infant removed the screen and retrieved the toy. Then, as the infant watched, Piaget hid the toy behind another screen (B) in a different place. Still, the infant tried to recover the toy by pushing aside the first screen (A). It was as though the child had learned that a certain motor activity would reinstate the missing toy. The child’s concept of the object did not, at this age, extend to recognition that objects usually remain in the place where they have been most recently mentally represented.

   



Under certain conditions, 9- to 10-month-old infants do not show the A-not-B error (Bremner & Bryant, 2001; Marcovitch & Zelazo, 2006). If infants are allowed to search for the object immediately after seeing it hidden, the error often does not occur. Early deprivation of babies and children is another major factor in object permanence delays, as well as other cognitive developments. Extensive research has been conducted on abandoned and orphaned children in institutional settings since the 1940s. Deprivation of not only nutrition and health has been recorded, but also the lack of stimulation and relationships (van IJzendoorn et al., 2011.) With a combined effect size in 75 studies on more than 3,800 deprived children in institutions in 19 different countries, current research reveals that children reared in institutions show diminished intellectual performance. However, those who had improved caregiver–child ratios demonstrated fewer cognitive delays (van IJzendoorn et al. 2011). Children assigned to foster care experienced important gains in cognitive function, and the younger the child was placed, the better the outcomes (van IJzendoorn et al., 2011).

Deferred Imitation  



Deferred imitation is imitation of an action that may have occurred hours, days, or even weeks earlier. Piaget believed that children demonstrate deferred imitation at the age of 18 months, when they are able to mentally represent behaviour patterns or events. o For example, children will watch their parents cook and then pull out the pots and pans from the drawer and pretend to cook, starting at this age. Children may see a child at daycare throw a tantrum and be rewarded with the attention of the caregivers, and later engage in the same behaviour at home. Piaget explained that children are unable to engage in deferred imitation until 18 to 24 months because to do so requires the ability to make internal representation of that behaviour or event.

Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory       



Piaget’s theory remains a comprehensive model of infant cognition. Many of his observations of his own infants have been confirmed by others. The pattern and sequence of events he described have been observed among infants in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia (Werner, 1988). Still, research has raised questions about the validity of many of Piaget’s claims (Siegler & Alibali, 2005). First, most researchers now agree that cognitive development is not as tied to discrete stages as Piaget suggested (Krojgaard, 2005; Siegler & Alibali, 2005). Although later developments seem to build on earlier ones, the process appears to be more gradual than discontinuous. Second, Piaget emphasized the role of maturation, almost to the point of excluding adult and peer influences on cognitive development. However, these interpersonal influences have been shown to play important roles in cognitive development (Kuhn,2007; Maratsos, 2007). Third, Piaget appears to have underestimated infants’ competence (Siegler & Alibali, 2005). o For example, infants display object permanence earlier than he believed (Wang, Baillargeon, & Paterson, 2005). Moreover, Piaget’s argument that deferred imitation appeared around the age of 18 months has been contradicted by other research (Barr, Rovee-Collier, & Campanella, 2005;

Campanella & Rovee-Collier, 2005) that has indicated infants as young as 6 months of age could imitate an action after a time delay. o For example, a child can observe an adult push a button to produce a beep and after a time delay, they can reproduce the same action. One day later, when the infants were given a chance to play with the same objects, many of them imitated the actions they had witnessed.  The results of various studies indicate that infants as young as 3.5 months are aware that objects exist even when hiding behind a screen, can retain the height of the object as it should appear behind the screen, and were surprised in a situation when objects should have appeared but were blocked (Baillargeon & Devos, 1991; Rosander & Hofsten, 2004).  Thus, infants as young as 3.5 months demonstrate some object permanence although it may be limited to the specific experimental situation. By 1 year of age however, infants have a greater understanding of object permanence in many different situations than they did when they were younger.

Information Processing 

The information-processing approach to cognitive development focuses on how children manipulate or process information that is coming in from the environment or is already stored in the mind. Infants’ tools for processing information include their memory and imitation.

Infants’ Memory 

   

Many of the cognitive capabilities of infants— recognizing the faces of familiar people, developing object permanence, and, in fact, learning in any form—depend on one critical aspect of cognitive development: their memory (Daman-Wasserman et al., 2006; Hayne & Fagen, 2003). Much of our current understanding of infant perceptions and cognitive abilities comes from the study of the visual habituation–dishabituation model. Habituation takes place when the infant encodes information and begins to predict outcomes. Dishabituation takes place when memory performance becomes apparent. In other words, infants disengage from the source of interest and shift their attention to something new (Kav.ek, 2012). Memory improves dramatically between 2 and 6 months of age and then again by 12 months (Pelphrey et al., 2004; Rose, Feldman, & Jankowski, 2001). The improvement may indicate that older infants are more capable than younger ones at encoding information so that it may be stored, retrieving information already stored, or both (Hayne & Fagen, 2003).

Did You Know? A 1-hour-old infant may imitate an adult who sticks out his or her tongue. True, but that imitation may be reflexive rather than an action of choice. Imitation: Infant See, Infant Do?







Imitation is the basis for much of human learning. To assist infants remembering imitated acts, a practice period enhances success of deferred imitation. But in one study, 12-month-old infants were prevented from practising the behaviour they imitated. However, they were able to demonstrate it 4 weeks later, suggesting that they had mentally represented the act (Klein & Meltzoff, 1999). But infants can imitate certain actions at a much earlier age. Neonates only 0.7 to 71 hours old have been found to imitate adults who open their mouths or stick out their tongues (Meltzoff & Prinz, 2002; Rizzolatti et al., 2002; see Figure 5.2).

Individual Differences in Intelligence among Infants 

 



Cognitive development does not proceed in the same way or at the same pace for all infants (Newman et al., 2006; Rose, Feldman, & Jankowski, 2001, 2005). Efforts to understand the development of infant differences in cognitive development have relied on so-called scales of infant development or infant intelligence. Measuring cognition, or intelligence, in infants is quite different from measuring it in adults Infants cannot, of course, be assessed by asking them to explain the meanings of words, the similarity between concepts, or the rationales for social rules. Very different kinds of items are used in the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID), first constructed in 1933 by psychologist Nancy Bayley, and now in its third edition (BSID III). This is one of the most commonly used tests of cognitive functioning in high risk and premature infants (Hack et al., 2005). The Bayley Scale for Infant and Toddler Development of 178 mental-scale items and 111 motor-scale items. o The mental scale assesses verbal communication, perceptual skills, learning and memory, and problem-solving skills. o The motor scale assesses gross motor skills, such as standing, walking, and climbing, and fine motor skills, as shown by the ability to manipulate the hands and fingers. o Also used is a behaviour rating scale that is based on an examiner’s observation of the child during the test. o The behaviour rating scale assesses attention span, goal directedness, persistence, and aspects of social and emotional development. This test is often used with preterm

infants to determine their neurological functioning and for screening of a developmental delay. o It remains unclear how well results obtained on the Bayley-III completed in infancy predict intellectual functioning at later ages. For example, only 18% of infants who had low scores on the Bayley-II Mental Development Index (MDI) had low scores at 5 years of age (Colombo & Carlson, 2012; Hack et al., 2005).

Testing Infants: Why and with What?  

As you can imagine, testing an infant is no easy matter. The test items must be administered on a one-to-one basis by a psychometrist, someone specially trained to administer test questions; and it can be difficult to judge whether the infant is showing the targeted response. A psychometrist may be able to detect early signs of sensory or...