KHA111 Cognitive Development II PDF

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Cognitive Development II Perceptual and cognitive development in infancy and childhood

1. Classic theories of cognitive development Jean Piaget: 1896-1980 • Swiss psychologist, philosopher • Father of developmental psychology • Huge influence on ideas about the development of knowledge throughout childhood and beyond

Piaget’s Stage Theory A stage theory: rate varies, order doesn’t Stages are marked by qualitative changes

Stages: • Sensorimotor • Pre-operational • Concrete operational • Formal operational

Key terms: • Schemes • Adaptation • Assimilation • Accommodation • Equilibration

Adaptation Newborn infant: a helpless organism? • No; has a remarkable capacity for: • acquiring and processing large amounts of information • subsequently modifying behaviour

Schema Essential to Piaget’s theory is the concept of the schema: An organised and repeatedly exercised pattern of thought or behaviour, e.g., – “birds” – “clouds” – “attending a lecture” – “going on a date” Schemes are mental concepts. According to Piaget, children develop schemas to help organize their perceptions. The interpretation of early experiences is organized into schemas that give children a framework, or way of interpreting the world around them.

Piaget’s two processes of adaptation 1.

Assimilation • interpreting actions or events in terms of existing schemas • e.g., Praying mantis assimilated to birds (“fly”)

Assimilation is a process in which a person interprets new experiences in terms of existing schemas.

2. Accommodation • modifying a schema to fit with reality • Child modifies “Fly=bird” schema to exclude insects Accommodation is a process in which a person adjusts and refines his or her schemas based on new information.

Equilibration: • Process by which schemas are modified to achieve a better and better fit with reality

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development 1. Sensorimotor Stage (birth to ~ 2 years) 2. Preoperational Stage (~ 2 to 7 years) a. Pre-conceptual stage: 2-4 yrs b. Intuitive Stage: 4-7 yrs 3. Concrete Operational Stage 4. Formal Operational Stage

Sensorimotor Stage • Development of “tableau” prior to object concept • Principally a stage of psychomotor exploration – Coordinating sensory input with action – Mouthing, grasping, watching and manipulating objects • Development of object permanence In the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities (i.e. looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping).

Pre-operational Stage • Emergence of symbolic thought – words representing events, actions and objects, allowing communication with others • Decline in egocentricity, emerging capacity to take the perspective of another – eg., Three mountains task • Theory of mind develops – other people have thoughts and intentions different from one’s own In the preoperational stage (2-7 years), children learn to use language but do not yet possess the abilities to understand mental operations of concrete logic.

Conservation • Ability to see that number, mass, volume, etc., remain the same despite changes in one dimension – e.g., length, area, height • Requires ability to “decentre” and focus on more than one dimension • Conservation not yet intact in children in preoperational stage

Egocentrism: A child understands the world to have only their view. Has great difficulty in understanding the views of others. During Piaget’s preoperational stage, the child is unable to see the world through anyone else’s eyes but his or her own. The limitation is called egocentrism, not intentional selfishness, but difficulty taking another’s point of view.

Concrete Operational Stage • Children show conservation • Have ability to compensate one dimension against another – e.g. volume: height against width • Key to conservation: ability to decentre: – make a judgement based on ≥ 2 dimensions In the concrete operations stage (7-12 years), children gain the mental operations that allow them to think logically about concrete events.

Formal Operational Stage: Adolescence: potential for development of a more advanced, complex, abstract form of logic, e.g. 1. Combinational logic: • Understanding that there are various possible solutions to a problem or motives to a behaviour 2. Separating the real and the possible: • Ability to accept a proposition; separate self from the real world • form and test hypotheses in action • reflect on a hypothesis re non-existent elements Piaget suggested that children become able to deal effectively with abstract concepts during the formal operations stage.

In the formal operations stage (from 12 years to adulthood), people begin to think logically about abstract concepts. Teenagers may get involved in hypothetical thinking—imagining possibilities or impossibilities.

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development • Emphasises the social context of learning: • interactions with sig others - siblings, teachers, parents • As well as cultural values: self -> immediate peers -> adults -> disparate gps of others • Proposed a zone of proximal development (ZPD): • ranges from the child’s own capacity for problem-solving to more advanced and collaborative development • Imitative learning has an important role: • facilitates internalisation of socially-shared meanings through play Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development: is the difference between what a child can do alone versus what a child can do with the help of a teacher. Leading the case for social influence on cognitive development was Vygotsky, who believed that development occurs on a social level before it occurs at the individual level. Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist who felt the primary factor in development was the social environment. He proposed a concept called scaffolding in which a more highly skilled person gives the learner help and then stops as the learner develops on his own

Challenges to Piaget’s Theory • Is learning really stage-like? - Continuity vs. horizontal decalage • Role of task demands - • Require children to reflect and report on own reasoning processes • Cultural bias - Under- or overestimation in different cultures? • Underestimation of infants’ problem-solving capacities

By the end of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage, infants have fully developed a sense of object permanence. The sensorimotor stage lasts from birth to two years. During this stage, infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities

Accommodation: Piaget’s theory described two processes by which we adjust our schemas—concepts or frameworks around which we organize and interpret information. Using assimilation, we interpret new

experiences in terms of existing schemas. Accommodation to adjust and refine our schema in order to incorporate the new information

Legacy of Piaget’s Theory • Children differ qualitatively, not just quantitatively, from adults in their thinking • Children’s learning is active, not passive • Children show general cognitive development across multiple domains

2. More recent testing techniques Testing early abilities · ·

How can we tell what young infants can see, prefer or discriminate? Testing measures must rely on natural infant responses and behaviours, including: • preference for novelty; • looking; • head-turning; • sucking; • changes in heart-rate

Preferential Looking Can the infant discriminate between two similar visual stimuli? • Looking time measured to both stimuli • Longer looking to one = preference = discrimination • Method used extensively in early research • Provided much info about infants’ early visual abilities and preferences, e.g., – Prefer some detail > none at all; – Prefer to look at faces > patterns • Disadvantage: What happens if infant looks at both stimuli about equally?

Habituation Infant is “habituated” to a stimulus until looking time drops to a pre-set criterion “Test” stimulus then presented Increased looking time = increased interest = discrimination • Advantages: 1- Human preference for novelty means infants always prefer new stimulus. 2- Can allow for individual differences in time needed to habituate • Habituation studies can tell us about: • Early shape discrimination • Locus of discrimination • Colour perception • Understanding of the world

3. What testing techniques can tell us about early infant abilities? Intermodal understanding & memory • Ability to match or associate different sensations: speech sounds and lip movements • Infancy and memory – infantile amnesia? • Evidence of: – recognition memory – implicit memory – explicit memory – working memory

Visual preference for faces? • Haith (1980): infants genetically programmed to look at visually stimulating objects • Faces hold infants’ visual attention: Why? • Faces: – are three-dimensional – are moving – have areas of high and low contrast – provide visual and aural stimulation – regulate their behaviour re baby’s activities.

Early preference for faces • Caron et al., 1973; Haaf et al., 1983: • Infants are intrigued with faces as they have an interesting pattern within an outlined circle. • Newborn infants show no preference for normal vs. scrambled faces

Dannemiller & Stephens (1988): • Presented computer generated figures to 12 week old infants • Equal black/white/complexity • Infants preferred to look at Stimulus A 70% of the time.

Developmental shifts in parts of the face infants find most interesting 1-month-old infants look at • hairline 57% of the time • eyes 30% of the time 2-month-old infants look at • eyes 49% of the time • hairline 30% of the time

Psychologist Harry Harlow found that contact comfort is an important factor in love and attachment.

In Erikson’s autonomy versus shame and doubt stage, toddlers realize that they can direct their own behavior. This stage occurs between one and two years. Erikson believed that social interactions were important in development. He proposed an eight-stage theory of development that occurred over the entire life span. Each stage involved an emotional crisis in the individual’s social interactions.

Securely attached infants, when their mothers are nearby, are wary but calm around strangers

Sense of object permanence: Young infants lack object permanence—awareness that objects continue to exist when they are no longer perceived. Infants under 5 months may fail simple object permanence tests due to difficulty planning the correct movement of the hidden object. By 8 months, infants exhibit memory for things that are not perceived....