exam 1 (50 points) essay 1: 15 points (5, 5, 5) essay 2: 15 points *short answer 1: 6 points (2, 2,...
TRANSCRIPT
Exam 1 (50 points)
Essay 1: 15 points (5, 5, 5)
Essay 2: 15 points
*Short Answer 1: 6 points (2, 2, 2)
*Short Answer 2: 4 points (2, 2)
Short Answer 3: 4 points
Short Answer 4: 6 points (2, 2, 2)
• Schemes: Knowledge structures
– Simplest schemes are organized patterns of behavior, including reflexes
• Ex: sucking scheme; looking scheme; grasping scheme
– Become more complex with age and become mental/internal
– Children play an active role in the development of schemes through their interactions with the environment (constructivist)
Mechanisms of Cognitive Development
• Organization: Inherited predisposition to combine physical or psychological schemes into more complex systems
– Ex: infants combine looking and grasping into a reaching scheme
• Adaptation involves assimilation and accommodation
• Assimilation: Interpret new experiences in terms of existing schemes – Ex: Newborns and young infants try to suck
many things, regardless of their “suckability”– Ex: Child sees a camel at the zoo and yells
“horse!”
• Accommodation: Modify schemes to fit new experiences
– Ex: Infants learn to modify their sucking depending on the object
– Ex: Child sees a camel at the zoo and yells “Lumpy horse!”
Piaget’s stages involve
• Discontinuous (qualitative) change
• Invariant sequence
– Stages are never skipped
Sensorimotor Stage (birth-2 years)
• Newborns have reflexes and basic perceptual abilities
– Refine these innate responses (accommodation) during the first month of life
• Gradually become capable of repeating satisfying behaviors that initially occurred by chance
• First learn to repeat actions involving their own body (primary circular reactions)
– Ex: thumb sucking
• Then learn to repeat actions involving objects (secondary circular reactions)
– Ex: shaking rattle
• Object Permanence: Understanding that objects continue to exist when they cannot be perceived directly
– Infants have some understanding of object permanence at around 8 months (according to Piaget)
• Will search for a fully occluded (covered) object if they observe it being hidden
– A-not-B error: Tendency to reach where objects have been found before, rather than where they were last hidden
– Infants make this error until about 12 months of age
– According to Piaget, the A-not-B error occurs because infants do not have a full understanding of the permanent existence of the object independent of its spatial location and their actions on the object
• Between 18-24 months, final stage of object permanence emerges
– Invisible displacement problems: One object serves as a symbol for a second object that is hidden from view
General Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory:
• Underestimates the role of specific experiences in affecting cognitive development
– Ex: Certain experiences (like formal schooling) may promote conservation and other abilities
• Doesn’t explain HOW cognitive development occurs
– Concepts (i.e., schemes, organization, adaptation) are vague
– Better description than explanation of children’s cognitive development
• Portrays children’s thinking as being more consistent than it really is
– Cognitive development occurs more gradually and shows more variation within children than Piaget’s theory allows
• Ex: Children can typically solve some conservation problems sooner than others
• Underestimates the cognitive competence of infants and young children
– Ex: Object permanence??
Core Knowledge Theories
– Some types of knowledge are innate
• Ex: Knowledge about object properties such as solidity and continuity
– two objects cannot occupy the same space; objects follow continuous paths through space
– Infants/young children develop “naïve” theories in certain domains (areas) based on this innate knowledge
• Ex: theory of physics (knowledge of physical properties of objects)
– Domains in which infants have “core knowledge” are adaptive for survival from an evolutionary perspective
• Exs: knowledge of people, knowledge of living things, knowledge of objects
• Violation of Expectation Method
– Based on assumption of infants’ preference for novel stimuli
– Habituate infants to a “possible” physical event
• Habituation: Decrease in response due to repeated presentation of a stimulus
– Present a “possible” and “impossible” event• Measure infants’ looking time to each event
• Pits novelty of a stimulus against impossibility of an event
Baillargeon, Spelke, & Wasserman (1985)
• Infants were habituated to a screen rotating up and then down 180 degrees
• Test trials: Object was placed behind the screen to block its path
– Screen rotated 112 degrees (possible event) or 180 degrees (impossible event)
– Infants looked longer at impossible event, even though possible event was (arguably) more novel
• Based on findings using the violation-of-expectation method with very young infants, core knowledge theorists claim that some types of object knowledge are innate or emerge very early without direct experience with objects
Issues
• If infants are not fully habituated initially, may show a preference for the familiar stimulus during test trials—the more familiar stimulus is also the “impossible event”
• Some evidence indicates the presence of familiarity effects
• Other factors may also be confounded with the possible and impossible events
– Ex: Degree of movement
• Should infants’ looking behavior be attributed to higher-order cognitive processes or does it reflect more “basic” perceptual processes (e.g., preference for novelty or familiarity)?
– “Perception and knowing are not the same thing. . . A person can regard an event as odd without knowing why” (Haith, 1998)
• Why does young infants’ behavior differ from older children’s behavior?
– Ex: If young infants have object permanence, then why don’t older infants search for hidden objects, make the A-not-B error, etc.?
Conclusions (Cohen & Cashon, 2006)
• Evidence is mixed and has been used both to justify core knowledge theories and more traditional Piagetian explanations of object knowledge
• Researchers should focus on understanding the process of acquiring object permanence, rather than treating it as an all-or-none phenomenon
Information Processing Theories: Common Features
– Cognitive development is viewed as gradual (continuous, quantitative) rather than abrupt (discontinuous, qualitative)
– Children are viewed as active problem solvers
• Problem solving: Process of attaining a goal by using a strategy to overcome an obstacle
– Focus is on specifying mechanisms of cognitive change
• Task Analysis: Identification of goals, relevant information in the environment, and potential processing strategies for a problem
– Comparisons between information processing of humans and that of computers:
• Computer’s ability to process information is limited by its
– Hardware (e.g., memory capacity, speed/efficiency of operations)
– Software (e.g., strategies, information available)
• Individuals’ thinking is limited by – Memory capacity– Speed/efficiency of thought processes– Availability of relevant strategies and knowledge
Development of Memory
Components of the Memory System:
• Sensory memory: Fleeting retention of raw sensory input; information is moved to short-term memory or is lost
– Can hold a moderate amount of information for a fraction of a second– Capacity is relatively constant over much of development
• Short-term (working) memory: “Workspace” in which information from sensory memory and long-term memory is brought together and actively processed
– Can hold and operate on between 1 and 10 items (words, numbers, etc.) for periods of a few seconds to a minute
– Capacity and speed of operation increases greatly over the course of childhood and adolescence
• Long-term memory: Information retained on an enduring basis
– Can hold an unlimited amount of information for unlimited periods of time
– Includes knowledge and skills
– Long-term memory increase greatly with development
Explanations of Memory Development
• Basic Processes
– Simple, most frequently used mental activities
• Exs: associating events with each other; recognizing objects as familiar; recalling facts and procedures; generalizing from one instance to another; encoding
– Encoding: Process of representing in memory information that draws attention or is considered important
• Speed of processing increases most rapidly during childhood but continues to increase through adolescence
– Biological factors• Increased myelination promotes faster neuronal
transmission
• Increased connections among brain regions promotes increased processing capacity and speed
– Familiarity/Learning
• Strategy Use
– Strategy: A general plan or set of plans intended to achieve a goal
Specific Memory Strategies
• Rehearsal: Repetition of information
– Spontaneous use of this strategy emerges around age 5
• Repeat an item as it is presented
– Younger children do not typically use cumulative rehearsal
(repeating all items in a list each time a new item is added)
– Cumulative rehearsal is associated with the primacy effect» Improved recall for items at the beginning of a sequence or list
– When younger children are instructed to use cumulative rehearsal, memory performance improves
• Organization: Grouping items on the basis of similarity
– By approximately 10-11 years, children tend to recall related items together
– When younger children are instructed to use organization, memory performance improves
• Elaboration: Creating a meaningful relationship between two items (verbally or visually)
– Typically tested using paired-associates procedure
• Two words are paired (e.g., bear-blanket)– Test: One word is presented and participant must recall
other word
– Children rarely use elaboration spontaneously
– If instructed to use visual or verbal elaboration, memory performance improves
• Content Knowledge
– Greater knowledge increases children’s ability to remember new information because they can relate it to information they already know
• When children know more about a topic than adults, their memory for new information about the topic is often better than that of adults
– Ex: Chi (1978)
» Tested memory for novel chessboard arrangements in child chess experts and novice adults