Infant Numerical Knowledge and Object Permanence

Numerical Knowledge

• Starkey researched whether 6-9 month olds could differentiate between 2 and 3 objects

• The Habituation Method involves showing a stimulus until the infant habituates

• Following habituation, the infant is tested with both familiar and novel stimuli

• If the infant gazes longer at the novel stimuli, it indicates discrimination

• Infants looked longer at the different number in studies on numerical discrimination

• Infants habituated to 2 looked longer at 3, and infants habituated to 3 looked longer at 2, proving successful discrimination

• Infants can discriminate between 3 vs. 4 objects, but not 4 vs. 6

• Babies can discriminate numbers of sounds, visual objects, and events like jumps

• Baillargeon, Miller, and Constantino studied whether infants keep track of objects over time

• Infants looked longer at impossible or unexpected events compared to possible events

Object Permanence

• Jean Piaget initially introduced the concept of object permanence

• Infants 7 months and younger typically fail object permanence tasks, showing they don't understand objects continue to exist when out of sight

• Violation of expectation (V.O.E.) occurs when an event contradicts prior expectations, causing surprise or confusion

• Baillargeon's car study revealed that both 8-month-olds and 6.5-month-olds looked longer at the impossible event than at the possible event

• Object permanence appears to be present at 6 1/2 months

• V.O.E. showed both 5.5 and 4.5 month olds looked longer at the impossible event when observing a rotating screen study

• Aguiar & Baillargeon's minnie mouse study also explored if children younger than 4.5 months have object permanence

• 3.5 month olds know the mouse exists when hidden and detect violations in impossible events and can generate explanations

• 3 month olds know the mouse exists when hidden and detect violations in impossible event, but cannot generate explanations unless shown two mice

• Earliest evidence of object permanence presents at 2 1/2 months old and may be innate

• Tasks are hard for children because of processing resources

Jean Piaget

• Piaget described children as "child as scientist" and that they can generate hypotheses, perform experiments, and draw conclusions

• Schemas are cognitive frameworks used to categorize concepts, objects, or experiences

• Assimilation involves modifying new information to fit existing schemas

• Disequilibrium is a state of confusion when schemas do not fit with experiences

• Accommodation is modifying old action patterns to deal with new objects

• Equilibration is reaching a balance between current understanding and knowledge

• Development occurs in stages, though this has been proven wrong

• Universally children of all cultural backgrounds go through the same cognitive development stages

Piaget's Stages of Development

• Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years): Infants understand the world through senses and actions
• Preoperational stage (2-7 years): Mental representation emerges through imitation, anticipation, pretend play, and symbolic art with limitations:
• Cannot focus on a whole and its parts
• Irreversibility
• Animistic
• Cannot think of one object in two ways simultaneously
• Egocentrism
• Concrete operational stage (7-12 years): Children succeed on tasks preoperational kids fail
• Show more flexible logical thinking, and are less egocentric, but struggle with abstract patterns and different realities
• Formal operational stage (12-adulthood): Main achievement is abstract thinking
• Using scientific reasoning to form hypotheses and reason logically

Cognitive Development

• Domain Specificity involves specific mental faculties responding to environmental input related to an individual domain

• The A-not-B error task is not very straightforward

• In the A-not-B error task, the older the infant, success depends on how long they have to wait before being allowed to search

• Pointing vs. Looking: Infants will look at the correct location

• This is a Result of immature inhibitory control abilities

• Centration in number conservation was revisited

• Markman studied 4–5-year-olds

  • Two versions: standard= unit labels; modified=group labels
  • Requires sophisticated linguistic abilities
  • Mehler & Bever (1968) assessed this

• Egocentrism was revisited during the 3 mountains task

• Borke studied 3-4-year-olds and gave varied results based on the task design

• Standard: mountains did give poor results

• Modified: rich display w familiar objects (boats, houses, etc.) gave much better results

• Magical thinking revisited

• Piaget claimed that children give magical causes for physical events

• Rosengren wanted to know if this was true

• Rosengren studied 4-5 year olds and asked them to explain:

• Everyday transformations (balloons and paper)

• Magical transformations (ropes, scarves)

• Results:

  • Both ages explained physical causes for everyday transformations
  • 4-year olds used the explanation of magic for magical transformations, while 5-year-olds used the explanation of tricks and deception for magical transformations

• Magical thinking comes from:

• Children watched magicians doing everyday transformations and magical transformations with their parents - The children analyzed spontaneous comments made by their parents

• Children are mush more competent than Piaget believed

Theories of Cognitive Development

• Core Knowledge Theories
• Domain Specificity: Specific mental faculties that respond to environmental input related to a particular domain
• Principles: Data bundled into particular areas and only for info about evolutionary history and which is adaptive
• Innate cognitive capabilities (general & specialized learning mechanisms)
• Theories organize info with a domain (naive physics, naive psychology, naive biology (aka informal theories))
• Naive Physics
• Object principles guide infants' expectations about how objects should behave in the world
  • Solidity: two solid objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time
• Cohesion: objects must maintain a single bounded contour over time
  • Infants expect objects not to fall apart when moved
  • Spatiotemporal continuity: an object cannot blip out of existence and reappear at another location without traversing the space (and time) in between
• Even young infants “know” quite a lot about objects, according to Spelke

Socio-Cultural Theories

• Lev Vygotsky: learning is a social process that happens through interaction with others

• Children are teachers and learners

• Principles:

  • Development occurs via social interaction and emphasizes use of cultural tools like an abacus or note-taking

1. Guided participation & Social Scaffolding

• When knowledgeable individuals guide learning

2. Intersubjectivity

• Shared communication
• Joint attention: two people focusing on the same thing by ~9 months
• Social referencing: children look to social partners for guidance from unfamiliar events
• A zone of proximal development is a range between what children can do on their own and what they can learn with help

Info Processing Theories

• Sensory Memory: Holds incoming sensory information in its original form and requires attention

• Working memory holds and processes manipulated information with limited capacity

• Requires a Memory strategy: rehearsal, chunking, or grouping

• Central Executive: a control processor that directs the flow of information and regulates cognitive activities

• Long-Term Memory: An unlimited store that holds information indefinitely

• Child as a problem-solver

• Children begin to form simple plans by their first birthday

• As children grow older, they make a greater variety of plans, which help them solve a broader range of problems

• Problem solving requires planning and analogical reasoning

• Planning

• Requires lack of inhibition

• Young kids are overoptimistic

• Analogical reasoning

  • In infants: (when solving the pull-cloth-to-get-toy problem)
  • At 10 months- requires "surface similarity"
  • By 13 months- can generalize knowledge even to superficially different problems

• Problems in children: (when comparing two objects)

  • 6 years: cite superficial similarities
  • 9 years: cite deeper relationships

• Speed of processing improves with age and with basic processes (hardware)

• Controversy over why it improves:

• Experience and learning alone

• Biological maturation contributes (e.g., myelination, synaptogenesis, synapse pruning)

Acquiring and managing information (software)

• Techniques improve reading (e.g., rehearsal) and involve acquiring content Knowledge to learn from experience and facts about the world
• Eye-witness testimony: young children more likely to agree with leading questions and change answers when questions are repeated
• Socio-cultural theories (Vygotsky): children are teachers and learners and development occurs via social interaction and can show guided participation with intersubjectivity

Chapter 8: Intelligence

• Intelligence is the ability to acquire & apply knowledge & skills, and is affected by knowledge and information

• Intelligence as a single trait (Spearman and Jensen) with G= generalized intelligence

• Crystallized Intelligence: Acquired knowledge, such as schema

• Fluid intelligence: the ability to think abstractly and solve problems without prior knowledge

• Binet-Simon Intelligence test: Intelligence is based on “high-level" abilities and could identify kids with trouble learning

• Modern intelligence tests examples: Stanford-Binet, WISC, SAT, GRE, MCAT, LSAT, etc.

• Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children (WISC):

  • Verbal score: measures crystallized intelligence
  • Performance score: measures fluid intelligence

IQ Scores

• Intelligence scores reflect test performance relative to other children of the same age
• .67 correlation between IQ at age 5 and age 15, higher when tests are taken closer together
• Stable, but not identical over time: Rate of Habituation predicts future test scores, and faster habituation= higher IQ test scores,
• Predictors of IQ scores besides school grades:
• Long-term educational achievement (years of education)
• Income as an adult
• Brody (1992) stated "IQ is the most important predictor of an individual's position within American society"
• IQ in childhood is more closely related to later occupational success rather than SES of the child's family, family income, the school that the child attends

Environmental influences on IQ

• Family
• HOME scores (Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment
• Measures the quality of home environment as a Very good predictor of IQ
• School
• Different SES, same gains means Teacher quality is more important than race, class, or school, and that More school=higher IQ
• Society
• Growing up in poverty can have a substantial negative impact on IQ scores
  • Poor diet, poor health care, lack of intellectual stimulation, lack of emotional support, poor schooling

Race, Ethnicity, & Intelligence

• Average IQ scores for African American children are 10-15 points lower than for euro-American children
• Latinos and Native Americans fall between, and Asian American children's scores are highest
• The Bell Curve says genes and the environment affect racial differences
  • Group Averages can lead to Differences between ethnic groups

Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences

• Concepts of intelligence are too limited, and should also assess savants, brain-damaged individuals, diverse cultures, etc.
• Traditional tests are too limited, only measuring linguistic, logical, and spatial intelligence, but can't really test performance
• Gardner believed levels of intelligence should be:
• Linguistic/Verbal ability, logical/mathematical ability (most valued in school and society & most closely related to the traditional IQ test)
• Spatial ability
• Musical ability
• Bodily kinesthetic ability
• Naturalistic
• Intrapersonal
• Interpersonal
• Intelligence is a “biopsychological potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create products that are of value in a culture” (Gardener, 2000, p.28)
• Evidence:
  • Brain damage: normal performance in all domains except one
  • Child prodigies: exceptional ability in one area
• Limitations of Gardner's Theory

Sternberg

• Not clear that certain domains are “forms of intelligence”
• Theory of successful intelligence: Three fundamental aspects of intelligence
• Analytic
• Creative
• Practical reasoning
• Students who excel on the practical and creative tests are more racially and economically diverse Maybe we need to broaden our definition of intelligence The Flynn effect: massive increases in IQ throughout generations, especially in the lower 10%
• Better nutrition, health care, educational systems, rising standards of living, emphasis on intelligence over knowledge