Psychology: Learning, Behavior, and Adult Perception

Human Development III & Learning and Behavior

• APSS 386 Psychology in health care, Lecture 5

Agenda

• Cognitive Development
• Learning and behavior including:
  • What is Learning?
  • Classical Conditioning
  • Operant Conditioning
  • Observational learning

Perceptual Development in Adulthood

• Charles Bonnet Syndrome involves visual hallucinations when there is no mental Illness.
• These hallucinations typically occur in people with visual impairments.
• The brain fills in images that are unseen.
• Taste, Smell, Touch, and Overall Senses:
• Taste includes bitter, sour, salty, and sweet.
• General declines in sensitivity occur, especially to bitter tastes.
• Relates to loss of teeth and chewing abilities.
• Smell sees little change In healthy adults, but is linked with cognitive declines
• Touch shows older people have high touch threshold or less sensitivity
• Stronger pressure is needed to detect the touch.
• Sensitivity to temperature may decline.
• Thinning of skin and wrinkling results in less effective touch sensors.
• Experiencing a decline in the five senses is a normal aging process that has significant implications for older adults' lifestyles, making It more challenging to communicate. Prevention Is always important.

Cognitive Development

• Cognition is the activity of knowing, and the process through which knowledge Is acquired and problems are solved.
• Examples of cognition: perception, memory, learning, problem-solving
• Cognition changes in important ways throughout the lifespan.

Piaget's Constructivist Approach

• Piaget believed that children of the same age often made similar kinds of mental mistakes.
• He studied how children think, not just what they know by observing his own infant children and using a flexible question-and-answer technique to discover how children think about problems.
• Intelligence Is a basic life function that helps an organism adapt to Its environment.
• Piaget viewed infants as active agents who learn about people and things by observing, investigating, and experimenting.
• Through exploration the brain responds by creating schemes (repetitive behavior), or schema (thought behind an action).
• Cognitive structures – organized patterns of action or thought that people construct to interpret their experiences. As children develop more complicated schemas and schema, they can adapt to environments. Example:
  • Person Schemas are Information about individuals, Including their appearance, traits, behaviors, and roles.
• Event Schemas (Scripts) are Information about the sequence of events in particular situations (Examples dining at a restaurant or attending kindergarten).
• Object Schemas are Information about objects and their properties including what a chair looks like, and how It Is used.

How does Cognition Develop

• Knowledge Is created by building schemes and schema from experiences using two inborn functions.
• Organization helps existing schemes and schema join systematically into new and complex units and create a more efficient and logical knowledge structure.
• Adaptation is the process of adjusting to environmental demands through assimilation and accommodation.
  • Assimilation applies existing schemes or schema
  • Accommodation updates or creates new schemes or schema
• The goal is to achieve a balance between cognitive structures and environmental experiences, leading to a more accurate understanding.
• Assimilation is an adaptive process through which new experiences are interpreted In terms of existing schema or cognitive structures.
  • For example, an existing schema for cats is used to fit our experience with a new animal Into our existing scheme for cat。
• Accommodation is an adaptive process of when existing schema is modified In order to better fit new experiences.
• For example, although there is a schema for cats, but the animal may have different shapes, so the schema would change.

Piaget's Four Stages of Congnitive Development

• Humans progress through these stages:
• 1. Sensorimotor stage: birth to roughly 2 years
• 2. The preoperational stage: roughly 2-7 years
• 3. The concrete operations stage: roughly 7-11 years
• 4. The formal operations stage: roughly 11 years and beyond
• Sensorimotor Stage is when the world Is understood through the senses and actions.
• The dominant cognitive structures are the behavioral schemes that develop through coordination of sensory information and motor responses.
• Object permanence develops d during the sensorimotor period as the understanding that objects continue to exist when they are not visible.
  • Object permanence develops between 4-8 months through "out of sight, out of mind."
• The "A-not-B error" occurs by 8-12 months, where Infants will search for an object in the place they last found It (A), rather than in a new place (B).
  • By 1 year, A-not-B error Is overcome but trouble remains with invisible displacement.
• By 18 months, object permanence is mastered when infant can mentally represent an invisible action (a toy being hidden) and Imagine the object In Its final location. At 2 1/2 months, Infants do not recognize the difference between objects moving along a track under different window conditions.
• But by 3 months, Infants understand that objects should be visible under the correct window conditions.
• Symbolic capacity is most developed by sensorimotor stage Infants to let them solve problems by 24 months
• This involves the ability to use Images, words, and gestures to represent objects and experiences.
• Can use internal behavioral schemes to construct mental symbols that can guide future behavior.

The Child – The Preoperational Stage

• Symbolic capacity is the greatest cognitive strength of the preschoolers (2-7 years)
• Start to understand past and future.
• They use pretend or fantasy play which can Include imaginary companions.
• Focus on perceptual salience (the most obvious features of an object or situation).
• Have difficulty with tasks that require logic.
• Reliance on perceptions and lack of logical thought means children have difficulty with conservation.
  • The idea that certain properties of an object or substance do not change when Its appearance Is altered In a superficial way
• They cannot perform the conservation-of-liquid-quantity task because they do not understand the volume of liquid Is conserved despite the change in the shape It takes In different containers.
• Unable to engage in decentration - the abillty to focus on two or more dimensions of a problem at once.
  • Preoperational thinkers engage in centration - the tendency to center attention on a single aspect of a problem.
• Preschoolers lack reversibility - the process of mentally undoing or reversing an action.
• Additional limitations of preoperational thinkers come in the form of egocentrism because of a tendency to view the world solely from one's own perspective, and difficulty recognizing other view points.
• Have difficulty with classification if there Isn't an abillity to relate the whole class (furry animals) to Its subclasses (dogs, cats).
• Piaget may have underestimated preschool age child with simple and real=world tasks to Identify cognitive abillities. 3-year-olds grasp the concept that a number remains the same even when Items are rearranged spatially.
  • Preschoolers may not be as egocentric.
  • Preschool children seem to have more understanding of classification systems.
• Comparison of a preoperational thinkers engage in centration, Irreversible thought, and static thought, while concrete-operational thinkers on on the conservation task focus on decentration and reversibility.

Concrere-Operations Stage –

• The stage where the child understands mastering the logical operations missing In the preoperational stage.
• Conservation will be exhibited, using decentering, reversblility, and transfrormational thought.
• Seriation enables the child to arrange Items mentally along a quantifiable dimension such as weight or height.
• Transitivity helps understand relationships among elements In a series
• School-age children are less egocentric and are better at recognizing the perspectives of others.
• Classification abilities improve and subclasses are understood to be Included In a whole class.

The Adolescent – Formal Operations Stage

• Formal operations are mental actions on ideas being More abstract than concrete operations.
• Systematic and scientific thinking is permitted by having hypotheticals and abstract concepts.
• The pendulum task demonstrates the use of hypothetical-deductive reasoning
• It Involves reasoning from general Ideas or rules to their specific Implications
• Piaget's pendulum helps form hypotheses and systematically testing through methods.
• Propositional thought occurs through evaluation of the logic of propositions without referring to the real-world circumstances.
  • Condition 1: hidden chip
  • Statement would be that either the chip In hand Is green or it Is not green。
  • Condition 2: visible red or green chip
• Younger children rely on the physical properties, while adolescents can understand logics.

According to Piaget

• The transition happens gradually over years so adolescents may show scientific awareness, but may not be able to scientifically reason.
• He believed with age, adolescents can decontextualize or separate prior knowledge. His perspective may be over zealous, since achievement relies on opportunity to learn reasoning skills and exposure to education

The Adolescent – Formal Operations Stage

• It can contribute to positive aspects such as identity, thoughts, and appreciation of humor.
• Contribution to "not-so-positive" aspects of adolescent development:
• Questioning can lead to confusion and to adolescent Idealism.
• Adolescent can become egocentric, can’t differentiate

The Adult – Limitations in Cognitive Performance

• Research has revealed general limitations among adults
• College students who have had Piaget's scientific reasoning have shown little improvement.
• American adults do not solve scientific problems at the formal level.
• Communities may not have adults solving formal operations.
• Adults mostly use concrete operations on unfamiliar problems, and are likely to formally operate in a field. In addition, aging and congitive skills could be affected through cross-sectional cohort or task Irrelevance issues

The Adult – Growth Beyond Formal Operations

• Theorists have proposed two forms of postformal thought by thinking in complex ways than formal operations including:
• Relativistic thinking: an understanding that knowledge depends on context and subjective perspective.
• For example: abortion
• Dialectical thinking: detecting paradoxes and inconsistencies among Ideas and trying to reconcile them by challenging what constitutes “truth.”

Vygotsky's Sociocultural Perspective

• Culture and society are pivotal to his theory
• The Knowledge depends on social experiences.
• Cognitive development varies socially when available.
• Children can adapt by interacting with their parents Vygotsky also touched on social interaction about children's growth.
• Zone of proximal development is what the learner could complete with a skilled partner

Additional Facts by Vgotsky

• Active participation In activities with the aid and support of parents helps guide children.
• Parents gradually reduce help as scaffolding, allowing them to become competent.
• Thought changes once thinking begins in words. This causes self guiding private speech, allowing for incorporation in solving problems.
• Vygotskey's socicultural has been debated, since Indivuduals also construct knowledge

Vygotsky vs. Piaget

• Vygotsky: animal and human development are different - Piaget: fundamental
• Vygotsky: Development differs in contexts - Piaget: Mostly Universal
• Vygotzky: Analysis varies, including scoial, cultural, and historical - Individual
• Piaget: Growth results from child independent exploration, but is social - Vygotsky results with social interactions
• Vygotsky co construct knowledge with others. Piaget construct independent exploration of a world Piaget: Peers are esepcially triggers cause child to resolve not easily over whelmed
• Vygotsky Adults teach through culutre of thinking. Piahet peers are better, triggered so its not over whelmed
• Vygotsky: Mediation helps development - Piaget: largely ineffective

Implications for Health Promotion

• Piaget's cognitive theory can inform how children understand Illness and appropriate practices by thinking about something concrete. Children are likely to find solutions. Germs can prevent it. So its okay!
• Formal thinking is complex, allowing medicine to assist

Learning and behavior

• Learning involves change, knowledge or direct/indirect observational experience.
• Its either conscious or unconscious.
• Examples: Associative learning
• Getting paid increases your response to do a job Three Types of Associative Learning:
• Classical Conditioning
• Operant Conditioning
• Observational learning

Classical Conditioning

• Discovered through Ivan Pavlov's digestive research on animals , where it involves associating to anticipate events
• Making associations between behaviors and originally irrelevant behavior Before the conditioning:
• Unconditioned response (UCR), which doesn't rely on leaning; only the inborn reflexes like salvation
• And Unconditioned response (UCS) which causes the UR through salvation!

During Conditioning

• Nutral stimulus, like a bell ringing may naturally elicit at response like a dog drooling, eventually allowing one to start drooling with out the bell ringing,
• Ater Conditioniong
  • Neurtal Stimulus becomes a conditioned response General Progress Includes:
• Acquition
• Extertion
• Spotaneous General concepts of conditioning

Timing Between UCS and CS

• Can happen through delay condioning
  • This Is when the UC is only triggered when you hear the bell
• Trace conditioning
  • It Is when you hear the bell, but there's the food Is not present
• Simultaneous conditioning
• You hear a bell and then, and only then do you see the food and respond to it.
• Backward cooing
  • You see the food and then hear the sound of the tone (bell).

Concepts to Know

• Timing Is crucial for acquisition
• Survival-related conditioned can cause aversion
• Stimulus discrimination is responding to one thing and another.
  • For example discrimination may be the reason a dog acts up to one sound and a similar one
• Stimulus generalization means reacting to things similar
• If theres fears over ones spider, thats bad for all.
• Positive application might be when the emotion promotes a stimulus. Fear is a preventitive measure

Operant Conditioning

• It was proposed by BF skinner and Is based on pleasant law of effect. When it comes along with pleasant consequences, Its more likely to occur.
• Pleasant consequences would be work related, as when you go to work and get paid.
• Behaviors can Increase with with reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is the adding of something positive to increase a behavioral.
  • Negative reinforcement is removing a negative to increase the behavior
• The reverse is punishment, where you add something negative to reduce undesirable behavior.
  • Negative punishemnt Is when something is taking away to reduce undesirable behaviors

Four Types of Contingencies

• Inlcude adding positive re enforcement and taking away the negative, or even just scolding and time out Operant:
• Token economies
• Reward appropriate behaviors; ignore or punish Inappropriate.
• They involve getting the right appropriate choices one does. You can even use Applied Analysis Shaping
  • Reward the success
• Then begin force it, the one of the best,
• Primary Reinforcers Is Food, and what we naturally need
• Secondary Is where there Isn't a Value That Is what is obtained only to get secondary needs
• Continuous reinforcement relies on to get every reward done. That said, partial relafomrecnts get
  • It Is Ratio Versus

Variable and Fixed Reinforcement

• Fixed interval. reinforcement
• Variable
  • Fixed- reinforcement is delivered after
• • Number
• Variable is the gambling that the number of

Variable Is it possible to learn Yes? No?

Observational Learning

• Modeling, or thinking through your own behavior for success, which Is why you think when you see its actions over the model that what you learn you do. Observational

• Attention on a The

• Reproduction - want

Vicarious reinforcement

• More to the model's behavior
• Vicarious is more for Less
• Which would be where the

The Doll Experiment of 1963

• To study agressive behaviors with kids 33 total nursery devided
• Each child see a model and punished. What can you say with gaming and violence