Developmental Psychology Notes PDF

Chapter 4 : Theories of Cognitive development What is a theoretical framework? Defines the problems or questions that the research aims to address Scientific method Allows researcher to make predictions or testable questions that can be used to support or modify the theory After running...

Chapter 4 : Theories of Cognitive development What is a theoretical framework? Defines the problems or questions that the research aims to address Scientific method Allows researcher to make predictions or testable questions that can be used to support or modify the theory After running a research study, results will typically be interpreted within the context of your theoretical framework Theories of Cognitive Development Understanding developmental theories: Provides a framework for understanding important phenomena Raises important questions about human nature Leads to a better understanding of children Observation: 7-month-old doesn't reach for glasses when they're out of view Piaget: infants younger than 8 months don't realize that hidden objects exist Are there other potential explanations? Lack the memory or problem-solving skills to retrieve the hidden object? Lack the motivation? How about their reaching skills? **\*Piaget theory :** Main themes addressed: - - - Proposed by Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist. Cognitive development involves a sequence of **four stages** Sensorimotor Preoperational Concrete operational Formal operational **View of Children\'s Nature** Piaget's fundamental assumptions Children are mentally active from birth. Children's mental and physical activity contribute to their development. Constructivist approach to cognitive development Children construct knowledge for themselves in response to their experiences. Children's constructive processes involve Generating hypotheses Performing experiments Drawing conclusions from their observations Central Developmental Issues Nature and nurture interact to produce cognitive development ** Nature:** maturing brain & body; ability to perceive, to act, and to learn from experience; and their capacity to integrate observations Main sources of continuity ** Assimilation:** incorporation of incoming information into already known concepts - - ** Accommodation:** process of improving current understanding based on new experiences - - - ** Equilibration:** process of balancing assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding Sources of **discontinuity:** distinct, hierarchical stages of development Qualitative change, broad applicability, brief transitions, invariant sequence ** Stages:** - - - - Piaget\'s Legacy ** Contributions :** Piaget's theory remains very influential in understanding cognitive development. **Weaknesses :** The theory is vague about the mechanisms that give rise to children's thinking and produce cognitive growth. Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized. The theory understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development. The stage model depicts children's thinking as more consistent than it is How can Piaget's theory be applied to education? **Child-centered** approach Considering the various stages of cognitive processing to determine when information should be taught Children learn best when interacting with their environment, both mentally and physically Summary One reason Piaget's theory is so long-lasting is that it conveys the flavour of children's thinking at different ages, extends across a broad range of ages and content areas, and provides many fascinating and surprising observations of children's thinking. Both nature and nurture interact -- the nature of the child's developmental stage shapes their experience of their world Piaget's theory is often labelled constructivist because it depicts children as actively constructing knowledge for themselves in response to their experience. The theory posits that children learn through two processes that are present from birth--- assimilation and accommodation---and that the contribution of these processes is balanced through a third process, equilibration. These processes produce continuities across development. Piaget's theory divides cognitive development into four broad stages: the sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2), the preoperational stage (ages 2 to 7), the concrete operational stage (ages 7 to 12), and the formal operational stage (age 12 and beyond). These stages reflect discontinuities in development. **\*Information processing theories** Main themes addressed: Nature & Nurture Mechanisms How change occurs Theories that focus on the **structure of cognitive systems** and the **mental activities** used to deploy attention and memory to solve problems Examine how nature and nurture work together to produce development Emphasize precise descriptions of how change occurs **Continuously,** in small increments Happens at different ages on different tasks Focus on: Development of memory Development of problem solving **View of Children\'s Nature** The child as a **limited-capacity processing system** Cognitive development arises from children's gradually surmounting processing limitations through: Expanding amount of information processed at a time Increasing processing speeds Acquiring new strategies and knowledge Maturation of brain structures supports these abilities The child as a problem solver ** Active problem solving:** the process of attaining a goal by using a strategy to overcome an obstacle How to explain memory? Basic process **Associating** events with one another ** Recognizing** objects as familiar Recalling facts and procedures ** Generalizing** from one instance to another ** Encoding** specific features of objects and events ** Improving processing speed;** myelination and increased connectivity **Sensory memory:** A very short-term memory that holds information from your senses (like sights, sounds, or smells) for a few seconds Example: You hear a loud noise and remember it just long enough to decide to look where it came from. **Long term :** A type of memory that stores information for a long time, sometimes even your entire life. Example: Remembering your first day of school or how to ride a bike. **Selective :** The ability to focus on certain memories while ignoring others. It's not a separate memory system but more about how we choose what to remember. Example: Remembering only the good parts of a vacation and forgetting the stressful ones. **Working:** A "short-term memory" system used to hold and work on information temporarily. Example: Doing math in your head or following multi-step instructions. **The Cortex:** We know that the **prefrontal cortex** plays a particularly important role in the **development of cognitive abilities**, such as planning, inhibiting inappropriate behaviour, and adopting new goals in response to changing situations We also saw that brain **maturation**, particularly of the prefrontal cortex, continues for a particularly long time -- at least into one's 20s Information-processing theories specify the role of brain development in supporting necessary mental processes  **Central Developmental Issues** Executive functions improve throughout the life span ** Strategies :** Rehearsal ** Selective attention:** **Content knowledge** Increased knowledge improves recall and integration of new information. Prior content knowledge improves encoding, provides useful associations, and guides memory in useful directions. ** The development of problem solving** Children are depicted as active problem solvers. Their use of strategies often allows them to overcome limitations of knowledge and processing capacity. ** Overlapping waves theory:** an informationprocessing approach that emphasizes the variability of children's thinking How can we apply information-processing theories to education? Research has found that children's knowledge of numbers when they enter kindergarten predicts their mathematics achievement later. Playing games that use numbers and number manipulations has been found to improve numerical knowledge -- presumably because children get experience building up the basic skills and strategies of using numbers Summary Information-processing theories **focus on the specific mental processes** that underlie children's thinking. Even in infancy, children are seen as actively pursuing goals; encountering physical, social, and processing limits; and devising strategies that allow them to surmount those limits and attain their goals. Child as problem solver The development of memory, problem solving, and learning reflects improvements in basic processes, strategies, and content knowledge. Describes mechanisms for change, including neural maturation and the development of behavioural strategies **\*Core knowledge theories:** Main themes addressed: Nature & Nurture Continuity/discontinuity View children as having **some innate knowledge** in domains of special evolutionary importance ** Domain-specific learning mechanisms** for rapidly and effortlessly acquiring additional information in those domains Understanding and manipulating other people's thinking Differentiating between living and nonliving things Identifying human faces, finding one's way through space Understanding causes and effects; language **View of Children\'s Nature** Core-knowledge theorists : View children as entering the world equipped with specialized learning mechanisms Propose mental structures that allow children to quickly and effortlessly acquire information of evolutionary importance Are domain specific; different mechanisms produce development in each domain Child as a well-adapted product of evolution Children possess the knowledge/processes necessary to learn abilities that have been deemed important by evolution ** Nativism** Infants have substantial innate knowledge of evolutionarily important domains Inanimate objects and their mechanical interactions Minds of people and animals capable of goal-directed actions Numbers Spatial layouts **Constructivism** Infants build increasingly advanced understanding by combining rudimentary innate knowledge with subsequent experiences. Children identify fundamental units for dividing relevant objects and events into a few basic categories. Children explain many phenomena in terms of a few fundamental principles. Children explain events in terms of unobservable causes. Applying core-knowledge theories to education Children learn to apply specifics to all members of a group. Hearing and seeing storybooks lead children to learn and generalize logic and hypothetical species. It is particularly important in understanding evolutionary concepts like natural selection. Summary Core-knowledge theories are based on the view that children begin life with a wide range of specific cognitive competencies. Children are especially adept at acquiring evolutionarily important information, such as language, spatial and numerical information, understanding of other people's thinking, and face recognition. From early ages, children organize information about the most important areas into **domain-specific knowledge structures.** Believe that at least some degree of knowledge is innate -- or present from birth -- though they also build increasingly advanced theories by combining basic innate knowledge with subsequent learning **\*Sociocultural theories:** Main themes addressed: Nature & Nurture Mechanisms How change occurs Sociocultural context **Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model:** **Sociocultural Theories:** Emphasize that other people and the surrounding culture contribute greatly to children's development Guided participation Social scaffolding View of Children\'s Nature Sociocultural theorist **Lev Vygotsky** believed that **children are social learners**, connected to others who help them gain skills and understanding. ** Example: language & thought:** Three phases of internalized speech: **1.** Children's behaviour is controlled by other people's statements. **2.** Children's behaviour is controlled by their own private speech, in which they tell themselves aloud what to do, much as their parents might have done earlier. **3.** Children's behaviour is controlled by internalized private speech (thought), in which they silently tell themselves what to do. **Children seen as both teachers and learners.** Humans have two unique characteristics crucial to complex culture construction. Teaching other species members; attending and learning from such teaching Central Developmental Issues Sociocultural theories propose that **change occurs through social interaction.** Intersubjectivity: Joint attention: Educational Applications One way to improve schooling is to change the culture of schools Instruction aimed at deep understanding Learning is a cooperative activity Create a community of learners Jigsaw approach Summary Starting with Vygotsky, sociocultural theorists have focused on how **the social world molds development.** These theories emphasize that development is shaped not only by interactions with other people and the skills learned from them, but also by the artifacts with which children interact and the beliefs, values, and traditions of the larger society. Sociocultural theories view humans as differing from other animals in their propensity to teach and their ability to learn from teaching. It is human Nature. Sociocultural theories describe people as learning through guided participation and social scaffolding, in which others who are more knowledgeable support the learner's efforts. Mechanisms. Establishing **intersubjectivity** between people through **joint attention** is essential to learning. Again -- **Mechanisms.** **Guided participation:** Guided participation is a process where a child learns by engaging in activities with the help of a more knowledgeable person, like a parent or teacher. The helper guides the child through the activity, providing support and encouragement. For example, a parent might help a child learn to bake by explaining steps and assisting with tasks. Over time, as the child learns, the guidance decreases, and they become more independent. **Discovery learning:** Discovery learning is a teaching method where children learn by exploring and figuring things out on their own, rather than being directly told the answer. The idea is that children build knowledge through hands-on experiences and curiosity. For instance, instead of being told how plants grow, children might plant seeds, water them, and observe the process, discovering growth patterns through their own observations. **Intersubjectivity:** Intersubjectivity is a shared understanding between two or more people, which helps them work together and learn from each other. It involves a meeting of minds where both parties---often a child and an adult---understand each other\'s intentions, thoughts, or feelings. In learning, intersubjectivity is important because it helps people connect and cooperate. For example, when a teacher and a student both understand the goal of a math problem, they're able to work together more effectively. **Jigsaw approach:** The jigsaw approach is a cooperative learning strategy where students are divided into small groups, and each person is given a different piece of information on a topic. Each student learns their "piece" and then teaches it to their group members, so that together they complete the full "puzzle" of the topic. This method encourages teamwork, as everyone has an essential part to contribute for the group to understand the whole topic. **Private speech:**is when children talk to themselves to help guide their actions and thoughts. For example, a child might say, "First, I need to stack this block, then the next one," while playing. **\* Dynamic systems theories** Main themes addressed: Nature & Nurture The active child Mechanisms How change occurs Theories that focus on **how change occurs over varying time periods in complex systems** Depict development as process of constant change Propose that at all points in development, thought, and action change from moment to moment in response to the current situation, the child's immediate past history, and the child's longer-term history in similar situations Depict each child as a well-integrated system with many subsystems that work together to determine behaviour View of Children\'s Nature Dynamic-systems theories emphasize Children are innately motivated to explore the environment. Children have a precise way of problem solving. Infants and toddlers are competent. Other people are important in influencing development. **Motivators of development :** Children are motivated to learn about the world around them. They are interested in the world around them. They expand their capabilities. Practicing new skills (and improving on them) is a result of being motivated. Observing other people and imitating their actions are motivators of development. The centrality of **action** Children's specific actions contribute to development throughout life. Infants' reaching influences their perceptions of other people's reaching Infants who are good at reaching are better at guessing where other people are intending to reach The way children moved an object influenced how they categorized it Thinking shapes actions and actions shape thinking Central Developmental Issues **Self-organization:** Development is a process of self-organization. It involves integrating attention, memory, emotions, and actions **to adapt to a changing environment.** "Soft assembly" as components are ever changing. ** Mechanisms of change:** Changes occur through mechanisms of variation. ** Variation:** the use of different behaviours to pursue the same goal ** Selection:** increasing frequent choice of behaviours that are relatively successful in reaching goals Children also use efficient and novel behaviours How can we apply dynamic-systems theories to education? Interventions can be developed that focus on improving the **actions of the child in the environmen**t (complex system). Summary Dynamic-systems theories view change as the one constant in development. Rather than depicting development as being organized into long periods of stability and brief periods of dramatic change, these theories propose that there is no period in which substantial change is not occurring These theories view each person as a unified system that, in order to meet goals, integrates perception, action, categorization, motivation, memory, language, and knowledge of the physical and social worlds Dynamic-systems theories view development as a self-organizing process that brings together components as needed to adapt to a continuously changing environment Attaining goals requires action as well as thought. Thought shapes action, but action also shapes thought. Just as variation and selection produce biological evolution, they also produce cognitive development.  Chapter 5: Seeing, thinking, & doing in infancy **Perception:** - **Sensation:** - Vision **Preferential looking technique:** Method for studying visual attention in infants Involves showing infants two images simultaneously to see if the infants prefer one over the other (indexed by longer looking) Fantz visual stimuli (paired patterns with a plain surface) Modern version automatic eye tracker **Habituation:** - - - Visual acuity and colour perception **Vision acuity:** Sharpness of visual discrimination Simple versus complex patterns **Contrast sensitivity:** Ability to detect differences in light and dark areas in a visual pattern High-contrasting patterns versus low-contrasting patterns **Visual acuity in infancy** - - Talking faces in infancy - - - - - Visual Scanning - - - **Object perception** Summary ** Describe the rapid development of visual acuity, scanning patterns, and pattern perception that occurs during infancy.** ** Newborns' visual systems are relatively immature**, with poor acuity, low contrast sensitivity, and minimal colour vision. They begin visually scanning the world minutes after birth and show preferences for strongly contrasted patterns, including faces. ** The auditory system** is comparatively well developed at birth, and newborns will turn their heads to localize a sound. Young infants' remarkable proficiency at perceiving pattern in auditory stimulation underlies their sensitivity to musical structure. Through active touching, using both mouth and hands, infants explore and learn about themselves and their environment. Research on intermodal perception has revealed that from very early on, infants integrate information from different senses. **Violation of expectancy:** - - - **Expected event** : where objects behave as expected based on the infant's prior experiences or knowledge. **Unexpected event** : where objects behave in an unusual or \"impossible\" way, violating the infant's expectations. **Preferential looking:** is when a parent or caregiver looks at their baby to connect and communicate with them. This is an important way that parents help their baby feel loved, learn, and grow. - - - **Motor development** **Reflexes:** Innate fixed, tightly organized patterns of action that occur in response to particular stimulation **Motor milestones** Infants **progress quickly** in acquiring basic movement patterns. Tremendous individual and cultural differences in the ages at which these milestones are achieved. Most developmental research still focuses on participants from WEIRD cultures. Differences in the course of motor development reflect the contexts in which infants are developing. **Modern views of Motor development** ** Early pioneers:** infants' motor development is governed primarily by brain maturation. ** Current theorists:** motor development results from confluence of Neural mechanisms Increases in infants' strength Posture control Balance Perceptual skills Changes in body proportions Motivation Important aspect of motor development is the infant's discovery of affordances. **The expanding world of the infant** ** Reaching** ** Pre-reaching movements:** clumsy swiping movements by young infants towards the general vicinity of objects they see ** 3 to 4 months:** successful reaching ** 7 months:** leaning facilitates reaching; self-directed visual experiences aid motor development Self-locomotion: ability to move oneself around in the environment ** 8 months:** exploring environment on own; walking improves with age and experience Summary **Motor development proceeds rapidly in infancy through a series of "motor milestones,"** starting with newborn reflexes. Some aspects of motor development vary across cultures. ** Explain the role of culture and experience in the achievement of motor milestones.** Different experiences with movement can change the timing of motor milestones. Each new motor achievement, from reaching to self-locomotion, expands the infant's experience of the world **Learning and Memory** **Habituation:** Simple, highly adaptive form of learning that involves a decrease in response to a repeated or continued stimulation Reflects general informationprocessing efficiency Occurrence indicates learning has taken place Brings order to the infant's world (the "blooming, buzzing, confusion") **Statistical learning** ** Statistical learning:** picking up information from the environment and detecting statistically predictable patterns ** Statistical learning abilities:** have been measured across numerous domains, including music, action, and speech When regularity and predictability of objects, events, and other stimuli are violated, infants take notice (Goldilocks effects). **Classical conditioning** - ** Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) :** something that causes a natural reaction (like food making you feel hungry). ** Unconditioned response (UCR) :** the natural reaction itself (feeling hungry). ** Conditioned stimulus (CS) :** something neutral that starts to cause a reaction after being paired with the UCS (the bell). ** Conditioned response (CR):** the learned reaction to the CS (feeling hungry when you hear the bell) **Instrumental conditioning** ** Instrumental (or operant) conditioning:** Learning the relation between one's own behaviour and the consequences that result from it ** Positive reinforcement:** Reward that reliably follows a behaviour and increases the likelihood that the behaviour will be repeated **Observational learning/imitation** Learning through observation of other people's behaviour ** Imitation:** a form of observational learning Mixed results in newer studies on neonatal imitation; failure to replicate Meltzoff and Moore work Infant attention to intention research Mirror neuron studies with monkeys; mu rhythm **Rational learning:** Ability to use prior experiences to predict what will occur in the future Involves integrating prior beliefs and biases with what actually occurs in the environment **Active learning:** Learning by acting on the world, rather than passively observing objects and events Surprise can drive active learning **Memory:** Memory systems available in early life ** Studies of development of working memory:** ** Change-detection task research:** found ability to detect change ** improves rapidly during first year** ** Reaching tasks:** demonstrated ability to retain contents in containers in infants' working memory Consanant: Dissonant: Binocular: Monocular: Chapter 6: Language development **Symbols:** Involve systems of representing our thoughts, feelings, and knowledge and for communicating them to other people **Generative:** System in which a finite set of words can be combined to generate an infinite number of sentences **Comprehension:** Required to develop language skills; refers to understanding what others say (or sign or write) **Production:** Refers to speaking (or signing or writing) **Phonological:** phonemes = smallest units of meaningful sound (/c/at vs /b/at) ** Semantic:** units of meaning = morphemes (dog, dogs, walk) ** Syntactic:** rules for combining words (he runs to the store; store runs he to) ** Pragmatic:** how to use language in context (conversational conventions, etc.) The Components of language **Phenomes:** Smallest units of meaningful sound Example: bat vs pat → /b/ vs /p/ rake vs lake → /r/ vs /l/ **Morphemes:** Smallest units of meaning in a language, composed of one or more phonemes Example: **dog** (1 morpheme) **dog s** (2 morphemes) **walk** (1 morpheme) **walk ed** (2 morphemes)**walk ing** (2 morphemes) **Syntax :** Rules specifying how words from different categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) can be combined Example: **The cat jumped on Rosie** is allowed in English **The Rosie on jumped cat** is NOT **Rosie jumped on the cat** IS allowed, but means something entirely different **Pragmatics :** Knowledge about how language is used **Signed languages :** e.g., American Sign Language - What is required for language? **A human brain is required!** Specialization of brain for processing language (e.g., lateralization) Brain is particularly sensitive to language input during early sensitive periods for language development **A human environment is required!** Infants' auditory preferences are fine-tuned through experience with human language. Sensitive period **Sensitive period :** - - - Summarize the competencies in **speech perception** that are present in **early infancy** and the changes that occur in this aspect of language development **before the end of the 1st year of life.** Categorical speech perception Perceptual narrowing (categorical perception changes during sensitive periods) Using distributional properties of speech for word segmentation Speech Perception **Prosody:** The characteristic rhythm, temp, cadence, melody, intonation patterns, etc with which a language is spoken **Categorical Perception:** The perception of speech sounds as belonging to discrete categories Word Segmentation **Word segmentation:** process of discovering where words begin and end in fluent speech; **begins during the second half of the first year** **Distributional properties:** In any language, certain sounds are more likely to appear together than are others. ** e.g :** in English, the "ng" sound is more likely to come at the end of a word than the start ** e.g :** "Look at the happy baby" **py** is not typically followed by **ba**, but ba is often followed by **by** Infants can identify **patterns** in the speech surrounding them. They then focus on sound patterns that make a difference in their native language and lay the groundwork for becoming native listeners and native speakers. Just after birth, infants can use **predictable sound patterns** to identify words from speech streams. Summary Infants have remarkable speech-perception abilities. Like adults, they exhibit categorical perception of speech sounds, perceiving physically similar sounds as belonging to discrete categories. As they learn the sounds that are important in their language(s), infants' ability to distinguish between non-native sounds declines. Infants are remarkably sensitive to the distributional properties of language and use them to segment words from fluent speech. Discuss the importance of sensitive periods in language development. ** Perceptual narrowing:** As infants learn the sounds that are important in their language(s), their ability to distinguish between non-native sounds declines. This is thought to happen during a sensitive period within the first year. Specialization for the language you hear supports acquisition of more complex language. Summarize the competencies in **speech perception** that are present in **early infancy** and the changes that occur in this aspect of language development **before the end of the 1st year of life.** Categorical speech Perceptual narrowing Using distributional properties of speech for word segmentation Preparation for production **Babbling:** - - - - - **Early interactions and babbling** - - - **Successful communication requires** - - First Words **Early word recognition:** Linguistic experience supports skilled rapid word comprehension. Infant word understanding exceeds word production; **same understanding occurs in toddlers with autism.** Parents underestimate this comprehension competence. Older children use context to aid word recognition. ** First words around 10 to 15 months** **Cross-situational word learning:** Determining word meanings by tracking correlations between labels and meanings across scenes and contexts **Syntactic bootstrapping :** Strategy of using the grammatical structure to infer meaning Putting words together **First sentences:** Most children combine words into simple sentences **by end of second year** **Telegraphic speech:** short utterances that leave out nonessential words; generally two-word utterances - **Grammar :** Mastery of regularities of language Increasing ability to recognize patterns and generalize to novel words **Overregularization :** Speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular e.g., broked, goed Sign that children understand the grammatical rule -- but are applying it too broadly The Wug test - **Overextension:** - - Conversational Skills **Private speech:** Speech directed to self, rather than another person (Vygotsky) **Collective monologues :** Conversation between children involving series of non sequiturs; content of each child's turn has little or nothing to do with what other child has just said **Narratives:** Descriptions of past events that have the basic structure of a story and can be produced by 5 years of age **Pragmatic development** **Learning how language is used to communicate** Developing conversational perspective-taking and responding appropriately Using information other than words to further assess conversational meaning Later development **Development of language skills beyond ages 5 or 6 years** Accomplishments in sustaining a conversation Complex grammar mastered by school-age children Appreciation of multiple meanings of words Better comprehension of words **Approximate vocabulary achieved by age** **6-year-olds:** 10,000 words ** 5th-graders:** 40,000 words **College students:** 150,000 words Summary Describe the characteristics of children's word production, syntax, and conversational skills through the preschool period: Infants begin to recognize highly familiar words at about 6 months of age, and they begin to produce words at about 1 year of age. Infants use a variety of strategies to figure out what new words mean By the end of their second year, most toddlers produce short sentences. The length and complexity of their utterances gradually increase. In the early preschool years, children exhibit generalization, extending such patterns as "add -s to make plural" to novel nouns, and making overregularization errors. Children develop their burgeoning language skills as they go from collective monologues to sustained conversation.