Lecture 4.docx

Lecture 4 3 broad theories on children's cognitive development Piaget's theory Nativist view Learning from environment Jean Piaget father of field of cognitive development 1920 - worked at Binet Institute translating intelligence test questions from English into French was intrigued by the wrong...

Lecture 4 3 broad theories on children's cognitive development Piaget's theory Nativist view Learning from environment Jean Piaget father of field of cognitive development 1920 - worked at Binet Institute translating intelligence test questions from English into French was intrigued by the wrong answers - why were children making these predictable mistakes? Piaget proposed that: children's thinking is QUALITATIVELY different from adults' thinking cognition grows and develops through 4 stages properties of Piaget's stage theory children at diff stages think in qualitatively different ways thinking at each stage influences thinking across diverse topics brief transitional periods at end of each stage (no overlap) stages are universal (not culture dependent) and the order is always the same Piaget's stages of cognitive development 1. sensorimotor stage (0-2 years) 2. pre operational stage (2-7 years) 3. concrete operational stage (7-11 years) formal operational stage (12 and up) sensorimotor stage 0-2 years infants live in the here and now - no concept of past or present gain knowledge about world through MOVEMENTS and SENSATIONS - the only way they can acquire knowledge about the world maybe their movements aren't as random as they seem - they are exploratory and informative sensorimotor stage: 1-4 months old interact with world via REFLEXES repeat pleasurable actions these reflexes are entered around their own bodies lots of reflexes disappear around 2 months old sensorimotor stage: 4-8 months old repeat actions towards OBJECTS to produce a DESIRED OUTCOME indicates interest beyond their own bodies, in the world allows for formation of connections between own actions and consequences in the world: cause and effect first experience of themselves as agents sensorimotor stage: 8-12 months old combine several actions to achieve a goal have clear intentions have to coordinate and combine actions emergence of object permanence object permanence knowing that objects continue to exist even though they can no longer be seen or heard starting to become less present-oriented: developing concept of things that aren't in the here and now develops at around 8 months tested by seeing how babies react to objects being hidden A-not-B error occurs in babies who have object permanence tendency to reach for a hidden object where it was LAST FOUND rather than in the new location where it was LAST HIDDEM evidence that initial object permanence is fragile disappears around 12 months old ie. two blue sheets hiding object experiment sensorimotor stage: 12-18 months old engage in trial-and-error experiments to see how outcome changes ie. varying the height from which an object is dropped allows for greater understanding of cause-effect relations sensorimotor stage: 18-24 months old mental representations of things in their lives fully developed object permanence indicated by deferred imitation (copying) allows for symbolic thoughts clearly they can now think about the past preoperational stage: symbolic thought ability to think about objects or events that aren't within the immediate environment enables language acquisition - need to have a concept of an object to pair it with a label ability to use symbolic representation - to take everyday objects and pretend they are something else/have a new property evidenced through ability to engage in pretend play and drawing preoperational stage: egocentrism perceiving the world solely from one's own POV ie. difficulty taking another person's spatial perspective (little kid and experimenter with the volcano diorama) egocentric speech egocentric speech when two preoperational kids are conversing, it sounds like they're on the dame page but really they're just alternating their own personal monologues ie. Jenny: my bunny slippers are brown and red. Chris: I have piece of sugar in a red piece of paper. Jenny: We bought them. My mommy did. Chris: Can't eat the piece of sugar, not unless you take the paper off. signs of progress out of egocentrism increase in verbal arguments means that the child is at least paying attention to another's perspective because if they can argue, then at least it's over something in common ground ie. wanting the same toy preoperational stage: centration tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event to the exclusion of other relevant features ie. the liquid in diff shape glasses - is it the same amount of liquid? - "this one has more water because this one is higher than that one" difficulties with CONSERVATION concept: merely changing the appearance of an object doesn't change the object's other key properties Piaget's conservation tasks volume: liquid in diff shape cups number: dots in two lines matter: play doh smushing length: two lines (either on top of one another or skewed) concrete operational stage: ages 7-12 can reason logically about concrete objects and events can understand conservation concept but cannot think in purely ABSTRACT/HYPOTHETICAL terms or generate systematic scientific experiments to test their beliefs 3 ways that kids in concrete operational stage can reason logically about concrete objects and events 1. reversibility: capacity to think through a series of steps and then mentally reverse direction, returning to the starting point 2. seriation: ability to order items along a quantitative dimension, like length or weight 3. cognitive maps: mental representation of familiar large-scale spaces, like their neighbourhood and school formal operational stage: ages 12 and up ability to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically not universal, in Piaget's opinion: not all adolescents/adults reach this stage can imagine realities that are different than their current ones allows them to take interest in politics, ethics, science fiction, and to reason scientifically Piaget's pendulum problem test of deductive reasoning determine influence of weight and string length on time it takes for pendulum to swing back and forth unbiased experiments require varying ONLY ONE variable at a time children under 12 perform unsystematic experiments, and draw incorrect conclusions child hides their face behind their hands and believes that other can't see them. which of Piaget's stages is this child in? preoperational because – egocentrism child is presented with 2 equal lines of pennies. experimenter then creates larger spaces between the pennies in just one of the lines. child in concrete operations; stage will think... the lines have the same number of pennies Piaget's stages of cognitive development: summarized sensorimotor (0-2 years) infants acquire knowledge purely through senses and actions by the end of this stage, achieve object permanence preoperational (2-7 years) symbolic thought thinking characterized by egocentrism and centration concrete operational (7-12 years) begin to think logically about concrete objects can see world from other perspectives understand that events are influenced by multiple factors formal operational (12 and up) can think systematically and abstractly Piaget's 3 points on how children learn 1. children ACTIVELY shape their knowledge of the world not passive children have ideas about the world, they perform experiments, and draw conclusions from observations 2. children LEARN ON THEIR OWN don't depend on instruction from others 3. children are INTRINSICALLY MOTIVATED don't require rewards from other people strengths of Piaget's theory intuitively plausible depiction of how learning progresses, that reflects their active learning good overview of children's thinking at diff stages exceptional breadth covers the lifespan examines many cognitive operations and concepts applications of Piaget's theory: in education children's distinctive ways of thinking at different ages need to be considered in deciding how to teach them ie. can't teach kids in concrete operational stage about calculus children learn best by interacting with the environment hands-on learning experiments weaknesses of Piaget's theory 1. no scientific method 2. theory depicts children's thinking as more consistent than it is 3. children are more cognitively capable than Piaget recognized 4. theory is vague about the mechanisms of cognitive growth theory underestimates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development nativist view of cognitive development kids are born with innate knowledge in specific areas of evolutionary importance innate cognitive mechanisms allow them to further develop knowledge (rapidly) in these areas domains of evolutionary importance: solid objects understanding of physical laws numbers categorization understanding the minds of people language nativist: evidence for earlier object permanence if you show an object and then turn off the lights, most infants younger than 8 months old will reach for where they last saw the object suggests they still expect it to be there 8 months is much younger than when Piaget proposed object permanence sets in evidence for earlier object permanence: task difficulty Piaget's object permanence task may be too difficult infants younger than 8 months old may fail Piaget's object permanence task because they haven't developed motor capacity to manually search (to reach, grab and pick things up) can use LOOKING BEHAVIOUR as better measure of object permanence ie. violation-of-expectation paradigm violation-of-expectation paradigm 1. infants = habituated to an event 2. TEST: infants are presented with a possible and an impossible event, which are variations on the habituation event possible event: consistent with knowledge or expectation being examined in the study impossible event: violates knowledge or expectation being studied 3. longer looking at the impossible event indicates that infant possesses knowledge about the physical property being studied (impossible event is viewed as more novel/unexpected) drawbridge study example of the violation-of-expectation paradigm watch drawbridge open and close, over and over until they get bored (become habituated) then box shorter than drawbridge is placed in its trajectory when drawbridge opens this time, the box stops it but in impossible version, the drawbridge seems to continue even though the box is there if kids get object permanence, they should look longer at the impossible event, as it is surprising and new results of drawbridge study: infants as young as 3.5 months old looked longer at the impossible event than the possible event indicates that infants as young as 3.5 months: have object permanence understand that solid objects can't go through another solid object implications: since at 3.5 months they have not yet learned language they couldn't have been taught this principle suggests that understanding of solid objects is innate study: do infants understand gravity? violation of expectation paradigm with 3 months old a hand places a box on a platform then a hand places a box in midair and it remains suspended results: 3 month olds looked longer at box suspended in midair follow-up study - compared looking times at: a box suspended in midair (same impossible event) a box that falls when placed midair INFANTS LOOKED LONGER AT BOX SUSPENDED IN MIDAIR shows that infants expect the box to fall if there's no support since infants haven't learned language yet, suggests innate, rudimentary understanding of gravity study: infants' understanding of numbers do infants have basic concept of numbers? study: habituation paradigm with 6 month olds habituation: shown a series of displays containing 16 dots dots are different sizes and are arranged differently in each display test: show slide with same number of dots (16) show slide with only 8 dots which do they look at for longer? results of study of infants' understanding of numbers: infants look longer at the new number display 6 month olds show the same behaviour for other dots in a 2:1 ratio 9 month olds can discriminate displays in a 3:2 ratio infants haven't learned to count yet, so this suggests they have an innate ANS: approximate number sense ANS approximate number sense cognitive system that allows infants to intuitively estimate numbers and magnitudes don't have to explicitly count, have an immediate sense research shows positive correlation between infant ANS and preschool math ability suggests ANS lays foundation for later math ability categorization in infancy categorization begins in infancy habituation paradigm: showed 3 month olds various pictures of cats habituated to general category of cat looked at novel cat photos less and less TEST: photo of a dog results: infants looked longer at the dog suggests that infants saw all the cats as a single category, and the dog as a different category categorization in infancy: categories more general than cat habituation: 6 month olds habituated to photos of mammals then, on test trial, looked at non-mammals (ie. bird or fish) shows that infants had formed category of mammal by recognizing similarities between mammals 9 month olds divide objects into ___ broad categories 3 people, animals, inanimate objects indexed by different reactions to members of each of these categories ie. in the lab: 9 month olds pay more attention to animals than inanimate objects but they smile less at animals than they do at people importance of categorization helps make sense of the world, simplifies things allows children to make inferences and predictions about objects of the same category ie. if child learns that a giraffe is an animal, it knows that it breathes, moves and eats can easily assign categorical traits to new stimuli ie. will ask "how tall is a building" but not "what do buildings eat?" study: forming categories based on shape infants focus on similarities in shape when forming categories study: various objects placed in front of 12 month olds experimenter picked up target object and demonstrated that it rattles infants = more likely to assume that an object of a similar shape also rattles versus objects similar in colour or texture focus on similarities in shape results in difficulties understanding... exceptions ie. infants fail to categorize a snail as an animal because they don't have legs ie. fail to understand that a boat is a vehicle because it lacks wheels when do children start to form category hierarchies? by 2-3 years, children start to form category hierarchies category hierarchies: organize object categories by set-subset relations allow for finer distinctions among objects within each level what category hierarchy do children learn first? usually the BASIC level objects at the basic level have OBVIOUS similarities similarities at superordinate level are less obvious and differences between subordinate levels are hard to detect summary of categorization categorization starts in infancy 9 months: differentiate people, animals and inanimate objects 2-3 years: form category hierarchies early categories = based on perceptual similarities (esp in shape) children learn basic categories before they learn superordinate and subordinate categories summary of nativist view children have innate, specialized cognitive mechanisms that provide them with basic knowledge in domains of evolutionary importance research shows that infants as young as 3-6 months old have innate understanding of: object permanence and object solidity physical laws, like gravity and motion through external force approximate number sense (ANS) categorization suggests that infants are a lot more cognitively capable than Piaget thought criticism of Nativist view overestimates infants' innate, cognitive understanding - too generous findings of nativist studies can instead be explained by: perceptual features of stimuli infants may look longer at certain stimuli because they're more visually interesting (ie. more complex/novel) and not because they understand the concept being tested learning from the environment 3 month olds have learned a lot about the world in about 810 hours of awake time 2 ways that children actively learn from the environment on their own trial and error statistical learning can learn through observation and through directly interacting with the world statistical learning in infants infants have remarkable ability to notice patterns example of observational learning esp critical in language study: statistical learning in infancy habituation paradigm with 2 month olds habituate to sequence of 3 pairs of shapes (shapes show up on screen one at a time, in a particular sequence) always in the same order: the same shape always came before a certain other shape TEST: familiar sequence: same pairs of shapes novel sequence: randomly ordering the same shapes (no pattern) RESULTS: 2 month olds looked longer at the novel sequence suggests they had learned the order of shapes in the habituation phase evidence that infants are sensitive to statistical regularities in their environment implications of statistical learning babies are ACTIVELY INTERPRETING the world around them and drawing conclusions statistical learning is INNATE and DOMAIN GENERAL mechanism through which infants learn in various domains CONTRAST with nativist theory which assert existence of innate, domain specific learning mechanisms (contrasts because nativists think that we only have innate abilities in specific, evolutionarily important areas - don't think it's domain general) caregivers and children learning from environment caregivers play role in children's learning by determining the quality of the home environment measuring the home environment Home Observation for the Measurement of the Environment (HOME) gold standard researchers VISIT a child's home and OBSERVE the environment and INTERVIEW the caregiver CHECKLIST of characteristics that reflect 2 factors, with YES/NO answers parenting quality stimulation of environment: variety and presence of interesting toys higher score = higher quality home environment home environment matters a lot higher scores on the HOME positively predict children's cognitive skills and development IQ MATH and READING comprehension language ability PARENTING QUALITY is the most important factor factors influencing the home environment socioeconomic status (SES): low SES associated with lower quality home environment culture: determines the specific contents of what a child learns but process through which children learn is universal (children everywhere benefit from accepting/involved parents and stimulating environments) short summary of Piaget, Nativist and Learning views 1. Piaget: cognitive development occurs in qualitatively distinct stages Nativist emphasizes innate knowledge and specialized learning mechanisms in domain of evolutionary importance Learning children learn great deal from environment through trial and error and statistical learning quality of home environment affects cognitive development