Lecture 4: Childhood Cognition 2022 PDF

Physical and cognitive development over early childhood Piaget Information Processing Core Knowledge Sociocultural Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience  Why developmental theories? Provide a framework for understanding Background changes in c...

Physical and cognitive development over early childhood Piaget Information Processing Core Knowledge Sociocultural Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience  Why developmental theories? Provide a framework for understanding Background changes in cognitive capacities Raise crucial questions about human Question nature Motivate new research studies that lead Motivate to education/policy/parenting changes... Why not just one theory? Because child development is a complex and varied process, no single theory accounts for all of it Theories of cognitive and social development, for example, focus on different capabilities The four theories examined in this lecture will allow a broader appreciation of cognitive development than any one of them does by itself Theory Main Questions nature/nurture; Piaget (Constructivism) continuity/discontinuity; active child Information Processing how change occurs Core Knowledge nature/nurture influence of social and cultural contexts, Sociocultural (Vygotsky) education Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience mechanisms of change  View of children’s nature Piaget’s Developmental Stages Examples, Criticisms Theory Delay of gratification & some theory of mind Jean Piaget  Infants know the world through their Sensori- Birth to senses and through their actions. For motor 2 years example, they learn what dogs look like and what petting them feels like. Toddlers and young children acquire the ability to internally represent the Preopera- 2-7 world through language and mental tional years imagery. They also begin to be able to see the world from other people’s perspectives, not just from their own.  Children become able to think logically, not just Concrete intuitively. They now can classify objects into coherent 7 - 12 years Operational categories and understand that events are often influenced by multiple factors, not just one. Adolescents can think systematically and reason about what might be as well as what is. This allows them to Formal Operational 12+ years understand politics, ethics, and science fiction, as well as to engage in scientific reasoning.  Preoperational Stage A mix of impressive cognitive acquisitions and equally impressive limitations A notable acquisition is symbolic representation, the use of one object to stand for another, which makes a variety of new behaviours possible A major limitation is egocentrism, the tendency to perceive the world solely from one’s own point of view A related limitation is centration, the tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event Preoperational children also lack of understanding of the conservation concept, the idea that merely changing the appearance of objects does not change their key properties Piaget’s Three- Mountain Task  a brief foray into Theory of Mind A well-organised understanding of how the mind works and how it influences behaviour Two-year-olds: Understand the connection between other people’s desires and their specific actions, but show little understanding that beliefs are also influential Three-year-olds: Understand that desires and beliefs affect behaviour, but have difficulty with false-belief problems (i.e., tasks that test a child’s understanding that other people will act in accord with their own beliefs even when the child knows that these beliefs are incorrect) Five-year-olds: Find false-belief problems very easy Theory of Mind what is *theory of mind*? understanding that other people have minds understanding *perspective* inhibiting one’s own perspective think about tolerance... Testing Theory of Mind false belief unexpected transfer unexpected contents deception, lying, joking?? gaze following inferring goals  Experimenter: This is John. And this, this is John’s bed [brings out picture of bed]. And this, this is John’s closet [brings out picture of closet] Now, John wants to find his kitten. And his kitten is REALLY in the closet [points at closet], but John THINKS his kitten is under the bed. [points at bed] Where will John look for his kitten? Boy: Theory of mind movie [points at closet] Experimenter: And where is the kitten really? Boy: [points at closet] Unexpected contents Gets round criticisms that children had difficulty with story comprehension Show young children a box with unexpected contents  Unexpected contents movie What’s inside this tube? What is this? When you first saw this tube, before we opened it, what did you think was inside? (Gopnik & Astington, 1988) What will your friend Johnny say is inside? (Perner et al, 1987)  When you first saw this tube, before we opened it, what did you think was inside? 3-yr-old: pencil! 5-yr-old: Smarties What will your friend Johnny say is inside? 3-yr-old: pencil 5-yr-old: Smarties deception another perk to having a theory of mind lies and jokes.... movie clip - *mean monkey* task 3-yr-old has been told that the mean monkey puppet always wants the same sticker that he wants, so to get the desired sticker the 3-yr-old has to trick the monkey.... Appearance Reality an example of centration - being stuck on one aspect of a stimulus... what it looks like, for example appearance-reality John Flavell Appearance Reality 3-4 yr-olds will make one of two errors: Phenomenism: they say it really is a dessert Realism: they say it looks like a candle The Balance Scale: An Example of Centration Procedures Used to Test Conservation Liquid conservation movie Concrete Operational Stage Children begin to reason logically about the world They can solve conservation problems, but their successful reasoning is largely limited to concrete situations Thinking systematically remains difficult Formal Operational Stage Ability to think recursively (e.g., thinking about a boy thinking about a boy…) Can imagine other realities Systematic planning and experimentation Piaget believed that the attainment of the formal operations stage, in contrast to the other stages, is not universal let’s look at one child... In sensori-motor period, infants will show the A-not-B error, seemingly incapable of following the “if toy is hidden there, then i should reach there” Pre-operational children can easily solve an A-not-B problem, but cannot perform well on a classic sorting task requiring similar “if - then” rules cognitive flexibility being able to switch flexibly between rules. the dimensional change card sorting task (child version of the WCST) (Zelazo and colleagues, 1996...) predicts perseverative behaviour in 3-year-olds when the “if-then” rules are in conflict reasons..?? centration (colour vs. shape)? representational complexity attentional inflexibility? similar to A not B?  How stage-like is child development? Are there qualitative changes in thinking? Little evidence for or against. Are stage transitions domain general ? Problem type seems to effect child (e.g., ability to sort weights develops later than ability to sort sticks) Notion of “horizontal decalage” (solve one type of problem using mature thinking skills, but not accomplish this for less familiar problems) Nevertheless, there is a sense that children reason in the same way the same age Are stages Universal? No! Cultural effects and practice effects are present Next Information-Processing Theories Core-Knowledge Theories Sociocultural Theories Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Theory Main Questions nature/nurture; Piaget (Constructivism) continuity/discontinuity; active child Information Processing how change occurs Core Knowledge nature influence of social and cultural contexts, Sociocultural (Vygotsky) education Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience mechanisms of change Information Processing Precise specification of the processes involved in children’s thinking Task analysis helps information-processing researchers understand and predict children’s behaviour Emphasis on thinking as a process that occurs over time Emphasis on problem solving and memory Continuous Cognitive Change Information-processing theorists view children as undergoing continuous cognitive change The term continuous applies in two senses: Important changes are viewed as constantly occurring, rather than being restricted to special transition periods between stages Cognitive growth is viewed as typically occurring in small increments rather than abruptly Metaphor: Computation System Underlying many information- processing theories is the metaphor of the child as a computation system Cognitive development arises from children’s gradually surmounting their processing limitations through: Increasing efficient execution of basic processes Expanding memory capacity Acquisition of new strategies and knowledge Encoding People encode information that draws their attention or that they consider important They fail to encode a great deal of other information Some crucial information, such as data on the relative frequency of events, is encoded automatically Children, however, do not encode all of the important information in the environment change blindness efficiency of the system why bottleneck the system with ALL the information when some can be assumed to have unchanging properties? Processing Speed The speed with which children execute basic processes increases greatly over the course of childhood Biological maturation and experience contribute to increased processing speed Two biological processes that contribute to faster processing are myelination and increased connectivity among brain regions Problem-Solving Children are active problem solvers Children use a variety of approaches to solve problems At any given time, children possess several different strategies for solving a given problem With age and experience, the strategies that produce more successful performance become more prevalent Overlapping-waves theories also hypothesise that children benefit from this strategic variability Planning Contributes to successful problem-solving 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 Planning However, many children fail to plan in situations in which they would benefit from doing so The frontal lobe, a part of the brain that plays an important role in inhibition, is one of the last parts of the brain to mature Young children tend to be over-optimistic and incorrectly believe that they can succeed without planning Core-Knowledge Theories View of Children’s Nature Central Developmental Issues Core-Knowledge Approaches Emphasise the sophistication of infants’ and young children’s thinking in areas that have been important throughout human evolutionary history Like Piagetian and information-processing theories, core- knowledge theories depict children as active learners, constantly striving to solve problems and to organise their understanding into coherent wholes However, core-knowledge theorists view children as entering the world with specialised learning abilities that allow them to quickly and effortlessly acquire information of evolutionary importance, such as face perception and language  Assumed to be domain specific, or limited to a particular area Innate Understandings Consistent with this emphasis, core-knowledge theorists have devoted a great deal of attention to early understanding of major domains (language, space, number, physical objects, plants and animals, and people) Naive Theories A number of core-knowledge theorists have proposed that young children actively organise their understanding of the most important domains into theories These informal theories are not deductive systems but share three important characteristics with formal scientific theories: Identify fundamental units for dividing up the vast number of objects and events in the world Explain many particular phenomena in terms of a few basic principles Explain events in terms of unobservable causes Assumptions Modularity - mental life is orchestrated by multiple cognitive processors or modules Isomorphism - there is a correspondence between the organisation of the mind and the organisation of the brain (fMRI; locality) Transparency - observable behaviour will indicate which module is dysfunctional Universality - there are no individual differences in the organisation of cognitive modules Sociocultural Theories View of Children’s Nature Central Developmental Issues Sociocultural Approaches Focus on Emphasise Present Focus on the contribution of Emphasise guided Present interactions as other people and the participation, a process in occurring in a broader surrounding culture to which more knowledgeable sociocultural context that children’s development individuals organise activities includes cultural tools, the in ways that allow less innumerable products of knowledgeable people to human ingenuity that enhance engage in them at a higher thinking level than they could manage on their own Sociocultural Approaches It sees development as continuous, with change as quantitative rather than qualitative Humans are seen as unique because of their inclination to teach each other and to learn from each othe Sociocultural theorists believe that many of the processes that produce development, such as guided participation, are the same in all societies However, the content that children learn varies greatly from culture to culture and these differences shape children’s thinking accordingly  Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky born in the town of Orsha, Belarus In 1913 Vygotsky was admitted to the Moscow University through a "Jewish Lottery" to meet a three percent Jewish student quota for entry in Moscow and Saint Petersburg universities died at the age of 38 from tuberculosis "This is the final thing I have done in psychology – and I will like Moses die at the summit, having glimpsed the promised land but without setting foot 1896-1934 on it. Farewell, dear creations. The rest is silence."  Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky roles of cultural and interpersonal communication. internalisation: higher mental functions developed through these interactions, and also represented the shared knowledge of a culture. "knowing how". skills that are initially beyond the child. The mastery of the skills needed for performing these practices occurs through the activity of the child within society: e.g., riding a bicycle 1896-1934 Vygotsky’s Developmental Psychology (Key concepts) Patterns and levels of thinking are products of activities practiced in social institutions of the culture in which the child grows up Children are social beings, entwined with other people who help them gain new skills Understanding how and why children develop as they do requires that we understand the nature of the culture’s historical background The history of the child’s own development determines how the child is prepared to resolve upcoming problems Consciousness as a problem in the Psychology of Behavior, essay, 1925 Educational Psychology, 1926 Historical meaning of the crisis in Psychology, 1927 The Problem of the Cultural Development of the Child, essay 1929 The Fundamental Problems of Defectology, article 1929 The Socialist alteration of Man, 1930 Ape, Primitive Man, and Child: Essays in the History of Behaviour, 1930 Paedology of the Adolescent, 1931 Play and its role in the Mental development of the Child, essay 1933 Thinking and Speech, 1934 Tool and symbol in child development, 1934 Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, 1978 Thought and Language, 1986 The Development of Thought and Language Language becomes the crucial tool for determining how children think Is thought identical to language? Independent? Separate but collaborate? the inter-relationship of language development and thought inner speech as being qualitatively different from verbal external speech. Although Vygotsky believed inner speech developed from external speech via a gradual process of "internalization" (i.e., transition from the external to the internal), with younger children only really able to "think out loud," he claimed that in its mature form inner speech would not resemble spoken language as we know it (in particular, being greatly compressed). Hence, thought itself develops socially. Child development consists of an endless stream of dialectic conflicts and resolutions Vygotsky’s Stages of Development As the child grows up, he or she periodically arrives at new stages at which new structures are built, thereby creating potentials for new functions There were 2 levels of performance: The actual level (e.g., as measured by Piaget) Learning potential “zone of proximal development” Social Scaffolding Social Scaffolding A process in which more competent people provide a temporary framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own The quality of scaffolding that people provide tends to increase as people become older and gain experience Zone of Proximal Development Refers to the range of performance between what children can do unsupported and what they can do with optimal support (think about the card sorting video) This principle often involves providing younger children with more concrete instruction and older children with more abstract information  Clear educational implications Mechanisms remain vague Evaluation Interpretation plays an important role Fits his data well, but other data less well Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Driven by the availability of new technologies Biologically inspired Information processing  Use Event Related Potential (ERP methods) Use Functional Magnetic Resonance (fmri methods)  ERP event-related potentials: electric potential directly generated by neuronal activity during a (because of a) particular event Non-invasive and painless - recording of electrical activity through electrodes placed on scalp surface Phase-locked: the activity that is evoked by the presented stimulus (what we want to measure) ERP study example oddball paradigm fMRI fMRI measures detects changes in blood oxygenation and flow that occur in response to neural activity assumption that brain activity is related to changes in blood flow/volume (increase in oxygenated blood) in certain areas (haemodynamic response) Magnetic susceptibility of oxygenated blood differs from that of deoxygenated blood – we can measure that fMRI good spatial resolution but the temporal resolution is poor (change in blood flow & volume does not happen immediately) Very sensitive to motion Serious issues with methodology… fMRI example Looking at spoken language comprehension, where you are interested in the specific brain regions , but don’t care as much about the timing  NIRS near infrared spectroscopy near-infrared light with a long wavelength can travel through the skull and provide access to the brain The infrared light can detect changes in the concentration of oxygenated blood Lloyd-Fox et al, Neurosci & Biobehav (2010) let’s sum up our sprint through cognitive development jean piaget - active child constructing his/her own knowledge information processing - narrowing focus on specific tasks, thinking about memory, processing, encoding core theories - re-engaging with the nature/nurture debate Lev Vygotsky - adding sociocultural elements into the mix developmental cognitive neuroscience - looking at brain mechanisms as they relate to development; a new and expanding area