Exam 1 (50 points)

Essay 1: 15 points (5, 5, 5)

Essay 2: 15 points

*Short Answer 1: 6 points (2, 2, 2)

*Short Answer 2: 4 points (2, 2)

Short Answer 3: 4 points

Short Answer 4: 6 points (2, 2, 2)

• Schemes: Knowledge structures

– Simplest schemes are organized patterns of behavior, including reflexes

• Ex: sucking scheme; looking scheme; grasping scheme

– Become more complex with age and become mental/internal

–  Children play an active role in the development of schemes through their interactions with the environment (constructivist)

Mechanisms of Cognitive Development

• Organization: Inherited predisposition to combine physical or psychological schemes into more complex systems

– Ex: infants combine looking and grasping into a reaching scheme

• Adaptation involves assimilation and accommodation

• Assimilation: Interpret new experiences in terms of existing schemes – Ex: Newborns and young infants try to suck

many things, regardless of their “suckability”– Ex: Child sees a camel at the zoo and yells

“horse!”

• Accommodation: Modify schemes to fit new experiences

– Ex: Infants learn to modify their sucking depending on the object

– Ex: Child sees a camel at the zoo and yells “Lumpy horse!”

Piaget’s stages involve

• Discontinuous (qualitative) change

• Invariant sequence

– Stages are never skipped

Sensorimotor Stage (birth-2 years)

• Newborns have reflexes and basic perceptual abilities

– Refine these innate responses (accommodation) during the first month of life

• Gradually become capable of repeating satisfying behaviors that initially occurred by chance

• First learn to repeat actions involving their own body (primary circular reactions)

– Ex: thumb sucking

• Then learn to repeat actions involving objects (secondary circular reactions)

– Ex: shaking rattle

• Object Permanence: Understanding that objects continue to exist when they cannot be perceived directly

– Infants have some understanding of object permanence at around 8 months (according to Piaget)

• Will search for a fully occluded (covered) object if they observe it being hidden

– A-not-B error: Tendency to reach where objects have been found before, rather than where they were last hidden

– Infants make this error until about 12 months of age

– According to Piaget, the A-not-B error occurs because infants do not have a full understanding of the permanent existence of the object independent of its spatial location and their actions on the object

• Between 18-24 months, final stage of object permanence emerges

– Invisible displacement problems: One object serves as a symbol for a second object that is hidden from view

General Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory:

• Underestimates the role of specific experiences in affecting cognitive development

– Ex: Certain experiences (like formal schooling) may promote conservation and other abilities

• Doesn’t explain HOW cognitive development occurs

– Concepts (i.e., schemes, organization, adaptation) are vague

– Better description than explanation of children’s cognitive development

• Portrays children’s thinking as being more consistent than it really is

– Cognitive development occurs more gradually and shows more variation within children than Piaget’s theory allows

• Ex: Children can typically solve some conservation problems sooner than others

• Underestimates the cognitive competence of infants and young children

– Ex: Object permanence??

Core Knowledge Theories

– Some types of knowledge are innate

• Ex: Knowledge about object properties such as solidity and continuity

– two objects cannot occupy the same space; objects follow continuous paths through space

– Infants/young children develop “naïve” theories in certain domains (areas) based on this innate knowledge

• Ex: theory of physics (knowledge of physical properties of objects)

– Domains in which infants have “core knowledge” are adaptive for survival from an evolutionary perspective

• Exs: knowledge of people, knowledge of living things, knowledge of objects

• Violation of Expectation Method

– Based on assumption of infants’ preference for novel stimuli

– Habituate infants to a “possible” physical event

• Habituation: Decrease in response due to repeated presentation of a stimulus

– Present a “possible” and “impossible” event• Measure infants’ looking time to each event

• Pits novelty of a stimulus against impossibility of an event

Baillargeon, Spelke, & Wasserman (1985)

• Infants were habituated to a screen rotating up and then down 180 degrees

• Test trials: Object was placed behind the screen to block its path

– Screen rotated 112 degrees (possible event) or 180 degrees (impossible event)

– Infants looked longer at impossible event, even though possible event was (arguably) more novel

• Based on findings using the violation-of-expectation method with very young infants, core knowledge theorists claim that some types of object knowledge are innate or emerge very early without direct experience with objects

Issues

• If infants are not fully habituated initially, may show a preference for the familiar stimulus during test trials—the more familiar stimulus is also the “impossible event”

• Some evidence indicates the presence of familiarity effects

• Other factors may also be confounded with the possible and impossible events

– Ex: Degree of movement

• Should infants’ looking behavior be attributed to higher-order cognitive processes or does it reflect more “basic” perceptual processes (e.g., preference for novelty or familiarity)?

– “Perception and knowing are not the same thing. . . A person can regard an event as odd without knowing why” (Haith, 1998)

• Why does young infants’ behavior differ from older children’s behavior?

– Ex: If young infants have object permanence, then why don’t older infants search for hidden objects, make the A-not-B error, etc.?

Conclusions (Cohen & Cashon, 2006)

• Evidence is mixed and has been used both to justify core knowledge theories and more traditional Piagetian explanations of object knowledge

• Researchers should focus on understanding the process of acquiring object permanence, rather than treating it as an all-or-none phenomenon

Information Processing Theories: Common Features

– Cognitive development is viewed as gradual (continuous, quantitative) rather than abrupt (discontinuous, qualitative)

– Children are viewed as active problem solvers

• Problem solving: Process of attaining a goal by using a strategy to overcome an obstacle

– Focus is on specifying mechanisms of cognitive change

• Task Analysis: Identification of goals, relevant information in the environment, and potential processing strategies for a problem

– Comparisons between information processing of humans and that of computers:

• Computer’s ability to process information is limited by its

– Hardware (e.g., memory capacity, speed/efficiency of operations)

– Software (e.g., strategies, information available)

• Individuals’ thinking is limited by – Memory capacity– Speed/efficiency of thought processes– Availability of relevant strategies and knowledge

Development of Memory

Components of the Memory System:

• Sensory memory: Fleeting retention of raw sensory input; information is moved to short-term memory or is lost

– Can hold a moderate amount of information for a fraction of a second– Capacity is relatively constant over much of development

• Short-term (working) memory: “Workspace” in which information from sensory memory and long-term memory is brought together and actively processed

– Can hold and operate on between 1 and 10 items (words, numbers, etc.) for periods of a few seconds to a minute

– Capacity and speed of operation increases greatly over the course of childhood and adolescence

• Long-term memory: Information retained on an enduring basis

– Can hold an unlimited amount of information for unlimited periods of time

– Includes knowledge and skills

– Long-term memory increase greatly with development

Explanations of Memory Development

• Basic Processes

– Simple, most frequently used mental activities

• Exs: associating events with each other; recognizing objects as familiar; recalling facts and procedures; generalizing from one instance to another; encoding

– Encoding: Process of representing in memory information that draws attention or is considered important

• Speed of processing increases most rapidly during childhood but continues to increase through adolescence

– Biological factors• Increased myelination promotes faster neuronal

transmission

• Increased connections among brain regions promotes increased processing capacity and speed

– Familiarity/Learning

• Strategy Use

– Strategy: A general plan or set of plans intended to achieve a goal

Specific Memory Strategies

• Rehearsal: Repetition of information

– Spontaneous use of this strategy emerges around age 5

• Repeat an item as it is presented

– Younger children do not typically use cumulative rehearsal

(repeating all items in a list each time a new item is added)

– Cumulative rehearsal is associated with the primacy effect» Improved recall for items at the beginning of a sequence or list

– When younger children are instructed to use cumulative rehearsal, memory performance improves

• Organization: Grouping items on the basis of similarity

– By approximately 10-11 years, children tend to recall related items together

– When younger children are instructed to use organization, memory performance improves

• Elaboration: Creating a meaningful relationship between two items (verbally or visually)

– Typically tested using paired-associates procedure

• Two words are paired (e.g., bear-blanket)– Test: One word is presented and participant must recall

other word

– Children rarely use elaboration spontaneously

– If instructed to use visual or verbal elaboration, memory performance improves

• Content Knowledge

– Greater knowledge increases children’s ability to remember new information because they can relate it to information they already know

• When children know more about a topic than adults, their memory for new information about the topic is often better than that of adults

– Ex: Chi (1978)

» Tested memory for novel chessboard arrangements in child chess experts and novice adults