Cognition and development

Piaget's theory was developed to explain two aspects of learning; why we learn (motivation) and how we learn (assimilation and accommodation). Schemas are packages of information about an object or person. 

A child's motivation to learn is triggered by disequilibrium which is meeting a new situation that they cannot explain. When existing schemas are in line with what we perceive around us, this is known as equilibration. 

Assimilation is the term term for adding new information to a previous schema from a new situation.

Accommodation is when they experience something very different to anything they have experienced before and the information doesn't fit in with an already existing schema, so they have to create a new schema or change an existing one drastically. 

• This theory is descriptive rather than explanatory; it doesn't explain how these processes occur.
• Piaget's theory combines nature (biological maturation) with nurture (the child's experience).
• Practical application: Piaget's theory can be used applied to educational programmes so that they can respond to the stages of development.
• Piaget ignores the influence of culture and other people in fostering cognitive development.
• He claimed that language development was a reflection of cognitive development whereas Bruner said language development was the cause of cognitive development.

Sensory motor stage (birth - 2 years): Infants are born with a set of reflexes which helps them to explore and manipulate objects. They experience a lot of physical sensations. They realise that other people are separate from them and they start to acquire basic language. The concept of object permanence is gained from around 8 months old. 

Pre-operational stage (2 - 7 years): There are errors in logical thinking at the beginning of the stage. Thinking is nfluenced by what the child can see rather than logical reasoning. Conservation is when the child doesn't understand quantity remains the same despite the appearance changing. Egocentrism the child cannot see the world from another perspective. Class inclusion is when the child can classify objects but cannot include objects in sub-sets. 

Concrete operational stage (7 - 11 years): They can start to use operations (set of logical rules) so they can conserve quantities, realise people see the world in a different way (decentring) and has improved in inclusion tasks.

Formal operational stage (11+): Children manipulate abstract ideas and concepts.

• Cross-cultural studies found that the stages of development occur in the same order, apart from the formal operational stage. This suggestts cognitive development is a result of the biological process of maturation. However, the age at which this happens varies between cultures and individuals, suggesting social and cultural factors influence cognitive development.
• Because the formal operational stage isn't reached in all cultures it may not be biologically based.
• Huges (1975) argued that the mountains task was too complicated for children and didn't make sene. He carried out a study with a simpler, everyday concept and found 90% of the children had lost their egocentrism by age 4.
• Bower and Wihart (1974) found that one month old babies showed surpise when objects disappeared which raises the possibility that they don't look for hidden objects because they don't have the motor abilities to do so rather than lacking object permanence
• A limitation is how the children were asked the questions. As they were asked more than once they may have been led to believe they had given an incorrect answer such as "which beaker has the most water?". It may be that researchers appear to children like they are intending to alter the number or volume of something or the children may view it as a trick question.

This theory suggests that we are born with elementary mental abilities such as memory and perception, but higher mental functions develop through the influence of social interactions. He agreed that development takes place in stages similar to Piaget, but viewed cognitive development as a social process where children learn from experienced adults. Vygotsky argued that higher mental abilities can only develop through interaction with more advanced 

Zone of proximinal development (ZPD): This is the gap between the level of actual development (what the child can do on their own) and the level of potential development (what the child can do with assistance). ZPD is where a task can be completed with instruction as it is just beyond the individuals capabilties. Challenging tasks are needed to encourage growth.

Scaffolding: This is the conditions needed to support a child's learning to move away from what they know to new things. There are 5 ways in which an adult can 'scaffold' a child's learning:
1. Engaging the child's interest
2. Maintaining the child's interest e.g. providing clear instruction 
3. Keeping the child's frustration under control e.g. supportive interactions
4. Emphasising the important features of the task
5. Demonstrating the task

• Supporting study found that children working in pairs or groups produce much more sophisticated ideas in "reciprocal teaching"
• Can explain cultural differences in development because different cultures and sub-cultures adopt different mental abilities.
• Other factors are ignored due to the emphasis on social interaction and culture. Other factors may be emotional ones such as the joys of success and disappointment or frustration of failure
• Over-emphasised socio-cultural factors at the expense of biological influence on development. The theory doesn't explain why stages occur in the same order in all cultures, which is most likely to do with biological factors
• Vygotsky's theory has been applied to education. Scaffolding is used as an effective way of teaching as it helps teachers to guide their students to the next stage of their learning as well as mixing different ability children to make use of reciprocal/peer teaching

She made tasks where children had to look at both possible and impossible events. She found babies stare longer at impossible events.

Violation of expectation: the research into this involved 24 5-6 month olds. 
The rabbit passed behind a screen and reappeared on the other side, children stared for 25.11 seconds.
The rabbit passed behind a screen with a window and appeared the other side without being seen through the window, children stared for 33.07 seconds.

This challenges Piaget as he said children don't have a concept of object permanence until 8-9 months. Baillargeon shows this is much earlier. She suggested children are born with knowledge of the properties of objects (nature). This is called the physical reasoning system.

• Challenges Piaget's idea that we are born with only a few physical schemas and knowledge is acquired through experience.
• The procedure has greater validity than Piaget as it doesn't require the children to use their motor skills - it measures exactly what it is intended to measure.
• All studies with children present a problem of not knowing exactly what the child is thinking, we have to interpret their behaviour. So we don't know the real reason why they are staring/doing whatever they are doing.
• The suggestion that we are borm with basic knowledge of objects and their properties makes sense as it can explain why we know things such as if you let go of an object it will fall to the floor.
• Double-blind study; neither the participants or researchers knew the purpose of the study which was important.
• Parents were told to not interact with the children at all.
• Volunteer sample - the parents who got involved probably hold similar characteristics and most likely interact a lot with their children therefore it could be due to another factor like the parents have played with their children lots and encouraged behaviour like this.

Social cognition is the mental processes we use when we interact with other people. How we initiate and respond to people is based on our understanding of them.
Holly scenario: Holly is 8 years old and is the best tree climber. She falls from a tree, isn't hurt but her father gets worried and makes her promise to not climb trees again. They meet Sean and his kitten is stuck up a tree. Holly's the only one who can climb but remembers her promise.
Stage 0 - Undifferentiated perspective-taking (3-6yrs): Father would be happy about her getting the kitten back. They think the father knows what they do. They distinguish between themselves and others but take an egocentric approach.
Stage 1 - Social-informational perspective-taking (6-8yrs): Father may tell her off as he doesn't know about the kitten. They understand people have different perspectives and assume this is because of different information.
Stage 2 - Self-reflective perspective-taking (8-10yrs): Holly won't be punished as her father will understand if she explains why. Can view their own thoughts and feelings from others and know other people can do the same.
Stage 3 - Mutual perspective-taking (10-12yrs): Holly thought she should help Sean; her father would only punish if he felt she had done it for a bad reason. They view the situation from both perspectives and consider 2 viewpoints at one time
Stage 4 - Societal perspective-taking (12-15yrs+): Holly won't be punished as she is helping people. Decisions are now made with reference to social conventions.

• A supporting longitudinal study took place over 5 years with 41 children. They used the same dilemmas as Selman did in 1980. 40 out of 41 children developed perspective-taking in the same way as Selman described.
• Selman's stages reflect Piaget's stages of cognitive development. We do not know if increase in cognitive ability causes the improvements in perspective taking. 
• A study found teens (avg. age 15) that had been abused had the avg. perspective-taking age of 10. This could be because they had poor social interaction or because they were observing poor behaviour in their parents.
• Studies are from Western, individualist cultures. Wu and Keysar found young Chinese adults (collectivist cultures) were better at perspective-taking than their American counterparts.
• Perspective-taking doesn't lead to prosocial behaviour. Bullies had no difficulties in perspective-taking. Selman doesn't consider moral development such as empathy or family influence.
• Selman's theory can be used to increase understanding of some atypical development. Children with ADHD and autism have difficulties with perspective-taking.

Theory of mind is the ability to understand that everyone has different beliefs, feelings, desires and perspectives to everyone else. This allows us to predict what other people are going to do, think and believe. 

Wimmer and Perner made a study of 2,4,6 & 8 year olds. They had to watch Maxi place chocolates in a blue cupboard, when Maxi leaves the room, his mother moves the chocolates to a green cupboard. They are asked where Maxi will look for the chocolates. Most 3 & 4 year olds said the green cupboard (no ToM). Most 6 & 8 year olds said blue cupboard (had ToM). 

This suggests ToM becomes developed between 6 and 8. 

Baron-Cohen done research into autism and ToM. He created the Sally-Anne study. Sally puts marble in her basket, when she leaves, Anne puts the marble in her box. Sally returns and the children are asked where the marble is, where it was to begin with, and where Sally will look for the marble. The sample had 20 autistic children, 14 children with Down's and 27 without a diagnosis. Average aged of 4.5. All ppts got the first two questions right. 85% of control and down's syndrome children got the answer right, only 20% of the autistic children did. 

Children with ASD seem to lack ToM.

• Baron-Cohen simplified the false belief task, but some people argue that the reason why children aged 0-3 fail is because they don't understand the task.
• ToM is very similar to Piaget's concept of egocentrism and appears around the same age which increases validity for both concepts.
• ToM involves specific areas of the brain which suggests that it's an innate process that isn't influenced by learning (nature). This is supported by cross-cultural studies that suggest this ability appears at the same age across cultures. 
• Children engage in imaginary play before age 4 which shows they have theory of mind before they are able to complete false belief tasks. 
• Sally-Anne study has been replicated many times which proves it is reliable.
• However, the study doesn't consider all of the other symptoms of autism.
• Lack of ToM isn't only linked to ASD, it is also found in people with schizophrenia and people with narcissistic personality.
• 20% of the autistic children got it right, so it isn't a symptom of autism in everyone.

Rizzolati et al. (2002) discovered mirror neurons by accident. The found a monkey's mirror neurons became activated in the same way be carrying out an action or observing someone carrying out the same action. 

This challenges the belief that contrary to what we used to think (understanding other people's actions using stored knowledge), we actually stimulate other's actions in our motor system and experience their intentions by using our mirror neurons.

Iacoboni says mirror neurons send messages to the limbic system, part of the brain that deals with emotions, and they help us to tune in with each others feelings. It is thought we produce facial expressions in response to facial expressions observed in other people. The firing activates feelings associated with that facial expression which allows us to experience the same feelings.

Ramachandran says mirror neurons have been influential in evolution as it allows us to understand the emotions, intentions and perspectives of others so we can live in large groups and societies. 

• Hacker done fMRI imaging when people were shown a video of someone yawning. When they yawned it showed increased activity in right frontal love which is thought to be rich in mirror neurons.
• fMRI do not show precise areas/neurons therefore it is difficult to make conclusions.
• Most research showing single neurons has been carried out on animals and for ethical reasons we cannot do it on humans and cannot completely generalise animal studies to humans.
• "Broken mirror" theory for people with autism; deficits in social cognition could be due to dysfunction in the mirror neuron system which can explain why they struggle to read emotions.
• Results were found to be inconsistent.