Cognitive Development

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  • Created by: Honor
  • Created on: 24-03-17 11:27

Piaget's Stages

Sensorimotor. Ages 0-2. Object permanence develops at 9 months. This when the child understands that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed

Pre-operational. Ages 2-7. Children are still egocentric meaning they cannot see another person’s viewpoint. Children have animism which is when they believe objects have human feelings. Also they will struggle with the idea of conserving

Concrete operations. Ages 7-11. They can now understand conservation and know that even when the appearance changes, the overall quantity will not differ. Children cannot understand class inclusion however

Formal operations. Ages 11+. Children now possess the ability to classify objects into categories and understand how they relate to each other. They can also think abstractly and logically problem solve

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Piaget's Key Terms

Schema – mental ideas about how to perform an action

Operation – a combination of schemas

Assimilation – using an existing schema to deal with a new object

Accommodation – an existing schema can’t deal with a new situation

Equilibrium – period of stability when schemas are used and work comfortably

Disequilibrium – instability when schema is not assimilated 

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Piaget's Own Evidence

Toy and Cloth Studysupports object permanence - involved hiding a toy under a cloth while the child was watching. He found that infants searched for the hidden toy when they after 9 months old. Before 9 months, children showed no interest in finding the toy as if it were out of sight, out of mind.

Mountain Studysupports egocentrism - Piaget and Inhelder used models of mountains with different features to test how a child perceived other viewpoints. Children looked at the model and were asked what a doll may see if it stood at different points in the scene. Under 7s would only describe their view but over 7s understood that people may see different things

Beaker Studysupports conservation - if he poured water into a different shaped glass, even though its appearance has changed, children around 7 would begin to understand that it was the same amount. 5 year olds would think that there was a different amount because the appearance has changed.

Pendulum Studysupports logical thinking - asked to work out what made the swing differ speed on a pendulum. Children past 11 years approached the task systematically, testing one variable at a time but younger children tried them out randomly or changed two things at the same time.

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Piaget Evaluation

Inspired other theories e.g. Baillargeon’s research into object permanence

Object permanence challenged by Bower and Wishart who placed a teddy bear in front of a 4 year old and when they reached for it, they turned the lights off. The baby still reached for it even thought they could not see

Donaldson argued that pre-school children were capable of more sophisticated thinking and may not be egocentric, may not understand the task

Observer bias may occur as he was the sole observer and may have only seen the results he wanted to see, a second observer may have been needed

He used his own children which is too small of a sample to generalise so may lack population validity and may have displayed demand characteristics from being tested

Culture bias as he only tested his own culture and this may not applicable to the whole world so may lack population validity

Only takes nature into consideration and does not look as an interactionist and see how the environment may affect us

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Vygotsky: Social Interaction, Context, Culture and

Interaction enables children to see adults and older children problem solve and use their cognitive skills

Heavily influenced by context and culture

Called learning a “fundamentally social process”

Interaction is KEY to cognitive development

Children have monologues called egocentric speech and this is because they have not yet internalised the skill yet

Social speech is used to talk

Intellectual speech is used to plan and think which develops around 7-8

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Vygotsky Supporting Studies

Wood and Middleton - supports scaffolding

12 mothers were asked to teach their own 4-year-old children in their own homes how to put together a wooden jigsaw puzzle/tower so that they could do it on their own

Recorded on video and the tapes were then analysed

Most successful "teacher mothers" adjusted their help subtly depending on the child's actions

Tzuriel and Shamir - supports scaffolding and social interaction

Peer assisted learning in Israel to look at the impact of peer mediation on the ability of young children to master seriation tasks

Those who had received more peer mediation had gained more improvement than the control group who received nothing 

Nunes also supported as he found Brazilian street children can have good numerical skills despite no formal education, as they had watched their elders work in shops

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Vygotsky Evaluation

Nurture over nature as it stresses the importance of context and someone's experiences and ignores genetic makeup. Does not provide an interactionist view as both sides have not been considered so it is not a complete theory

Good as it does account for culture differences as culture and context is a key feature in his theory e.g. the Brazilian children study. This makes it more generalisable to everyone as a theory

Contrasts with Piaget as he said cognitive development was specific to ages which Vygotsky believed to be false. Stand on different sides of the nature/nurture argument  

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Baillargeon's Explanation

Aimed to discover the unsuspected abilities of newborn and young children

Conducting such research can be very difficult as infants cannot easily indicate what they are thinking due to the inability to form language and perform the correct movements

Baillargeon suggested why infants only searched for objects around 9 months was because they physically could not move to look for it, not because they did not understand object permanence

In order to overcome this Baillargeon suggested a new technique was used

This was called Violation of Expectation research

It used the fact that infants look at something longer if it has surprised them and violated what they expected from that object

Baillargeon believed in the core knowledge theory that means humans have an innate basic understanding of physical objects and the relationship between them

Either quickly learned (innate fast learning) or knowledge is inbuilt (innate object knowledge)

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Violation of Expectation Research

Stage 1: Infants are shown a particular event repeatedly until they get familiar with it and stop responding to it

Stage 2: Infants are divided into 2 groups. Half are shown the same event and the other half are shown something unexpected and unfamiliar

The Rolling Carrot Task by Baillargeon and DeVos

3 and a half year old were made to watch a scenario of either a small or tall carrot slide along a conveyor. At the end a screen blocked off the lower half of the carrot so a small one could not be seen and a tall one could

When the tall carrot did not show through the infants looked longer as they were suprised by the unexpected event

Supports the idea that object permanence is younger than Piaget suggested

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V of E Research Evaluation

Baillargeon recruited her participants by getting names from a list of recent births from a newspaper. Opportunity sampling so is less time consuming but may be missing minorities and not fully representative and not generalisable

Cannot get consent from children therefore parental consent has to be obtained instead

Need to be informed they have the right to withdraw and this stands before, during or after the experiment

Lab experiment so has no extraneous variables so cause and effect can be established however it is not true to real life so not ecologically valid

Experiments were videoed which is good as they can be reviewed by other psychologists to improve reliability and reduce bias but also can be time consuming and parents must consent as their privacy must be temporarily violated

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Baillargeon Evaluation

Bremner suggested infant may be showing interest and surprise but this does not suggest that they understood object permanence

Cashon and Cohen suggested that infants are looking longer at scenarios that were more interesting to them, not the ones they found "impossible"

Baillargeon is a nativist and believed the abilities are innate as core knowledge theory suggests humans are born with an understanding of objects so she will believe object permanence will develop much earlier than Piaget. No nurture aspect means it's not a full theory

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Selman's Theory of Perspective Taking

Thought children don't understand the thoughts and feelings of others until they experience it themselves

In order to understand others, they have to take on other people's perspectives 

This ability is vital for many social activities such as group problem solving and persuasion

Good perspective taking usually means good social interaction but does not guarantee it

It is a skill that takes time to develop fully

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Selman's Scenarios

Selman devised scenarios of social situations to investigate children's abilities to see the world from other people's viewpoints

After the child heard the scenario and were asked open questions about it afterward

E.g. Emily is told not to cross the bridge by her mother. One day Emily's brother's bike is stolen by older children and they cross the bridge.

Should she chase the children? Will her mother tell her off? Does Emily think it is wrong?

This scenario has 4 people so it is rich in perspectives to consider

From these answers, Selman reviewed the data and grouped them into levels 

Children moved gradually from being egocentric to understanding multiple viewpoints

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Selman's 5 Stage Model

Stage 1. Age 3-6. Undiffererentiated Perspective Taking. Children can recognise that their self and others are different and have different feelings but not yet sure why.

Stage 2. Age 5-9. Social Informational Perspective Taking. Begins to realise that people have different views as they have different information to take in.

Stage 3. Age 7-12. Self-Reflective Perspective Taking. Child develops the ability to see things from other people's viewpoints and predict how people will feel about their own behaviour.

Stage 4. Age 10-15. Third-Party Perspective Taking. Steps outside the normal one on one social situation and may imagine how a bystander sees it.

Stage 5. Age 14 plus. Societal Perspective Taking. Broader look and understands that a person's views may be affected by other information like their culture, religion, values etc.

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Evaluation of Selman's Theory

Selman followed up on his original research and reinterviewed 48 boys of his 225 participants 2 years later. It was found that 4 had more gains and none had regressed. This shows that social cognition progresses with age and it can not decrease as it is a skill that is learned

O'Keefe and Johnson found that teachers that had an understanding of what stages children were at could ensure that learning was effective so that the children could make progress. Emphasises the real life application of his theory in the real world which makes it more valid

Suggested that perspective taking is too complex of a skill to be measured without longitudinal studies as it takes so much time to develop and needs time to study

We now live in a digital world and Selman saw communication as face to face but now can be in multiple ways today which may have affected the ages of his model and it may not be valid

His original research only included male participants and results were generalised and differences between the genders is being minimised which is beta gender bias so may not be fully valid

Reductionist appproach as his theory is broke down into ages suggesting that no other factors come into play apart from the age

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Developing a Sense of the Self

Before babies begin to understand other themselves, they must first develop a sense of their self

Self-recognition is about realising they are separate to other people

It develops rapidly from birth to two years

They start to understand themselves at 2 years

From that they are starting to develop a theory at 2 years, it becomes noticeable at 3-4 and should be fully developed at 6

Theory of mind is the understanding that every mind is different and that others do not see the world in the same way that you do

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Theory of Mind

Development of theory of mind is seen as crucial to normal social behaviour e.g. helps interaction

An everyday example of theory of mind is understanding someone may be very scared of rats even though you do not have this fear as you acknowledge everyone sees things differently 

Most people develop the ability to put themselves in another's perspective which helps us to begin to predict other people's behaviour and reactions

Theory of mind is assessed by the false belief tasks

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False Belief Tasks

Wimmer and Perner devised a story to test out children's false beliefs

Maxi's mother bought some chocolate. He sees her put it in the blue cupboard. Later on when Maxi is outside his mother moves it to the green cupboard.

Which cupboard will Maxi look in?

Nearly all 3 year olds said the wrong cupboard as they have not yet got the correct belief

By the age of 6 nearly all children the children understood.

Supported by the smarties tube by Perner

Children are shown a smarties tube. All children say smarties will be inside it. It has crayons in.

Children who have not yet developed theory of mind say other children will say crayons are in it but older children understand a child will still say smarties

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Theory of Mind to Explain Autism

Autism is a spectrum of disorders characterised by a triad of impairments

Research has divided the symptoms of Autism into 3 areas of impairment

This is called Wings Triad

Social and Emotional - difficulties with friendship, working co-operatively 

Language and Communication - difficulties with jokes, sarcasm, literal interpretations, body language

Flexibility of Thought - difficulties with empathy, coping with changes in routine, imagination

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Sally-Anne Test

Sally has a basket

Anne has a box

Sally puts a marble in her basket and goes away

Anne puts her marble in her box

First asked control questions to check they understood the basics e.g. where is the marble now?

Where will Sally look for the marble?

85% of the control group answered the false belief correctly

Down's children were also the same as ToM is not linked with low IQ

Only 20% of the autistic children could answer it correctly

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Explaining Autism Evaluation

Parents will have to give consent as the child cannot for themselves

Right to withdraw before, during and after

Privacy and ethics are much more important in children research!

Even more important when working with autistic children because they are vulnerable and require a higher level of care 

Language used in the false belief tasks may cause methodological issues as complex language may cause children to answer incorrectly, not because they do not have a theory of mind which could give invalid results

Baron-Cohen used an independent experimental design type to ensure that the control groups could be clearly compared to the autistic and downs groups

A complex disorder like autism cannot be reduced down to a simple explanation as more factors need to be considered

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Role of the Mirror Neuron System

Foundation for biological explanation to social cognition

A mirror neuron allows us to imitate others and understand behaviour

Fires when an animal performs an action or observes an action without intent

Has to have intent or would fire unnecessarily all the time

By understanding their intentions, we can understand the thoughts of others

At first was observed in monkeys and generalised to humans

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Mirror Neurons in Monkeys

Di Pellegrino and Rizzolatti

Researchers were recording neural activity in the motor cortex of monkeys 

Initially found that the F5 neurons fired when a monkey reached for a peanut

Accidentally found F5 neurons also would fire when they observed another monkey and a peanut

From this they systematically studied the action of mirror neurons in a series of manipulations 

They recorded electrode activity of individual F5 neurons

Hickok however argued that research should not only show that there is increased activity when observing but it should also show that damage can reduce performance

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Mirror Neuron Evaluation

Electrodes are harming, would not be used on humans so why is it okay on monkeys?

Study could never be carried out on humans due to ethics

Monkeys cannot give consent

Monkey research is generalised to humans so may not be valid

Reductionist as it reduces a complex topic down to a low level explanation 

Only looks at nature and does not consider nurture and give a balanced view

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