Infant & Child Dev Exam 2

Research should be guided by theory because they:

Explain multiple phenomena simultaneously

Make specific, testable predictions

Understand the generalizability of an explanation

Empiricism and Nuture

All knowledge comes from experience

Babies are blank slates = Tabula rasa

Nativism and Nature

Babies are endowed with knowledge and capabilities

Maturation unfolding

Early Psychology research followed:

Empiricist tradition → behaviorism

Classic Conditioning

A neutral stimulus can take on a new meaning and lead to a different (conditioned) response after being paired with a meaningful stimulus

Operant Conditioning

behaviors are modified through reinforcement or punishment

reinforcement through rewards

Sleep Associations

work like classical conditioning

Chomsky’s “Poverty of the stimulus” argument

It would be impossible for children to learn language from impoverished & error-laden speech available to them

When Nativist and Constructivist views grew

Empiricist traditions decreased or disappeared

Constructivism

Emphasis on children’s active role in their own learning

Piaget’s stage Theory: Describe and explain development

Piaget’s Stage Theory

Stage 1: Sensorimotor Period

Stage 2: Preoperational Period

Stage 3: Concrete Operational Period

Stage 4: Formal Operational Period

Emphasized qualitative change

Schema: cognitive representation of the world; how people organize & understand information

Stage 1

Sensorimotor Period

• birth - 2 years

• Schemas are limited to sensory experience

• No mental representations

Stage 2

Preoperational Period

• 2-7 years

Emergence of Mental Representations:

• Symbolic play

• Deferred imitation

• Object Permanence

Stage 3

Concrete Operational Period

• 7 - 11 Years

Emergence of Logical Mental Operations:

• Flexible thinking

• But, still restricted to concrete experiences

Stage 4

Formal Operational Period

• 11 Years +

Capable of Abstract thought:

• Logical reasoning

• Problem solving beyond concrete experience

4 key processes between Piaget’s theory

Assimilation

Equilibrium and Disequilibrium

Accommodation

Assimilation

Incorporate new information into an existing schema

Disequilibrium

How to rectify disequilibrium and return to equilibrium (reference to thinking whale is fish)

Schema: Things that live in the water are fish

• maybe my schema is right and the thing i saw doesn’t live in the water

or

• maybe my schema is wrong

  • change schema to fit new reality

Lev Vygotsky

• Thought Piaget overlooked social interactions

• skills are difficult to master but can be done with guidance from mentor

• argued learning occurs with guidance from others

Symbolic Understanding

Symbols: Something that stand for something else

Dual representation: when the symbol itself is a thing, like an object

Mental Representation

being able to hold and manipulate objects and events in mind

Deferred Imitation

copying another person’s actions later, hours or days after the child witnessed the actions

involves memory

Displaced reference

When children understand and use words to refer to things that are not present

Important for language development and pretend play

Objects permanence

Understanding an object continues to exist, even when you don’t see it

Egocentrism

The tendency of children to believe that other people view the world from their perspective

• Piaget believe not until age Concrete Operational stage (age 7)

• Piaget overestimated children’s difficulties and are likely to demonstrate some ability early, (3 or 4 yr old)

Failing Conservation tasks

• Pre-operational thinking (early childhood)

• Error: centration focusing on only one dimension

Decentration

The ability to focus on more than one part of a problem, situation, or object

Reversibility

Realization that objects/things can be changed or returned to their original state

Classification is not straight forward

Preoperational stage, cannot think about larger categories

requires thinking about sets and subsets

Mental Operations require

Reversibility & Classification

10 wooden bead problem example

Deductive Reasoning

difficult until 11+

Focus on what they know or have experience with

instead of the logical premise involved in the problem

Issues with Piaget’s approach

1. All-or nothing stage theory: children dont cleanly go from one stage to another

2. Piaget underestimated the abilities of infants and children. Relied on complicated tasks that children fail for other reasons

3. Process

Challenges to Piaget’s Conclusions

• Dynamic Systems theorists

• Information-processing theorists

• Nativists

Dynamic Systems theorists

• wanted more emphasis on in-the-moment contextual influences, rather than mental representations

  • changing features of the experimental context dramatically changes behavior

Information-processing theorists

posit gradual developmental changes, rather than qualitative stages

Nativists

Piaget underestimated infants’ cognitive ability

• other methods show infants do have mental representations, before Piaget believed

Rise of Nativism

observations show:

Young children are the most effective learners on earth

It would be impossible for children to learn so rapidly from impoverished & error laden input available to them

Core Knowledge Theory

Modern and dominant nativist theory

“Children learn fast and flexibly, because they are endowed with at least six cognitive systems that capture fundamental properties of the things they learn about”

Expectation paradigm

watching an event, and having a certain expectation

Violation expectation paradigm

Infants will look at the unexpected event longer

Core Knowledge: Objects

• Infants have innate knowledge or capacity to learn physical properties of objects

• Principles of persistence: Idea that objects retain physical properties over time

Principles of Persistence

• Permanence: objects continue to exist when they aren’t visible

• Cohesion: Objects should hold together, or retain their physical properties over time

• Continuity: objects should move long continuous paths in time and space

• Gravity, support, and contact: objects cannot move on their own or support themselves, only with contact/support

Property: Solidity

Expectation: object is solid

Property: Height/size

Idea that objects retain physical properties, such as height

Complexity of support understanding

Infants understand that objects:

• 3 months: cannot float in mid air

• 5 months: type of contact matters

• 6.5 months: Amount of contact matters

Two objects or one object

Core Knowledge Theory

Children learn fast and flexibly because they are endowed with at least six cognitive systems:

Objects, Numbers, Places, Geometry Agents, Social Beings

Number Knowledge: Two sources of numerical information in infancy

Core Object System

Core Number System

Core Object System

Supports rapid determination of the exact number of objects up to a capacity limit of about three

Core Number System

Represents approximate (or imprecise) numerical sizes of sets, in any perceptual modality (e.g., visual sets of objects, number of tones heard, number of ridges felt)

Infant tracking small sets

They can track small exact number of objects, events, & actions

Infants & small, exact numbers

• Infants can track up to three objects

• quick and automatic

• precise: exactly 1, exactly 2, or exactly 3

• Due to core object system

• called Subitizing

Infants & Large, Approximate Quantities

• Infants, non-human animals, and human adults across cultures can represent large sets

• occurs quickly and automatically

• is approximate: follows weber’s law

• ANS can support approximate arithmetic (adding, dividing, and subtracting)

Navigation

Spatial navigation of our local environment is critical for most species and virtually all of history

Navigation tools (Descriptors)

• Landmarks

• Spatial structure

• Room structure

Reorientation: Children & Rats

Children (and rats) only use distance and direction of walls, not landmarks to reorient

children do not use landmarks when disoriented

Executive Functions (EF)

Collection of skills involved in controlling and coordinting attentiomn, memory, and other behaviors involved in goal-directed actions

• A control system - not specific content knowledge

• Processes within EF:

1. Working memory: Holding and manipulating information in mind

2. Inhibitory control: Controlling attention to override impulses

3. Cognitive flexibility: Shifting rules, perspectives, or strategies

Working Memory

• Children’s ability to hold and manipulate items in mind

• Measured through reverse digit span task

  • Given set of digits, repeat them backwards

• Capacity grows from infancy → early childhood → Adolescence

• Changes from from shifts in strategy

Inhibitory Control

• Children’s ability to respond appropriately to a stimulus while inhibiting an alternative, dominant response

• Improvement from 3-5 yrs old

Cognitive Flexibility

• Children’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances, such as switching between rules and tasks

• Improvement around 4 years old

Developmental change in EF

Infancy:

• Early precursors (e.g., basic attention regulation)

Toddlerhood/preschool years

• Rapid growth

• High variability across people and contexts

Middle childhood:

• More efficient, more integrated, better strategies

• Large effect of schooling and social expectation

Key principles: Gradual, non-linear, and context dependent

EF Correlation

EF associated with long term life outcomes

• Associated with better math skills

• correlated with more effective resolving of peer conflict

• attention span

EF and culture values

Treating one experience of self-control as universal, risk labeling difference as deficit