Chapter 7 Review: Conceptual Development

what are concepts?

general ideas / understandings that can be used to group together objects, events, qualities, or abstractions that are similar in some way (how we make sense of the world)

how do infants categorize objects?

they respond to discriminably different entities from a common class as members of the same category; concepts are the basis of categories

what are the three general categories of objects?

1. inanimate objects

2. people

3. other living things (plants? unsure for years)

how did 3-4 month olds categorize objects?

they habituated to pictures of cats, looked longer at pictures of dogs

how did 6 month olds categorize objects?

they were able to categorize mammals vs fish / birds

what is perceptual categorization?

grouping objects based on similar appearance (e.g. colour, shape, movement)

how did 2+ year olds categorize objects?

they used shape

what are category hierarchies?

categories that are organized by subset relations, such as animal / dog / poodle

what are the levels of category hierachies?

1. superordinate level

2. basic level

3. subordinate level

what is the superordinate level of catergories?

the general level within a category hierarchy (e.g. animal)

what is the basic level of categories?

the middle level, and often the first level learned (3-4 months), within a category hierarchy (e.g. dog)

what is the subordinate level of hierachies?

the most specific level within a category hierarchy, learned at around 6-7 months (e.g. poodle)

how do infants learn categorization?

by using subtle difference in language, young children (30 months) used subtle linguistic cues when learning about categories

what is an example of cause-effect categorizing?

• 4-5 year olds are randomized to 2 conditions: 1) hearing a list of different features wugs and gillies have, 2) hearing about why the creatures have these features

• if 4-5 year olds knew why wugs and gillies had their features (vs just their features) they were better at categorizing the creatures and remembering the categories

what is naive psychology?

a common sense level of understanding other people and oneself; children develop this psychology early in life and apply invisible mental states to explain behaviour

infants seem to be born with what kind of consciousness?

a kind of implicit self consciousness, a rudimentary understanding that they are separate from other people and can act in ways that accomplish their goals

when do most children show self-recognition in mirror task?

by 18-20 months

when do children look more at photos of self than others, and refer to self by name or personal pronoun?

by 18-24 months

self-awareness is established by?

2 years of age

what is theory of mind?

well-organized understandings of how the mind works and how it influences the behaviour (intentions, desires, beliefs, perceptions, emotions)

when do children develop theory of mind?

between ages 2 and 5

what are 2 year olds understandings of theory of mind?

other people’s desires → their actions (not understanding of beliefs)

what are 3 year olds understandings of theory of mind?

other people’s desires and beliefs → their actions, but fail at false-belief problems

what are 5 year olds understandings of theory of mind?

excel at solving false-belief problems & understand that people may feel one emotion but display another

what are false-belief tasks?

tasks that assess whether children understand that another person’s beliefs reflect that person’s experiences and influence their actions, even if those experiences have led the other person to a false belief

what is the theory-of-mind module (TOMM)

a hypothesized specialized brain mechanism devoted to understanding other people

what parts of the brain are investigated as the core components of the brain’s theory of mind network (kobayashi et al)?

the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporo-parietal junction

studies of children with autism spectrum disorder are often?

are often cited to support the idea of TOMM, as children with ASD struggle with completing false-belief tasks

what is the mental states theory?

the idea that theory of mind emerges from interactions with other people (e.g. siblings, especially older and opposite sex)

how do children understand living vs. nonliving things?

young children understand that self-produced motion is a distinctive characteristic of people and other animals

who do preschoolers understand about biological processes?

they understand properties of living things crucial for their functions (not 100% correctly though!) such as inheritance and essentialism

what is essentialism?

living things have an essence inside them that makes them what they are

what do 3-4 year olds understand about biological processes?

naive theories of biology include understanding of movements, growth, internal parts, inheritance, illness, and healing (e.g. if a chair gets scratched, will it heal?)

when do children classify plants as ‘alive’?

is difficult, not until age of 7-9 years; goal-directed behaviour (e.g. motion) is an important part of being alive; experience + culture (e.g. living in a rural area = realize that plants are living sooner)

what is stage 1 of understanding death (ages 3-5)?

death is separation; dead are less alive; a lot of curiosity about death

what is stage 2 of understanding death (ages 5-9)?

death is final/irreversible, but you might be able to escape it; death is seen as a person

what is stage 3 of understanding death (ages 9+)?

death is personal, universal, final, and inevitable

how do nativist / core knowledge theories explain how children understand biological processes?

children have a “biology module” that

• was crucial for survival during early periods of evolution

• explains fascination of plants and animals

• explains why throughout the world information about plants and animals organized in similar ways

how do empiricists / sociocultural/ information-processing theories explain how children understand biological processes?

• children’s biological understanding arises from personal observations and culture

• children learn through reading and questions (questions differ!)

• children’s innate fascination with animals in complemented by the influences of information, beliefs, and values conveyed by parents and society

what is causal reasoning in infancy at 6-10 months?

• habituated to clips where a moving object collided with a stationary object

• looked longer at clips, where stationary object started moving before the collision

what is causal reasoning in infancy at 9-11 months?

• can reproduce actions that are causally related (e.g. building a rattle)

• causally unrelated actions cannot reproduce until 20-22 months

what was chen and sigeler’s toddler problem solving task?

was done to examine toddlers’ causal reasoning and problem solving, choosing the right tool for getting the toy turtle required children to understand the importance of both the length of the shaft and the angle of the head relative to the shaft

why did 2-year olds succeed more than 1-year olds in the problem solving task?

• they more often used a tool to try to get the toy, as opposed to reaching for it with their hands or seeking their mother’s help

• they chose the optimal tool on a greater percentage of trials in which they used some tool

• they more often generalized what they had learned on the first problem to new, superficially different problems involving tools and toys with different shapes, colours, and decorations

what was the overall finding of chen and sigeler’s toddler problem solving task?

the older toddlers had a deeper understanding of the causal relations between a tool’s features and its usefulness for pulling in the toy, and that they learned more from observing other people’s actions

how do 3-4 year olds understand magic?

they fail to see the point of magic tricks; they get something strange is happening

how do 5+ year olds understand magic?

they find magic fascinating because there is no obvious causal mechanism that produces the trick; they have better developed cause-effect thinking

how do children understand space relative to others?

understanding the location of objects relative to self forms early in life (e.g. reaching for objects closer to self)

what helps children understand space relative to others?

self-locomotion (e.g. imagine if you are in the classroom study; reiser et al); puzzles

what are egocentric spatial representations?

coding of spatial locations relative to one’s own body, without regard to the surroundings

how do visually impaired children develop spatial thinking?

they have a surprising good sense of space, children who are born blind perform some tasks as well as sighted children who are blindfolded

when can infants use landmarks to code the location of objects they observe to be hidden?

as young as 6 months

how can young infants use a landmark successfully?

it must be the only obvious landmark in the environment and must be located right next to the hidden object

does culture impact spatial skills?

yes they tend to be well developed in cultures in which they are crucial for survival (e.g. aboriginal children are superior to their city-dwelling peers in memory for spatial location)

how do infants experience time?

have rudimentary knowledge or temporal order and duration of events & can differentiate between longer and shorter time periods (seconds, not longer)

how do preschoolers experience time?

they often confuse the past with the future

what plays a role in time perception?

attention

if there is a faster train and a slower train next to each other, which train travelled for a longer period of time according to a 5 year old? why?

the faster train, the child’s logic dictates that "further distance" must equal "more time" (pre-operational)

what is numerical equality?

the realization that all sets of N objects have something in common (e.g. two, dogs, two cups, share the property of “twoness”)

when do babies have a basic understanding of addition & subtraction?

at 5 months

what happened in wynn’s task for infants understanding addition?

infants younger than 6 months looked for a longer time at the seemingly impossible event, suggesting they were surprised to see 1 doll rather than 2

what are the 5 principles underlying counting?

1. one-to-one principle

2. stable-order principle

3. cardinality principle

4. order irrelevance

5. abstraction

what is the one-to-one principle?

one and only number name for each object that is counted

what is stable-order principle?

number names are counted in the same order

what is cardinality principle?

the last number differs from the previous ones as it is the number of objects

what is order irrelevance?

objects can be counted in any order (left to right, top to bottom)

what is abstraction?

any set of discrete objects/events can be counted

how does culture impact how children learn to count?

in chinese, the words for numbers between 11 and 19 follow the same rule (equivalent to ten-one, ten-two, and so on), in english, no simple rule indicates the numbers between 11 and 19; each term has to be learned separately