COGS 120D exam #2

Dual Representation

Being able to flexibility switch between treating objects as an object and as a symbol

Symbolic Representation

• Knowing that an object could represent another object (e.g., a map representing a room)

• Develops around 3 years old

Conclusion on DeLoache’s Studies

2-year-olds could solve the “shrinking room” task if doing so did not rely on dual representation

Symbolic Understanding

The understanding that things can stand for or represent other things

Pretend Play

• Helpful for: Executive functioning, language, socio-emotional reasoning

• Taylor & Carlson (1997): Found that those children with imaginary friends outperformed against children w/o them in terms of executive functions

Egocentrism

• Inability to view other people’s perspectives

→ Ex: Piaget’s mountain task, where children couldn’t imagine the mountains from the doll’s POV until ~age 7

Animistic Thinking

Over attributing human attributes to things that are inanimate

Essentialism

• The idea that members of a category all have some inner “essence” that causes them to be a member of that category

→ E.g., a cat has special “cat genes” that make it cat-like

• Properties of Essentialism:

→ Fixed at birth (a cat raised by dogs will still be a cat)

→ Underlying structure (if one cat has something, all cats have it)

Conservation

Understanding that an amount stays the same even when its shape or appearance changes.

Why do conservation errors occur?

• Centration: focusing on one salient feature of an object (e.g., focused on how long the row is opposed to the number of objects in the row)

• Lack of reversibility: poor understanding that objects can be transformed back into the original state

Appearance-Reality Tasks (Flavell, 1986)

• Tests of whether kids can tell the difference between what something looks like and what it actually is.

• Kids look at white milk through green glasses.

→ 3-4 yrs: think it really is green

→ 5-6 yrs: know it only looks green and is still white

Future Thinking Words

2-3 years: Children start using words like “tomorrow” or “yesterday”

Counterfactual Reasoning

• 3-4 years of age: Reasoning about events that could have happened but didn’t

• Harris, German & Mills (1996): What would happen if you took your shoes off when you went through the door?

→ Children would say something along the lines of your kitchen would not get dirty

Over-Determined Counterfactuals

• Children don’t yet have the idea to do this

• An outcome has more than one cause, and each cause alone would’ve been enough to make it happen.

Planning

• Usually measured using the Tower of London Task (Shallice, 1982; Berg & Byrd, 2002)

→ Board looks like this, then asks them to make it look a certain way in a certain number of moves, which forces them to think ahead

→ develops around 4-5

Planning (Future)

• Scenario: Imagine you’re walking into an cold environment, what would you need to bring? (mittens, ice cubes, ruler)

→ 5-year-olds: select correct items to plan for the future

→ < 5-year-olds: select semantic matches (things associated with the scene, but aren't useful for them)

Episodic Foresight/Future Thinking

• Picturing yourself in a future situation so you can plan or prepare for it now.

• 5-year-olds (and adults) continue to struggle with this

• Scenario: 3-5-year-olds ate salty pretzels and got thirsty.

→ Asked what they want now → water

→ Asked what they want tomorrow → still water

Takeaway: how kids feel now shapes what they think they’ll want later. 5-year-olds did a little better, but most still picked water.

Timeline Placement

Preschoolers showed no difference in preference for right vs. left or top vs. bottom (Tillman & Barner, 2016)

Logarithmic thinking

• Our minds stretch out things that are close to us and squish together things that are far away.

→ Ex: people place marriage, retirement, and death close together on a timeline, since they’re all far from now.

→ 5-year-olds: can tell past from future, but not near future from distant future (both feel like “later”)

Ability to map events

• Ability to place events on a map develops between 3-6:

→ 3-year-olds: no trouble with differentiating past events, but had trouble with future events

→ 5-year-olds: differentiated between both past and future events

Inhibitory Control

The ability to follow rules while inhibiting impulses

• Gestard et al. (1994): told them to say “night” when they saw a card with a sun, while “day” for a card with a moon

  → 3 year olds were terrible, 5 year olds were better

  
  

Dimensional Card Sort Task

Tests cognitive flexibility, the ability to switch rules and approaches to problems

Delay of Gratification

• Resisting immediate temptation to get rewards later on

• Kids choose between 1 marshmallow now or 2 marshmallows if they wait for the experimenter to come back.

→ Older kids wait longer.

→ Kids who waited longer did better later in life

Working Memory

• Ability to hold multiple things/information at once

→ Adults: remember about 7 items

→ 4-year-olds: remember about 4 items

…BUT, adults do just as poorly with unfamiliar items

→ As words become familiar to us, we use up less processing space, thus freeing up storage space

Kidd, Palmieri, & Aslin (2012): Rational Snacking

Children who were placed into unreliable environments waited for much less than those in reliable ones

Two Theories on Working Memory Changes

1. Total operating space increases

2. As words become familiar to us, we use up less processing space, thus freeing up storage space

Long-term memory

• Procedural memories + Declarative memories

→ Declarative split into semantic memories (general knowledge) & episodic memories (personal recollections)

Infantile Amnesia

People typically can’t recall anything that happened before the ages of 3-4

Earliest Memories

• Happen around ages 3-5

• Happen at earlier ages in:

→ Cultures that discuss memories a lot

→ Cultures that discuss emotions a lot

• Often have emotional and/or negative content

Forgetting & Remembering

With age:

→ Forgetting decreases

→ Memories become more specific

→ Children become less suggestible

Theory of Mind

The ability to understand others may have beliefs, perspectives, and desires different than one’s own

Wimmer & Perner (1983): False beliefs

The ability to recognize that another person can hold a belief that differs from reality.

Overregularization

Incorrectly applying already known rules to new words

→ Ex: I goed to the store.

Gricean Maxims

• Maxim of Quality: Be truthful

• Maxim of Quantity: Don’t talk for too long or for too little

• Maxim of Relation: Be Relevant

• Maxim of Manner: Be Clear

Code-Related Skills

Understanding how written language represents spoken language and how print works.

Critical Components of Early Reading

• Identifying letters

• Understanding conventions of print

• Language comprehension skills

• Cognitive control

• Working memory

Early Math

1. Nonsymbolic math (math without symbols or verbal labels) begins in infancy

2. Symbolic counting (math with symbols or verbal labels) develops during the preschool years

   
   

Symbolic Counting Stages

1. Counting without Meaning

2. Memorizing/knowing what “one”, “two”, or “three” looks like

3. Understanding the cardinality principle; proficient counting (the final number word spoken represents the total quantity of objects)

Marker for not being two knower yet

1. Not bringing two items when asked for two

2. When asked for a different number, they give 2 instead

Cultural Universals?

• Tsimane

→ Piantadosi et al. (2014): Protracted educational attainment, so protracted counting

* Go through same stages (0, 1, 2, 3, etc.), but takes longer compared to other countries

• Piraha

→ No linguistic words for numbers above 2

Generic Language

Language that describe a category as a whole rather than referring to specific individuals

Generics have Consequences

1. Increased stereotyping

2. Lead to beliefs that the other group shares the opposite view (Moty & Rhodes, 2021)

→ “Boys are good at sports” implies girls are not

3. Leads to increased essentialism (start believing properties are fixed at birth)

Working Memory Total Operating Space Consists of What?

Total operating space = processing space + storage space

Breastfeeding

• Linked to: higher IQ, lower obesity, fewer negative health outcomes

• But very few experimental studies

• Takeaway: the benefits may come from SES, not breastfeeding itself.

How do we get children to eat healthy foods?

• Frequent exposures (Menella et al., 2020)

• Some taste preferences develop in utero

• Creative preparation (Anzman-Frasca et al., 2012)

• Relaxed environment at meal time (Birch et al., 2003)

• Eating healthy foods yourself (Fisher et al., 2001)

“Dressing Up” Healthy Food

Sullivan & Birch (1990): children presented with sweet or salty tofu

→ Got children to eat more of that specific food, but it didn’t help them generalize tofu

Why do Children Develop Disgust Reactions?

• Kids got two identical foods, but one had been “sneezed on”.

→ 3-4 yrs: no difference. They ate the sneezed-on food just as much.

→ 5-8 yrs: avoided the contaminated food and ate more of the clean one.

Should we Describe Food as Healthy?

• 5-6-year-olds saw foods labeled “healthy,” “unhealthy,” or neutral.

→ “Unhealthy” vs. neutral: kids avoided the “unhealthy” food.

→ “Healthy” vs. neutral: no difference. The “healthy” label didn’t make kids want it more.

Changes in Sleep Patterns

• Less napping

• Less REM sleep (from 50% as infants to 20% as children)

How do we get children to sleep more?

• Consistent routines (Sadeh et a., 2009)

• Consistent parenting (Staples et al., 2015)

Maltreatment

• <1% of children are maltreated, though rates are declining

→ Neglect is the most common form

4 Types of Abuse

• Neglect: failure to meet children’s basic needs

• Emotional abuse: hampering emotional needs

• Physical abusive: intentional harm

• Sexual abuse: attempts or actual sexual contact

Types of Stress

• Positive: brief spikes in heart rate and mild stress hormones. Ex: first day of school, getting a shot.

• Tolerable: serious but temporary stress, buffered by supportive relationships. Ex: a loved one dying, with caring adults around.

• Toxic: prolonged stress activation without protective relationships. Ex: ongoing abuse or neglect.

Vaccination

Claimed 8 of 12 kids showed autism signs soon after the MMR vaccine. It was never replicated, and multiple studies found no link.

Explicit Reasoning

• Conscious, explicitly stated

→ Relies on verbal report

→ Subject to self-presentational strategies (e.g., telling experimenters what they want to hear)

→ Can risk underestimating reasoning

Implicit Reasoning

• Subconscious, not explicitly stated

→ Relies on non-verbal report (behavioral)

→ Not as subject to self-presentational strategies

→ Can risk overestimating reasoning

Lawrence Kohlberg

• Expanded on Piaget's stage-like theories

• Believed moral reasoning was about independent thinking, beyond the constraints of the law and social groups

Kohlberg’s Stages

• Level 1: Pre-conventional: right and wrong come from rewards and punishment.

→ Stage 1, punishment: avoid doing wrong to avoid getting in trouble.

→ Stage 2, self-interest: “what’s in it for me?” trades.

• Level 2: Conventional: right and wrong come from social approval and rules.

→ Stage 3, good relationships: be good and liked, judge actions by good intentions.

→ Stage 4, law and order: follow rules and laws to keep society working, as a duty.

• Level 3: Post-conventional: right and wrong come from justice, rights, and universal ethics.

→ Stage 5, social contract: people have different values and rights, and laws can be changed to serve people.

→ Stage 6, universal principles: follow universal ethics. Laws only count if they’re just, and unjust laws can be disobeyed.

Criticisms of Kohlberg

• Western, educated model

• Culturally-specific

• May underestimate:

→ Young children

→ Women (different moral orientation–ethics of “care”)

→ Non-educated people

• Relies too much on explicit reasoning

Measuring moral reasoning implicitly

Chernyal & Sobel (2015): children collaborated with puppet and then puppet knocked over a tower either accidentally or intentionally.

→ Children were much more likely to punish puppet if they did it intentionally compared to accidentally

Moral vs. Social-Conventional Domain

Smetana & Braeges (1982): children have some type of distinction between moral and social conventions

How Do Children Understand Emotions? (Stages)

Stages:

1. Distinguishing based on valence (good vs. bad emotions)

2. Distinguishing based on extreme arousal (extreme vs. mild emotions)

→ A little upset vs, downright distraught

3. Distinguishing based on at non-extreme arousal

→ Tense vs. nervous, stressed vs. depressed

Emotion Understanding Achievements

• Towards the end of the preschool period (~ages 5-6), children can:

→ Understand mixed emotions (being nervous and excited)

→ Understand real vs. apparent emotions

→ Understand emotions when they conflict with their own

• By 3 years, children can:

→ Predict emotions other people have

→ Predict actions follow from emotions

How Do We Support Emotion Understanding?

• Tarullo et al. (2016): emotion talk predicts emotional understanding

→ Kids whose adoptive parents used more emotion talk had emotional understanding similar to the control group

Culturally Variability in Emotion

• Wang et al. (2010): European American vs. Chinese parents

• → European American parents use more internal state language (feelings, thoughts), attributions, and explanations.

• → Their kids have earlier first memories, linked to the emotional content.

• Chinese kids develop ToM a bit later, but catch up eventually.

• Lu et al. (2009): Experiment

→ Kids who practiced predicting what would happen next in stories scored higher on ToM than controls.

Nso People of Cameroon

• Kids are taught self-restraint and emotional control from early on.

• They did much better on the marshmallow test (Lamm et al., 2018)