Cog Dev

What were the two stages Piaget thought of for learning

Motivation to learn

Learning occuring

How does motivation to learn work

Disequilibrium and equilibration

Disequilibrium and equilibriation

Learning something new we don’t understand leads to disequilibrium

Adapting to situation by adapting and exploring = Equilibration

How does learning take place

Assimilation and accommodation

Assimilation and Accommodation

Assimilation: Understand new experience and fits into existing schemas

Accommodation: Adjust by radically changing existing schemas or making new ones

How are schemas important to Piaget

Schemas are mental structures that represent our knowledge, new info either fits or doesn’t fit

PIAGET EVAL: Form mental representations through discovery

Believed learning occurred through forming own mental representations

Howe et al: 9-12 year olds study movements on slope, all understanding had increased but not all children had come to same conclusions or picked up same facts

PIAGET EVAL: Application to education

Adaptations to learning environment encouraged to allow children to make own discoveries

PIAGET EVAL: Underplay role of other people in learning

Piaget believed other people are important sources of information

Other theories suggest others are CENTRAL to learning e.g. Vygotsky

PIAGET EVAL: Overplay importance of equilibration

Children vary greatly in intellectual curiosity, Piaget may have over-estimated how motivated children are to learn

PIAGET EVAL: Underplayed importance of language

Piaget: Language is cognitive ability that develops inline with other abilities

Other theories place more importance on language development

What are Piagets stages of intellectual development

Sensorimotor

Pre-operational

Concrete

Formal

What happens in sensorimotor stage

Age: 0-2

Baby focuses on physical sensations and co-ordination, learnt through trial and error

8 months = Object permanence understanding, things exist when out of sight

What happens in pre-operational stage

Ages: 2-7 years old

Beginnings of conservation, egocentrism and class inclusion

Pre-operational stage: Conservation

Basic understanding that quantity is consistent even when appearances change

Two identical rows of counters, when counters in one row pushed closer, pre-operational children struggled

Two vessels holding water, if one is taller and thinner, pre-operational believe it to hold more

Pre-operational: Egocentrism

Piaget and Inhelder: Three mountains task, each mountain had a different feature, doll would be placed on side of mountain at different angle from child and child was asked what the doll could ‘see’

Pre-operational children often chose picture that fit their own point of view

Pre-operational: Class inclusion

Pre-operational understand categories, but not as far as subsets

Piaget and Inhelder: Show 7/8 year olds a picture, 5 dogs and 2 cats, and ask ‘are there more dogs or animals’

Children say dogs as they cannot see dogs as belonging to the class of dogs and the class of animals

What happens in concrete operations

Children perform better at conservation, egocentrism etc

Reasoning is better, but onto on physical objects, cannot reason with abstract ideas

What happens in formal operations

Child are capable of formal reasoning, not distracted by content of argument

Smith et al. = “All yellow cats have two heads. I have a yellow cat named Charlie. How many heads does Charlie have?”

Younger children were confused by content of question, older children understood content wasn’t important but the logic was

PIAGET EVAL: Piaget’s method for conservation is questionable

Children saw Piaget changing layout, assumed that it meant quantity changed, answered how they were expected to

McGarrigle and Donaldson: Replicated Piaget’s study with a ‘naughty teddy’ that knocked the counters closer. 72% of children answered that counters were same as before

Children can conserve as long as not confused about how they’re being questioned

PIAGET EVAL: Piaget’s conclusions on class inclusion are dubious

Siegler and Svetina: 100 5 year olds tested on class inclusion

One group got feedback, must be more animals as there are 9 animals but only 6 dogs

Other group got feedback, must be more animals as dogs are just a type of animals

Scores showed improvement in the second group, showed real understanding of class inclusion

PIAGET EVAL: Children can decentre

Hughes: 2 intersecting walls, three dolls, 1 boy doll and 2 police officer doll

Children as young as 3 ½ could place boy doll where police officer could see him 90% of the time

4 year olds could hide boy doll from 2 police officers 90% of the time

PIAGET EVAL: Under and over estimates abilities

Underestimates young children and overestimates adolescents

Modern studies show with adult help pre-operational kids are capable of developing conservation and class inclusion understanding

PIAGET EVAL: General versus specific development

Piaget: Intellectual and cognitive aspects develop together

Research into children with ASD shows the abilities develop differently

Asperger: Typically very egocentric, but develop normal reasoning and langauge

How did Vygotsky differ from Piaget

Saw cognitive development as a social process, learning from more knowledgeable others

What were Vygotsky’s two phases of knowledge

Intermental = Between more knowledgeable and less knowledgeable

Intramental = Within mind of less knowledgeable

Cultural differences in cognitive abilities

If reasoning comes from external sources, changes with occur across cultures

What is ZPD

Zone of Proximal Development, gap between what we know now and what we could know with help

Why did Vygotsky put emphasis on ZPD

Gap between what we know and what we could know through interaction with others

Assistance lets a child cross their ZPD

What did Vygotsky believe about advanced learning

Thought children were more capable that Piaget thought, of advanced reasoning skills and higher mental functions

Need to learn from others

What is scaffolding

The help that children get to cross ZPD

5 aspects of scaffolding

Recruitment : Engaging child

Reduction of degree of freedom : Focussing child

Direction maintenance : Encouraging child

Marking critical features : highlighting key features

Demonstration : Showing aspects

EVAL : ZPD, Roazzi and Bryant

4-5 year olds working alone or with an older child to estimate sweets in a jar

Alone= bad estimate, With older child = provided prompts, made successful estimates

Provides support for idea that you can develop additional reasoning abilities

EVAL : Scaffolding

Conner and Cross = 45 children (16, 26, 44, 54 months) in problem solving with help from mothers

Changes over time e.g. less direct intervention, only offer help when they can see it is needed

EVAL : Apply to education

Social learning and peer tutoring can be used to properly aid children across ZPD

EVAL: Application to education, Van Kerr and Verhaeghe

Experimental: 7 year olds tutored by by 10 year olds and learning in class

Control: 7 year olds just in class learning

Experimental group did better over all than control

EVAL: Individual learning

What children gain when learning from a more knowledgable other is independent

Baillargeon early research

Children have a better early understanding of the world that Piaget thought

Claim his early ideas of object permanence had issues in research

Baillargeon violation of expectation

Thought ideas of object permanence could be tested with violating the expected event

Baillargeon VOE procedure

24 infants, 5-6 months

Expected event : Short rabbit pass through window cant be seen. Tall rabbit can be seen

Unexpected event : Short rabbit cant be seen, tall rabbit can be seen

Baillargeon VOE findings

Impossible event : infant looked for 33 seconds Possible event : infant looked for 25 seconds

Researchers took longer looking as surprise, showing they expected a certain outcome, indicating object permanence

Baillargeon Theory of Infant Physical Reasoning

Humans born with physical reasoning system, hardwired with basic understanding of physical world

Object persistence : An object remains in existence and cannot spontaneously alter

Baillrageon Physical reasoning and object persistence

After a few weeks, infant categorises events e.g. a taller object may block a smaller object

When tested with VOE task, they understand that the tall rabbit should appear in window

Invisible events capture their attention, they recognise what should’ve occurred due to physical reasoning

EVAL: Baillargeon tests infant understanding better than Piaget

Eliminates confounding variable of a lack of understanding of existence (PRS theory)

Child has not simply lost interest

Higher validity

EVAL: Baillargeon, what is a child understanding

Research shows the child looks longer but why

Are we guessing what the infants actions mean or what the infant finds interesting

EVAL : PRS explains universality

Hespos and Van Marle : Without learning, we still have good basic understanding of events, if we let a key ring go it will fall to the floor

Understanding is universal and strongly suggests an innate system

BAILLARGEON EVAL: Behavioural response isnt the same as understanding

Bremner: If we accept infants behaviour in maintaining attention is because of the impossibility of the event, it is different from the understanding we use for the physical world

EVAL : PRS is consistent with other abilities

Goes along with other abilities, in sense they develop with age and learning

Pei et al : Patterns can be used to estimate distance from an early age, distance perception is innate yet develops

Selman’s beliefs of perspective taking

social perspective taking and physical perspective taking are separate process and grows accordingly

Study : Holly’s Cat in the tree

30 boys, 30 girls, 20 4YO, 20 5YO, 20 6YO

Asked how each individual would feel in a scenario if Holly did or didn’t climb tree

Holly promises father not to climb tree again, but cat is stuck up their.

Found level of role-taking correlated with age

Selman’s stages of Development

Stage 0 : Socially egocentric

Stage 1: Social information role-taking

Stage 2: Self-reflective role-taking

Stage 3: Mutual role-taking

Stage 4: Social and conventional role-taking

Socially egocentric (3-6YO)

Cannot tell difference between own emotions and another’s

Can tell difference between emotional states, but not what causes them

Social information role-taking (6-8YO)

Can tell difference between own and others point of view

Can only focus on one at a time

Self-reflective role-taking (8-10 YO)

Can put self in another’s shoes and can appreciate their point of view

Still only focus on one perspective at a time

Mutual role-taking (10-12YO)

Can look at a situation from own and another’s perspective at same time

Social and conventional system role-taking (12+YO)

Understand that knowing someone’s point of view isn’t enough to come to an agreement

Development of cognitive reasoning

Stages of cognitive reasoning don’t fully explain social development

Developed three aspects that contribute to social development

Three aspects that contribute to social development

Interpersonal understanding

Interpersonal negotiation strategies

Awareness of personal meaning of relationships

Interpersonal understanding

If we take different roles it shows we can understand social situations

Interpersonal negotiation strategies

We cannot just understand what others think, we have to develop skills to respond

We develop social skills e.g. conflict management

Awareness of personal meanings of relationships

Ability to reflect on social behaviour in context of life and full range of relationships

EVAL : Supporting evidence for perspective-taking

Longitudinal studies support perspective taking e.g. Gurucharri and Selman

EVAL : Mixed evidence for importance of perspective taking

Observation of child-parent interactions (Buijzen and Valkenburg) : Negative correlation between age, perspective-taking and coercive behaviour e.g. forcing parents to buy things for them

Keller and Gasser : Bullies show no difficulties in perspective-taking, perspective taking not important for socially desirable behaviour

EVAL: Perspective taking, applications for atypical development

Marton et al. : 50 8-12YO with ADHD and ASD, found they had poorer perspective-taking skills

Helps with understanding atypical development

EVAL : Perspective taking is overly cognitive

There is more to social development than cognitive abilities

Selman doesn’t consider social factors, or internal factors e.g. self-regulation and empathy

EVAL : Cultural differences

Wu and Keysar : Chinese participants did better in perspective-taking than Americans

Development of perspective-taking is more than cognitive

Theory of Mind

Ability for us to “mind-read”or have personal theory about what another is thinking

Intentional reasoning, Meltzoff

18 MO watch adults with marbles

Experimental : Fail to put marble in container

Control : Place beads in

Both sets placed marbles in jar correctly, shows they can judge intention

False beliefs

Test whether a child can understand that people can believe something not true

Chocolate and cupboard, Wimmer and Perner

Maxi leaves chocolate in blue cupboard, mother uses it and puts in green cupboard, asked children where Maxi should look

3 YOs = Look in green cupboard

4 YOs = Look in blue cupboard

Sally-Anne

Sally puts marble in basket, Anne moves it to box, test to see where Sally should look

Experimental : 20 high-functioning ASD children

Control : 27 neurotypical, 14 down syndrome

Sally Anne findings

85% of control correctly said where Sally should look

20% of group with ASD said correctly

Suggests deficits in ToM might be explanation for ASD

Older children with ASD, Eyes test

Try and gauge emotion from just eyes

Those with ASD struggled

EVAL : Validity of false belief

Low validity, cannot be sure you are testing for ToM

Stories are short enough the child could remember

Child can have good ToM and struggle with false beliefs

EVAL : ToM and perspective taking

Perspective taking = Cognitive ability to view social situations from others POV

ToM = Understand mental states of others

They can be measured using same methods

EVAL : ASD and theory of mind

Helpful in understanding differences

Tager-Flusberg : ToM problems aren’t specific to ASD

EVAL : No clear understanding of ToM development

Some argue Piagetian approach - Develops with all cognitive abilities, innate

Some argue Vygotskian - Internalised from interactions with adults

Discovery of Mirror Neurons

Measuring monkeys motor cortex activity

Monkey observes man eating lunch and cortex lights up the same as when it reached for own food

Mirror Neurons and Intention

Goldman and Gallese : MN respond to intention behind action, we simulate other’s motor system

Mirror neurons and perspective-taking

MN are important in social-cognitive functions e.g. ToM and others’ perspectives

Provides neural explanation for experiencing and understanding other’s emotions

Mirror Neurons and Evolution

Ramachandran : Helped shape evolution

MN help facilitate emotion and perspective

Without MN, we would not have survived in large groups with complex roles and hierarchies

Mirror Neurons and ASD

Ramachandran and Oberman : Broken mirror theory

Neurological deficits, e.g. mirror system, prevents imitating and understanding social behaviour

Later problems lead to difficulties in social communication

EVAL : Evidence for MN

Haker et al. : fMRI to asses brain activity during yawning and its contagious nature (high activity in Brodmann’s area)

Mouras et al : Had ptp watch documentary, mr bean and porn, brain activity measured using fMRI and arousal with penis ring. activity in pars opercularis increased with pressure in ring

showed perspective taking was happening during porn

EVAL : Studying mirror neurons

Scanning cannot get individual activity

Cannot ethically use electrodes

EVAL : Mixed evidence for ASD and mirror neurons

Hadjikhani : Structural scans show smalelr thickness in pars opercularis for ASD ptp

Not all studies consistently show brain differences for ASD and mirror neurons

EVAL: Do mirror neurons exist?

Hickok : We only know what mirror neurons do, but we cannot identify any specific cells