Chris Erb’s Lectures (Cognitive Development)

Flashcards testing core concepts, historical studies, developmental theories, and empirical research methods from the lecture material.

What is developmental psychology?

The study of how people think, feel, believe, and behave as they change and develop across the lifespan.

What is the overall theme of psychology over the lifespan mentioned in the notes?

"Growing up, growing older, growing wiser" — understanding how the mind changes and develops throughout life.

What are adaptive minds, and why are they significant to human survival?

Adaptive minds can adapt to different environments and circumstances, allowing humans to survive and thrive across diverse environments from the Arctic to the Sahara and from the Himalayas to the Amazon.

What are flexible minds, and what three examples of cognitive flexibility were discussed?

Flexible minds adjust thoughts and behaviour according to changing demands. Three examples are inhibiting prepotent responses, switching between tasks, and delaying gratification.

What does it mean to inhibit a prepotent response according to Schachar and Logan (1990)?

To suppress an automatic or strongly preferred response in order to produce a more appropriate response.

What did Zelazo, Muller, Frye, and Marcovitch (2003) study?

They studied children's ability to switch between tasks and rules as part of cognitive flexibility.

What did Mischel, Ebbesen, and Raskoff Zeiss (1972) investigate?

They studied children's ability to delay gratification by resisting an immediate reward for a larger reward later.

What four research topics are the focus of Chris Erb's research?

Causal learning and reasoning, cognitive control, attention and distraction, and numerical cognition.

What are the five dimensions used to ask "What is the mind and how does it work?"

Aspect of mind, level of analysis, timeline, organism, and goal.

What is the physics metaphor for studying the human mind?

Just as Newton recognised everyday physical events as opportunities to develop and test theories of physics, psychologists can treat everyday mental experiences as opportunities to test theories about the mind.

What are the three major theoretical issues in developmental psychology?

1. Quantitative versus qualitative change
2. Nature versus nurture
3. Domain-specific versus domain-general development.

How do domain-specific and domain-general theories of development differ?

Domain-specific proposes specialised processes for particular types of information, whereas domain-general proposes broader cognitive mechanisms operating across multiple areas of thinking.

How do the mechanistic and complexity views of the mind differ?

The mechanistic view sees the mind as a machine with separate parts serving particular functions, while the complexity view sees it as an ecosystem with interconnected components influencing each other through feedback loops.

What is genetic epistemology?

The study of the origins of knowledge.

What are the three hallmarks of Piagetian theory?

Constructivist, domain-general, and stage-based.

What are Piaget's four stages of cognitive development and their age ranges?

1. Sensorimotor (birth–about $2$ years)
2. Preoperational (about $2$–$7$ years)
3. Concrete operational (about $7$–$11$ years)
4. Formal operational (about $11+$ years).

What are assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration in Piaget's theory?

Assimilation is interpreting new experiences via existing schemas; accommodation is altering/creating schemas for new experiences; equilibration is the process balancing both to fit schemas to the environment.

What three infant reflexes are associated with Piaget's sensorimotor stage?

Rooting reflex (turning head/opening mouth when corner of mouth touched), grasp reflex (closing fingers on palm touch), and Moro reflex (spreading arms when loss of support is detected).

What is the A-not-B task, and what developmental progression does it reveal?

An object is repeatedly hidden at location A and then moved to B. Infants search at A around $9$–$12$ months, but by about $24$ months they pass more demanding object-permanence tasks.

What is centration in preoperational thought?

Focusing on one dimension of a problem while ignoring other relevant dimensions (e.g., focusing on height while ignoring width).

What three mental operators allow concrete operational children to solve conservation tasks?

Compensation (dimensional trade-offs), reversibility (mentally undoing changes), and identity (recognising core aspects stay unchanged).

What is hypothetico-deductive reasoning in the formal operational stage?

A form of scientific reasoning where people generate hypotheses and systematically test predictions derived from those hypotheses.

What did Topál et al. (2008) discover about the A-not-B task?

Infants may interpret an adult's repeated actions as social/instructional communication, meaning performance reflects social expectations alongside object knowledge.

How did Vygotsky's view of development differ from Piaget's?

Piaget emphasised individual constructivism through domain-general stages, whereas Vygotsky emphasised sociocultural context and learning through social interactions with more skilled individuals.

What is private speech, and when does it peak according to Vygotsky?

Speaking aloud to oneself to guide thinking and behaviour; it peaks around $5$–$7$ years of age before becoming internalised.

What three infant behaviours are commonly used by developmental researchers?

Sucking, kicking, and looking.

What did DeCasper and Spence (1986) demonstrate using high-amplitude sucking?

Newborns adjusted their sucking to hear a familiar story read during the final trimester, demonstrating that information retention begins prior to birth.

What were the findings of Rovee-Collier's mobile conjugate-reinforcement task?

$8$-week-old infants remembered the kicking-mobile association after a $1$-week delay, and memory persisted for about $2.5$ weeks if a reminder was provided a day before testing.

What did Simcock and Hayne (2002) conclude about infantile amnesia in the 'incredible shrinking machine' study?

Children aged $27$–$39$ months only used words known at the original event during later recall, suggesting language development is key to accessing early preverbal memories.

How does parental reminiscing style affect autobiographical memory according to Jack et al. (2009)?

An elaborative parental reminiscing style was associated with an earlier age of earliest reported memory at $12$–$13$ years of age compared to a repetitive style.

What three core physical principles have been studied in young infants?

1. Continuity (objects move along connected paths)
2. Solidity (solid objects cannot pass through each other)
3. Gravity (unsupported objects fall).

What did Baillargeon (1986) find using the drawbridge task with $3.5$-month-old infants?

Infants looked significantly longer at an impossible event where a panel moved through a solid object, challenging Piaget's timeline for object understanding.

What did Needham and Baillargeon (1993) show regarding gravity in $4.5$-month-olds?

Infants looked longer at an impossible event where an unsupported object remained suspended, showing early expectations about gravity.

What did Wynn (1992) observe in $5$-month-old infants regarding numerical cognition?

Infants looked longer at impossible addition/subtraction outcomes (e.g., $1 + 1 = 1$ or $1 + 1 = 3$) compared to expected outcomes ($1 + 1 = 2$).

What is nativism in cognitive development?

The view that infants come into the world pre-loaded with core knowledge or specialised cognitive systems for domains like physical objects, numbers, and agents.