cognitive development, classical conditioning, treatment

Cognitive Development

• Jean Jacques Piaget’s point of view of cognitive development was that people construct their higher levels of knowledge. 

• Biological maturation and environment contribute to this knowledge (as the brain matures, its perception of environment also changes.) 

• According to Piaget, “interaction with the environment changes people, and cognitive development is dependent on how the individual child interacts with the social and physical world. 

• The scientist in the crib: “the essence of knowing is activity”. 

• Piaget saw the child as a scientist who comes to know about the world by manipulating it mentally and physically. Children use strategies in thinking and problem solving that reflect different stages of cognitive development. 

• Cognitive development was a function of the drive toward cognitive equilibrium.

• Individual development is an outgrowth of disequilibrium. 

• Disequilibrium is a result of a person’s current understanding of the world (repertoire of schemas) and reality. 

• Restoration of this discrepancy occurs through adaptation. 

• Adaptation includes two complementary processes: assimilation and accommodation. 

• Assimilation is the incorporation of new knowledge into existing schemas. 

• Accommodation is the modification of existing schemas to incorporate new knowledge. 

Cognitive Development Stages 

• Piaget described 4 stages of development. These stages are invariant and universal. 

• They are never skipped. 

Sensory-Motor Stage: 0-2 years of age. 

• Thought is based on action. 

• Child learns through sensory information (look, feel, taste) and actions that can be performed (sucked, grasping, hitting)

• The major accomplishments during this stage are: object permanence (allowing the child to recognize that objects continue to exist when they are out of sight), causality (child recognizes that certain events cause other events), and development of symbolic thought (child can now use language to think about actions before performing them). 

Pre-Operational Stage: 2-7 years of age. 

• Symbolic function emerges (extension of symbolic thought). It permits the child to learn through use of language, mental image, and other symbols, about things that are not present. This allows children to engage in symbolic play and solve problems mentally. 

• Children exhibit pre-causal (transductive) reasoning which reflects incomplete understanding of cause and effect. 

• Magical thinking: a belief that thinking about something will make it happen. 

• Animism is another manifestation of precausal reasoning. 

• Egocentrism: child is unable to separate his/her perspective from that of others. 

• Children are unable to conserve or understand that changing one dimension does not change its other dimensions, 

Concrete Operational Stage: 7-11 years of age. 

• Child is capable of mental operations, which are logical rules for transforming and manipulating information. 

• They classify in more sophisticated ways (bigger, smaller, lighter, heavier, etc) Ths is called Horizontal Deccalage

Formal Operational Stage: 11+ years

• Abstract thinking

• Relativistic thinking

• Hypothetical thinking

• Metacognition is developed

• Personal fable and imaginary audience are developed

Vygotsky

• Recognized biological basis of cognitive development

• Emphasized social and cultural factors in cognitive development.

• Introduced the Zone of Proximal Development concept.

• Scaffolding by adults or peers aids in reaching the next developmental level.

• Symbolic play helps children practice behaviors within their zone of proximal development

Classical Conditioning

• Classical conditioning explains how certain stimuli acquire the capacity to automatically elicit a particular response. 

• Ivan Pavlov is the proponent of classical conditioning. 

• While investigating the digestive process of dogs, Pavlov discovered that several of the animals in the experiment salivated not only in response to the taste, sight or smell of meat powder but also when meat powder was not present. For example, they salivated when they entered the experimental room or when they saw  the experimenter. 

• Pavlow defined this as a “conditioned reflex”. 

• Stimulus: event or object provoking a specific response

• Response: behavior produced in the presence of a stimulus

• Pavlov’s experiments describe 2 specific kinds of stimuli: unconditioned stimulus and conditioned stimulus, each of which produces the unconditioned response or conditioned response. 

• Unconditioned stimulus and conditioned stimulus evoke responses.

• Unconditioned stimulus and unconditioned response are natural.

• Conditioned stimulus paired with unconditioned stimulus leads to conditioned response. 

• Effectiveness of classical conditioning is dependent on several factors: temporal relationship, number of trials, pre-exposure. 

• Pavlov found that the order and timing of the presentation of the Conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus were important in determining the success of classical conditioning. 

• Continuous CS presentation without UCS leads to decay (Classical Extinction)

• Spontaneous Recovery occurs when CS-UCS pairing is reintroduced

• CR rarely extinguished completely, only suppressed

• Subject responds to similar stimuli as the CS

• CR exhibited not only to CS but also to similar stimuli

• Stimulus discrimination: the ability to differentiate between the conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli and respond only to the conditioned stimulus with a conditioned response. It is established through discrimination training. 

• Discrimination training involves selective reinforcement and extinction. 

• Very difficult discriminations can produce experimental neurosis. 

Classical Conditioning Treatment

• Systematic desensitization is a counter conditioning technique. It is a process in which undesirable behavior is paired with an incompatible behavior so that the undesirable behavior is eliminated. 

• This treatment procedure was developed by Joseph Wolpe. 

• Steps to systematic desensitization: 1. Patient is given relaxation training 2. A hierarchy of anxiety provoking stimuli ranging from the least anxiety provoking to the most anxiety provoking is established. 3. The patient is desensitized in imagination to these stimuli. 4. After the patient has been desensitized through imagination, he or she is then exposed to the stimuli in “vivo” (imagination) or real life. 

• Wolpe referred to this process as reciprocal inhibition. His theory holds that a parasympathetic nervous system activity over the sympathetic nervous system activity is involved in the process. 

• Systematic desensitization is very effective in the treatment of phobias, sexual dysfunction and insomnia. 

• Sensate focus: Developed by Masters and Johnson. Relies on counter conditioning. Reduces anxiety in sexual situations. Couple engages in sexual touching progressively. Pairing anxiety with pleasure response eliminates anxiety. 

• Flooding: Proponent: Guthrie. Deliberate exposure with response prevention. Immediate exposure to phobia. Can be done in imagination or real-life. Forced reality testing prevents escape. Effective in reducing generalized anxiety. 

• Aversive conditioning: the last resort used with alcoholics. Noxious stimuli paired with targeted behavior. Example: Antabuse paired with alcohol to induce nausea. Can be done only  in a hospital. Combined with positive reinforcement and adaptive responses. Ethical considerations for usage. Works best if the program is part of the individual’s natural environment. 

• Covert sensitization: Aversive conditioning in imagination. Effective in treating paraphilias, obesity, and addictive disorders. More successful when supplemented with actual aversive stimuli. 

• Operant Conditioning: Key concept: the association between the behavior and the consequences of the behavior. Operant: a response that is voluntarily emitted and ;earned as a result of environmental consequence. 

• Strength of an operant is equal to the rate of responding during acquisition and to the total number of responses before extinction trials. 

• This theory is developed by Skinner. 

• Extinction is defined as the withdrawal of reinforcement from a previously reinforced behavior resulting in decrease of behavior and elimination of behavior. 

• Response Burst: the removal of the reinforcer results in a temporary increase in behavior and then decrease. 

• Reinforcers are events or objects that reinforce a given behavior. 

• Primary reinforcers have a biological basis and are naturally reinforcing, for example food to a hungry animal, water to the thirsty, sex. 

• Secondary reinforcers have become reinforcing through the process of learning. 

• Continuous Reinforcement: every response is reinforced. Good for establishing a desired behavior. Fast learning but also fast extinction. 

• Intermittent Reinforcement: interval schedules, which are good for maintaining behavior. 

• Fixed interval: reinforcement occurs after a fixed period of time regardless of the number of responses. 

• Intermittent reinforcement is associated with the scallop effect (responding is very low in the beginning and gradually increases and finally becomes very rapid just before the reinforcement)

• Variable interval: given after an unpredictable amount of time. Keeps the individual guessing and is therefore more reinforcing than fixed interval in which an organism can anticipate the reinforcer and therefore perform the require action just before reinforcement is due. 

• Ratio schedules: reinforcement is provided after variable number of responses. No way of knowing when reinforcement will be provided. 

• Fixed ratio: reinforced after a fixed number of responses. 

• Variable ratio: the reinforcement is after a variable number of responses. Gambling is an example of this. Responses are highly resistant to extinction. 

• Chaining links simple behaviors into complex ones

• Shaping reinforces gradual approach to desired behavior