Developmental Psychology 1 - Cognitive Development

Eötvös Loránd University Developmental Psychology 1: Cognitive Development Notes

Course Information

Instructor: Patricia Gerván
Email: gervan.patricia@ppk.elte.hu
Semester: 2025 Fall

Overview of Middle Childhood

  • Age Range: 6 to 11 years

  • Key Focus: Schooling and formal education

Cognitive Development Topics

  1. Perceptual Development

    • Includes understanding how children enhance their ability to process sensory information.

  2. Attention and Executive Function

    • Focuses on how children learn to focus on relevant stimuli and manage distractions.

  3. Development of Long-Term Memory

    • Studies how children's memory capabilities develop over time.

  4. Working Memory

    • Includes cognitive processes involved in holding and manipulating information.

  5. Knowledge Base Expansion

    • Discusses how children acquire a richer and deeper knowledge base during middle childhood.

  6. Higher-Order Cognitive Skills

    • Involves complex thinking skills such as reasoning and problem-solving.

  7. Academic Skills

    • Covers competencies necessary for academic success, including literacy and numeracy.

  8. Apprenticeship and Guided Participation

    • Explores how mentoring and social interaction promote learning.

Perceptual Development

  • Definition: Perceptual learning is described as the experience-dependent enhancement of sensory processing abilities—how we interpret what we see, hear, taste, feel, and smell.

  • Key Insight: Children are often considered novices concerning perceptual experiences compared to adults.

Face Perception in Middle Childhood

  • Own-Race Recognition Advantage:

    • Children demonstrate a higher ability to recognize faces of their racial group compared to others due to differential exposure and practice.

    • Research Findings: Goodman et al. (2007) found that children aged 5-19 from diverse racial backgrounds excelled at recognizing faces from their own groups, especially as they matured into late childhood.

    • Study Components: Included participants viewing and identifying faces from different racial groups and completing an unexpected recognition task.

    • Age Groups: Divided into four groups: ages 5–7, ages 9–10, ages 12–13, and adults.

    • Results: 5-7-year-olds showed no race-based recognition differences, while older groups exhibited a significant own-race advantage.

Global and Local Processing

  • Nelson's Proposal: The idea that children's cognitive development shifts from a global (holistic) to a local (analytical) processing style. Recent studies indicate that these processing types may develop independently.

  • Burack et al. (2000) & Porporino et al. (2004) conducted experiments demonstrating varying ages respond faster in global conditions, showing age-dependent performance differences in processing tasks.

Selective Attention and Executive Function

  • Concepts:

    • In middle childhood, there’s a noted increase in children's ability to focus attention selectively and inhibit distractions (e.g., during games like “Simon Says”).

    • Scientific Studies: Bartgis et al. (2003) performed dichotic listening tasks highlighting increased abilities in ignoring distractions between ages 5 and 7.

Attentional Networks (Posner and Rothbart, 2007):

  1. Alerting Network: Initiates alertness in response to new stimuli.

  2. Orienting Network: Directs focus toward certain stimuli.

  3. Executive Network: Manages the inhibition of competing responses.

    • Fully functional attentional networks develop significantly during middle childhood.

Working Memory

  • Capacity: Experts note a significant increase, often nearing the adult level of around 7±2 items, observable in young children from around 4-5 to 5-6 at school ages.

  • Influence on Academic Achievement:

    • Study by Gathercole et al. (2004) notes that increased working memory correlates with higher academic achievements among British children aged 7 and 14, with distinct measures for phonological loops and central executive tasks.

    • Research identified WM training significantly improves skills among children who are initially low in working memory capabilities (Holmes et al., 2009).

Long-Term Memory Development

  • Autobiographical Memory: Critical aspects emerge as preschoolers begin recalling events. Issues such as childhood amnesia (Usher and Neisser, 1993) highlight the complexities of memory retention stemming from neurological and developmental milestones.

Emotional and Traumatic Event Memory

  • Flashbulb Memories: These refer to durable memories of significant events with associated emotional intensity (Brown and Kulik, 1977).

    • Example Study: Warren and Swartwood (1992) examined memories regarding the Challenger space shuttle explosion among children of varying ages, illustrating narrative complexity and understanding increased with age.

Class Inclusion and Reasoning Skills

  • Inhelder & Piaget's Class-Inclusion Task highlights how children's ability to understand hierarchical relationships evolves, with younger children frequently misjudging such relationships due to developmental constraints.

  • Reasoning capabilities vary, with older children showing significantly more cognitive sophistication as they delve into more complex conditional arguments (Kuhn, 1977).

The Role of Culture in Cognitive Development

  • Apprenticeship and Guided Participation: Vygotskian perspectives emphasize the importance of environment and social interactions. Children attain knowledge not merely through formal instruction but instead through observation and participation with adults (Rogoff).

  • Cultural Differences: Traditional versus modern educational settings reveal different opportunities for collaborative learning, significantly impacting cognitive development trajectories.

Learning Mathematics and Literacy

  • Jeanne Chall's Stages of Reading Development: Framework delineates how children progress through various stages of reading that correlate with increasing comprehension and independence.

  • Mathematical Instruction Approaches: Emphasis on drill-and-practice juxtaposed with meaningful learning approaches helps in developing conceptual understanding alongside rote recall of math facts.

Conclusion

  • Cognitive Development in Children: Continuous growth in the realms of memory, executive function, perceptual skills, and academic capabilities define the crucial period of middle childhood, supported by cognitive theories and cross-cultural observations.

This comprehensive guide serves to enhance understanding of the complexities within cognitive development as outlined in the course materials. Students are encouraged to delve deeper into each section for further insights and connections to practical applications in educational settings.