Cognition

• Piaget's cognitive development theory

  Children are born with a small number of schema's that develop and expand as children experience more events

  
  

  Assimilation - When new experiences can be understood within the existing schemas

  Accommodation - When the new experience cannot be understood by our current schemas, therefore a new one is created
• Define what was meant by disequilibrium

  Piaget - When a child cannot make sense of their world due to insufficient schemas. This results in a lack of comfort and an increase in motivation to learn and develop their schemas
• AO3 - Piaget's theory of cognitive development

  Research support - Howe et al - 9-12 year olds discuss movement down a slope, there is more knowledge and more intellectual discussions as age increases (Interviewer bias)

  
  

  Revolutionised teaching - Activity related classrooms allow children to develop and learn new schemas increasing its external validity

  
  

  Underestimates the role of others - Vygotsky - Reductionist

  Unrepresentative sample - Children belong to predominantly white MC parents
• Name the 4 stages in Piaget's theory of intellectual development

  Sensorimotor (0-2)

  Pre-Operational (2-7)

  Concrete Operations Stage (7-11)

  Formal Operations Stage (11+)
• Outline the sensorimotor stage

  0-2 years

  Focus on physical sensations and on basic coordination between what they see and movement of their body

  Babies come to an understanding of other people as separate objects and acquire some basic language

  Develop the understanding that objects are there when out of sight
• Define Object Permanence & State what stage this is developed

  Sensorimotor - The understanding that an object still exists even when it is out of sight
• Explain the pre-operational stage of intellectual development

  2-7 years

  Children demonstrate egocentrism, weak number and liquid conservation as well as class inclusion

  
  

  3 Studies:

  - Number conservation - 2 identical rows of counters side by side, when counters pushed together, children believed there to be less counters

  - Liquid conservation - 2 identical beakers, children established equal volume. When poured into a thinner beaker, stated a difference in volume.

  - Egocentrism - 3 mountains task - Children often chose photos which matched what they saw of the mountain rather than the doll
• Explain the concrete operations stage


  7-11 years

  Have seemed to master conservation and are much better with egocentrism and class inclusion however they can only reason with physical objects
• Define what is meant by class inclusion

  An advanced classification skill in which we can recognise classes of objects have subsets and are within themselves, subsets of larger classes
• AO3 - Piaget's theory of intellectual development

  Contradictory research - Donaldson - If counters accidentally moved by a "naughty teddy" - 62% under 7 where correctly able to identify they had the same amount. Suggests that Piaget may have used misleading questions

  Siegler & Svetina - When children received feedback acknowledging subsets, they developed an understanding of class inclusion - Suggests this is just something that isn't taught so young

  Hughes - Children as young as 3.5 years could position colls in ways as to not be seen by the other dolls.

  
  

  Less deterministic as it isn't fixed

  Temporal validity

  Focused on a domain general approach to intellectual development as he viewed this the same as cognitive development
• Explain the formal operations stage


  11+

  Children are now capable of formal and abstract reasoning as well as focusing on their form of argument

  Syllogisms are used to test this
• Define what is meant by Maturation

  Piaget - Children do not know less than adults but simply think differently, their way of thinking changes as they grow up
• Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development

  Much more dependent on social processes.

  Knowledge is first intermental and then intramental
• Define what is meant by intermental


  Between a more and less expert individual
• Define what is meant by intramental

  Within the individual
• How can Vygotsky's theory be used to explain cultural differences in development

  Cultural differences in cognitive development is because everyone grows up and learns about the world in varying cultural values and children therefore pick up the mental tools most important for their world

  
  

  Brazilian children were found to develop much better counting skills
• What is the zone of proximal development


  The gap between current and potential capabilities.

  
  

  The role of the teacher is to guide the child through this gap to as full a level of understanding as the child's development ability would allow
• How do we progress through the ZPD

  Most advanced formal learning is through the help of experts and peers as we need to become more skilled at reasoning. This is done via scaffolding
• Who suggested different features of scaffolding and what are they

  Wood et al

  - Recruitment (gaining interest)

  - Reduction in degrees of freedom (focussing the learning)

  - Direction maintenance (Motivating to continue)
• What is the most useful progressive technique used in scaffolding learning according to Wood et al

  Demonstrating
• AO3 - Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development

  Research support - Roazzi & Bryany - 4/6 year olds working alone estimating sweets in a jar were less accurate than when older children offered prompts to the children ("mastering" task is subjective)

  
  

  Research support - Canner & Cross - Observed 45 babies at 16 months, 26 months and 54 months, as children gained more knowledge, there was less direct intervention and more hints (Observer bias, less ID)

  
  

  Van Keer et al - 7 year olds tutored by 10 years olds progressed further in reading (Howe - everyone learns differently)

  Reductionist - doesn't account for personality
• Baillargeon's explanation of infant cognition

  Babies in the sensorimotor stage may have a better developed understanding of the physical world than Piaget proposed. Lack of motor skills not object permanence
• Violation of Expectation study

  Baillargeon - Observed the reactions of 24 infants of around 5/6 months in 2 different conditions

  Possible - Tall rabbit can be seen passing the window but short cannot be seen

  Impossible - Neither rabbits appeared at the window

  Time looked:

  Possible - 25.1s

  Impossible - 33s

  
  

  Babies understand object permanence at 6 months or less
• What is the infant Physical Reasoning System (PRS)

  Baillargeon - PRS is innate to enable us to learn details more easily. Primitive awareness becomes more sophisticated as we learn - Object persistence

  
  

  Infants identify event categories' which correspond to one way in which objects interact and children learn these from birth

  
  

  Having an innate PRS means infants are predisposed to attend to impossible events
• AO3 - Baillargeon


  VoE research eliminates the idea that children lost interest - more valid

  Hard to judge what an infant understands - falsifiable

  Repeated measures used

  Can explain why physical understanding is universal - Hepsos and Van Marle - We all have a good understanding of basic properties and this requires an PRS

  Bremner - Distinction between behavioural response and behavioural understanding
• What is Selman's level of perspective taking theory

  Social perspective taking develops separately from the physical perspective taking
• Outline the method of Selman's perspective taking task

  60 children - 30 boys and 30 girls aged 4,5 and 6 (stratified), asked to take roles of different people in a social scenario and consider how they would feel
• Levels of perspective taking

  Social egocentric (3-6)

  Cannot distinguish between their own emotions and those of others and cannot explain the emotions of others

  
  

  Social information role taking (6-8)

  Can now distinguish between their own POV and that of others but can only focus on one at a time

  
  

  Self reflective role taking (8-10)

  The child can now put themselves into the position of others and fully appreciate their POV, but only consider one at a time

  
  

  Mutual role taking (10-12)

  Now able to consider their own POV and anothers at the same time

  
  

  Social and Conventional role taking (12+)

  Understanding another's POV is not enough to allow people to reach agreement and this is why social conventions are needed to keep order
• Selman's 3 aspects to understand social development

  Interpersonal relationship - What Selman researched. If we can take different roles, we can understand social situations

  
  

  Interpersonal negotiation strategies - We must also develop skills in how to respond to social situations

  
  

  Awareness of personal meaning of relationships - Social development also requires the ability to reflect on social behaviour
• AO3 - Selman's perspective taking theory

  Research support - Positive correlation between age and ability to take different perspectives. (correlational evidence)

  Strong representative sample

  Valkenburg - Negative correlation between age, perspective taking and coercive behaviour. Suggests perspective taking is important for pro-social behaviour

  Marton et al - Those with a diagnosis with ADHD had difficulties understanding scenarios and identifying emotions of others - useful for support

  Gasser - Bullies have no perspective-taking impairments

  Reductionist
• What is Theory of Mind


  The ability to know what is in someone else's mind. Suggested by Woodruff.
• How did they test ToM in toddlers

  Meltzoff - Children observed adults placing beads into a jar

  Condition 1 - Adults struggled to put the beads in the jar

  Control - Successful at placing beads into the jar

  Children in both conditions placed beads into the jar imitating what was intended - ToM
• What is a false belief task


  One which demonstrates ToM as the belief is not true of reality
• Maxi & the chocolate study

  Wimmer - 3/4 year olds were told the story of Maxi - Thought his chocolate was in the green cupboard but his mum had moved it into the blue

  3-4 year olds would incorrectly identify where Maxi would look, yet 4 year olds were a bit better at answering correctly
• How does the Pernal smarties task provide validity to Wimmer's study

  Children at the age of 4 passed the smartie task - aligning with the findings of Wimmer
• When is it believed we develop ToM and how do we know this

  Wellman - Meta-analysis of 178 studies involving 4000 children. 75% of which pass at 4 years, 20% pass at 2 years
• How does ToM link to ASD

  Baron-Cohen - Conducted the Sally Anne task (one much similar to Maxi & the chocolate) to investigate ToM in children with ASD

  
  

  20 high functioning children with ASD, Control group - 14 children with down syndrome (to eliminate low IQ, 27 without diagnosis)

  85% Control group passed

  20% ASD group passed
• AO3 - ToM


  Low validity - Bloom & German - Tests requires cognition skills such as memory rather than ToM (face validity). Giving visual aids to those with ASD resulted in higher success rate.

  Studies can be measures of perspective taking rather than ToM (ability to take Maxi's view) though Selman's theory suggests children at 4 cannot pass this task

  Widely argued that people with ASD have more difficulty on age appropriate ToM tasks - this gives useful understanding

  Tager-Flusberge - ToM problems aren't specific to those with ASD
• What are mirror neurons

  Neurons which fire in response to personal action and response to another person's actions. Thought to be located in the premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, primary somatosensory cortex

  
  

  Rizzolatti - When monkey saw researcher reach to grab somethings, monkeys motor cortex became activated
• How do mirror neurons help with intent

  Goldman - Mirror neurons respond to intentions and actions.

  Benefits us for social interaction as we stimulate and identify actions of others in our brain and therefore experience intent