Chapter 4: Cognitive Development

Question 1

Working memory

Answer 1

Information held in mind that is no longer present and can be manipulated. Holds 4 items at 4-5 years old, and 6 items at 9-10 years old

Question 2

Language and working memory interact

Answer 2

Length of words (dependent on native language) can have an affect on number of words remembered in a digit span test

Question 3

Brain areas of working memory

Answer 3

Prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. Response time decreases with age, and younger kids use their hippocampus more than older kids (possibly because it is helping until working memory develops)

Question 4

Effect of economic status on working memory

Answer 4

Low income kids miss more duplicate letters and experience a leveling off of prefrontal cortex use in n-back tests that high income kids do not experience. Possibly due to high income kids getting more education and practice

Question 5

N-back test

Answer 5

Detecting letter repeats. Have to remember a certain number of letters back at a time (hence the name).

Question 6

Executive function

Answer 6

Cognitive control; uses working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition

Question 7

Cognitive flexibility

Answer 7

Ability to switch rule sets or tasks easily. Studied by Philip Elizo in a card sort task

Question 8

Card Sort experiment (Elizo)

Answer 8

Tested 3 and 5 year olds with card sorting game. Changed the rules halfway through. 5 year olds could make the change, 3 year olds had trouble.

Question 9

Inhibition

Answer 9

Self control; inhibition of responses to events. Can shift based on the reliability of the person/situation requiring inhibition. Can be trained through play

Question 10

Marshmallow task

Answer 10

Children are told they can have double the reward if they wait for the experimenter to return. Those with less impulse control were found to have lower SAT scores and less prefrontal response at 40

Question 11

Theory of Mind

Answer 11

Recognizing others can have beliefs different than your own. Tested using False Belief tasks. Relies on working memory and other cognitive abilities

Question 12

False Belief task

Answer 12

One doll moves another doll’s toy. Children are asked where they think the second doll will look for their toy when they come back. Used to evaluate development of theory of mind

Question 13

Piaget’s Theory of Development

Answer 13

Constructivist (children construct knowledge themselves); assumes kids are intrinsically motivated to actively learn. Claims nature and nurture interact. Discontinuous.

Question 14

Assimilation

Answer 14

Fit new knowledge into an existing schema

Question 15

Accomodation

Answer 15

Adapt current schemas to account for new knowledge

Question 16

Equilibriation

Answer 16

Balance of assimilation and accomodation

Question 17

Sensorimotor stage

Answer 17

0-2 years old; experience the world through senses and actions

Question 18

Preoperational stage

Answer 18

2-7 years old; internally represent the world with language and mental images. Develop Theory of Mind. Use symbolic representations during play and are egocentric. Make problem-solving errors based on centration

Question 19

Egocentrism

Answer 19

Perceiving the world from your viewpoint only.

Question 20

Centration

Answer 20

Focus on one single perceptually striking feature of an object or event

Question 21

Concrete Operational stage

Answer 21

7-12 years old; develop logical thinking and understand that events can have many influences/causes. Overcome centration, but will make premature conclusions.

Question 22

Formal Operational Stage

Answer 22

12+ years old; Think systematically and reason about what could be and what is (abstract and hypothetical)

Question 23

Sensorimotor substages

Answer 23

Birth-1 month: Reflexes adapt to the environment
1-4 mo: Reflexes become behaviors
4-8 mo: Object permanence develops
8-12 mo: A-not-B error occurs

Question 24

Issues with Piaget’s theory

Answer 24

Underestimates children’s abilities; vague explanations about mechanisms behind cognitive growth; understate social effect on development; does not account for variability among children

Question 25

A-not-B error

Answer 25

Incorrectly reaching for where a toy has been previously, rather than where it is now hidden

Question 26

Ballargeon box experiment (impossible drawbridge)

Answer 26

Showed videos of a box being occluded by a hinged object. The object either stopped by colliding with the box or passed through it as if it had never existed. Children were more likely to look at the impossible condition, thus suggesting that object permanence does exist before 4 months of age

Question 27

Floating box test

Answer 27

Situations of boxes occurring in different positions prove different discrepancies of baby physics at different ages. Proves graded knowledge of gravity throughout early childhood

Question 28

Karen Wynn baby math experiments

Answer 28

Showed babies events of toys either adding or subtracting. Babies would look longer at events that made no sense, like impossible addition. Shows that babies understand basic math at 5 months old

Question 29

Infant probability inferences

Answer 29

Babies will look longer at an improbable event. Ex: pulling more yellow balls out of a mostly blue box. Will imitate actions more from likely events than less likely

Question 30

Information Processing Theories

Answer 30

Emphasize that thinking occurs over time; continuous; brain capacity and processing power increase with age; children are active problem solvers.

Question 31

Overlapping waves theory

Answer 31

Each child will use a variety of approaches to solve problems. They discover and apply more strategies of increasing complexity, and will chose which to use based on the problem

Question 32

Problem-solving in children

Answer 32

Planning out a solution is difficult due to lack of skill to inhibit the urge to solve the problem. Over-optimism of their abilities can cause poor planning

Question 33

Core-knowledge theories

Answer 33

Focuses on the importance of knowledge throughout evolution. Children are active learners, have innate learning mechanisms to efficiently learn evolutionarily important info

Question 34

Nativism

Answer 34

Belief that children are born with innate learning mechanisms AND evolutionarily important knowledge

Question 35

Spelke’s 4 innate systems theory

Answer 35

Inanimate objects and mechanical interactions, minds of other goal-directed beings, numbers, and spatial layouts/geometric relations are all innate skills babies have an understanding of

Question 35

Constructivism

Answer 35

Babies possess learning mechanisms and rudimentary knowledge that is built upon with age and experience

Question 36

Sociocultural theories

Answer 36

Focus on how interactions with others facilitate development. Focuses on cross-cultural phenomena like guided participation and social scaffolding

Question 37

Guided participation

Answer 37

Knowledgeable people create activities where less knowledgeable people can accomplish more of the task than they could on their own (facilitates learning of general skills)

Question 38

Social scaffolding

Answer 38

Adults organize a physical and social environment to help kids learn; building activities that are on the upper-end of a child’s abilities and assisting them to help them grow

Question 39

Vygotsky’s theory

Answer 39

Children are social learners and like to participate in activities pertaining to their lives. Continuous theory. Believed language and thought are intertwined; studied external self directed speech

Question 40

Intersubjectivity

Answer 40

Mutual understanding people share during communication. Crucial for learning and teaching

Question 41

Joint attention

Answer 41

Looking at the same object as another person; useful for learning

Question 42

Dynamic-systems theories

Answer 42

Focuses on development of actions to look at cognitive development. Each child is a system of subsystems (memory, attention, etc) interacting. Social world and actions are crucial parts of development.