Cognitive development in childhood

Question 1

what is the Definition of ‘cognitive’?

Answer 1

• Logical (deductive) reasoning:
  
  • If A is true, then B;
  • A is true, therefore B
• Not used in everyday situations:
  
  • “If you’re naughty, you won’t get a treat”
• What do parents really mean?
  
  • Logically, there is no implication about good behaviour
  • Everyday assumption: you’ll get a treat as long as you’re not naughty.

Question 2

what are the Stages of development?

Answer 2

• Sensorimotor (0-2 yrs): intelligence expressed through sensory and motor abilities – bound to here and now.
• Preoperational (2-7 yrs): able to represent experiences in language, mental imagery and symbolic thought. But unable to perform mental operations, e.g. represent multiple dimensions simultaneously.
• Concrete operational (7-12 yrs): able to reason logically about concrete processes. Unable to reason purely abstractly or test hypotheses.
• Formal operational (12+ yrs): able to reason about abstractions and hypothetical situations, generalise information and form experiments to test hypotheses.

Question 3

what are Piaget’s tasks?

Answer 3

• A few classic Piagetian tasks in the slides/notes – how do children respond to these and what does this tell us about their reasoning abilities?
• conservation
• mountain
• hierarchical classification

Question 4

what are the Tasks: conclusions?

Answer 4

• 6-7 year olds make these errors in reasoning, 8-year-olds do not. Why is this?
• Young children’s reasoning is appearance-based not logically-based
• Young children are unable to consider others’ points of view.
• Young children are unable to mentally reverse steps in reasoning or focus on more than one attribute.

Question 5

what are the limitations of the theory?

- Underestimates children’s abilities.

Answer 5

• Underestimates children’s abilities.
• Gergely et al., (2002) Rational imitation
  
  • 14-month-old infants rationally imitate adults’ behaviours
  • suggests they can infer others’ perspectives (cf. mountain task)

Question 6

what are the limitations of the theory?

- Doesn’t distinguish competence vs performance

Answer 6

• Doesn’t distinguish competence vs performance.
• Important to distinguish what children ‘know’ from what they can ‘do’ in a task
• Context affects children’s performance:
  
  • McGarrigle (Donaldson, 1978):
    
    • “are there more brown kittens or more kittens?”
    • “are there more brown kittens or more sleeping kittens?”

Question 7

what are the limitations of the theory?

- Understates context or interactions

Answer 7

• Understates context or interactions
• Culture and schooling affect performance:
  
  • Knowledge can be culture-specific
  • Schooling emphasises certain processes, e.g. logical structures to pass Piagetian tasks
  • Implies role of adults not child in guiding learning
• Children develop in social networks – interaction with others must influence development.

Question 8

what are the limitations of the theory?

- Describes performance doesn’t explain process behind behaviour/develop

Answer 8

• Overestimates the role of logical (deductive) thinking.
• Transitivity task:
  
  • The green stick is longer than the yellow stick. The yellow stick is longer than the red stick. Which stick is longer, green or red?
  • How did you answer the problem?
    
    • logical reasoning: if G > Y and Y > R  G > R

Question 9

what are mental models?

Answer 9

• Human reasoning is based in mental models that reflect our factual understanding of the world
• Reasoning: build up a mental picture of the situation and then infer from that.
• Sometimes this looks like valid logical reasoning on the surface, and sometimes not.

Question 10

what is Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective?

Answer 10

• Importance of language for development:
• Thought → internalized speech
  
  • Children’s behaviour is controlled by parents’ directions.
  • Children’s behaviour is controlled by ‘private speech’.
  • Children’s behaviour is controlled by internalized private speech: thought.
• Children are social learners
  
  • Interaction with more expert others scaffolds learning
  • Learning occurs within dynamic ‘Zone of Proximal Development’

Question 11

what did Wood & Middleton, (1975) study?

Answer 11

• Mothers showed toddlers how to build a wooden pyramid
  
  • Mother’s interventions were categorised from low control/general prompts to total control/physically demonstrating.
  • Toddlers were more successful when mothers modulated responses to their behaviour:
    
    • Any failure on the child’s part results in an increase in the level of help
    • Any success results in the decrease in level of help
    • Provides empirical evidence for the effect of scaffolding

Question 12

what is Information-processing theory?

Answer 12

• Cognitive development is related to processing abilities and grows continuously:
  -Increased processing capacity
  
  • Increased processing speed
  • Acquisition of strategies and knowledge
• Development of memory and executive function
  
  • greater monitoring of mental processes
  • ability to plan and approach tasks systematically
• Rehearsal of strategies improves processing
• Better able to make use of knowledge and test hypotheses  acquisition of new strategies and knowledge
• Continuous and constructivist

Question 13

what is the Dimensional Change Card Sorting Task?

Answer 13

• Children are asked to switch from sorting cards based on colour to sorting based on shapes
• Three-year-olds can sort cards by a single dimension but fail to switch to second dimension
• Five-year-olds can switch between sorting by two different dimensions

Question 14

what is the information-processing theory?

attention

Answer 14

• Throughout childhood, attention becomes more:
  
  • Selective
    
    • Sharp increases in performance in tasks with added distractors between ages 6 and 12
  • Adaptable
    
    • Increased flexibility in shifting attention to different requirements
  • Planned
    
    • During middle childhood, children become more systematic and make decisions about what to do when/in which order

Question 15

what is the information-processing theory?

part 3

Answer 15

• Improvements in both working memory and long-term memory across childhood
  
  • reflecting the maturation of cognitive processes, neural structures
• Memory strategies start being used in middle childhood
  
  • E.g., rehearsal, i.e. repeating information to oneself for better recall
• Long-term knowledge base grows and becomes more organised
  
  • Improves efficiency in information processing

Question 16

what is the information-processing theory?

Answer 16

• Knowledge supports memory – may support encoding of new information
  
  • highly knowledgeable children organise info in their area of expertise with little effort
  • they can devote more working memory resources to using recalled information for reasoning and problem solving
• e.g., Schneider & Bjorklund (1992) tested 7 and 9-year-olds’ recall memory for football items or unrelated items
  
  • Children who were football experts recalled more football items than non-experts
  • There was no difference for unrelated items.

Question 17

what did Ramani & Siegler (2008) study?

Answer 17

• tested 5-year-olds numerical representations
  
  • Experimental group played ‘the great race’ with numbers
  • Control group board had no numbers
• Compared pre-test and post-test performance on counting, reading numbers, the number line and size comparisons
• Number representation and processing improved by rehearsal.
  
  • automisation
  • generalisation

Question 18

what is Siegler’s ‘overlapping waves’ model?

Answer 18

• Children use different strategies at different stages
• Early strategies are simpler than later
• More successful strategies are more prevalent