Quiz 4 Flashcards
(158 cards)
cognition
using perception to make inferences about the core nature of stimuli
Understand:
- Objects, quantities → knowledge
- Form categories
core knowledge
theory that infants are born with some understanding in several areas
- Upon these, new skills are built
3 aspects of core knowledge
1) Object representation
2) Number and quantities
3) People and their actions
object representation
nature of the objects; how they should exist, move interact, look
object constancy
object does not change in size or shape depending how one views it
object cohesion and continuity
objects are seen as wholes with distinct boundaries
Infants shown an image of a rectangle occluding a bar
2.5-month-old infants are surprised at:
- If an object is moved without anyone moving it
- Object remains still when something pushes it
- object cohesion and continuity
6.5-month-olds know that…
objects cannot remain still in “mid-air”
- object cohesion and continuity
horizontal decalage
in which an ability develops at different rates in different context
object permanence
object still exists even if it is hidden
- At 4 months, infants attempt to retrieve an object if it is hidden, but only if the object is partially visible
- At 6 months, infants will search for a hidden object only if they are moving in the direction of the object
- At 8 months, infants retrieve a hidden object successfully but, cannot if the object was hidden in one location and later moved to another (A not B Task)
numerosity
ability to quickly determine the number of items in the set without counting
cardinality
basic understanding of “less than” or “more than”
Can infants tell the difference between two arrays that differ in the number of objects they contain? (Crackers study)
- 10-12-month-olds saw different numbers of crackers put in two boxes
- They could crawl to whichever box they pleased
- Consistently crawl to the one having more
- Can do 1 vs. 2
- Can do 2 vs. 3
- Do not discriminate above that (no 3 vs. 4 or 2 vs.4)
- The pattern is similar to the rhesus monkey
Wynn (1992) –> mouse experiment
- Violation of Expectation Method
- Showed 5-month-olds sequences of events of a mouse being shown then a screen closing so that they cannot see the mouse and adding a second mouse then removing the screen to show either 1 or 2 mice
- Possible (1 + 1 = 2)
- Impossible (1 + 1 = 1)
- Infants looked longer at the impossible
- 3-day-old chickens show a similar pattern
infants can discriminate cardinality in:
- preferential-looking at a visual scene
- auditory sequences
- sequences of events
core knowledge criticisms
Violation of Expectation Method use
- A lot of studies rely on this method
- Not everyone believes that systematic changes in looking time reflect underlying cognitive abilities
Necessity
- There is no need to postulate innate knowledge of physical laws
- Infants are born with perceptual abilities and acquire knowledge of objects through experience
Memory
- The looking preference patterns (e.g., longer looking at impossible events) can be the result of the need for more processing time for memory encoding
Woodward & Gerson (2014)
Action production and goal analysis of action links
- Neonatal imitation
- Anticipation of endpoints of action trajectories
- Infants’ motor system is active during observations of actions of others
Infants analyze actions in terms of intentional relations:
Visual habituation studies
- 3-month-olds look longer at actions that disrupt the goal rather than go along
Grasping a ball
- 9-month-olds show this pattern for more complex, indirect actions
Using a tool to get the object
Experimental
- 11-month-olds show analysis of actor’s goal to create visual predictions about their future behavior
Neuro
- 9-month-olds show different activation when viewing goal-directed actions vs. movements
Why infants analyze actions of others
- Social cognition
- Social information processing
Create timely, appropriate response to social partners
- Theory of Mind development
Performance on action analysis tasks in infancy predicts performance in understanding of psychological processes of others at 4 years of age
Infants’ actions are goal-directed
- Aiming the reach in anticipation of moving object position of contact
- Preshape their hands in anticipation of object’s size and orientation
- Speech of reach depends on whether they want to throw or put an object into the box
Infants’ actions and actions of others
- If infants receive training on a goal-directed action, they are more likely to interpret others’ actions with the same object as goal-directed
E.g., use velcro mittens as a tool to grab objects
E.g., to use the cane as a tool
- Active training is more likely to have an effect than observational learning alone
Motor processes’ role in action understanding
Mirror neurons
- Cells in the motor cortex that fire when performing and observing an action explored in monkeys and adults
- Yet to explore this system in infancy
- EEG rhythms are similar when adults watch and perform an action
Similar for infants
The magnitude of the pattern is influences by motor development
- Sensitive to goal-directedness vs. simple movements
social cognition
thinking about one’s own thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors, as well as those of other people
- Deals with how thought processes (cognition) work in a social context
Social Cognition
thinking about one’s own thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors, as well as those of other people
- Deals with how thought processes (cognition) work in a social context
basic social-cognitive abilities
- View self and others as intentional agents; with goal-oriented behavior
- Understand intentions; consider others’ perspectives
Intentional understanding can be seen early on → Carpenter et al. (1998)
- 14-18-month-olds
- Shown intention and accidental behavior sequences
- When given a chance to imitate, 14-month-olds prefer to imitate intentional behaviors (~2x as much)
- Infants differentiate intentional vs. accidental actions
early orientation to social others
- Newborns prefer listening to the language of their caregivers vs. foreign
Heard in the utero - Newborns orient to the human face and learn to seek caregivers’ faces
- Prepared (by prenatal experience) to attend to caregivers and others
social learning
acquiring information from others
- direct teaching
- observational learning