Tutorial Slides Week 3

Question 1

Approach to Study of Cognition

Answer 1

FOUR approaches are taken to the study of cognition:

• Information processing.
• Neurological.
• Cognitive developmental.
• Psychometric.

Question 2

Two Key Questions regarding Cognitive-Developmental and Psychometric Approaches

Answer 2

• Is it positive or even useful to accelerate the process of cognitive development?
• How does cultural context affect the measurement of intelligence?

Question 3

Cognitive Acceleration

Answer 3

• Parents put effort into encouraging their infants to learn more at earlier ages
• Some parents begin intensive teaching in early infancy
• This is hoped to produce a super-baby who acheives at an advanced level compared to their peers

Question 4

Support for Cognitive Acceleration

Answer 4

• Glenn Doman founded Better Baby Institute 1955
• Domann Method - parents teach infants by using flashcards three times per day
• Brains of human babies most sensitive to learning and making neural connections at first 12 months of life
• Not using neurons will lead to death of neurons.

Question 5

Argument Against Cogitive Acceleration

Answer 5

• Piaget argued against Cognitive Acceleration
• There may be an optimal speed of development for the species
• He said: The higher the zoological species the longer its period of infancy

Question 6

Research of Cognitive Acceleration

Answer 6

• Adey, Robertson, and Venville (2002)
• Investigated effect of cognitive acceleration program on cognitive development of children in Year One
• 300 children in 14 Year One classes (experimental group) tested on conservation tasks and drawing (test of spatial awareness)

Question 7

Research of Cognitive Acceleration - The Intervention

Answer 7

A series of activities over one year designed to:

• Promote Cognitive Conflict (from Piaget)
  
  • Involves the child being faced with a problem that they cannot solve
  • Development to higher functioning is the desired result of resolving this conflict
• Be delivered in way that maximised social construction (from Vygotsky)
  
  • Social construction says that children learn in a social way
  • Exposure to and manipulation of ideas with others who have greater skills and knowledge
• Encourage metacognition (child’s conscious reflection on his/her thinking process)
  
  • A reflective process to occur after a problem has been attempted
  • To increase their personal awareness of what they have learned and how their thinking has changed.

Question 8

Cognitive Conflict

Answer 8

• A psychological state involving a discrepancy between cognitive structures and experience
• Discrepancy occurs when simultaneously active, incompatible ideas compete for a single response
• Thought to trigger compensatory adjustments in executive control processes
• Serves to reduce and prevent future similar cognitive conflict.

Question 9

Social Construction

Answer 9

• Centres on the notion that meanings are developed in coordination with others rather than separately within each individual.
• Children learn through socialising
• Knowledge is co-constructed and that individuals learn from one another

Question 10

Metacognition

Answer 10

• Analysing the results of the process of resolving a problem
• Seeks to improve outcomes of future attempts to problem solve
• Gain personal awareness of how their thinking changes in response to the outcomes of problem solving

Question 11

Cognitive Accelerations - Intervention Activities and Results

Answer 11

• Effect size:
  
  • Direct tests (same type as tested) →.47.
  • Transfer tests (different type to tested) →.43.
• Seriation.
• Classification.
• Time sequence.
• Causality.
• Points of view.
• Rules of a game.
• Space/Time.

Experimental group made significantly greater gains in cognitive development over one year than controls.

Question 12

Define Intelligence

Answer 12

• Intelligence = ability to solve problems and adapt to and learn from experiences Santrock 2012
• Psychometric approach to intelligence assumes intelligence is a measurable factor.

Question 13

Psychometric Approach

Answer 13

• Many different tests devised to measure intelligence.
• Many different definitions of intelligence.
• Definition of intelligence used in test determines how construct of ‘intelligence’ is measured
• First intelligence tests developed > 100 years ago.

Question 14

Criticism of Intelligence Tests

Answer 14

• Skills required to survive today are broader than when the first IQ tests were introduced
• Original tests had a very homogenous population and as society becomes diverse this can affect Bell Curve
• Creative, Adaptable, Analytic Skills, Practical Skills are not measured
• PseudoQuantification - We can calculate an accurate number that doesn’t alway reflect much