Lecture 17: Cognitive Development

Question 1

What are Piaget’s stages of cognitive development?

Answer 1

• Sensorimotor Stage (0-2) - The child begins to interact with the environment.
• Preoperational Stage (2-6/7) - The child begins to represent the world symbolically.
• Concrete Operational Stage (7-11/12) - The child learns rules such as conservation.
• Formal Operational Stage (12 - Adulthood) - The adolescent can transcend the concrete situation and think about the future.

Question 2

What simple reflexes are present at birth to six weeks in the sensorimotor stage?

Answer 2

• Sucking
• Grasping
• Looking
• When a reflex schema is engaged, then action occurs.

Question 3

What are primary circular reactions at 6 weeks to 4/5 months?

Answer 3

• Primary means that the actions are directed to the infant’s own body.
• Circular reaction - behaviour occurs by chance initially, then repeated.
• Behaviour patterns occur that prolong or exercise the reflexes.
• Accommodation - process by which schemas are modified.
• Infants actions on body change from reflexive to more voluntary.

Question 4

What is secondary Circular reactions at 4/5 months to 8/9months?

Answer 4

• Secondary - Directed towards objects.
• Voluntary - but not truly intelligent because not goal directed.
• Circular reactions - Events happen by chance, infant attempts to repeat. Infants grasps rattle as she moves, it makes a noise, then infant moves to repeat the noise.
• This process connects actions to outcomes in infant’s mind.
• No object Permanence - retrieval of partially hidden objects only.

Question 5

What is the coordination of secondary circular reactions at 9months to 12 months?

Answer 5

• Means-end = now truly intelligent
• Allows for goal directed sequences of behaviour = intentional
• Objects can be placed in global relations to other objects, e.g. banging together.
• Objects can now be more fully explored - application of multiple schema.
• Beginning of object permanence = retrieval of fully hidden objects but makes A not B error. Not able to solve visible displacements’.

Question 6

What is that A not B error?

Answer 6

*Searching in previously hidden location (A), even when can see the object has been moved to a new location (B) Piagetian visible Displacement task.

Question 7

What are Tertiary Circular Reactions at 12 months to 18 months?

Answer 7

• Means- end - trial and error allows for discovery of new means.
• Objects can be placed in specific relations to to other objects. E.g. use of an object to retrieve another object - tool - use.
• Piaget focused on behaviour patterns of rope, stick & support.
• Objects manipulated in specific relation to forces. E.g. infant in high chair, throwing food onto floor, watching it fall.
• Object Permanence - Retrieval of fully hidden objects solve A not B error. I.E., Able to solve visible displacements. but not able to solve invisible displacements.

Question 8

What are invention of new means through mental combinations at 18 months to 24 months?

Answer 8

• Representation = internalisation of action patterns.
• Means - end reasoning now allows for causal reasoning. If toy appears unexpectedly, infant can search for cause.
• Trial and error problem solving can now be conducted mentally. E.G., insightful problem solving, planning in advance of action.
• Object Permanence knows that objects continue to exist in space & time. Able to solve invisible displacements with systematic search.

Question 9

What is the pre - operational stage (2 - 7 years old)?

Answer 9

• Mostly defined as lacking operational thought. I.E. Mental actions that obey logical rules. Lacks ability to conserve.
• Concentration focus on 1 aspect only.
• Focus on perceptual appearance.
• Ignore transformation process attend to initial and end states.
• Fail process of logical reversibility
• Children lack hierarchical categorisation.
• Egocentrism impacts ability to take others perspective.
• Representational activities
• Language
• Make - believe play, including role playing & imaginary friends.
• Magical beliefs become beliefs with plausible explanations.
• Appearance - reality problems - e.g., straw in a glass of water.

Question 10

What is the Formal operational Stage?

Answer 10

• In concrete operations, children are limited by the needs to perceive the information directly. From 12 years, this limitation is overcome.
• The adolescent is able to reason logically in the abstract.

Question 11

What is Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory?

Answer 11

• Vygotsky emphasised that cognition developed within socio - cultural contexts.
• All of cognition has its roots in social interaction.
• Social interaction shapes the structure of thought.
• Social interaction determines the meaning of action and thought.
• With help from scaffolding from competent adults, the child can perform at higher levels than he can on his own.
• The adjustment. by the father, to give assistance just at the level that the child needs is referred to as acting within child’s zone of proximal development.

Question 12

Where did Vygotsky and Piaget differ in their theories?

Answer 12

• Whereas Piaget conceived of the infant as an independent scientist, Vygotsky conceived the infant as a cultural participant/apprentice perhaps these different perspectives parallel different cultural views.
• Piaget - mental representation (not language) driving cognitive development/ Vygotsky stated social interactions shaped language and language was foundation for all cognition.
• Piaget - egocentric speech, but stops when can engage in social speech. Vygotsky - private speech - guides self action, becomes internalised.
• Evidence support for Vygotsky - With increasingly challenging tasks, more private speech children with more private speech, more attentive, better performance children with learning difficulties have private speech for longer.
• Piaget was interested in plotting development along many realms (time, space). But he did not investigate what we now call social cognition.
• Joint attention (develops 9-12 months)
• Communication (becomes more sophisticated & more abstract.
• Theory of mind (develops 4 years)

Question 13

What is Joint Attention?

Answer 13

• Engagement with someone, about something.
• Primary intersubjectivity
• Engagement with social partner, Mutual gaze, positive emotion engagement. Infant –> Social partner (3-4 months).
• Manipulation of objects - Positive engagement, play with toys. Infant –> Object. (5-7 months).
• Secondary Intersubjectivity
• Coordinated Joint engagement. Coordination of object attention with social attention. Infant –>social partner –> Object. Infant –> Object. (9-12 months).
• Required for referential learning (language).
• Joint Attention is required in intentional communication, social referencing & imitation.
• JA = foundational skill for shared intentionality - motivation to share psychological states with others.

Question 14

What is theory of mind?

Answer 14

• Thinking about thought - meta cognition.
• Pre schoolers view the mind as the container of information.
• Older children (6-7 years old) view the mind as constructive agent, understand that people make mental inferences.
• Cognitive self - regulation - process of monitoring own thinking, keeping focus on goals, monitor progress redirect veering off.