Cognitive Development - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Cognitive Development

Week 5

Psychology

NJ KangSlide2

The Ability to Solve Logical Problems

7 under: preoperational logic (Conservation)

Children tend to focus on one dimension or viewpoint in problem solving rather than integrating different dimensions or viewpoints together

7 over: concrete operational logicSlide3

The Ability to Solve Logical Problems

7 over: concrete operational logic

Involving the use of logic such as

The appearance-reality distinction and spatial cognition.

conservation, class inclusion, transitive inferences, and perspective-taking. Slide4

Cognitive Abilities in 2 to 6 year-olds

The Appearance-reality distinction

At pre-operation level: children believe How it looks is how it is

Something looks good to eat (appearance) is good to eat (reality).

Milk in a cup with a red filter wrapped.(

Flavell

, 1993)

At concrete level, we know it is not always like this. Slide5

Phenomenism

versus Realism

Ellie with a bear custom.

Q:

When you look at her with your eyes right now, does she look like Ellie or does she look like a bear?

Q:

Who is over there really and truly? Is she really and truly Ellie, or is she really and truly a bear?

A: Ellie both looked like and truly was a bear

A: Ellie looked like and truly was Ellie

Phenomenism

Realism

Phenomenism

answers and report the appearance of an object when asked about its real properties,

or realism answers and report the reality of an object when asked about its appearance. Slide6

Task Variations and the effects of language

Why children fail appearance –reality tasks?

They may believe that it is to evaluate the effectiveness of a disguise.

Their lack of knowledge about how to deal with the apparent contradiction between the two,

Or their misunderstanding of the experimenter’s questions (

Keil

, 1989)

Sponge rock task (Sapp et al., 2000)

Verbal task: children under 3 are able to trick someone into thinking that a sponge that was shaped and colored to look like a rock was actually a rock.

nonverbal task: they can find the sponge can wipe the floor with. Slide7

Task Variations and the effects of language

The conditions under which 3 year olds understand the distinction between appearance and reality are variable,

by the age of 4 years children certainly do have some capacity to represent different perspectives and view points

However, when asked even a simple appearance –reality question such as whether a piece of white paper placed behind a blue filter is really and truly white it is not until around age 6 or 7 that children will consistently give the correct answer. Slide8

Understanding spatial relations in 2 year-olds

Judy

DeLoache

(1987, 1991, 2000)



2.7 years

0

and 3.2 year-olds

 X

Shown a furnished room and its scale model located in an adjoining room.

Hid a large toy behind a furniture in the furnished room and a small toy in the same furniture in its scale model

.

Slide9

The credible Shrinking room

2.7 year olds

2.5 year-olds symbolic task

Real Room

hid a Real Toy

Shrinking Machine

Find a shrunken

toy from the model room

Real Room

hid

a Real Toy

Asks to find a small toy from the model

r

oom

Failed Slide10

Task 1

Can you think of any other experiment reflecting this idea?

How can this be implied in ELT?Slide11

Conservation

Under 7 years are

nonconservers

They lack an understanding of invariance, the concept that quantities remain the same despite perceptual changes if nothing is added or subtracted. Slide12

The different conservation problem

The different conservation tasks are typically passed at different ages

Number, liquid, length, and mass : around 6 to 7

Conservation of mass/weight: around 9

Volume : around 11 or 12

Horizontal

decalage

: they all seem to require the same logical abilities at the similar stageSlide13

Alternatives to Piaget’s interpretation of the conservation problemsSlide14

Are

nonconservers

“perceptually seduced”?

Gelman

(1982)

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

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Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1Slide15

Are

nonconservers

“perceptually seduced”?

Gelman

(1982)

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

Turtle 1

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They were

able to give a response consistent with an understanding of conservation and the invariance principle.Slide16

Are

nonconservers

“perceptually seduced”?

Object to these types of studies is that children do not genuinely conserve, and do not really understand that the same amount remains regardless of transformation. Slide17

Conversational confusions: Do children understand the questions?

The hypothesis that children’s inability to conserve is due to a misunderstanding of the question has been addressed in several different ways.

McGarrigle

and Donaldson (1974)

A naughty teddy accidentally not deliberately messed up one array of counters

 aged 4 to 6 were significantly more likely to conserve.

Light et al., (1979): liquid conservation task

A group of 5 and 6-year-olds: showed two glasses of water.

Accidentally one of them was chipped and poured the liquid into a new glass that was taller and narrower, more likely to conserve

Rose and Blank (1974) use of only one question after the row transformation than asking questions two before and after transformation (Are there the same number in both rows or does one row have more?). Slide18

Class inclusion

That require knowledge of part-whole or inclusion relations.

Are there more roses or flowers?

Superordinate (flowers) or subset (roses)

Pragmatic understanding:Slide19

The Effects of changing the task

Linguistic misunderstandings?

Chapman and McBride (1992)

Gave 4 – to 10- year-olds two versions of a class inclusion task involving seven toy horses (5 brown 2 white)

1) Are there more horses or more brown horses? (All standing)

2) Are there more sleeping horses or more brown horses?

 linguistic cues more salient and more successful  most children could not effectively justify their answers. Slide20

Transitive Inferences

Young children under about 7 years of age cannot reliably coordinate two separate pieces of information together in order to make a logical inference.

A>B, B> C

 A>CSlide21

Transitive Inferences

Bryant and

Trabasso

(1971)

Children aged 4-6 years could succeed on this task should steps be taken to ensure that they remembered the premises.

Giving names A: Tall, B: short and tall, C: short.

More names: red>Green> blue> yellow.

Very young even 4 years olds can do it.

But has the issue of a false positive pattern of responses.

Young children after all do possess inferential abilities. But maybe simply relying on their spatial representation abilities (having a mental image of the size of the objects)Slide22

Perspective -taking

Egocentrism permeates young children’s thinking and is a severe, general limitation on their knowledge of the world (Piaget)

Egocentrism: child’s difficulty in understanding things from another person’s point of viewSlide23

Perspective -taking

Three mountain task

Under 7 year old cannot describe a scene from other people’s perspective but their own vantage point.

Newcombe

and

Huttenlocher

(1992)

Children’s difficulties on the

Piagetian

tasks come from their lack of knowledge or experience in selecting different perspectives from an array of picturesWith 4 toys and a doll experiment children did all well.

Children’s perspective-taking seems crucially dependent on task demands. Slide24

What is the cause of the transition in cognitive development?

Children 7 and most 5 year olds often do not succeed on measures of the

appearance-reality distinction,

spatial cognition,

conservation,

class inclusion,

transitive inferences, and

perspective taking.



Lack of pre-existing schemasSlide25

What is the cause of the transition in cognitive development?

For Piaget, Assimilation and Accommodation

Assimilation:



Assimilate by attempting unsuccessfully to use these structures as strategies to solve tasks involving conservation etc.

children, eventually, adapt to the environment, they recognize the existence of a conflict between their present strategies and the strategies required for solving the problem at hand.

Accommodation

they accommodate (change) the structure of their thinking in order to embrace a new strategy that enables successful problem solving.

 Equilibrium. Slide26

What is the cause of the transition in cognitive development?

Information –Processing Change

The development of specific Brain structures

Conversational awareness.

Cultural influences on cognitive development.Slide27

Cultural influences on cognitive development.

A transition from synthetic models to mature, culturally received mental models.

Children’s knowledge of the shape of the earth.

Naïve theory or folk theories generated by constraints that can be seen as entrenched presuppositions which are resistant to change as these are constantly confirmed by every day experience.

Synthectic

model (1) the earth is a flat plane (2) unsupported objects fall down on an up-down gradient

 coherence of beliefs and assumptions about something shaped by culture.Slide28

Questions

Think about the changes that take place in children’s thinking around the ages of 3 to 6 years. How might these developments help children solve Piaget’s concrete operational tasks?

Is it reasonable to claim that young children understand the experimenter’s questions in tests of their cognitive understanding and development?

What evidence suggests that young children are egocentric?

Can children make transitive inferences?

Think about the roles of culture and brain development in cognitive development.

Do we understand what causes the major developments in children’s thinking that occur around ages 6 to 7 years?

Think about Piaget’s conservation problems. Why do you think young children fail them, and what develops to enable the older child to succeed at these tasks?