Many argue that ______ childhood
and the ________ parental investment
co-evolved with larger brains and
intelligence
protracted, increased
Many argue that protracted childhood
and the increased parental investment
co-evolved with larger brains and
intelligence
what are two ways that human “Life History” is unique in?
- Human babies are more helpless
-A lot of brain development happens after birth - Period of immaturity is more protracted
-Extended period of learning and socializatio
Jean Piaget’s Theory of Development
- more of an empiricist (than nativist) view of development
- development was seen as discontinuous progression through different stages (like steps– not a straight line of ability to think least to most abstract concepts)
- Development was seen as a “domain-general” process
-developmental changes cross-cut domains (physical world, mathematical world, social world)
Jean Piaget’s theory of development focused on the
inner-workings of the child’s mind; he
conceptualized the child as a scientist, constructing
and adapting theories about the world based on their
experiences
Central to Piaget’s theory were:
1. Schema
2. Assimilation
3. Accommodation
Describe these
- Schema: infants’ and children’s
theories about how the world works - Assimilation: the process of applying
a schema to a novel stimulus (using what you already know to understand something new) - Accommodation: the process of
adjusting a schema to incorporate
new information (changing what you thought u knew bc learned something else)
Piaget’s Theory of Development: 4 stages of abstract concepts
- Sensorimotor stage (0-2yrs)
-least abstract, limited to the here and now
-infants acquire info about the world by sensing it and moving around within it
-they develop object permanence (knowledge that objects exist even when they are not visible) - Preoperational stage (2-6yrs)
-develop preliminary understanding of the
physical world - Concrete Operational stage (6-11yrs)
- Formal Operational stage (11yrs+)
-most abstract
object permanence
knowledge that objects exist even when they are not visible (sensorimotor stage)
Definition of Conservation & Conservation study in children 2-6yrs (preoperational stage)
Conservation: the understanding that certain properties of an object are invariant despite changes in the object’s appearance
preoperational stage children fail to understand this
study: experimenter pours one cup into a narrow and tall glass and children can’t tell it’s the same amount of liquid
What’s egocentrism and what’s the egocentrism study (three mountains task)
child sees 3 mountains and there’s a doll on the other side. child is asked what the doll sees (their view reversed basiclaly)
Egocentrism: failure to understand that different people see the world differently
Failure/success in three mountains task (social reasoning task) coincides with failure/success in conservation task (a physical reasoning task)
* Preoperational children fail
* Concrete operational children succeed
Because infants will look longer at things
that interest them, longer looking can be
used as an indicator of…
Infants’ ability to distinguish between stimuli
Infants’ understanding of the world
Why should we believe infant looking studies?
- Looking time findings are correlated with the construct
they appear to measure - Looking time findings converge with other methods
(e.g., neuroimaging methods)
Lev Vygotsky and his view on development
Lev Vygotsky viewed development as a
“socio-cultural” process and that it was
largely the product of the child’s
interaction with others (caregivers)
cultural intelligence hypothesis: definition, research, and findings
what makes human cognition unique is the early
development of socio-cognitive skills
Researchers compared young children (2.5 years), chimpanzees, and orangutans on the same battery of physical cognition and social cognition tasks
Findings: 2.5-yr-old children are comparable to chimps in
their physical reasoning but outperform chimps
in their social reasoning
evidence of the social nature of
human cognitive development
- Infants are social creatures from the start
-newborns follow stimuli, but only faces - Infants use social signals to guide their
behavior and learning (social referencing), Babies’ behavior will vary as a function of parents’ expression - Toddlers understand the intentions and goals of others (and are often motivated to help)
Domain-general (piaget) vs domain-specific development (others like Noam Chomsky)
general: brain develops with one big general learning system
specific: has separate specialized systems for different kinds of learning
In Jean Piaget’s theory of development,
development was seen as a domain-general
process, developmental changes cross-cut
domains (e.g., physical world, mathematical
world, etc.)
Others (e.g., Noam Chomsky) viewed
development as a domain-specific
(“modular”) process, development across
different domains (physical, mathematical,
social) proceeded independently
Theory of Mind
the understanding that people’s minds produce representations
of the world and that these representations guide people’s behaviors
Autistic adults and children ______ in many
tests of non-verbal intelligence and show strong
______ across tasks
Autistic adults and children outperform in many
tests of non-verbal intelligence and show strong
dissociations across tasks
Statistics about our Aging
Population
- Human life expectancy doubled in the
20th century - Many predict those born in 2000 will
celebrate 100th birthdays - In 2018, the number of people over 65
surpassed those under 5 for the first
time in our lifetime
80% of all cognitive tasks tested
showed peaks in what age?
late teens, early 20s
Why is (early, late 20s) age-related cognitive decline less noticeable?
Possibility 1: very few situations actually require “peak” cognitive abilities
Possibility 2: not everything declines with age
Possibility 3: compensatory mechanisms (ex: older airline pilots perform worse on memory task but better with air traffic control commands)
Cognitive decline with age in:
1. Working memory vs long-term memory
2. Episodic memory vs semantic memory
3. Recall vs recognition
- Working memory (holding information in mind) declines more than long-term memory (especially semantic memory).
- Episodic memory (memory for events) declines more than semantic memory (memory for facts).
- Recall (remembering with no retrieval cue) declines more than recognition (remembering with retrieval cue).
young vs old adult brain with differentiation
young adult: highly differentiated
(i.e., different brain areas solve different tasks)
older adult: brain becomes “de-
differentiated” (i.e., brains areas are less specialized; they get recruited for multiple tasks)
processing linguistic info: young vs old adult brain with lateralization
young: more lateralized, language happens mostly in left hemisphere
older: less lateralized, more bilateral, use both hemispheres to process language, thought to e compensation bc certain functions weaken with age
visual processing: younger vs older with identity (what) and spatial (where) tasks. ventral vs dorsal stream
Identity tasks (what)
younger: ventral stream
older: ventral and dorsal
Spatial tasks (where)
younger: dorsal stream
older: ventral and dorsal
The happiness curve
“U-Shaped” curve of happiness replicates across many countries and remain true after controlling for many other variables (economic, etc.)
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PSYC1100_L1_08282520
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Chapter 111
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Chapter 24
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Chapter 317
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Chapter 3 pt 218
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Chapter 429
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Chapter 1 Study Guide16
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Chapter 2 Study Guide4
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Chapter 3 Study Guide21
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Chapter 4 Study Guide18
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Chapter 523
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Chapter 6 pt 19
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Chapter 6 pt 221
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Chapter 728
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Exam 2 Study Guides50
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Chapter 8 - Language35
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Chapter 9 - Cognition15
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Chapter 10 - Intelligence32
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Chapter 11 - Development32
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Exam 3 Study Guides56
