1
Q
What is schema?
A
Mental framwork of beliefs and expectations about how the world works which are developed through experience. Become more detailed and complex as a child gets older.
2
Q
What is a me schema?
A
All of a child’s knowledge about themselves
3
Q
What is disequilibrium?
A
When our existing schema does not allow us to make sense of something new - this is an unpleasent experience.
4
Q
What is equilibration?
A
When we have encountered new infomation and built it into our understanding of a topic either by assimilating it into an existing schema or accomodating it by forming a new one.
5
Q
What is assimilation?
A
Takes place when we understand a new experience and equilibrate by adding new infomation to our existing schema
6
Q
What is accomodation?
A
Takes place in response to dramatically new experiences. Has to either change their schema or form a new one.
7
Q
What is a strength of piaget’s theory of cognitive development? (Research support)
A
Existence of evidence for the individual formation of mental representations.
Piaget says that children will form quite individual representations of the world even when they have similar learning experiences, even when they have similar learning experiences. Howe demonstrated this in a study in which children aged 9-12 years were placed in groups of 4 to investigate and discuss the movement of objects down a slope. Following this activity, all the children were found to have increased their understanding. However, their understanding had not become more similar, instead, each child had picked up different facts and reached slightly different conclusions. This means that each child had formed an individual mental representation of how objects move on slopes.
8
Q
What is a strength of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development? (Real world application)
A
Has been applied in teaching. Piaget’s idea that children learn by actively exploring their environment and forming their own mental representations of the world has changed classroom teaching. Now classrooms are activity orientated where children actively engage in tasks that allow them to construct their own understandings of the curriculum. This is called discovery learning. This shows how Piaget inspired approaches may facilitate the development of individual representations of the world.
9
Q
What is a limitation of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development? (Real world application counterpoint)
A
There is no firm evidence showing that children learn better using discovery learning. In a review by Lazonder and Harmsen, they concluded that discovery learing with considerable input from teachers was the most effective way to learn, but it seems that input from others, not discovery is the crucial element of this effectivness. This means that discovery learning is less effective than we would expect if Piaget’s theory was correct.
10
Q
What is a limitation of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development? (The role of others in learning)
A
He underestimates the role of others in learning.
He saw learning as an indivdual process, contrasting other theories which sees learning as a more social process supported by more knowledgeable others. Vygotsky saw knowledge as existing first between the learner and the more experienced other and only then in the mind of the learner. There is strong evidence to support the idea that learnig is enhanced by interaction with others and this is perhaps explained better by alternate theories.
So Piaget’s theories may be an incomplete explanation for learning as it doesn’t put enough emphasis on the role of others.
11
Q
What is the extra evaluation point for Piaget’s theory of cognitive development? (The role of motivation)
A
Piaget says that people aquire new knowledge to escape the unpleasent sensation of disequilibrium, so the desire to learn is innately motivated. However, Piaget may have overstated the role of motivation in learning, as he studied an urepresentative and highly intelligent sample who may have been more motivated to learn than most.
12
Q
What is the first stage of Piaget’s stages of intellectual development?
A
Sensorimotor stage
13
Q
When does the sensorimotor stage take place?
A
0-2 years
14
Q
What happens in the sensorimotor stage?
A
Early focus is on physical sensations and developing basic physical coordination.
Learn by trial and error that they can deliberately move their bodies and eventually that they move particular objects.
15
Q
What is object permanence?
A
The ability to realise that an object still exists when it is out of site. They continue to look for the object instead of switching their attention to something else.
16
Q
When do babies learn object permananence?
A
8 months old
17
Q
What is the second stage of Piaget’s stages of intellectual development?
A
Pre-operational stage
18
Q
When does the pre operational stage occur?
A
2-7 years
19
Q
What is conservation?
A
The ability to realise that quantity remains the same even when the appearence of an object or group of objects changes.
20
Q
What is Piaget’s number conservation experiment?
A
Placed 2 rows of 8 identical counters side by side.
Even young children correctly reasoned that each row had the same number. However, when the counters in one of the rows were pushed closer together, pre operational children struggled to conserve and said there were fewer counters in that row.
21
Q
What is Piaget’s liquid conservation experiment?
A
When 2 identical containers were placed side by side with the contents at the same height most children could see they had the same volume of liquid. However, if the liquid was poured into a thinner, taller vessel, younger children tended to believe there was more liquid in the taller vessel.
22
Q
What is egocentrism?
A
A child’s tendency to only see the world from their own point of view.
23
Q
What is Piaget’s and Inhelder’s 3 mountains task?
A
Children were shown 3 model mountains, each with a different feature: a cross, a house or snow.
A doll was placed at the side of the model so it faced the scene at a different angle to the child.
Child was asked to chose what the doll would see from a range of pictures. Pre operational children tended to find this difficult and often chose the picture that matched the scene from their own point of view.
24
Q
What is class inclusion?
A
Where we recognise that classes of objects have subsets and are themselves subsets of larger classes.
24
What is Piaget and Inhelder find out about class inclusion?
Children under the age of 7 struggle with the idea that classifications have subsets. When they showed 7-8 year old children pictures of 5 dogs and 2 cats and asked are there more dogs or animals? Children tended to respond there were more dogs. They couldn't simultaneously see a dog as a member of the dog class and the animals class.
24
When does the stage of concrete operations take place?
7-11 years
25
What happens in the stage of concrete operations?
Most children can conserve better and perform better on tasks of egocentrism and task inclusion. They have better reasoning abilities - operations, but they are concrete, they can only be applied to physical objects in the child's prescence. They struggle to reason about abstract ideas and to imagine objects or situations they cannot see.
26
From what age is the stage of formal operations?
11+
27
What happens in the stage of formal operations?
Can focus on the form of the argumet rather than the cotent.
Can be tested using syllogisms e.g All yellow cats have two heads, my yellow cat is called Charlie, how many heads does Charlie have. Younger children become distracted by the content and answered that cats don't have 2 heads.
Once children can reason formally, they are capeale of scientific reasoning and can appreciate abstract ideas.
28
What is a limitation of Piaget's stages of intellectual development? (Conservation research)
Research on conservation was flawed.
Children taking part in Piaget's conservation studies may have been influenced by seeing the experimenter change the appearance of the counters of liquid. Why would the researcher change the appearance then ask if it was the same? McGarrigle and Donaldson set up a study in which the counters appeared to be moved by accident. In one condition they replicated the standard Piaget task, with 4-6 year olds and found most children answered incorrectly. However in another condition, a naughty teddy appeared and knocked the counters closer together, now 72% said there were the same number as before. So children age 4-6 could conserve for long as long as they were not put off by the way they were questioned. So piaget was wrong about the age conservation appears.
29
What is a limitation of Piaget's theory of intellectual development? (Class inclusion research)
Findings on class inclusion are contradicted by newer research. Siegler and Svetina gave 100 five year olds from Slovenia ten class inclusion tasks, recieving an explanation of the task after each session. In one condition they recieved feedback that there must be more animals than dogs as there are 9 animals and only 6 dogs. A different group received feedback that that their must be more aimals becuase dogs were a subset of animals. The scores across the sessions improved more for the latter group suggesting children had aquired a real understanding of class inclusion. This means that children under 7 can in fact understand class inclusion so Piaget underestimated what younger children can do.
30
What is a limitation of Piaget's theory of intellectual development? (Egocentrism research)
There is lack of support for Piaget's view of egocentrism.
Hughes tested the ability of children to see a situation from 2 people's viewpoints using a model with 2 intersecting walls and 3 dolls, a boy, and 2 police officers. Once familiarised with the task, children as young as 3 1/2 were able to position the boy doll where 1 police officer could not see them 90% of the time, and 4 year olds could do this 90% of the time when there are 2 police officers to hide from.
This means that when tested with a scenario that makes more sense children can decentre and imagine other perspectives much eariler than Piaget proposed suggesting that he underestimates the abilities of younger children and that his stages are incorrect.
31
What is a strength of Piaget's theory of intellectual development? (counterpoint)
One issue with all the limitations are that they are all criticisms of the age at which a particular cognitive stage is reached, not criticism of the characteristics of the stages. e.g. Hughes' point is that children could decentre at a younger age than Piaget had claimed but this ability may still not be present in very young children and we can see from Hughes' research that ability improves with age. Therefore the core principles of Piaget's stages remain unchallenged but the methods he used meant the timings of his stages were wrong.
32
What is the extra evaluation point for Piaget's theory of intellectual development? (Domain general and domain specific)
Piaget believed itellectual development is a single process and that all aspects of cognition develop together e.g language and reasoning, this must be the case for most children otherwise the school system would not teach a common curriculum to children according to age. However, research with autistic children suggests these abilities may develop separately. Some autistic also experience co occuring learning disabilities and face challenges with reasoning, lagnuage and egocentrism. But in other autistic children who do not have learning disabilties these skills develop as they do in no autistic children.
33
What do Piaget and Vygotsky agree on?
Children's reasoning abilities develop in a particular sequence and that such abilities are qualitatively different at different ages.
34
What is the major difference between Piaget and Vygotsky's views?
Vygotksy saw cognitive development as a social process pf learning from more experienced others, knowledge is at first intramental and becomes intermental and he also sae language as a much more iportant part of cognitive development as vygotsky did.
35
Why are there cultural differences in cognitive development?
If reasoning abilities are acquired from the more experienced indivuals the person has contact with, the child will acquire the reasoning abilities of those people. Children will pick up the mental tools most important for life within the physical, social and work environments of their culture.
36
What is the zone of proximal development?
The gap between a child's current level of development - what they can understand and do alone, and what they can potentially understand after interaction with more expert others
37
What is the value of learning from more advanced others?
Children develop a more advanced understanding of a situation and hence the more advanced reasoning abilities needed to deal with it by learning from others, as opposed to individual exploration.
Higher mental functions such as formal reasoning can only be acquired through interaction with more advanced others.
38
What is scaffolding?
Process of helping a learner cross the ZPD and advance as much as they can. Level of help typically declines as the learner crosses the ZPD.
39
What are the 5 levels of help given to children in scaffolding?
5. Demonstration
4. Preparation for child
3. Indication of materials
2. Specific verbal instructions
1. General prompts
40
What is a strength of Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development? (Support for the ZPD)
Clear evidence that there is a gap between level of reasoning a child can acheive on their own and what they can acheive with help from a more expert other.
Roazzi and Bryant gave children 4-5 the task of estimating the number of sweets in a box, in one condition the child worked alone and in another, with the help of an older child. Most children working alone failed to give a good estimate. In the expert help condition the older (expert) children offered prompts to the younger children and they succesfully mastered the task. Shows that children can develop additional reasoning abilities when working with a more expert individual so the ZPD is a valid concept.
41
What is a strength of Vygotksy's theory of cognitive development? (Support for scaffolding)
Research shows that the level of help given by an expert declines during the process of learning as predicted by scaffolding. Cromer and Crosss used a longitudinal procedure to follow up 45 children, observing them engaged in problem solving tasks with the help of their mothers at 16,26,44 and 54 months. Distinctive changed in help were observed over time. The mothers used less and less direct intervention and more hints and prompts as the children gained experience and only offered help when needed rather than constantly. So adult assistance with children's learning is well described by the concept of scaffolding.
42
What is a strength of Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development? (Real world application)
Ideas have been highly influential in education in the 21st century. Social interaction in learning, through group work, peer tutoring and individual adult assistance from teachers and teaching assistants has been used to scaffold children through their ZPD. There is evidence that these strategies are effective. Van Keer and Verhaeghe found that 7 year olds tutored by 10 year olds in addition to whole class teaching progressed further in reading than controls who had just standard whole class teaching. A review by Alborz of the effectivness of teaching assitants concluded that teaching assistants are very effective at improving rate of learning in children. So Vygotsky's ideas have value in real world settings.
43
What is a limitation of Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development? (Real world application counterpoint)
Applications may not be universal. Liu and Matthews point out that in China classes of up to 50 children learn very effectively in lecture style classrooms with few individual social interactions. This should not be possible in Vygotsky is entirely correct. So he may have overestimated importance of scaffolding in learning.
44
What is the extra evaluation point for Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development?(Vygotsky vs Piaget)
Their is plenty of evidence to support Vygotsky's view. But if he was right about the process of interactive learning we would expect all children learning together to pick up very similar skills and have similar schemas. But Howe found that what children learn varies considerably between individuals even in group learning.
45
What is a difference between Bailargeon and Piaget's theories?
Piaget believed babies less tha 8-9 months had very primitive understanding of the physical world, and lacked object permanence.
But Baillargeon said babies have a better understanding of the physical world than Piaget suggested, the lack of understanding of object permanence can be understood becuase babies lack necessary motor skills to pursue a hidden object, or may lose interest as are distracted.
46
What is a violation of expectation experiment?
If a child understands how the physical world operates, then they will expect certain things to happen in particular situations, if these do not happen and the child shows suprise, shows they have intact knowledge of that aspect of the world.
47
What is the procedure of Baillargeon and Graber's violation of expectation research?
24 babies age 5-6 months. A tall and a short rabbit passed behind a screen. In the familiarisation event, a baby is shown a short rabbit and a tall rabbit disappearing as they pass behind the screen - fits expectation of object permanence.
In the test events, the expected event a short rabbit passes behind a screen with a window and due to the height of the window, the rabbit is not visible until it appears of the other side. In the unexpected event the tall rabbit would not be seen through the window as it moves from 1 side of the screen to the other. Babies who show suprise at this have object permanence.
48
What were the findings of Baillargeon and Graber's violation of expectation research?
The babies looked for an average of 33.07 seconds at the unexpected event compared to 25.11 at the unexpected event, the researchers interpreted this as they were suprised at the unexpected event, they must have known that the tall rabbit would have appeared at the window, demonstrating understanding of object permanence.
49
How have other studies shown that infants do have good understanding of the physical world?
Baillargeon and grabers study is an example of an occlusion study, but VOE has also been used to test infant understanding of containent - When an object is seen to enter a container, it will be there when the container is opened, and support - the idea that an object should fall when unsupported but non when on a horizontal surface In these cases the infants have payed more attention to unexpected events.
50
What is a physical reasoning system?
Humans are born hardwired with a basic understanding of the physical world and the ability to learn more details easily. We have primitive awareness of the physical properties of the world which become more sophisticated through experience, e.g we have a innate understanding of object persistance.
51
How do babies develop to form more complex physical reasoning?
In the first few weeks of life, babies develop event categories, each category corresponds to 1 way in which objects interact e.g occlusion. Becuase a baby is born with a basic understanding of object permanence, and understands that 1 object can block the view of another, by the time they are tested with Baillargeon and Graber's task, they have a good idea that the tall rabbit should appear at the window. The unexpected event captures the baby's attention as the nature of the PRS means they are predisposed to attend to new events that might allow them to develop their understanding of the physical world.
52
What is a strength of Baillargeon's research? (Validity of violation of expectation)
The VOE method gets around an important limitation of Piaget's research - his assumption that when a baby loses interest in a hidden object, they no longer believes it exists. Piaget's method cannot distinguish between this and and the alternative possibility that the baby might be distracted by other visual stimuli. The VOE method overcomes this becuase a distraction would not affect the outcome as the only thing being measured is how long the baby looks at the screen - looking away is not recorded. So The VOE method has greater validity than Piaget's methods as a confounding variable is controlled.
53
What is a limitation of Baillargeon's research? (Validity of violation of expectation counterpoint)
Piaget pointed out that acting in accordance with a principle is not the same as understanding it. Even if babies can recognise and devote more attention to uexpected events they may not understand them. Understanding something means it can be thought about consciously and applied to reasoning about different aspects of the world. So even though babies do respond to unexpected conditions, this may not represent a change in cognitive ability.
54
What is a limitation of Baillargeon's research? (May not be object permanence)
Assumes that response to VOE is linked to unexpectedness and hence object permanence. Babies response may not be due to the unexpectedness of the event, all VOE shows is that babies find an event more interesting and we are inferring a link between this and object permanence. But it may not be unexpected, they could be interested for some other reason. So VOE may not be an entirely valid way to study a very young child's understanding of the physical world.
55
What is a strength of Baillargeon's research? (Universal understanding)
Hespos and Marle point out that we all have very good understanding of the basic characteristics of the physical world regardless of culture and personal experience. Suggesting basic understanding of the physical world is innate otherwise we would expect significant cultural and individual differences which there is no evidence for. This suggests the PRS is correct.
56
What is the extra evaluation point for Baillargeon's research? (Credibility)
There have been challenges to the idea of the PRS. Not only is it difficult to determine whether a baby is really responding to the unexpected nature of an event, but even if they are, do they really understand it.
But the 1 thing that enhances the credibility of the PRS its consistency to what we already know about the development of other visual systems, for babies can use crude patterns to judge distance at an early age but experience is needed to make use of more subtle visual cues.
57
What is social cognition?
The mental processes we make use of when engaged in social interaction
58
What kind of cognitive development did Piaget believe in?
Domain general - physical and social perspective taking occur hand in hand
59
What kind of cognitive development did Selman believe in?
Domain specific - social perspective taking is a separate process
60
What was Selman's research into social perspective taking?
30 boys and 30 girls, 20 4 year olds, 20 5 year olds and 20 6 year olds. Given tasks where they had to say how other people would feel in various scenarios. One scenario featured a girl called Holly who had promised her father she will no longer climb trees but then her friend's cat was stuck in a tree, children had to describe and explain how each person would feel if Holly did or did not climb the tree to rescue the kitten.
Found a number of distinct levels of perspective taking which correlated with age.
61
Outline stage 0 of Selman's stages
- Egocentric
- 3-6
- Cannot reliably distinguish between between their own emotions and those of others. can generally understand emotional stages in others but do not understand what social behaviours might have caused them.
62
Outline stage 1 of Selman's stages
- Social-infomational
- 6-8
- Child can now tell the difference between their own point of view and that of others but can only focus on one of these perspectives..
63
Outline stage 2 of Selman's stages
- Self reflective
- 8-10
- Child can put themself in the position of others and fully appreciate their perspective, but can only take on one point of view at a time.
64
Outline stage 3 of Selman's stages
- Mutual
- 10-12
- Children can now look a situation from their own and another's point of view at the same time.
65
Outline stage 4 of Selman's stages
- Social and conventional system
- 12+
- Can see that sometimes understanding other's view points is not enough to allow people to reach agreement, so social conventions are needed to keep order.
66
What did Selman believe development through his stages are based on?
Maturity and experience
67
What are Schultz's 3 aspects to social development?
1. Interpersonal understanding - if we can take different roles we can understand social situations.
2. Interpersonal negotiation strategies - as well as understanding what others think in social situations we also have to develop skills on how to respond to them. So we develop social skills like asserting our position, compromising and managing conflict.
3. Awareness of personal meaning of relationships - Reflect on social behaviour in the context of different relationships - understanding that relationships change how we behave, e.g a gang member may have good social skills but chooses to be violent to approach conflict due to their role in a gang.
68
What is a strength of Selman's theory? (Research support for stages)
Selman tested 60 children (boys and girls age 4-6 years old) using scenarios like Holly and the kitten. There were significant positive correlations between age and the ability to take different perspectives. This cross sectional research has been supported by findings of longitudinal research which follow children over a period of time and recorded improvements in their perspective taking ability. Longitudinal studies have good validity as they control for individual differences whereas cross sectional research does not. So there is solid support from different lines of research for Selman's core idea that perspective taking improves with age.
69
What is a strength of Selman's theory? (Research support for perspective taking)
A key element of Selman's approach is the importance of perspective taking in social development. Supported by an observational study of child-parent interactions in toyshops and supermarkets. Buijzen and Valkenburg observed interactions including those in which parents refused to buy their child what they wanted. Any coercive behaviour was noted which is an example of unhealthy social behaviour. Found negative correlations between coercive behaviour and both age and perspective taking ability. Suggesting there is a relationship between perspective taking and healthy social behaviour.
70
What is a limitation of Selman's theory? (Research support for perspective taking counterpoint)
Other lines of research have not supported the links between perspective taking and social development. Gasser and Keller assessed perspective taking in bullies, victims and non participants. Found that bullies displayed no difficulties in perspective taking. Suggests that perspective taking may not be a key element in healthy social development.
71
What is a limitation of Selman's theory? (Too cognitive)
Perspective taking is a cognitive ability, however there is far more to children's social development than their increasing cognitive abilities. By focusing on the cognitive elements of development, Selman's approach fails to take into account the full range of other factors that impact on a child's social development. Other internal factors include the development of empathy and emotional self regulation, external factors include parenting style, family climate and oppotunities to learn from peer interaction. So Selman's approach is too narrow to explain social development.
72
What is the extra evaluation point for Selman's theory? (Nature vs nurture)
Some evidence for cultural differences in perspective taking abilities. Wu and Keysar compared American and matched Chinese children and found that Chinese children were significantly more advanced. Suggesting that cultural influences might be important. However, Selman believed that his stages of perspective taking were based primarily of cognitive maturity (biologically driven) and hence universal.
73
What is theory of mind?
Our personal understanding of what other people are thinking and feeling.
74
Describe Meltzoff's intential reasoning research
Showed that toddlers age 18 months have an understanding of adult intentions when carrying out simple actions. The children observed adults place beads in a jar. In the experimental condition the adults appeared to struggle with this and some beads fell outside the jar. In the control condition the adults placed the beads into the jar successfully. In both conditions the toddlers did successfully place the beads in the jar. So they were imitating what the adult intended to do rather than what they actually did. Showing that young children have simple ToM
75
Describe Wimmer and Perner's false belief tasks
Tests whether a child can understand that people can believe something that is not true. Told 3-4 year olds a story where Maxi left his chocolate bar in a blue cupboard and went to the playground. Maxi's mum used some of the chocolate and returned it to a green cupboard. Children were asked where Maxi would look for his chocolate when he comes back. Most 3 year olds incorrectly said the green cupboard as they assume Maxi knows what they know. Most 4 year olds correctly identified the blue cupboard. So ToM undergoes a shift and becomes more advanced at 4 years old.
76
Outline Baron-Cohen's Sally Anne task
A false belief task where children were told a story where Sally places a marble in her basket and when she is not looking, Anne moves it to her box. The children have to work out where Sally will look for her marble
77
Describe how Baron-Cohen have explored the link between ToM deficits and autism using false belief tasks.
The Sally Anne task was given to 20 autistic children individually, 27 non autistic children and 14 children with down syndrome. 85% of the children in the control groups correctly identified where Sally would look for her marble. Only 4 of the autistic children (20%) could answer this. This difference showed that autism involved a ToM deficit and this may be a complete explanation for autism.
78
What is autism?
Where people face challenges with social interaction/communication and repetitive/restricted behaviours. As a spectrum disorder, autism affects people in different ways and co occurs with learning disabilities in some.
79
What challenged the idea that autism could not be explained by ToM deficits?
Studies of older autistic children without a learning disability showed this group can succeed on false belief tasks.
80
Describe the eyes task.
Assess ToM in adolescents and adults. Involves reading complex emotions in pictures of faces just showing a small area around the eyes. Found that many autistic adults without a learning disability struggled with this supporting the idea ToM deficits may be a cause of autism.
81
What is the limitation of ToM research (False belief tasks)
Reliance on false belief tasks to test the theory.
They have a serious problem with validity. They require other cognitive abilities such as visual memory - failure on false belief tasks may be due to deficit in memory rather then ToM. Some children who can engage successfully in pretend play which requires some ToM ability find false belieg tasks hard. So false belief tasks may not really measure ToM so it lacks key research evidence.
82
What is a limitation of ToM research? (Theory of mind vs perspective taking)
Research techniques fail to distinguish ToM from perspective taking. They are very different cognitive abilities and can be hard to be sure we are measuring one and not the other. E.g in intentional reasoning tasks a child might be visualising the beads task from the adult's perspective rather than expressing conscious understanding of their intention. In the Sally Anne task children may be switching between the perspectives of Sally and Anne. So with the exception of the eyes task, tasks that measure ToM may actually measure perspective taking.
83
What is a strength of ToM research? (Real world application)
Has application in understanding autism.
The tests to assess ToM are challenging for some autistic people as they may not fully understand what others are thinking, this explains why some autistic people find social interaction difficult. In contrast it is often assumed that neurotypical people can pick up on other people's thoughts and feelings with little effort. So ToM research has real world relevance.
84
What is a limitation of ToM research? (Real world application counterpoint)
ToM does not provide a complete explanation for autism. Not every autistic person experiences ToM issues nor are ToM problems limited to autistic people. Lack of ToM cannott explain the cognitive strengths of autistic people. So there must be other factors involved in autism and the association between austism and ToM is not as strong as first believed.
85
What is the extra evaluation point for ToM research (Nature and nurture)
Perner suggests ToM is an innate ability which develops alongside other cognitive abilities as a result of maturity. This is in line with Piaget's view that more abstract thinkig develops as we get older. Cross cultural studies have found similar pattern of development of ToM abilities in different cultures.
However, Astington suggests a more Vygotskain explanation, that ToM develops due to interaction with others and is gradully internalised. Liu found that ToM abilities did not necessarily develop at the same age in different cultures just in the same sequence.
86
What is the mirror neuron system?
Brain cells called mirror neurons distributed in several areas of the brain. They fire both in response to personal action and in response to action on the part of others. May allow us to interpret intention and emotion in others.
87
How were mirror neurons discovered?
Rizzolati studied electrical activity in a mokey's motor cortex, one researcher reached for this lunch in view of the monkey. The monkey's motor cortex became activated in the same way it did when it reached for food itself. The same brain cells fired when the monkey reached itself or watched someone else reach. Called mirror neurons as they mirror motor activity in others.
88
How have mirror neurons involved in understanding other's intentions?
Gallese and Goldman suggested that mirror neurons respond not just to observed actions but also intentions behind behaviour. Rather than the view that we interpret peoples actions with reference to our memory, we actually stimulate others actions in our motor system and experience their intentions using our mirror neurons.
89
How are mirror neurons involved in perspective taking?
If mirror neurons fire in response to other's actions and intentions this may give us a neural mechanism for experiencing and understanding other peoples perspectives and emotional states. Just as we stimulate intention by making judgements based on our own reflected motor responses we can also use this to interpret what others are feeling and thinking.
90
How have mirror neurons shaped human evolution?
Ramachandran says that the complex social interactions humans have require a brain system that facilitates understanding of intention, emotion and perspective. Without these we could not live in the large groups with complex social rules and roles that characterize human culture. So mirror neurons are key to understanding how humans have developed as social species.
91
What is the link between mirror neurons and autism?
Ramachandran and Oberman proposed the broken mirror theory of autism. The idea that neurological deficits that include dysfunction in the mirror neuron system prevent a child imitating and understanding social behaviour in others. e.g infants with autism may mimic adult behaviour less often than others. Later, problems with the mirror neuron system leads to challenges in social communication as children do not fully develop usual abilities to read intention and emotion in others.
92
What is a strength of the mirror neuron system? (Research support)
Evidence from neuroscience to support a role for mirror neurons in a range of human behaviour. Haker scanned the brains of people as they watched a film of people yawning. Levels of activity in Brodmann's area 9, believed to be rich in mirror neurons increased when participants yawned in respoinse. Contagious yawning is widely believed to be a result of empathy so this study links mirror neurons to empathy. Iacoboni showed that activity in the inferior frontal gyrus increased significantly when participants tried to understand the intentions behind a hand grasping gesture, mirror neurons encoded why an oject was being grasped. So mirror neurons may play a role in important aspects of social cognition.
93
What is a limitation of mirror neurons? (Hard to research)
Animal studies often involve implanting electrodes in the brain to study electrical activity, but ethically impossible to do this on humans and such animal studies tell us little about human cognition. Scanning is an alternative but only looks at activity in brain areas, not individual cells. So there is no gold standard for measuring mirror neuron activity in humans and no direct evidence for mirror neuron activity in humans.
94
What is a strength of mirror neurons? (Explaining autism)
Evidence to support a link between autism and dysfunctions in the mirror neuron system. Brain scans have shown a smaller average thickness of the pars opercularis is autistic people compared to neurotypical people. This is an area rich in mirror neurons and involved in perspective taking. Other studies used scanning methods to show activity rather than just structure and found lower activity levels in regions of the brain believed to be associated with high concentrations of mirror neurons again in autistic people compared to neurotypical people.
So a cause of autism may be related to the mirror neuron system.
95
What is a limitation of mirror neurons? (Explaining autism counterpoint)
Some research has supported a link between autism and and abnormal structure or function in the mirror neuron system, a systematic review of 25 studies by Hamilton concluded that evidence was highly inconsistant and results hard to interpret. So there may not be a link after all between autism and mirro neuron activity.
96
What is the extra evaluation point for mirror neurons (Mirror neurons and perspective taking)
Maranesi found that specific mirror neurons in a monkeys motor cortex fired according to position and angle from which the experimenters gestured. Showed that physical perspective is encoded by mirror neurons.
A recent review by Bekkali found there is only weak evidence linking mirror neurons to social cognition to humans
Psychology
flashcards
Decks in class (12)
# Cards
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Topic 1: Social Influence💙130
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Topic 2: Memory💜130
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Topic 3: Attachment💚153
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Topic 4: Psychopathology🩵124
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Topic 5: Approaches in Psychology🩶98
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Topic 6: Biopsychology🩷167
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Topic 7: Research Methods year 1🧡161
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Topic 11: Addiction❤️139
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Topic 8: Issues and Debates78
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Research Methods year291
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Schizophrenia102
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Cognition and Development98
