Lecture: Cognitive Development

Question 1

What is cognitive development?

Answer 1

How an infant goes from infant to cognitively mature adult

Question 2

What is the typical learning curve for grammar?

Answer 2

It is a U shaped grammar curve. For example, went, goed, went (they started using it correctly but then learned the rule so started using it in incorrectly, then they learn exceptions and begin using it correctly again)

Question 3

What is the universal grammar theory?

Answer 3

The mind has a bunch of switches that get set when you learn a language as a child E.g., “subject omission switch”

Question 4

What happens during the critical stage of language (age 3-5)

Answer 4

During this time children 2-4 new words per day to their productive vocabulary (words they can produce while talking) and twice that for understanding (they can understand the words but not produce them yet- understanding is a little better than producing). That’s 1 every one or two hours awake for years. They are learning words that they don’t hear that day

Question 5

What is the sensorimotor stage?

Answer 5

• Birth to age 2
• Simple reflex to symbolic processing
• Progress is seen on 3 fronts: Adapting to and exploring the environment (focus on intentional behaviour). Understanding objects (object permanence). Using symbols (waving)

Question 6

What is the pre operational stage?

Answer 6

-Age 2-6
-Use of symbols to represent objects and events
-Characterized by:
Egocentrism: difficult in seeing world from someone else’s perspective and Centration: narrowly focused thought (only one part of a problem, no conservation of liquid)

Question 7

What is the concrete operational stage?

Answer 7

• ages 7-11
• Mental operations to solve problems and reason: e.g., induction
• Problems thinking abstractly and hypothetically

Question 8

What is the formal operations stage?

Answer 8

• 11+
• Can apply mental operations to abstract entities
• Abstract and hypothetical thinking

Question 9

What are Piaget’s lasting contributions?

Answer 9

• The study of cognitive development at all
• Constructivism: that children are active participants in their own development
• Counterintuitive discoveries, puzzles that other scientists needed to solve

Question 10

What are some problems with Piagetian theory?

Answer 10

• Underestimates infants, overestimates adolescents (thought you had an adult cognitive brain at 11)
• Vague on processes and change mechanisms
• Does not account for variability (stages are not that clear cut)
• Underestimates social and cultural influences

Question 11

What is Lev vygostksy’s theory?

Answer 11

Focus on social and cultural development

Question 12

What is intersubjectivity (Vygotsky)?

Answer 12

shared understanding among participants of an activity

Question 13

What is guided participation (Vygotsky)

Answer 13

cognitive growth results from children’s involvement in structured activities with other who are more skilled

Question 14

What is the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky)

Answer 14

the difference between what a child can do alone and what they can do with help

Question 15

What is Scaffolding (Vygotsky)

Answer 15

teaching style that matches the amount of assistance to the learner’s needs

Question 16

What is private speech (Vygotsky)

Answer 16

comments not directed to others but intended to help children regulate on their own

Question 17

What is inner speech (Vygotsky)

Answer 17

thought, internalized private speech, serving the same function

Question 18

How is self control studied in children?

Answer 18

The marshmallow task

• The kids who could pass it were the ones good at distracting themselves
• They turned out to be more successful in the future
• Related to discounting in the future? Kids from lower SES were less likely to wait. Because they take what they can get because little is stable in their lives

Question 19

What is the information processing theory?

Answer 19

Children improve in the following ways:

• Better strategies
• Increased working memory
• Better inhibitory and executive functioning (frontal lobe controls this, alcohol makes the frontal lobe uninhibited)
• Increased automatic processing
• Increased speed

Question 20

What is the core knowledge theory?

Answer 20

• Distinctive domains of knowledge, some of which are acquired early
• Explains why kids learn language but not calculus easily
• Against the general intelligence approach to developmental and cognition
• Suggestions: language, objects, people, living things

Question 21

What is the looking paradigm?

Answer 21

baby sitting on mothers lap but mother is blindfolded and then baby watches puppet show and we make them habituate and then show them something new and see if they notice

Question 22

Core knowledge theory: objects

Answer 22

• 4.5 month olds have object permanence
• Objects move in continuous paths
• Objects cant move through other objects

Question 23

Core knowledge theory: living things

Answer 23

• 12-5months can tell the difference between animate and inanimate objects
• Movement
• Growth (But don’t consider plants to be alive until age seven or eight)
• Internal parts
• Inheritance
• Illness
• healing

Question 24

Core knowledge theory: people

Answer 24

• Naïve psychology

- Theory of mind at 2-5 years of age