PSYCH 2410 1st Edition Exam # 2 Study Guide Lectures: 7-12Lecture 7- Piaget’s TheoryI. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development- Piaget: founded Cognitive Theory- His theory was a constructivist theory (active child)o Motivated to learn from birth, learns on own, does not need rewardso Assimilation: extending known action pattern to new object to acquire knowledgeo Accommodation: modifying old action pattern to deal with new objecto Equilibrium: reaching a balance between current understanding and your own knowledge- Stage Theory: o Universal: same for all children around the worldo Invariant: each stage follows the same fixed ordero Discontinuous: each stage is qualitatively differento Parallel: same rate across multiple domainsII. Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)- Limited to relations between sensations and actions- Circular reaction: children repeat an event caused by own motor activity- Piaget believes they have no object permanence because they commit the A-not-B Erroro KNOW A-NOT-B EXPERIMENTIII. Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)- Symbolic Representation: one thing can stand for another thingo Delayed imitation, anticipation of problems, pretend play- Limitations: o Egocentrism: limited to take another perspective into consideration KNOW 3 MOUNTAIN TASK EXPERIMENTo Centration: centering attention on one aspect of event or problemo Hierarchical Classification: cannot focus on whole and its parts simultaneously KNOW CLASS INCLUSION TASKo Perceptual Bound: cannot think of appearance and reality of objects simultaneouslyo Transductive Reasoning: link events that occur close in time IV. Concrete Operations Stage (7-12 years)- Operations: mental representations of actions that obey logical rules- Children in this stage succeed where preoperational cannoto Struggle with abstract thinkingV. Formal Operations Stage (12+years)- Beginning of abstract and hypothetical thought- Can consider multiple outcomeso KNOW PENDULUM PROBLEMLecture 8- Piaget RevisedI. Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)- Evidence FOR infant thought: they understand others’ preferences- Evidence shows A-not-B error is not straight forward enougho Evidence shows immature frontal cortex easily distractedII. Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)- Number Conservation: Piaget had incorrect motivation for infantso Mehler and Bever modified the task Clay balls vs. M&Ms - Even two year olds succeededo Markman’s Unit vs. Group Labels At 4-5 years Unit labels (soldier) vs. group labels (army)- Focusing on the group helps children to succeed- Piaget thought children being able to count was meaninglesso 3 Principles: One-to-one, stable order, cardinal  children can understand the violations (starting at 3)- Egocentrism was disproven by a simplified 3 Mountain Task (Borke)o Picture task (shown front and back, children can say other side)o 4 year olds talk differently to babies than to adults know they need to modify speech- Hierarchical Classification difficulties were disproven with perceptual categorization trials- Transductive Reasoning- Piaget believed that the kids used magic to explain when in reality the culture provides magical reasoningIII. Evaluation of Piaget’s Claims- Is development discontinuous?o Evidence for early competence and incompetenceo Is more continuous- Does development occur in parallel?o Children do not pass all conservation tasks at once- Is development universal/invariant?o Culture/experience makes a differenceo Development is not invariant or universal Lecture 9-Theories of Cognitive DevelopmentI. Information-Processing Theories- Children undergo continuous change- Focused on describing how cognitive change occurs- Computer Analogyo Hardware: memory, processing speedo Software: knowledge, strategy These develop with age - Nature and nurture- Child as a problem-solvero Ex: pulling a string to get a toyo Task analysis: goalobstacle strategy- Problem Solving Requires…o Planning Lack of inhibition (kids get distracted) Young kids are overoptimistico Analogical Reasoning  In infants: (when solving the pull-cloth-to-get-toy problem)- At 10 months requires “surface similarity”- By 13 months can generalize knowledge even to superficially different problems In children: (when comparing two objects)- 6 years cite superficial similarities- 9 years cite deeper relationshipso camcorder and tape recorder- Basic Processes: Hardwareo Memory Encoding-committing to memory Children are worse at encoding than adults- Don’t always encode all relevant informationo Balance-scale problem Speed of processing improves with age- Controversy over why it improveso Due to experience and learning alone; practiceo Biological maturation increases speed- Acquiring and Managing Information: Softwareo Strategies: techniques to improve encoding  Rehearsal Selective attention Utilization Deficiency - New strategies often result in poor performance- Cost-benefit analysis to determine strategyo Content Knowledge All the information you learn from experience Facts, knowledge about the world Greater knowledge of a topic improves recall  Greater knowledge makes it easier to relate new information to existing knowledge - Draw connectionsII. Core Knowledge Theories- Domain Specificity: specific mental facilities that respond to environmental input relatedto a particular domain- Principleso Innate cognitive capabilities o Domain specificity: innate knowledge bundled into particular areaso Domains only for info that is ubiquitous throughout species evolutionary history and which is adaptiveo Informal theories organize information within a domaino Emphasizes nature with a little bit of experience - Informational theorieso Naïve physics Object principles: guide infants’ expectations about how objects behave in the world- Solidity: How solid objects work (Spelke)o Study: habituation method; watch dropping ball until they habituate to ito Floor is added mid way through and box is coveredo Infants show proper response- Cohesion: Infants expect objects not to fall apart when moved Surprised by sand- Spatiotemporal Continuity: An object cannot blip out of existenceand reappear at another location without traversing the space andtime between o Ex: ball rolling behind two