Cognitive development

Section 4.26

Quiz.

1. What do the ‘visual cliff’ experiments tell us about babies’ visual perception?

2. What is a ‘schema’ in Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development?

3. What is ‘theory of mind’?

4. What is ‘object permanence’?

5. Do infants know about gravity?

Cognitive Development.

Q: What do kids know at different ages?

• How do we find out what they know? (Methods)

• What do we think they know? (Theories)

• What do they seem to know? (Results)

Methods (infants)

• Play studies– Kids do the darnedest things!

• Habituation– Get infant bored, then look for the infant to

regain interest

• Eye-tracking– Find out where children are looking

• High-amplitude sucking

• ERP

Habituation

Sample habituation data

How long infants

look

dishabituation

no dishabituation

habituation

Eye-trackingWhat the infant sees

Eye close-upScene camera

Infant ERP

Theories of development

• Nativism vs Empiricism

• Piaget

• Pre-Piagetian knowledge.

Theories of development

Nativism• Infants are born with

rich knowledge of the structure of the world

• Core knowledge includes knowledge about events and objects

Empiricism/

(~Constructivism)• Infants are born into a

“blooming, buzzing confusion”

• Must discover the structure of the world by perceptual and motor experience

Piaget’s Scheme

• Schemas: frameworks in which to organize information

• Assimilation: making information fit into a pre-set schema.

• Accomodation: changing a schema to account for new information.

• Development is articulation (refinement) and differentiation (like speciation in evolution) of schemas.

Piaget’s stages1. Sensorimotor: 0-2 (children

experience the world through movement and senses and learn object permanence)

2. Preoperational stage: 2-7 (acquisition of motor skills)

3. Concrete operational: 7-11 (children begin to think logically about concrete events conservation!)

4. Formal operational: 11+ (development of abstract reasoning)

(false) Dichotomy of development

Piaget

Babies are dumb. They slowly learn things.

Empiricism

Early competence (Meltzoff)

• Subtle measurements of infants (ref. methods from before)

• Nearly newborns know– How to imitate– Object permanence– Conservation of quantity, mass– Gravity and support

(false) Dichotomy of development

Piaget

Babies are dumb. They slowly learn things.

Empiricism

Meltzoff, Baillargeon, Spelke

Babies know stuff… Important knowledge is innate

Nativism

What are the tasks of interest?

• Physical knowledge– Object permanence– (Object permanence as occlusion)– Object permanence and concreteness– Containment/Covering

• Social knowledge– Theory of mind.

• What is Innate? Learned? Learnable?

Object permanence

But what do young children know?

habituation

test

More object permanence

Knowing about matter.

solidity

Early knowledge of eventsOcclusion violation

Containment violation

Covering violation

More knowledge of events

Theory of Mind

• The “theory” that others have goals, beliefs, and desires

• Young children make mistakes in reasoning about others’ beliefs

• Piaget called this “egocentrism” (inability to take others’ perspective)

Sally-Ann Task

Sally puts cookies in the basket. She leaves. Anne moves the cookies to the box. Sally comes back. Where will she first look for the cookies?

(up until ~4 years, children say “box”)

Early theory of mind

Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005

Very early theory of mind?New goal and path

New pathNew goal

Piagetian conservation tasks

Object occlusion (training core knowledge)

Object occlusion: Data

Object occlusion: Data

You can train 4mos to perceive occlusion earlier!

More training of core knowledge

Shape bias training

Shape bias results

What are the tasks of interest?

• Physical knowledge– Object permanence– (Object permanence as occlusion)– Object permanence and concreteness– Containment/Covering

• Social knowledge– Theory of mind.

• What is Innate? Learned? Learnable?

Delay of gratification?

• 4 year olds get one cookie, wait 20 min with parent.

• If they don’t eat it, they get another at the end.

• How many points on the SAT (taken at age 18) did the DoG test predict?

Delay of gratification

Delay of gratification

Discussion: how much is too much?

Should we try to “pump up” kids’ cognitive development with products like Baby

Einstein?

In animals?

A clear plastic bowl was placed within reach of the ape by putting it halfway under the bottom of the ape's cage. The bowl was situated so that the experimenter could place chocolate pieces into the bowl from the outside of the ape's cage, and so that the ape could pull the bowl into the cage at any time during the trial. The experimenter (the author) had a second bowl that contained 20 chocolate pieces. He picked up chocolate pieces from his bowl and placed them into the ape's bowl, one at a time, until either all 20 pieces had been transferred into the ape's bowl or until the ape pulled its bowl into the cage and consumed the chocolate pieces.