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109 Cards in this Set

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What are the 5 truths of cognitive development?
1. proceeds as a result of the dynamic and reciprocal transaction of internal and external factors
2. constructed within a social context
3. involves both stability and plasticity over time
4. involves changes in the way info is represented
5. increasing intentional control over children's behavior and cognition is represented
What is meant by the bi-directionality of development?
biological and experiential factors are virtually impossible to separate; they continue to influence each other as they co-develop.
What is Representational constraint? (gets at how we think about or represent information)
The concept that, from birth, we have an ability to make sense of certain kinds of info, such as:
-Object information (objects are solid)
-There are actors (agents), actions, and receivers (objects)
i.e., people and other animate creatures do things wheareas objects get acted on.
What is Architectural constraint? (the design or construction of the brain)
(the design or construction of the brain)

Refers to the fact that neurons are denser in some pats of the brain than others at birth or that there are better connections between some parts of the brain than others.

Development is more precocious where there are more connections and more neurons
What is chronotopic constraint?
Think chronology or time

There are sensitive periods during which the brain is prepared to receive certain information and is prepared to react to it.

e.g., Blakemore's experiments with kittens exposed to vertical lines early in life could only see vertical lines
What is plasticity?
development and thinking responds to experiences and adapts to them.

Not inflexible, or hardwired

E.g., Children learn language, but they will learn the language of their environment and will become sensitive to the features of that language. Children hearing mandarin hear different tones and these change the meaning of the sounds (words).
What is an example of domain-general?
Being abl to represent info in symbols and manipulate thos symbos in our heads is something gained later in childhood and applies to many different areas or domains such as math, science, music, language, etc.
What is domain-specific knowledge often called? Examples of domain-specific
modules or encapsules of information.

E.g., ome scholars propose modules for certain aspects of visual perception and for language. This is, however, very controversial.
What is cognition?
cognition refers to the processes or faculties by which knoweldge is acquired and manipulated.

it is mental; not directly observable
What are cognitive mechanisms? What do they enable?
These are the means in which an organism represents situations mentally and draws inferences that go beyond immediate perception or instinct

enables: Flexible behavior, decision making, and effective, thoughful behavior even in a novel situation
Early roots of cognitive development stem from biology (Darwin, Piaget), but why was this not sufficient to describe behavior at the time?
Brain couldn't be readily observed
Where did the first efforts to include biology come from? (What field of study? What behaviors did it look at?)
ethology

looked at innate behaviors that were only slightly influenced by experience (e.g., imprinting of goslings)
What lead to advances in brain study of development?
the new field of developmental cognitive neuroscience, and neuorimaging
What is the main difference, biologically, between higher primates and other mammals?
the huge expansion of the overlying cerebral cortex and some associated structures, especially the basal ganglia (associated with motor control, habits, and emotions)
How was expansion of cerebral cortex accomplished?
intricate folding of the thin cerebral cortex to form solci (indentations) and gyri (lobes)
How is brain development an epigenetic process?
it involves interactions at many levels of organization

it means that brain development is not JUST a genetic process
What happens to the development of tissues as time goes by?
they become less equi-potential, and begin to become more specialized in morphology and function.
Plasticity represents the state of not yet having achieved________, plasticity _________ with maturity
specialization; decreases
What happens when a blastocyst begins to differentiate? (how does this lead to the brain forming?)
Part of the ectoderm, which forms the skin surface, eyes and nervous system, folds and creates a neural tube, which thens forms the forebrain, midbrain and spinal cord. The neural tube then differentiates
What do bulges on the mammalian brain indicate? When do they typically arise?
at 5 weeks after conception bulges appear that will become major components of the brain
What do neuroblasts create? How many neurons does a neuroblast create? How do neurons get to the cortex?
glial cells and neurons

each neuroblast creates 100 neurons, all of these climb up the same glial fiber to arrive at a specific area of the cortex
What is another function of glial cells?
they create myelin
Brain volume increases by how much between birth and adulthood? Why does this happen?
Brain volume quadruples between birth and adulthood, mainly resulting from more extensive fiber bundles, and myelinization (aka myelination)
What is the most obvious manifestation of postnatal neural development
increase in size and complexity of dendritic trees
Development involves dendritic______ and dendritic ______.
proliferation; pruning
There is a rise and fall in synaptic density during childhood, with density stabilizing to adult levels, when?
late childhood
T/F- the deferred imitation observed in human infants by Meltzhoff and Moore was boserved in high primates as well?
True
When does the imitation behavior peak?
Peaks at around 2 months and declines thereafter
What are the 3 explanations for why newborns imitate?
1. Learning: not likely because newborns can imitate right away; they don't have enough time to learn.

2. Selectiv imitation based on intermodal mapping: infants are coordinating information from two senses. (Meltzoff and Moore explained it this way)

3. "Babies aren't learning anything new, just copying behaviors already in their repertoire."

Some developmentalists describe copying behavior as "social mirroring," which enables parent and caregiver to tune in to one another.

note that newborns appear to be controlling these behaviors at least to some degree
is this purely instinctive/innate or is there some form of rudimentary intention?? Do babies plan/want/intend to imitate??
It is probably under sub-cortical control, meaning it is not consciously controlled
What is the underlying advantage for neonatal imitation of facial gestures?
it serves survival purposes

it is most likely social rather than symbolic or cognitive
What are two arbuments that suggest facial gestures are sub-cortical?
1. they are observed in chimps, whom don't develop sophisticated cognitive abilities

2. Visual processing is controlled sub-cortically. Additionally, infants who are cortically blind (can't process visual information from retina) still turn head toward stimuls during neonatal period.
Mirror Neurons
neornst that fire when we see or hear another engane in an action. This is why we cringe when seeing someone get hurt.

Humans have an even more varied repertoire because we can register emotion and intentions of others in addition to actions via mirror neurons.
Where and what are mirror neurons used for in monkeys?
gyrus- involved with vision network

parietal lobes- sensory input and location of body
Where and what are mirror neurons used for in humans?
distributed through cortex, especially motor and sensory areas

somatosensory areas- involved in the interpretation of feelings
how might neonatal facial imitation be governed?
via mirror neurons
Is neonatal imitation cognition?
NO!
What is a habituation paradigm in regards to sucking behavior?
Habituation occurs when an infants sucking (or looking) behavior declines 50%
What is the visual preference paradigm
A measure of interest or noticing. Infants will look longer at interesting new items.
What is a Violation of Expectation Paradigm
an infants reaction to something unexpected or surprising, which is measured or recorded by experimenters
Can infants tell the difference betwen ba and pa?
yes, In a habituation study, infants were to listen to either ba or pa until they habituated. Afterhabituation the opposite sound was played and the infant's sucking rate increased.
Examples of intersensory integration.
smoth/bumpy pacifier and a baby looks at matching instance for longer

sound and facial display associated with pronouncing that sound /a, /i
Infants, because the whites of their eyes are much larger than other primates, can easily tell the direction that someone is looking. As a result what will happen by 8-12 months? At about one year of age what happens to their looking behavior?
The infant will reach for a toy someone else is looking at.

(prior to language) infants look in direction another’s eyes gaze, not direction head/face is pointing.
Why is it that primates will look in the direction another's head faces even if their eyes are closed?
I'm not really sure, maybe it has something to do with primate's eyes typically having less whites, so they can't tell as easily where someone is looking.
How do babies learn ow to do things with objects and begin to learn their language?
Human infants join with caregivers in manipulating objects, drawing attention to things, and in interacting
What is a neurological example of babies comprehending object permanence?
6 month olds show EEG activity over temporal lobe during occlusions and events when an object is expected to appear.
When do children begin to have number words?
Toward the end of infancy (18-24 months)
What are some routines used by young infants for counting?
using gestures or counting fingers

(Baa Baa Black sheep: “1 for my master, 2 for my dame and 3 for the little boy…”)
What is one-to-one correspondence?
a major milestone that occurs between the ages of 3-5, and after correct sequence generation

it is when a child is able to correspond number to object. e.g., when a child counts his steps or counts the number of apples on the ground.
What is the cardinal principle? When does this usually occur in children?
Recognizing the amount in a set. The last number reached in the set indicates the quantity.

Usually achieved around 4 years. 3 year olds are often unstable. May count correctly but don’t necessarily say the final number is the amount. BUT, if they re-count they are more likely to use the cardinal principle. This indicates a concept is emerging.
WHat is the sum strategy?
First addition and subtraction method based on counting
_______ and _______ _______ typically develop together
language and number concepts
early on children may have _______ comepts for phrases such as "3 little pigs". Why is this a problem?
holistic

requires semantic re-analysis which may slow pace of learning.
When are infants more attentive to quantity changes compared with other kinds of changes? (new study)
when presented with images that change in size, contour, surface area and number
infants around 6 months of age are sensitive to what ratio of change? what about 9-10 months?
2:1

capable of finder distinctions such as 12 vs 8, but not 10 vs 8
Who is more advanced at arithmetic, humans or chimps?
chimps
In what area of the brain of higher mammals and humans is numerosity represented? After this happens what info does this region represent?
parietal
________ ________ very early for humans and is deployed in the wild by various animals
Mechanism functions
In humans, what does implementation of counting routines and symbols for numbers do? What does this change in the way that this part of the brain represents info?

What is this a great example of?
modifies the parietal circuitry

Area previously evolved to represent numerosity gets “recycled” to support exact numbers and symbols.

Thus, language (and symbols) temporarily may hold back advancements in understanding quantity for older human infants and young children for cognitive reasons (semantic analysis issues) and neurological reasons (restructuring of the parietal circuitry).



experience modifying the brain
In what structures are categories organized?
Hierarchical structure

e.g., dog is part of mammal which is part of an even larger category- animal
What is a prototype?
* Conceptualization (of an entity) that consists of typical features (attributes) associated with common instances of that entity. (Dogs commonly have fur, tails, and wet noses ands they pant, bark and run on four legs . . .)
What is a focal exemplar?
example prototype that has all, or most, of the typical features.

It is surrounded by other category members of progressively decreasing similarity to the focal exemplar.
Category membership is a matter of degree of variation from a ______
prototype
How does a child form categories?
grouping together things that seem similar to the prototype. (lots of individual variation)
Words identify (name, label) a _____ or ______, and often refer to a set of fairly diverse things.
set; category
Learning the words of a language is essentially what? (think Inuit and snow)
essentially learning how that language categorizes and partitions the world and what set of sounds identifies those categories/partitions
A few words emerge earyly in the second (first?) year, what do they usually relate to?
things that are important or recurrent for the child such as "dada" or "baba"
What happens to vocabulary around 18 months? What about 20-24 months?
Stunning vocabulary burst
- from a few words to 100 words in the span of just a few months!

children begin to combine words into two and then three word utterances.
How is language learning both referential and expressive?
Because words center on what the child enjoys, is familiar with and can act on him or herself, the words are usually:

associated with things or routines that are important to the child (milk, apple, ball, book, names of family members or pets, names of toys are common in the USA),
- objects the child can act on him or herself (thus shoe, sock or hat may appear, whereas shirt and pants are less common),
- actions the child performs (run, up, down, sit),
- some request words (more, want),
- possession (mine),
- words that express negation (no, not, allgone), and
- social terms (bye-bye, hi, thank you)
Why is the vocabular burst thought to happen? What does EEG and ERP suggest about this change?
As a result of symbolic development and the emergence of cognitive processes that support categorization and rudimentary lexical insight (a realization that words stand fro or represent groups of things)

changes in cortex support this development
What is extension?
extending a word to a new instance of a category. Thus forming categories and ascribing meaning to words occur together.
Why would "chair" only refer to grandpa's chair to a child?
the first time a word is used it refers to a single instance of something. therefore, "chair" is being under-extended
What are two things that lexical development requires?
learning the phonetic form of words, and learning what the category boundaries are for the word's reference
How is extension a cognitive operation?
Extension indicates that the child is actively constructing language and building hypotheses about meaning. It cannot come from imitation or simple memory.
What are over-extensions?
errors that indicate the child is actively constructing language, building hypotheses about what words mea and where category boundaries fall. They are actually good indicators of development!
What do many researchers believe children use to extend the meaning of words?
prototypes, because new instances of words have something in common with the prototype
What is a newer view of how children's thinking develops?
human infants (as all infant creatures) are born with some kind of knowledge or information (minimally reflex and instincts) and are pre-disposed or equipped to respond or notice certain things in their environment, quickly building knowledge.
What is core knowledge?
The "strongest" view, that states that infants are born with mental structures and some basic knowledge in at least 3 areas
-objects
-people
-basic social interactions and number sense

This view is the most extreme...posits that most amount of info is innate and contrasts with other views that knowledge is built from experience
What is sensorimotor schemata?

Symbolic Schemata?

Operational schemata?
patterns based on sensation and manipulation, used to recognize or represent experience. (infants must interact with things in order to understand them).

Ability to think about objects and events without acting on them- emerges 2nd year

INternal mental activity, such as reversibility (reversing and action in one's head)- emerges at 5 to 7 years.
What are concrete and formal levels of operational schemata?
concrete involves things like math

formal involves abstract kinds of thinking that arise around puberty like love, war, and morality
What are the two ways in wich Piaget posits that knowledge is gained?
Organization and adapatation
What is organization?
The ability to combine two existing schema into new more complex structures
What is adaptation? What are the two processes by which adaptation occurs?
Ways of adjusting to environment: occurs through two complimentary activities: assimilation and accommodation.
What is assimilation?
Interpreting new experiences in terms of existing models of the world, that is, existing schema.

One incorporates the environment into one's current understanding of the world

An adult who knows about vegetables and plants as food may encounter “Nopales” for the first tie, the pads of a prickly opera cactus and be surprised, but will assimilate these into his or her understanding of edible plants.
What is accommodation?
modifying existing schema as the result of new experiences.

Microwave oven example
The processes of assimilation and accommodation occur as __________ processes
complementary
When a child's schema (concept, understanding) of the world match well with her encounters of the word, it is know as...
Equilibrium
What is disequilibrium? What is this a catalyst for?
when a child’s encounters with the world do not fit well with her schema. This is a catalyst for development.
What is Horizontal décalage
When a child shows more advanced thinking in one area than in another at the same point in development (for example understanding volume of liquids, but not mass of solids or quantity of number)
Piaget's theory is a _______ theory. What does this mean?
Stage

development involves moving through a series of discrete stages. A child's thinking during one stage is qualitatively different from both the preceding and following stage. there is a transitional phase during which a child may use thinking characteristics of two stages
How does egocentricity characterize many aspects of children's thinking?
they they often view and understand the world in terms of their own perspective and/or by not “decentering” from, or moving past, salient information that may in fact obscure other information (as the height of liquid in a tall thin glasses is higher than in a short broad one, wrongly appearing to have more volume.) The process continues is some forms through adolescence
Piaget believed that processes are domain ________ rather than domain ________
general; specific
What is the contemporary view of how development proceeds? (hint: not nature vs. nurture). This lead to what theory derived from theoretical physics and applied to many other fields?
development involves mutually influential relations between many levels of organization: A<---->B

Complex Adaptive Systems Theory
What is a simple system? What is an example of a simple system? How did a simple system give rise to a complex dynamic system
Einstein's General Relativistic Theory of Gravitation.
-i) during physical evolution gravitation gave rise to the clumping together of matter into things like stars and planets
ii) gravitation is simple and invariable
HOWEVER, What it gave rise to was very complex----> the earth, and eventually us.

Once the bodies of matter formed, they began to influence one another. They adapted, responded, changed and evolved into a complex adaptive system.
Why are complex adaptive systems so complex?
subject to constraints, to laws of nature, etc, but even if you know everything about the initial state of something (for example, the universe or a person) the changes/adaptations/development that will occur in a complex system are at best a vast set of probabilities.
According to developmental systems theory, change is not limitless, there are constraints, but there is relative plasticity, and this accounts for_____ ______
individual variation
Why is change dynamic and not static? (developmental systems theory)
because change is always occurring. Development is a constantly changing arrangement of levels that mutually influence one another, hence a dynamic system
How are systems self-organizing? Does an external force manage change? Despite things not being pre-determined, what is still true of development?
They are not pre-determined

no

There are recurrent patterns, structures, organizations, processes, etc. in the system of individual human development (ontogenesis)
What is menat by phase transitions being abrupt and discontinuous?
we don't revert back to an earlier state; we don't un-develop, though we may eventually cease to develop.
_______ in the system promotes development
instability
Regarding Piaget's thinking and systems theory:

Phases are to_______ as ________ is to disquilibrium
stages: instability
What does culture do to the basic functions like perception, memory and motor sensation that we are born with?
It transforms them into more sophisticated capacities
Culture provides "tools __ ___________ ____________"
of intellectual adaptation
What are tools of intellectual adaptation?
cultural inventions that aid in thinking and interacting.

e.g., aids to memory (tying a knot around finger, rhymes)
language encodes numbers very well (early numbers memorized, but 20's are inferred)
Language often encodes cultural information and is essential for conceptual development (language helps establish categories)
General Genetic Law of Culture: What does the dual nature of cognitive development suggest?
that learning happens at two times during ontogeny, first between child and social community and second internally
What is the zone of proximal distance? When is a child able to function at a more advanced level?
the space between the child's capabilities alone and the level striving toward

When in proximity with others
What was Vygotsky's view of development via the ZPD?
Child more competent when helped by others who are more capable

Child internalized solutions gained in ZPD

Child is able to successfully act independently
How is Vygotsky's view that a child may be quite roficient in one area and less so in another at the same point n time different than Piaget's concpet of horizontal décalage?
Vygotsky saw more “domain specific” development, whereas Piaget stressed “domain general development.”
What is scaffolding?
an analogy similar to ZPD that describes the way in which parents converse with their parents scaffolds their development (language)