Cognitive Development

9.00 Intro PsychT.Konkle26 April 2007

Announcements

• Paper 3– due Friday May 4th

– drop off a paper copy outside my office (on time or else I wont get it!)

– if you *have to* you can email it to me, but grr– can turn it in on thursday section too…

• Return paper 2

• How was the test?

• Warning: gratuitous use of babies in this section…

Agenda

• how do we find out what babies know?

• what do babies start out with?

• gotta know piaget…

• theory of mind

• learning in the womb

• discussion: should we make babies learn faster?

How do we find out what babies know?

methods

Methods

Preferential Looking

Habituation

Violation of Expectation

Eye Tracking

ERP

Issues

Preferential Looking

Methods

Preferential Looking

Habituation

Violation of Expectation

Eye Tracking

ERP

Issues

- if you don’t see a preference, it doesn’t mean the baby can’t tell the difference between the stimuli.

Habituation

Sample habituation data

How long infants

look

dishabituation

no dishabituation

habituation

Methods

Preferential Looking

Habituation

Violation of Expectation

Eye Tracking

ERP

Issues

- if you don’t see a preference, it doesn’t mean the baby can’t tell the difference between the stimuli.

- do you expect a familiarity-preference or a novelty-preference?

Violation of Expectation

idea:

you look longer at what you don’t expect.

Methods

Preferential Looking

Habituation

Violation of Expectation

Eye Tracking

ERP

Issues

- if you don’t see a preference, it doesn’t mean the baby can’t tell the difference between the stimuli.

- do you expect a familiarity-preference or a novelty-preference?- you cant tell if they are preferring the view they saw earlier, or just have a preference for one of the stimuli

Eye-trackingWhat the infant sees

Eye close-upScene camera

Methods

Preferential Looking

Habituation

Violation of Expectation

Eye Tracking

ERP

Issues

- you cant tell if they are preferring the view they saw earlier, or just have a preference for one of the stimuli

- if you don’t see a preference, it doesn’t mean the baby can’t tell the difference between the stimuli.

- babies don’t sit still and they fuss

- do you expect a familiarity-preference or a novelty-preference?

Infant ERP

Methods

Preferential Looking

Habituation

Violation of Expectation

Eye Tracking

ERP

Issues

- you cant tell if they are preferring the view they saw earlier, or just have a preference for one of the stimuli

- if you don’t see a preference, it doesn’t mean the baby can’t tell the difference between the stimuli.

- babies don’t sit still and they fuss

- getting parent’s to do this to their kids?

- do you expect a familiarity-preference or a novelty-preference?

What do babies start out with?

Theories of development

Nativism• Infants are born with

rich knowledge of the structure of the world

• Core knowledge includes knowledge about events and objects

Constructivism/ Empiricism• Infants are born into a

“blooming, buzzing confusion”

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

pro nativist: Early conceptual knowledge

solidity

pro empiricist

• memorize

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nt1O83GZDuM

Who’s Piaget

… and why is this baby drinking out of a bottle?

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 stages

1. Sensorimotor: 0-2 (children experience the world through movement and senses)

2. Preoperational stage: 2-7 (acquisition of motor skills; words images and actions represent information, but thought is tied to perceived events)

3. Concrete operational: 7-11 (children begin to think logically about concrete events; organizing info into categories)

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

object permanence(out of sight, out of existance)

what is lacking?

conservation(mass, number, liquid)

perspective taking

Piagetian conservation tasks

Piaget’s stages

1. Sensorimotor: 0-2 (children experience the world through movement and senses)

2. Preoperational stage: 2-7 (acquisition of motor skills; words images and actions represent information, but thought is tied to perceived events)

3. Concrete operational: 7-11 (children begin to think logically about concrete events; organizing info into categories)

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

object permanence(out of sight, out of existance)

what is lacking?

conservation(mass, number, liquid)

perspective taking

what-would-happen-if?

nothing! mwhaha!

Neo-Piagetians…

What’s wrong with Piaget?

- main critique: Piaget mistook deficits in performance for deficits in competence.

- e.g. looking time studies show babies know about the solidity of surfaces and that ball cant fall through a floor, but their motor searches for missing balls do not reflect this knowledge.

- Development due more to domain-specific learning then domain-general maturational processes

Theory of Mind

I know that he doesn’t know that she knows, but she knows he knows…

Introducing theory of mind!

• attention getting.• out of sight, out of … ear shot?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PYDQ5UF-jn0

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”)

But… Early theory of mind

Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005

15 months!

Take away message: kids look reliably longer when the experimenter doesn’t look where they think she should

Very early theory of mind?

New goal and path

New pathNew goal9 months!

Baby Learning

Question: Can we help kids learn faster?

1. Object occlusion

Object occlusion

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Reaction: 4 month old

Object occlusion

Reaction: 4 month old

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Object occlusion: Data

You can train 4mos to perceive occlusion earlier!

2. Shape bias training

2. Shape bias results

3. Learning in the Womb

question: do children learn in the womb?answer: yes!

- cat in the hat read by mothers- hours after birth, the babies sucked on a pacifier- if they sucked faster on itm they would hear there mothers voice, (or slower), and they do!- they prefer the same story to a new story (both read by their mother)

Question: can you enhance development in the womb?answer: perhaps!

- play violin music for 70 hours (!) pre birth- result: more advanced infants in motor control and vocal abilities (pre-language)

4. 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?

Could we use this to train regulatory behavior?

now that you know it seems we can speed learning (even pre-natally) …

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

Einstein?

Question: Should we help kids learn faster?

… or framed in a different way..

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Feedback

(1) is there anything you’d like me to change / add / cover in the next 3 weeks?

(2) is there anything you’re unclear about, in regards to grades / course policy / extra credit / etc?

PAPER 3 due Friday May 4th

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More knowledge of events