Cognitive Development and Social Attachment

Self-recognintion– Initial self recognition is

assessed using the “rouge” test

– At:• 9 - 12 months all infants

reach for reflection• 15 months 25% reach

for own face• 21 months 75% reach

for own face– Emerges early in the

second year– Firmly in place by 24

months– Controversy

Institute for the Study of Child Development at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

http://www.tc.columbia.edu/academic/humandevelopment/dev_psy/facultybrooks.htm

• Piaget and Stages– Significance

of Piaget– Concerns

• Method: “clinical method”

• Stages• Universality• Accuracy

Schema Processes• Adaptation• Organization

Adaptation• Dealing with new information

Involves direct interactions with the environment to maintain equilibrium

• Two aspects of adaptation are assimilation and accommodation– Assimilation: interpret new

information in terms of current schemes (fitting in)

– Accommodation: we create new schemes for new information (building)

• These two processes are always working together

Organization

• Rearranging and linking schemes into interconnected networks

• Internal process

Psychophysiology and Cognition

• As our brain matures, the cognitive structures we are capable of creating changes qualitatively

• The changes map onto four stages of cognitive development:– sensorimotor (0 - 2 years)

– preoperational (2 - 7 years)

– concrete operations (7 - 12 years)

– formal operations (12+ years)

Sensorimotor Stage• Characteristics

– Non thinking stage– Focus on using sensory systems– Ends with the first signs of thought– Beginning of Symbolic Thought: 18

– 24 months• thinking problems through before

acting

• symbolic play – using one thing to stand for something else

Object Permanence– Up through 8 months

• No evidence of – 8 – 12 months

• Will search for object but often search where object was found previously

• Visible displacements are not incorporated into search

• May ask for objects that are gone (where is Rover?)

– 12 – 18 months• Can handle visible displacements

– After 18 months of age• Can handle invisible displacements

– More current research suggests that babies know more about object permanence than they reveal through their actions

• May not be able to inhibit reaching behavior

Preoperational Stage• Characteristics• During this stage children cannot

decenter their thinking (centration)– They can not consider more

than one aspect of a situation at one time

– This results in some consistent errors in thinking

• Egocentrism– No “theory of mind”– secret knowledge” tasks

• Children do not recognize that others do not know ‘secret’ information

Lack of Conservation

• Conservation is an understanding that basic physical dimensions of objects remain the same, despite superficial changes in appearance

• Preoperational children cannot solve conservation problems

Transformation, Classification and Symbolic Play

• Transformation– Unable to see events as

made up of smaller events• Classification

– thinking of objects in terms of categories

– Can classify by single categories i.e. color

– Struggle with separating sub-categories and super-categories

• Symbolic play– Any prop can be anything

Reasoning• Transductive

– all examples are treated equally• Tell pre-schoolers to line up by

height

• Syncretism– Illogical thinking or errors in

thought• Animism – difficulty determining

what is alive and not alive– Tend to view motion as evidence of

life i.e. sun

• Magic and the Supernatural– Belief in fantasy figures is

strongest between the ages of 3 and

Concrete Operational Stage

• 5-to-7 Shift• Spans the elementary

school years• A number of mental

operations are evident including reversibility and decentration

Problem Solving Strategy Assessment

• First investigated by Robert Siegler using a two-arm balance scale

• Found evidence of four strategies– one-dimensional, exclusive-focus– one-dimensional, sequential– two-dimensional, non-compensatory– two-dimensional, compensatory

Horizontal Decalage and Seriation

• Horizontal decalage

– Cannot apply a concept effectively in all appropriate situations

• Learning conservation

– Numbers

– Length

– Mass

• Seriation

– Transitivity

Formal Operational Stage• Abstract reasoning skills emerge during

this stage

– Adolescent thinking is more flexible and speculative

– Adolescent thinking is also more systematic and logical

– This stage may emerge later than Piaget suggested

Adolescent Egocentrism

• Elkind identified two components– Imaginary Audience

• collection of individuals who might be evaluating various aspects of the adolescent’s behavior

– Personal fable• perception of self as

unique• perception of self as

invincible

Adolescent Idealism

• Ability to distinguish the real from the possible may lead to idealism

• Reform the world?• Get caught up with

movements• Become somewhat

sociocentric• However may also be

somewhat hypocritical– Join the stop pollution

walk-a-thon and throw candy wrappers in the ditch

Post-Formal Thought• This is not part of Piaget’s theory• It extends cognitive development into

the adult years• Relativistic thinking

– involves consideration of multiple facets of a situation or assessing situations using multiple perspectives

• Dialectic thought – involves seeing both sides of an issue

at once• Recognizes more than one

solution may exist for any given problem

• Constantly reshaping thought• Committed to the best that can be

known at the time

Challenges to Piaget

• Underestimates younger minds– May be mentally capable of task but

can’t perform task• Says development happens doesn’t

explain how• Understates importance of social

interactions• Adulthood and cognition

– Kuhn, 1979 – approximately half of the adult population may never attain the full stage of formal thinking

• May be limited to formal thinking in field of expertise

Development of Wisdom

• pragmatic knowledge used in the conduct of life

• Adults averaging age 66 outperformed younger and older adults on wisdom related cognitive tasks

Changing Thought Processes

Adolescence

– Can learn abstract and complex content

Adulthood

• Early to middle adulthood

– Maintain learning skills well

• Middle to late adulthood

– Moderate declines

• Motivation, relevance, meaning

• Later in adulthood requires longer period of learning and significant decline in verbal learning

• Retention

Memory in Infancy• Habituation is evidence of recognition memory

• Rovee-Collier, 1997– Take longer (more trials) to learn– Can retain only for short periods

• 2 months = 2 days – 2-4 weeks after forgetting– hint and will remember– context specific and content specific

• 3 months = 1 week • 6 months = 2 weeks • 8-12 months = pure recall emerges consistent with

development of object permanence

• Short-term memory shows continued improvement through to adolescence

Changes from preschool through to adolescence

• Throughout the childhood years there is an increase in attention span and the ability to selectively focus attention

• May be due, in part, to maturation of the central nervous system – reticular activation system

• Increased speed of processing - myelinization

Increase in short-term (working) memory capacity

• In preschool children memory span is typically 4 - 5 items

• In pre-adolescents memory span is typically 6 - 7 items

• In adolescents memory span is typically 7 - 8 items

• Increase may be due to increased efficiency (automatization)

Increase in general knowledge base

• Makes events or information more understandable

• When information is meaningful, or can be linked to other information, it is more easily remembered

• Child “experts” can outperform adults on memory tasks (Chi, 1978)– May have more space in working

memory to direct toward chunking

Memory Changes During the Adult Years

• Challenges for aging minds• Retrieval takes longer• Decrease in working memory

– Deficit in performance on timed tasks

– Slower in learning unfamiliar tasks

• More important factors may be health and cohort– Part of the slow down may be

due to a general decrease in the speed of neural function

Developmental Trends

• 3-year-olds don’t use any consistent strategy• 4-5 year old shift to 1DE• 9-year-olds 50% 1DS, 50% 2DN• 12-year-olds 2DN• College students 2DN• 30% of adults spontaneously use a 2DC• Typically, individuals can execute and master the

next level strategy, if it is explained to them, Vygotski

Problem solving in Adulthood

• Traditional tasks on tests– Young adults

outperform elderly adults

• Everyday tasks– Middle adults

outperform young and elderly adults

Adolescence

• IQ stabilizes• Powerful environmental

changes could have an impact on IQ

• IQ and school – +.50 correlation– higher IQ lower dropout

rate

Changes in IQ During Adulthood

• Generally, older adults score lower on IQ tests, compared to younger adults

• May be due to a decline in ability or may be due to cohort effects

• In both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies age and cohort effects are entangled– Cross-sectional studies of intelligence across the lifespan

compare different cohorts– Longitudinal studies of intelligence across the lifespan only

study one cohort– Sequential testing allows cohort effects to be separated from

age effects

Findings from Sequential Studies

• Fluid intelligence declines gradually after young adulthood

• Crystallized intelligence increases with age

Predictors of decline

• Health– Terminal Drop

• Unstimulating environment– Use it or lose it

Issues

• Culture bias

• Motivation

• Nutritional

• Mental Retardation

• Giftedness– Terman’s Termites

Regarding Cognition and Aging• Schaie (1977/78)

– Instead of thinking about changes in cognition ability, think about changes in function of cognition

• Young adulthood (achieving stage)• Middle adulthood (responsibility

stage)• Middle-late adulthood (executive

stage)• Late adulthood (reintegrative stage)

– Intellectual changes consist of orientation and emphasis in how intelligence is applied, not intellectual decline

Attachment (Bowlby):

– An affectionate tie formed between two individuals

• Binds them together, and endures over time

• Universal aspect of development

– Requires the opportunity for the parent and child to develop mutual, interlocking patterns of behavior

– Most adults respond instinctively to infants, and vice versa

– Theoretical Underpinning– Attachment only occurs when the

behaviors become interlocking “synchrony”

Synchrony:

– The smoother and more predictable the synchronous routines become, the stronger the attachment

– Attachment may be jeopardized if either partner is not “good” at the synchronous exchanges

Phases of Attachment

• Undiscriminating responsiveness:• Birth to 2 or 3 months of age

(faces)• Discriminating responsiveness:

– 2 or 3 months to 6 or 7 months (“familiars”)

• Active Proximity Seeking:– 6 or 7 months to 36 months– Actively seeks contact with specific

individuals• Goal-Directed Partnerships:

– 3+ years– At this point relationships take on

more of a give-and-take quality

http://www.hmhb.org/wpb/Images/mother-baby.jpg

Components of Attachment

• Separation Anxiety:• Emerges at about 8 months of age

• Peaks at about 18 months of age

• Universal aspect of development

• Stranger Anxiety:• At 7 or 8 months an infant may stare

at strangers, then turn away

• By 10 months infants may cry if strangers approach or try to pick them up

• Not a universal part of development– Some infants never show stranger

anxiety

Assessing Attachment

• Strange Situation (Ainsworth)

• Total procedure lasts about 20 minutes

• During the procedure mother leaves the room twice

• First time infant ( around 12 months old) is left with a stranger; second time infant is left alone

• Pattern of behavior is assessed http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/ewaters/vitae/MDA_irv2.jpg

Styles of Attachment

70

10

15

5

0 20 40 60 80

Secure

Avoidant

Resistant

Disorganized