Chapter 5 GP 4, 5 and 6

NWRC Psych 30
Nancie Martin
Gp 4. How did Piaget explain
early cognitive development?
 GP4
• In this chapter we are concerned
with the sensiormotor stage of
development (Piaget)
• In this stage infants learn about
the world though their senses.
The stage is further broken
down into 6 sub-stages Refer to
the chart on page 147 as we go
through these stages
Substages of the Sensory-
Motor Stage
• Reflexes (0-1
month): During
this substage,
the child
understands the
environment
purely through
inborn reflexes
such as sucking
and looking.
 Substages of the Sensory-
Motor Stage
• Primary Circular
Reactions (1-4
months): This
substage involves
coordinating
sensation and new
schemas. For
example, a child
may suck his or her
thumb by accident
and then later
intentionally repeat
the action. These
actions are repeated
because the infant
finds them
 Substages of the Sensory-
Motor Stage
• Secondary Circular
Reactions (4-8
months): During this
substage, the child
becomes more
focused on the
world and begins to
intentionally repeat
an action in order to
trigger a response in
the environment.
For example, a child
will purposefully
pick up a toy to put
it in his or her
mouth
Substages of the Sensory-
Motor Stage
• Coordination of Reactions (8-
12 months): During this
substage, the child starts to
show clearly intentional
actions. The child may also
combine schemes in order
to achieve a desired effect.
Children begin exploring the
environment around them
and will often imitate the
observed behavior of
others. The understanding
of objects also begins
during this time and
children begin to recognize
certain objects as having
specific qualities. For
example, a child might
realize that a rattle will
make a sound when shaken.
 Substages of the Sensory-
Motor Stage
• Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18
months): Children begin a period of
trial-and-error experimentation
during the fifth substage. For
example, a child may try out
different sounds or actions as a
way of getting attention from a
caregiver. They vary their actions
to see what actually gets results
and what doesn’t! They are active
explorers of their worlds.
Substages of the Sensory-
Motor Stage
• Early Representational
Thought (18-24
months): Children
begin to develop
symbols to
represent events or
objects in the world
in the final
sensorimotor
substage. During
this time, children
begin to move
towards
understanding the
world through
mental operations
rather than purely
through actions.
 3. How did Piaget describe infants’
and toddlers’ cognitive
development, and how have his
claims stood up under later
scrutiny?
• We will look at some
terminology important to
understanding Piaget’s
theory of development
 Schemes
• Assimilation: In Piaget's
theory, the process by
which experiences are
incorporated into the mind,
of schemas.
in assimilation the child
takes in info about new
objects by trying out
existing schemas and
finding schemas that the
new object will fit
• the information from past
experience, formulated in
the child’s schema,
determines what and how
children will think about
new experience.
baby + new toy:  sucks on
it, waves it, throws it-
discovers new toy is, like
his old familiar rattle:
suckable, waveable,
throwable
 Schemes
• Accommodation: in Piaget's theory the change
that occurs in an existing scheme, or set of
schemas, as the result of the assimilation of the
experience of a new event or object.
• in accommodation the person tries out familiar
schemas on a new experience, finds that the
schemas cannot adequately “fit” the
experience, and changes the schema(s) so that
it will fit
baby + cup: he examines it with his existing
schema - sucks on it, waves it, throws it, but he
discovers - he can only put the edge in his
mouth, he must hold onto the handle to wave it
and throwing it doesn’t work because mom
takes it out of the play pen if he throws it!
Representational Ability
• The ability to
mentally
represent objects
and experiences
through the use
of symbols in
other words
pretending
Deferred Imitation
• Towards the end of
the
• sensori-motor
stage, the infant
shows evidence
of deferred
imitation, which
is the ability to
imitate behaviour
seen before.
Object Permanence
• For new infants a thing
out of sight is also
out of mind, there is
a developmental
milestone, called
object permanence,
that children reach
when he or she
realizes that the
object exists even
when it can't be
seen. Jean Piaget.
Piaget believed
most children
reached the object
permanence stage
when they were
about eight or nine
Invisible Imitation
• Imitation with the
body using parts
that the baby
cannot see for
themselves…
example is the
mouth or the
eyes
 Visible Imitation
• Baby imitates
using parts of the
body s/he CAN
see example:
hands feet
 GP 5 How can we measure
infant’s ability to process
information, and when do
infants begin to understand the
characteristics of the physical
world.
• Habituation: The foundational idea for
discrimination studies is that once
infants have been become so
thoroughly familiar with a stimulus
that they no longer pay attention to
it, their attention will recover if a
stimulus that they recognize as
different is presented. This is
exploited in the particular form of
this type of study called the Switch
 habituation
• In this procedure, during the
initial, Habituation phase,
the infant sits on the
parent’s lap facing a monitor
on which he/she sees a
visual image of some sort
while listening to a sound
stimuli. The experimenter
records on an external
computer how long the
infant looks at the monitor
while listening to the stimuli.
When the looking time drops
to a pre-established criteria
(a set percentage of initial
looking times), Test trials
• When the
stimulus is
novel infants
respond to it –
when the
novelty wears
off – the infant
is said to be
“habituated”
and responses
(such as heart
rate, sucking,
• Dishabituation is
the increase in
responsiveness
after a new
stimulus is
presented.
•
• Visual
Preference
Infants tend to
spend more
time looking at
novel stimuli
(also novelty
preference) –
they seem to
be able to
distinguish new
things from old
• Babies less than
2 days old
show
preference for
curved lines
over straight
lines and
complex
patterns over
simple
patterns. They
prefer 3D to 2D
 Cross –Modal transfer-
• Piaget felt the
senses were not
connected at
birth however it
is found that
even very young
babies tend to
link the senses
for example
when they hear
a sound they will
turn their heads
to look for the
 Infants and TV
• Quick scene shifts of video
• A study from the American
Academy of Pediatrics
shows that watching
videos as a toddler may
lead to ADHD, also
called ADD in later life.
TV watching rewires an
infant’s brain,. The
damage shows up at
age 7 when children
have difficulty paying
attention in school.
images become
"normal," to a baby
"when in fact, it’s
decidedly not normal or
natural." Exposing a
baby’s developing brain
to videos may over
stimulate it, causing
permanent changes in
developing neural
pathways.
"Also in question is
whether the noise of
television in the home
may interfere with the
development of ‘inner
speech’ by which a child
learns to think through
problems and plans and
restrain impulsive
 Object permanence

O b je ct p e rm a n e n ce is th e a w a re n e ss
th a t a n o b je ct co n tin u e s to exist e ve n
w h e n it is n o t in vie w .
• In young infants, when a toy is covered
by a piece of paper, the infant
immediately stops and appears to
lose interest in the toy. This child has
not yet mastered the concept of
object permanence. In older infants,
when a toy is covered the child will
actively search for the object,
realizing that the object continues to
exist.
 Number and Numeracy
• Number –
Research raises
the possibility
that numerical
concepts are
innate. Keep in
mind that
names of
numbers and
numeracy are 2
different
things.
Causality
• -The principle
that one event
causes another.
According to
Piaget this
understanding
developed
slowly as
infants took up
to a year to
realize that
they could act
upon their
environment
and affect
changes. More
GP 6 What can brain research
reveal about the development
of cognitive skills
• Explicit Memory
• Explicit memories consist of memories from
events that have occurred in the external
world. Information stored in explicit
memory is about a specific event that
happened at a specific time and
place. In forming and storing explicit
memories, associations are done with
previous related stimuli or experiences.
Therefore, explicit memories can be
remembered and recalled, and rely
on previous experiences and
knowledge. It is known that explicit
memories involve the temporal lobe.
(examples – facts, names, dates …)
 Implicit Memory

• Implicit memories cannot be looked up

or remembered to be used for actions
and reasoning. They consist of
memories necessary to perform
events and tasks, or to produce a
specific type of response. Implicit
memory is best demonstrated when
performance is improved on a task.
This type of memory is shown through
activation of the sensory and motor
systems needed to perform a certain
task. There are two basic types of
implicit memory; repetition priming
and skill learning. (example – riding
 Working Memory
• Setting up routines on a daily basis is
good practice for memory
development.
• Context is very important for baby’s
memory skill. They will recall their
surroundings, a song or a particular
game in their short term memory if
nothing about it changes or is taken
out of context.
 Working memory in
children
• Working memory--also known as WM--is a
better predictor of school achievement than
IQ. Can you add together 23 and 69 in your
head? When you ask for directions to the post
office, can get there without writing the
instructions down?Such tasks engage working
memory, the memory we use to keep
information immediately “in mind” so we can
complete a task.
• It’s like a mental workspace or notepad—the
“place” where we manipulate information,
perform mental calculations, or form new
thoughts.
• Just as different computers have different
amounts of RAM, WM capacity varies from
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giving the same verbal instructions to
 Working memory in
children
• This leads to trouble in the classroom.
• Kids with low WM capacity may look like
they aren’t paying attention.
• They often commit “place-keeping”
errors, repeating or skipping words,
letters, numbers, or whole steps of an
assigned task.
• They may frequently abandon tasks
altogether, not because they are lazy
or uncooperative, but because they
have lost track of what they are
doing.
 Working memory in
children
• Signs of low WM capacity
• Finds it difficult to follow instructions
• • Loses track during complicated tasks and may
eventually abandon these tasks
• • Makes place-keeping errors (skipping or
repeating steps)
• • Shows incomplete recall
• • Appears to be easily distracted, inattentive, or
“zoned out”
• • Has trouble with activities that require both
storage (remembering) and processing
(manipulating information)
•
 What Parents/Caregivers
can do
• Break down tasks and instructions into
smaller components.
• Kids should be encouraged to ask
questions when they have lost their way.
And kids may benefit from being asked
to repeat key information back.
• Read and ask questions immediately after
the story.
• Read stories that have a predictable flow
or rhyme scheme
•