Last Class

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Last Class

• Metamemory Knowledge of ones memory
• Grade K and 1 children show little evidence.
• Dont generalize strategies
• Culture differences in strategy use.
• Schooled v. unschooled cultures, Americans v.
  Germans
• Strategy Development.
• No stage-like or step-like development
• Many strategies are available
• Strategy thats use most frequently changes with
  age
• Strategies develop in overlapping waves.
• Bjorklund Rosenblum (2002)
• Implicit strategy use
• Siegler Stern (1998)

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HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1PSYCHOLOGY 3050Mental
Representation (Ch 9)
Dr. Jamie Drover SN-3094, 737-8383 e-mail --
jrdrover_at_mun.ca Winter Semester, 2009
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Mental Representation Through Infancy

• Representation the mental encoding of
  information.
• According to Piaget, infants have no mental
  representation until 18-24 months of age.
• Knowledge is only sensory and motor experience
• Out-of-sight, out-of-mind
• Piaget may have underestimated infants

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Expressions of the Symbolic Function

• The roots of symbolic function is in the
  sensorimotor stage.
• The underlying symbolic nature of cognition.
• Enables deferred imitation, language, symbolic
  play, and mental imagery.
• Deferred imitation requires the use of symbols
  which is not usually present until 18 months of
  age.

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Neonatal Imitation

• The ability of newborns to reproduce some
  behavior such as facial expressions.
• Piaget believed that infants did not show
  invisible gestures until 12 months.
• Meltzoff and Moore (1977) demonstrated imitation
  of facial expression in 6 21 day-old
• Looked at the number of tongue protrusions and
  mouth openings made in response to an adult
  model.

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Neonatal Imitation
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Neonatal Imitation

• Imitation of facial gestures occurs over the
  first month.
• However, this declines over the first year of
  life.
• Tongue protrusion peaks at 2 months and then
  declines.

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Neonatal Imitation

• Three Explanations
• Learning Unlikely as infants imitate shortly
  after birth. Not enough opportunity
• True Imitation Newborns can coordinate info from
  2 senses (vision, proprioception)
• Visually observe the stimulus (face)
• Store an abstract representation of the face
• Compare it with the proprioceptive representation
  from own movements

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Neonatal Imitation

• Newborns can integrate information from the two
  senses.
• Active intermodal mapping
• 3. An innate releasing mechanism (IRM)
• Fixed action pattern
• Inherited sets of behaviors elicited by specific
  sets of stimuli without prior experience (e.g.,
  imprinting in birds).

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Neonatal Imitation
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Neonatal Imitation

• But whats the purpose of this ability?
• Maybe a function specific to that developmental
  time and then disappears.
• Ontogenetic adaptation
• Might be important for nursing or early social
  development.

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Deferred Imitation

• Initial research indicated that deferred
  imitation did not occur until 18 months of age.
• Requires mental representation.
• Both Meltzoff (1985) and Abravanel and Gringold
  (1985) provide evidence that if occurs earlier.
• see page 238.
• Found evidence of deferred imitation in 12- to
  14-month-olds.

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Deferred Imitation

• Other studies show evidence of deferred imitation
  as early as 6 months of age.
• Toddlers will imitate other toddlers along with
  televised models.
• (see Hanna Meltzoff, 1993, p. 238).

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Early Number Concepts

• Infants as young as 5 months can add and subtract
  simple sets of numbers (Wynn, 1992).

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Early Number Concepts

• Performing mental math requires object
  permanence, memory, and along with rudimentary
  math knowledge.
• To accomplish mental math, infants might be
  subitizing, ie, quantifying small numbers of
  items without conscious counting.
• Another explanation is that infants are
  responding to changes in the amount of stuff.

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Learning to Use Symbols

• A mental representation of a physical object or
  event.
• External referents for objects or events.
• Representational Insight knowledge that an
  entity can stand for something other than itself.

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Last Class

• Mental Representation and Symbolic Function
• Deferred imitation, language, symbolic play,
  mental imagery
• Neonatal imitation
• Piaget 12 months Meltzoff Moore (1977) 6-21
  days
• Learning, True Imitation, Innate Releasing
  Mechanism
• Deferred Imitation
• Piaget 18-24 months Meltzoff (1985) and
  Abravanel Gringold (1985) 12-14 months
• Early Concept of Numbers
• Mental Math
• Subitizing, Amounts of Stuff

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Interpretation of Pictures and Models

• DeLoache (1987) had 2- and 3-year-old children
  search for a toy hidden in a room.
• Earlier, they are shown a model room that
  illustrates where the toy is.
• They then have to find the toy in the room.
• Then have to find the model toy in the model room.

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Interpretation of Pictures and Models
3-year-olds possess representational insight.
2.5-year-old do not
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Interpretation of Pictures and Models

• If a picture is used instead of a scale model,
  2.5-year-olds show representational insight,
  whereas 2-year-olds do not (DeLoache 1987).
• These findings may reflect difficulty with
  dual-representations.
• A model is its own item, worthy of its own
  attention.
• When models are made less interesting,
  performance changes.

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Interpretation of Pictures and Models

• When 2.5 year-olds see the model through a
  window, performance improves.
• Remove need for dual representation totally
• credible shrinking room studies -- 2.5 yr olds
  can succeed
• shrinking machine can shrink room
• shown Terry the Troll
• machine shrinks (then enlarges) Terry

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Interpretation of Pictures and Models
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Interpretation of Pictures and Models

• Standard model task hide Terry in large room
• Room was shrunk
• 2.5 yr can find Terry in small room
• No need for representational link between model
  and the room, instead -- large and small room
  believed to be the same thing
• no dual representation needed

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Interpretation of Pictures and Models

• There is evidence for early symbolic
  representation.
• Pretend play at about 18 months
• Child uses banana for a phone
• Banana used as symbol for phone
• Does not require representational insight or dual
  representation
• Must not only use object as symbol (phone), must
  also know that object (banana) is itself (banana)
  at the same time

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The Appearance/Reality Distinction

• Another representational difficulty
• Appearance-reality distinction
• Understanding qualitative invariance -- objects
  are the same in spite of qualitative perceptual
  change
• e.g., put on face mask, person same
• Piaget called this identity
• Similar to (but easier than) conservation
• invariance in spite of quantitative change --
  length, weight, number

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The Appearance/Reality Distinction

• De Vries (1969) studied qualitative identity
• Children were familiarized with a trained cat.
• The cat was then fitted with a dog mask.
• 3-year-olds believed the mask changed the
  identity of the cat.
• Flavell (1986) poured white milk into a red glass
  while young children were watching.
• Showed children a sponge that looked like a rock.

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The Appearance/Reality Distinction

• They were asked what does it look like to your
  eyes right now?
• Asked, what is it, really and truly?
• Made two kinds of errors.
• Phenomenism errors said milk was really and
  truly red.
• Intellectual realism Said the fake rock looked
  like a sponge.