COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

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• Chapter 7
• COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
• versus

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Cognitive Development

• Piagetian Concepts
• Organization Adaptation
• Psychological Structures
• Schemes
• The Sensorimotor Period of Cognitive Development
• 6 Substages
• Imitation and Object Permanence
• Piaget's View of Imitation
• Imitation in infancy
• Role of learning
• Generalized imitation
• Search Behavior and Object Permanence

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Definition of Cognition

• Varies widely, with 2 common characteristics
• Internal (mental) processes
• Enable individuals to acquire knowledge of the
  world
• Fail test of objectivity
• Cannot be observed or measured, thus cannot be
  analyzed
• Must look at specific behaviors
• Refers to development birth- 2 years
• Jean Piaget's work provides framework

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Piagetian ConceptsOrganization Adaptation

• Cognition- acquisition of knowledge about the
  world
• Results from individuals organizing their
  psychological structures to adapt to the
  environment
• Assimilation (occurs when behavior is successful
  at interacting with environment the individual
  adds that knowledge into his/her psychological
  structures)
• Accommodation (occurs when behavior is not
  sufficient to interact successfully with
  environment the individual adapts psychological
  structures to the environmental demands)

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Organization Adaptation

• Example infant is presented with novel rattle
• Piaget
• Assimilation by grasping (history of grasping
  other objects)
• Accommodation by locating rattle in space,
  reaching out and adjusting arm movements
• Behavior Analysis Stimulus control
• Sight of rattle (SD) evokes behavior (grasping)
• Topography of behavior (form of grasp) may be
  different from previous grasps

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Organization Adaptation

• Piaget behavior analysis (BA) agree
• Assume a behaving organism in an environment
• Child's behavior constantly conforms to
  environment
• Differ in process accounting for organizing and
  adapting (behavioral adaptation)
• Piaget intentional, internal process
• BA selectionist process

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Psychological Structures

• Regular patterns of behavior that occur as a
  result of assimilation accommodation
• Become more complex as child grows older,
  interacts more with environment
• Scheme (organizing structure in infants)
• Operation (organizing structure in ages 7-11)

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Schemes

• Ways of acting on the world or organized patterns
  of behavior
• Actions (behavior)
• Refer to basic structure (form) of behavior
• e.g. thumb sucking
• What BA would call operant unit (function)

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The Sensorimotor Period of Cognitive Development

• Two major general changes in this period
• Decline of egocentrism
• Child's behavior is directed (controlled) less by
  reflexes and more by environment
• Objects in environment begin to control more
  behavior (including objects out of view)
• Six substages
• Sequence is fixed, age is not
• Qualitative changes in cognitive structures and
  processes

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Stage 1 Birth to 1 Month

• Stage of reflex schemes
• Sucking behavior in newborns
• Specific stimuli elicit the sucking reflex
• Occurs in the absence of eliciting stimuli
• Functional assimilation
• possible internal eliciting stimulus and
  conditioned reinforcement
• Occurs in presence of novel objects
• Generalizing assimilation
• Stimulus generalization
• Becomes differentiated
• Recognitory assimilation
• Operant discrimination

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Stage 2 1 to 4 Months

• Primary circular reactions (operant conditioning)
  
• Earliest (primary) reactions characterized by
  repitions of chance discoveries (circular)
• The infant attempts to reinstate the effective
  behavior and the sequence becomes habit
• Implies infant's learning occurs at cognitive
  (unobservable) level
• Primitive anticipations (Piaget)
• Classical conditioning (BA)
• Curiosity as functional assimilation (Piaget)
• Unconditioned reinforcement (BA)

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Stage 3 4 to 7 Months

• Secondary circular reactions- repetition of
  previously learned behavior involving events and
  objects in external environment (Operant
  conditioning)
• E.g., Laurent's rattle attached to hand
• Piaget interpretation 4 steps- interest,
  perception, desire, accommodation
• BA interpretation reinforcement, response
  inductions (generalization)
• Similar to conjugate reinforcement procedures
  (Rovee-Collier et al.)

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Stage 3 4 to 7 Months, continued

• Formation of classes or meaning
• E.g. Lucienne sees her dolls from a distance
• Piaget perceives and recognizes, abbreviates
  behavior, first step in thinking
• BA stimulus generalization, generalization
  decrement, extinction

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Stage 4 7 to 10 Months

• Advances in imitation and object permanence
• Coordination of the secondary schemata
• Two or more previously learned schemes come
  together to be coordinated
• E.g. Laurent removing obstacle to matchbox
• Piaget borrowed from familiar scheme and used it
  in a new way, implies intentionality of infant
• BA extinction and differential reinforcement of
  slightly different form of behavior

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Stage 4 7 to 10 Months, continued

• More complex relationships between objects
  complex forms of anticipation
• e.g. spoon from glass versus bowl
• Piaget infant uses system of meanings in the
  service of anticipation
• BA discrimination

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Stage 5 10 to 18 Months

• Tertiary (third order) circular reactions- after
  the child accidentally causes something to
  happen, he or she deliberately varies behavior to
  repeat the effect
• e.g. dropping oatmeal from the high chair
• Piaget child tries to produce variation
• BA complex behavior is more likely to produce
  variable consequences (empirical grouping)

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Stage 6 18 to 24 Months

• Invention of new means through mental
  combinations
• Pivotal stage forms transition to the next period
  of development of using mental symbols and words
• e.g., Lucienne opening matchbox to retrieve watch
  chain

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Imitation Object Permanence

• Learning in humans occurs as a result of
• Operant Respondent Conditioning
• Imitation
• Verbal Rules
• Function-altering operations
• - alter the control of behavior by stimuli
• Importance of imitation cannot be overstated

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Piaget's View of Imitation

• Birth to approximately 8-12 months
• Limited to repetition of actions the infant has
  previously performed
• Elementary vocal and visual movements, grasping
• 12 months
• Level 2 imitation becomes possible
• Can imitate model and novel actions
• 18-24 months
• Untrained, deferred or delayed imitation

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Imitation in Infancy

• Meltzoff and colleagues
• Concluded that very young infants are capable of
  imitation (beginning at 72 hours of life)
• These claims have been challenged
• Difficult to infer learning as determinant of
  imitative behavior
• How best to account for differences between
  individuals?
• What are the determinants of the generalized
  imitative skills that lead to the acquisition of
  novel behavior?

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Role of Learning in Infant Imitation

• What do infants imitate and under what
  circumstances?
• Maturation of central nervous system
• Past present environmental conditions related
  to particular behavior
• At what point do infants display imitative
  behavior?
• What are the processes by which imitative
  relations develop?
• Experimentation is needed to answer
• Developmental account does not adequately answer
  this

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Generalized Imitation

• Poulson Kymissis (1988)
• Refers to behavior that
• Is topographically similar to the model's
• Is controlled by the topography of the model's
  behavior
• Occurs in the absence of enivronmental
  consequences for its occurrence, or occurs under
  consequences that are reduced from those during
  training
• Is stimulus generalization response
  differentiation

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Poulson and Kymissis (1988)

• Multiple-baseline design, 3 10-month-old infants
• Studied effects of modeling contingent praise
  on motor responses
• Results showed systematic increases in infants'
  response topographies demonstrating that
  generalized imitation occurs in infants
• Normally occurring interactions between mothers
  and infants explains normal development of
  generalized imitation
• Results suggest plausible processes for
  acquisition of novel behavior in infants

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Search Behavior Object Permanence

• Object Permanence
• Theoretical construct that explains behavior of
  continuing to respond to an absent object
• Behavior analytic view Is the infant's behavior
  still somehow controlled by stimuli associated
  with the absent object?
• Search Behavior
• Hidden objects
• Object or infant's position is altered

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Search Behavior continued

• Stages 1-3
• 1 2 no active search for out of sight objects
• 3 visual anticipation partially visible
  objects
• Stage 4 AB Search Error
• Delay, not visibility of object, is critical
  factor
• Search behavior affected by covers (use of
  landmarks)