Children

1
Childrens Thinking

• Lecture 3
• Methodology Introduction to Piaget

2
Can Infants Use Their Own Names to Learn New
Words?(Bortfeld, et al., 2005)

• Using the Headturn Preference Procedure, infants
  Maggie and Hannah were familiarized with two
  passages
• Maggies bike had big, black wheels Hannahs cup
  was bright and shiny
• The girl rode Maggies bike A clown drank from
  Hannahs cup
• The bell on Maggies bike was really loud The
  other one picked up Hannahs cup
• She knew Maggies bike could go very fast
  Hannahs cup was filled with milk
• The boy played with Maggies bike She put
  Hannahs cup back on the table
• Maggies bike always stays in the garage Some
  milk from Hannahs cup spilled on the rug

3
Can Infants Use Their Own Names to Learn New
Words?

• After familiarization, infants were tested on
  their preference for four words
• bike cup feet dog

4
Naturalistic Observation

• In contrast to experiments, observation avoids
  artificiality and thus maximizes external or
  ecological validity (i.e., generalizability).
• But observation lacks control and therefore
  does not provide a solid basis for drawing causal
  conclusions.
• Moreover, good observation is not trivial.

5
A Fish Story

• Louis Agassiz would ask the student when he
  would like to begin. If the answer was now, the
  student was immediately presented with a dead
  fish -- usually a very long dead, pickled,
  evil-smelling specimen -- personally selected by
  "the master" from one of the wide-mouthed jars
  that lined his shelves. The fish was placed
  before the student in a tin pan. He was to look
  at the fish, the student was told, whereupon
  Agassiz would leave, not to return until later in
  the day, if at all.
• Samuel Scudder, one of the many from the school
  who would go on to do important work of their own
  (his in entomology), described the experience as
  one of life's turning points.

In ten minutes I had seen all that could be seen
in that fish.... Half an hour passed -- an hour
-- another hour the fish began to look
loathsome. I turned it over and around looked it
in the face -- ghastly from behind, beneath,
above, sideways, at three-quarters view -- just
as ghastly. I was in despair. I might not use a
magnifying glass instruments of all kinds were
interdicted. My two hands, my two eyes, and the
fish it seemed a most limited field. I pushed my
finger down its throat to feel how sharp the
teeth were. I began to count the scales in
different rows, until I was convinced that that
was nonsense. At last a happy thought struck me
-- I would draw the fish, and now with surprise I
began to discover new features in the creature.
6

• When Agassiz returned later and listened to
  Scudder recount what he had observed, his only
  comment was that the young man must look again.
• I was piqued I was mortified. Still more of
  that wretched fish! But now I set myself to my
  task with a will, and discovered one new thing
  after another.... The afternoon passed quickly
  and when, toward its close, the professor
  inquired "Do you see it yet?"
• "No," I replied, "I am certain I do not, but
  I see how little I saw before."
• The day following, having thought of the fish
  through most of the night, Scudder had a
  brainstorm. The fish, he announced to Agassiz,
  had symmetrical sides with paired organs. "Of
  course, of course!" Agassiz said, obviously
  pleased. Scudder asked what he might do next, and
  Agassiz replied, "Oh, look at your fish!"

7
Jean Piaget Master Observer
8
What is Development?

• Change of a certain sort
• Orderly
• Directional
• Cumulative
• Behavior becomes more flexible and complex
• Behavior involves increasing differentiation and
  integration

9
What is Cognition?

• We usually use thinking to refer to higher
  order mental processes like judgment, problem
  solving, conceptualizing, etc.
• Here, we are concerned not only with these, but
  also with basic aspects of everyday mental
  processing.
• These include
• remembering
• categorizing
• representing the external world

10
The Object Concept

• Implicit beliefs we all hold about objects.
• We, and all other objects, coexist as physically
  distinct and independent entities within a
  common, all enveloping space
• The existence of our fellow objects is
  fundamentally independent of our own interaction
  or non-interaction with them
• An objects behavior and existence is independent
  of our psychological contact with it

11
Infants Object Concept, Stage 1
12
Object Concept, Stage 2

• Passive expectation if object disappears, infant
  will continue looking to the location where it
  disappeared, but will not search.
• In the infant mind, the existence of the object
  still very closely tied to schemes applied to
  experience

13
Object Concept, Stage 3

• Visual anticipation.
• If infant drops an object, and it disappears, the
  infant will visually search for it.
• Will also search for partially hidden objects
• But will not search for completely hidden objects.

14
Object Concept, Stage 4

• Infant will search for hidden object.
• Does infant understand the object as something
  that exists separate from the scheme applied to
  find the object?
• No. Evidence?
• A not B error.

15
The A not B task
1
A trials
16
The A not B task
1
A trials
17
The A not B task
1
A trials
18
The A not B task
2
A trials
19
The A not B task
2
A trials
20
The A not B task
2
A trials
21
The A not B task
B trials
22
The A not B task
B trials
23
The A not B task
??
B trials
24
A not B error

• Infant continues to search at the first hiding
  location after object is hidden in the new
  location.
• Object still subjectively understood.
• Object remains associated with a previously
  successful scheme.

25
Object Concept, Stage 5.

• Can solve A not B.
• Cannot solve A not B with invisible displacement.
• Can only imagine the object as existing where it
  was last hidden.
• Invisible displacement requires the infant to
  mentally calculate the new location of the
  object.

26
Piaget, The Theorist

• Piaget made observations on a wide variety of
  behavioral phenomena, often inventing informal
  experiments to draw out critical performances.
• Piaget offered a grand constructivist theory of
  cognitive development, in which the child is seen
  as an active agent of his or her own mental
  growth.

27
Nature vs. Nurture

• Phrygia preformationism
• Behaviorism
• Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and
  my own specified world to bring them up in and
  I'll guarantee to take any one of them at random
  and train him to become any type of specialist I
  might select - doctor, lawyer, artist,
  merchant-chief and, yes, even beggarman and
  thief, regardless of his talents, penchants,
  tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his
  ancestors.

28
Genetic Epistemology A constructivist theory

• No innate ideas...not a nativist theory.
• Nor is the child a tabula rasa with the real
  world out there waiting to be discovered.
• Instead, mind is constructed through interaction
  with the environment what is real depends on how
  developed ones knowledge is

29
How does Piaget describe developmental change?

• Development occurs in stages, with a qualitative
  shift in the organization and complexity of
  cognition at each stage.
• Thus, children not simply slower, or less
  knowledgeable than adults ? instead, they
  understand the world in a qualitatively different
  way.
• Stages form an invariant sequence.

30
Stages of Cognitive Development

• (1) Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
• (2) Pre-operational (2-7 years)
• (3) Concrete Operational (7-11 years)
• (4) Formal Operational (11-16 years)

31
What develops? Cognitive structures

• Cognitive structures are the means by which
  experience is interpreted and organized reality
  very much in the eye of the beholder
• Early on, cognitive structures are quite basic,
  and consist of reflexes like sucking and
  grasping.
• Piaget referred to these structures as schemes.

32
How do cognitive structures develop?

• Through assimilation and accommodation.

33
How do cognitive structures develop?

• Assimilation The incorporation of new
  experiences into existing structures.
• Accommodation The changing of an old structures
  so that new experiences can be processed.
• Assimilation is conservative, while accommodation
  is progressive.

34
Why accommodate?

• Normally, the mind is in a state of equilibrium
  existing structures are stable, and assimilation
  is mostly occurring.
• However, a discrepant experience can lead to
  disequilibrium or cognitive instability
• Child forced to accommodate existing structures.

35
Active view of development

• Child as scientist
• Mental structures intrinsically active ?
  constantly in need of being applied to experience
• Leads to curiosity and the desire to know more
• Development proceeds as the child actively
  refines his/her knowledge of the world through
  many small experiments

36
Instructional learning viewed as relatively
unimportant

• Teachers should not transmit knowledge, but
  should provide opportunities for discovery
• Child needs to construct or reinvent knowledge ?
  adult knowledge cannot be formally communicated
  to the child
• Limited importance of socio-cultural context
  importance of peer interaction.

37
II The Sensorimotor Period (0-2 years)

• Only some basic motor reflexes? grasping,
  sucking, eye movements, orientation to sound, etc
  
• By exercising and coordinating these basic
  reflexes, infant develops intentionality and an
  understanding of object permanence.