Introductions
HD FS 631
Learning & Cognitive Development
in Children
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name
major
professional background and
goal
The Nature of Cognitive
Development
August 26, 2002
Susan Hegland
Texts
• Bjorklund
• Recent empirical articles
– varying ages, methods, theories
• APA Manual
Course focus
Using the theories and research studies assigned, come to
each class prepared to discuss the following questions:
1) What changes in learning and cognitive development in
children?
2) What causes learning and cognitive development in
children?
3) What individual differences exist in cognitive
development in children?
4) What is the role of the environment (peers, adults,
objects) in influencing cognitive development?
Performance Outcomes
• Compare, contrast, and evaluate the utility of current
theories of the development of cognition and learning in
children; to draw implications for research and education.
• Analyze, synthesize, and critique current research evidence
on the development of cognition and learning in children; to
draw implications for theory-building, research, and
education.
• Prepare, present, critique and discuss the introduction and
method of a research study in cognitive development.
Discussion of empirical articles
• What research hypotheses were tested?
– What is the justification for each hypothesis?
– What operational definitions?
• What results, using what statistical analyses?
• What conclusion(s) did the author(s) draw?
– Limitations?
– Strengths?
• What implications do you draw for
– theory-building,
– future research,
– applications in cognitive development?
1
Presenting a research study
Exams: 3 parts
• Sign up tonight
• Present as if you are the author at a conference
• Class: audience asking questions
• Concepts: 10 terms (requiring a definition and
an example) (30 points)
– [N.B.: The ten terms will be selected from
Bjorklund, plus any identified in readings]
• Two essay questions (from study guide)
Paper assignment
• Research manuscript in learning and cognitive
development in children
• Note peculiarities of scientific communication
– Don't confuse while/although; since/because
– Source: theory/research/review/speculation?
– Learn APA referencing style: punctuation, first initials,
capitalization
• Make up your results (including data) and discussion!
• Two anonymous peer reviews
• Class presentation and handout
Cognition
• Inner processes and products of human
mind that lead to knowing
• All human mental activity:
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Definitions
• Cognition
• Change:
– learning,
– growth,
– development
• Stages
Change in cognitive functioning
• Learning
• Growth
• Development
remembering, relating,
classifying, symbolizing,
imagining, problem-solving,
creating, fantasizing
• Language, attention, and perception?
– in HD FS 632
2
Learning
Growth
Change in behavior
as a result of
experience
Change in behavior or structure
as a result of
maturation
Development
Theories in Cognitive Development
Change in behavior or structure
as a result of the
interaction between
the organism and the environment
Structure ↔ Function
• Describe, explain, and predict behaviors
• Useful/not useful (not true or false)
• What theories do you find most/least useful for
– describing
– explaining
– predicting
children’s learning and cognitive development?
Three dominant theories
• Piagetian and neo-Piagetian theories
(rationalist)
• Information Processing Theories (empiricist)
• Vygotskian Theories
(sociocultural)
How do children learn?
Model 1: Adults transmit
knowledge to each
child
Adult
Child
Thorndike
3
How do children learn?
Model 2: child constructs
knowledge
from interacting with
objects
Assimilation + Accommodation = Equilibration
How do children learn?
Model 3: Adult scaffolds as
adult & child interact
Adult
Child
Child
Piaget
How do children learn?
Model 4: as adults & children
Vygotsky
How do children learn?
Model 5: as adults & children
interact around
activities
interact
Adult
Adult
Child
Child
Child
Child
Child
Child
Child
Child
Child
Haitano
Are stages useful?
1) What changes in learning and cognitive development in
children?
2) What causes learning and cognitive development in
children?
3) What individual differences exist in cognitive
development in children?
4) What role (if any) do adults play in influencing
cognitive development?
Child
Child
Child
Rogoff
What do stages imply?
• Qualitative change from stage to stage
– Similarity in thinking across multiple areas during the
same stage
– Differences in thinking within the same area across
different stages
• Concurrence assumption
– transition from one stage to another
– on many concepts at the same time
4
Stages Theory:
Stage 4
Stage 3
Stage 2
Two different perspectives
on stages
• Changes occur abruptly and are followed by plateaus
Not supported
by research over the past 30 years
• Children's thinking is structured into coherent
organization
Supported
by research over the past 30 years
Stage 1
Five year old
Siegler’s strategy
choice model
Question of General Stages
Strategy 1
Strategy 4
Strategy 2
Strategy 5
Strategy 3
Frequency of Use
• Does mind develop in general, unified or specific,
fractionated manner?
– Not as unified and stagelike as Piaget thought
• Neo-Piagetians (Case, Fischer, Halford, Sternberg,
Pascual-Leone)
– Regular, maturation-based increase with age in
some aspects of informational processing
capacity (e.g., processing speed of efficiency)
• As information processing capacity increases with
age, new and more complex forms of cognition
are possible in all content domains
Age
Five year old
Past and Present
Where is cognitive development
today?
• Children undergo extensive and varied cognitive growth
from birth to adulthood.
– Rich, complex, and multifaceted process
• Development is amenable to productive scientific
inquiry:
– Some findings: children less capable than expected (e.g.,
conservation)
– Recently: children more capable than expected (e.g., speech
perception, intermodal matching, quantity)
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Child as Constructive Thinker:
• Not blank slates that copy
• Cognitive structures and processing strategies
lead children to
– select from the input what is meaningful to them
and
– to represent and transform what is selected
– in accordance with their cognitive structures.
Historical Trends in Methods
• From observational methods and highly verbal,
talky testing
• Mixed verbal/nonverbal, nonverbal
experiments
– Interviews after assessment
Piaget's model of processes is still
useful
• Cognitive development is largely selfmotivated
Children
• Perform thought experiments
• Provide counterexamples
• Reason using knowledge available (with faulty
logic)
• Metaphor: child as little scientist (Brown,
1983)
Newer methods for older,
postinfant children
• Modeling and imitation (Watson & Fischer,
1980)
• Rule assessment (Siegler, 1981)
• Surprise (Gelman, 1972)
• Siegler
• Ginsburg
Newer infancy methods
• Use nonverbal response patterns that provide
information about infant's perceptual-cognitive
states and activities:
– sucking, heart -rate changes, head turning,
reaching, and looking
• Habituation/dishabituation designs
– Surprise at change that violates physical law
demonstrates some tacit knowledge (e.g.,
Baillargeon, 1992; Spelke, 1988)
Revised Estimates of Competence
Infants and young children now seem more competent,
and adults less competent than developmentalistsused
to think, e.g., infants
• Discriminate most of the speech sounds used in human
language
• Discriminate between small numerosities
• Distinguish causal from noncausal event sequences
• Detect intermodal correspondences
• Imitate facial gestures
• Form concepts and categories
• Recall past events
6
Young children: "Pre" no longer
appropriate
• Not as egocentric: blindfolded others can't see
(Lempers)
• Understand mental states (belief versus wish)
• Understand more of numbers
Effects of Expertise
• Less useful: general, trans-domain developmental
similarities and synchronisms
– More emphasis on specific developments in single
content area
• More useful: Well-organized content knowledge
has powerful effect on cognitive level (e.g., Chi &
Glaser)
– Permits child to function at higher developmental stage
in one area
– Therefore, less consistency across areas
Domain-specific knowledge
• permits child to solve problems more by
memory than by reasoning
• by recognizing familiar problem patterns
Cognitive Development as Theory
Development
• In some domains, the knowledge that children acquire may
be such as to warrant being called informal, naive,
nonscientific "Theory" (Carey, Keil, Wellman)
• Children have a framework or foundational theory in a
domain (Wellman & Gelman, 1992) if they
– Honor core ontological distinctions
– Use domain-specific causal principles in reasoning about
phenomena in the domain, and
– Have causal beliefs that cohere to form an interconnected
theoretical framework
Sociocultural Influences
• Activities and environment are critical
(Vygotsky, Bronfenbrenner, Bruner, Cole,
Rogoff, Wertsch)
• Rogoff: cognitive development requires an
apprenticeship in which children acquire
knowledge and skills by participating in
societally structured activities together with
their parents, other adults, and children
Due to individual children's specific
and variable cultural experiences
Children show multiple, highly specific, and variable
developments
• NO universal, species-wide developmental outcomes.
Child and social world are mutually involved
• They cannot be regarded them as independently definable
• NOT separate entity interacting with another separate entity
• NOT solitary scientist constructing naive theories through
unaided efforts
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Individual Differences
Two kinds of developmentalists :
• Universalists : dominated since Piaget
• Individual differences: e.g., Binet
– Cognitive style and creativity (Kogan)
– Genetic and environmental contributions through
behavior genetics (e.g., Loehlin; Plomin)
Behavior genetics
• different nonshared environments that children
experience in same family can increase individual
differences (Plomin, 1991)
• Predict individual differences in cognition in later
childhood from individual differences in cognition
during infancy (e.g., Bornstein, 1986; Thompson, &
Fagan, 1991)
• Infants who show greater preference for visual
novelty tend to perform better on intelligence
measures
Practical Applications
Mechanisms of Development
• Real-life applications of research in cognitive
development are possible (e.g., Palinczar &
Brown's reciprocal teaching)
• Siegler: observing children in inner city
schools to see the process children go through
in learning mathematics
• Harder to explain cognitive development than
to describe it!
• Both domain-specific and domain-general
approaches exist to explain change
• Examples
– Best known: equilibration
Mechanisms of change
• Creation and resolution of competition between
neurological or psychological entities (like
equilibration)
• Siegler & Crowley: microgenetic method to find
information about mechanisms:
• Even after children discover a new competency they
may continue for some time to use previous, less
adequate approaches
• Contrary to Piaget, cognitive change often follows
successes rather than failures in use of current
approaches (see Karmiloff, 1984)
September 9
• Chapters 1 and 2 of Bjorklund
• Essay question
• Read Kloos & Somerville, come prepared to
interview “author”
8
Study questions for September
9
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Generally, young children are cognitively immature compared to older
children and adults. Discuss possible functions for this immatur ity.
Cite research to support your conclusion as to whether this
immaturity is harmful or beneficial.
Compare and contrast three different views of the relative influence of
nature and nurture in cognitive development
Compare different views on the relative influence of nature and
nurture in cognitive development.
Compare and contrast the development systems approach with the
genotype → phenotype theory. How much weight do these theories
give to environment? To genetics?
In what ways does brain development involve a loss of physical
structures and functions? How could these losses contribute to
developmental growth? Cite evidence.
What is plasticity as related to the brain? Discuss this concept and
provide evidence of plasticity.
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