Child Cognition test 2

Concious mental representation of sensory information

Mental groupings of similar things, events, or people (like Piaget's Schemas)

Higher level judgements or deductions based on perceptual information or concepts

• Neonate imitates facial expression (sticking out tongue) after seeing an adult do it for 20 sec.
• Successful imitation proved that neonates could represent the info, hold the info in their brain while adult was away, and reproduce gesture

• Causality
• Covering something causes it to disappear
• A short container causes a tall object to disappear
• A wooden obstacle causes a drawbridge to stop rotating

• Launching events - red and blue block that hit each other
• When contact is short, causality is possible (as soon as red hits blue)
• When contact is delayed, causality is not possible (1 sec after red hits blue)

Attributing mental states like beliefs, desires, or goals as the basis for the action

True

• Line moving up and diagonal (/), when it turns the "head" to move down and diagonal (\), adults attribute animacy (like it might be a real thing).
• If it's facing up and diagonal (/) and moves down facing the same way (/), they don't attribute animacy

• Pg 45
• 2 balls - 1 big, 1 small
• Swell up (like talking) 1 at a time
• Little ball "revs up" and jumps over wall in middle
• When wall gone, little ball still jumps
• Babies looked because they "knew" it was irrational of the little ball to jump because the wall was gone

• 1. Explaining the behavior of objects (Physical reasoning)
• 2. Explaining the behavior of people (Psychological reasoning)

• 3-6 mos olds prefer to watch 2 dots chase each other rather than just move randomly
• Argued: that infants were sensitive to movement info (the 1st dot doesn't want to be by the 2nd dot)
• It specified social causality

Agents

An agent

• Used box vs. person touching an object.
• Dishabituated to box touching because they dont have feelings, etc
• No dishabituation because people do have feelingss, etc
• Conclusion - infants reason differently about people and objects

• Adults tried to put beads in jar, or tried to put string on a hook and failed
• When babies imitated, they successfully complete the action intended by adult
• When saw done by a robot arm, they did not imitate
• Conclusion: Babies separate causal explanations by 18 mos. (understand unobservable traits like wants, desires, beliefs, goals)

Babies picked a yellow square when it helps the blue square get up the hill, and not the red square because it pushed the blue down the hill

Special dedicated info-processing systems in the brain that recieve input from particular classes of objects in world

• Language and grammar
• Numbers
• Music
• Cause and Effect

• Theory of Mind (Psychological causality)
• Object mechanics (Physical causality)

• Imitation
• Statistical learning
• Explanation-based (causality)
• Learning by analogy

• Reasoner wants to reach a desired goal
• Sequence of mental processes must be involved
• Mental processes are effortful (not automatic)

• Have a bear in a cup behind a screen, take cage out from behind screen and then bear.
• Babies have to reason that you can't get the bear out if you don't take cup out first

• Mickey mouse behind a wall -
• 10 mos olds dishabituate to equal relations only
• 14 mos olds dishabituate to equal and less than relations

• Change mickey's number and identity -
• Babies showed surprise at impossible identity + impossible math, but not to impossible identity alone

• Visual "what" pathway
• Processes unique features, colors, shapes

• Visual "where" pathway
• Processes spatial and temporal info (coming at you, moving away, to the left), what you can do with something, how you can act on something

Understand the intentions of others

• Deferred Imitation (reproducing a novel action previously learned, at a later time)
• Showed 6 actions to 14 mos olds with 1 week delay
• Findings:
• 9 mos old retain 3 novel acts 24 hrs
• 14 mos olds = deferred imitation over 2-4 mos
• 14 mos olds = deferred imitation after seeing it on tv

• Delayed imitaion 14 mos olds:
• Pulling the dumbell apart 3 times, 45% kids did it after he showed

Finding certain relational correspondences b/w 2 events, situations, etc then tranferring info knowledge form one to the other

• (Analogy)
• Conjugate reinforcement techinque a.k.a. mobile kicking
• Butterfly mobile used during recall, infants still kicked

• (Analogy)
• Using "means ends" to solve problem
• 1)Remove box, 2)pull cloth to 3)get string to 4)pull earnie toy close.

• Based on Baillargeon's research
• Based on idea that infants identify event categories like containment or support
• Baillargeon thinks these are innate

• Fundamental notions or principles that guide understandings of events
• Relies on simple basic principles (partial contact= support, no contact = falls)

• Perseveration due to pre-frontal cortex immaturity
• Do it over and over
• Inhibition is key - they can't inhibit the response tendency (they can't inhibit the previously executed motor pattern)

• Newborns come equipped with behavioral mechanisms for ensuring proximity to mother (crying, rooting, grasping, smiling)
• This ensures survival because mothers can't ignore a baby's cry, etc

• Maternal voice preferences
• Babies heard more of mother's voice depending on how fast they sucked on binky.
• Change their sucking rate to hear mother's voice the most possible
• Lasted for 24 hours
• Could be unlearned by reversing the learned action (sucking LESS now makes you hear more mother's voice, and they changed)

• Mothers read 1 of 3 books while pregnant
• Baby preffered to hear that book (by mother or stranger) after birth (changed sucking rate to hear it)
• Demonstrates "Familiararity preference"
• Babies can form memories prenatally

• Ability to detect and learn contingencies (relationships) b/w one's actions and events in environment
• a.k.a. Associative Learning

They notice that certain things they do produce an action that they like, so they keep doing it

• Babies shown 2 videos: own live movements and own pre-recorded movements
• Preferred to look at live movements

Indicates awareness and preference for contingency

• Put a dot on child's nose or forehead and show them in mirror
• Evidence of self-recognition shows at about 18 mos old
• They show signs of embarrassment or touching their body where it is

• Mothers responded:
• 1- naturally (talking/reacting to babies normally)
• 2- noncontingently (wore headphones listening to what they said a week before and imitated that)
• 3- imitated babies
• 3 mos olds smiled more in natural condition and looked at mom more in noncontingent condition