PSYC 206 Lifespan Development Bilge Yagmurlu

Chapter Overview Brain Development Preoperational Development Information-Processing Approaches to Cognitive Development Cognitive Development in Privileged Domains

Brain Development Brain Development Changes in myelination, neuron connections, and unevenness of growth After infancy, brain development slows 80% of adult weight at start of early childhood 90% of adult weight at age 5 Contributions to growth Myelination of the frontal cortex Length and branching of neural connections Synaptic pruning

Brain Development Variability in developing different areas of the brain May contribute to unevenness of early childhood cognition Visualizing, planning and controlling actions Scale errors

Preoperational Development The preoperational stage From Piaget’s theory Cannot perform mental operations Mental operations: The mental process of combining, separating, or transforming information logically.

Centration The tendency to focus on only one feature of an object to the exclusion of all others. According to Piaget, the greatest limitation of young children’s thinking Gives rise to 3 common errors: Egocentrism Confusion of appearance and reality Precausal reasoning

Egocentrism Egocentrism: The tendency to be captive to one’s own perspective and unable to take that of another tendency to ¨center¨: volume conservation tasks, class inclusions tasks lack of spatial perspective taking egocentric speech: not listener oriented lack of “theory of mind”

Egocentrism Children cannot grasp the concept of conservation. Understanding that physical properties of objects can remain the same even when their form changes.

Conservation

Conservation Conservation of Substance Conservation of Number 2 identical balls of clay One is deformed “Do the two pieces have the same amount of clay?” Conservation of Number 2 identical rows of coins One row is rearranged “Do the two rows have the same number of coins?”

Class Inclusion Tasks 8 beads: 5 black, 3 white Are there more black beads or white beads? Black... Are there more black beads or beads? According to Piaget, they center on only one level of categorization cannot consider the two levels simultaneously

Lack of Spatial Perspective Taking Allowed to view diorama (3 mountain experiment) from all sides Seated on one side; doll on opposite side Asked to identify how things would look to doll Almost always chose view corresponding to their own point of view

Speech Egocentrism Piaget emphasizes the egocentric nature of preschoolers’s speech (collective monologues) where no actual communication takes place children separated by a screen from peers were asked to describe the blocks on their side of the screen to the listener so that s/he can manipulate the blocks similarly most 4- and 5-year-olds used many egocentric terms such as “put this one first...”

Lack of Theory of Mind Ability to represent others’ mental states such as thoughts, beliefs, and desires There is a single reality and people may have different representations Understanding false belief: how someone comes to have a mistaken belief about something A child has a mature understanding of the mind around 4-4.5 years of age

Unexpected Change Paradigm

Unexpected Contents Task Show the child an M&M box: “What’s inside this box?” Following the answer, open the box, show there is a pencil in it. Put the pencil back inside the box, close it: “Ayse has not seen inside this box. Now I’m going to invite her into the room and show her the box all closed up like this, in the same way I showed you. Then, I’ll ask what’s inside the box. Will Ayse think there are candies in it or will she think there is pencil in it?”

Lack of Theory of Mind “ Pencil! ”:  cannot represent mental state of other child “ Candies! ”:  can distinguish reality, own thought and other thought 3-Year-Old will suggest pencils 4-Year-Old will correctly predict candy

Confusing Appearance and Reality Young children may often confuse appearance and reality Sponge-Rock task: showed a sponge which looked like a rock 3-year-olds insisted it is a rock although they were asked to handle it

Precausal Reasoning The tendency to reason from one particular to another, rather than engaging in cause-and-effect reasoning Why do people die? Because there are graveyards… Why do I take a nap? Because it is afternoon… What makes the sun shine? Because the sky is blue…