Dev across lifespan cognition powerpoint presentation

DEVELOPMENT ACROSS LIFESPAN

1. Development Across the Lifespan Week 3 – Cognitive Development 2 Early Childhood to Adulthood

2. Recap Last week we talked about: Prenatal cognitive development Emergence of consciousness / cognition Pre-natal cognition – the evidence Theories of early childhood cognitive development Piaget – Sensorimotor stage (0 – 2 years) Mental representations (schemas and concepts) Object permanence and VOE studies

3. This week . .  Continuing with cognitive development in middle childhood Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development -Pre-operational stage (2-7 years) Piaget's Concrete Operational stage (7 – 11 years)  Alternative theories – Vygotsky, Siegler, Karmiloff-Smith BREAK Adolescence through to adulthood Piaget's Formal Operations stage (11 years plus) Information processing approaches to cognitive development in childhood  What happens in early, middle and later adulthood

4. What is the pre-operational stage – 2 – 7 years? Children develop ability to think about things symbolically – i.e., not literally or in present time. This is a complex skill - symbolic thinking – i.e. Using images, gestures, language - to represent something else concrete or deferred imitation of things in past. - i.e. using a block to pretend to be a phone, mimicking dinner routine. Can understand concept of past and future . . .  This is the start of imaginary play . . or make believe . .  Language becomes more complex – is this responsible? Symbolic interactionism? Toward the end of the stage – this coincides with cognitive processes (cognitive operations – logic, transformation, combining ideas – next stage) - such as working memory, theory of mind, inhibition and development of executive functions – frontal lobe development (more on this later). But before this we have a pre-cognitive operations stage essentially . . hence the name.

5. Egocentricity (see essential reading – Flavell, 2005) Children are 'cognitively ecocentric ' at first The do not attribute points of view (perspectives) to things Hard to discern own perspectives on things / that of others or realise there can be a difference between these things.  Unaware of others mental representations and points of view of the world. Will report their own view in place of some else's POV. They lack theory of mind as we more readily refer to it now (more on this in a moment).  5

6. Three mountains experiment Classic Study - Piaget and Inhelder (1967) 3 mountains experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcqAWzW4DfQ&ab_channel=JULIANLLOYD Ability to pass this task coincides with the proposed transition from pre-operational to concrete-operational thinking (about age 7) – going from pre-cognitive operations and working towards concreate 'cognitive' operations – ability to use logical thought Can't pass this task without apply logic. End of pre-operational stage - children can mentally hold objects and concepts in their mind and then act on this information – working memory – storage and manipulation?  6

7. Theory of Mind - Definition Premack and Wood (1978) - see core reading for this week  – egocentrism – metacognition and then TOM research. TOM is a form of meta-cognition – thinking about thinking essentially. Children start to reflect on own though processes and mental representations over time. "one infers states that are not directly observable , and one uses these states anticipatorily, to predict the behaviour of others as well as one's own . These inferences, which amount to a theory of mind . . are universal in human adults   " Two components Perception – perceptiveness of facial expressions, body language, and other social cues indicating emotional state – empathy? Perspective taking – seeing someone else's point of view – physically / emotionally

8. Awareness of mental life – a timeline By 1 year infants understand other people have intentions and their own mental states and that these can influence mental states of others  — evident through - joint attention, social referencing, preverbal gestures, and spoken language.   By 2 years – infants begin to understand emotions and desires of others (or at least that they have them) – evident through understanding that people have different likes, dislikes, wants and needs – and these can be different to their own.  Vocabularies expand, include   words like " want, think, remember, and pretend " ( Wellman, 2011 ).   By 3, children understand thinking is subjective – inside their own heads - you can think about  something without seeing, touching, or talking about it ( Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1995 ). Verbal responses indicate that they assume people always behave in ways consistent with their desires.  

9. False Belief Tasks Approx age 4 onwards – children begin to understand that interpretative mental states such as beliefs can affect behaviour . To test this – false belief tasks -   show a child abox of smarties – open it – they realise it is pencils – ask them what they think a friend will say it is . .. they say "pencils" – failure to attribute the false belief to the friend. Really the friend should have the same false belief the child started with – that it was smarties. Another variation . . Smarties box and plain box. - ask child to indicate the box with smarties – they pick smarties box – then open them to show the smarties box is empty and the plain one has the sweets in it. Introduce child to a puppet -   “Here’s Pam. She would like sweets. Where do you think she’ll look for them ? Why would she look in there? Before you looked inside, did you think that the plain box contained sweets ? Why?” ( Bartsch & Wellman, 1995 ).   Only some 3-year-olds can explain Pam’s— and their own— false beliefs, but many 4-year-olds can.

10. Theory of mind and language? Maybe they don't yet have the language to express TOM. Helping problem study ( Buttelmann et al., 2014)  – 18-month-olds  — after observing an adult reach for a box previously used for blocks that now contained a spoon— based their choice of how to help on adult's  false belief about the contents of the box: They gave her a block rather than a spoon .  This suggests that toddlers implicitly understand that people’s actions can be guided by false beliefs ( Astington & Hughes, 2013).   Flavell et al (1981) - can understand someone looking at other side of a card doesn't see the same thing – Hughes (1975) - can imagine it in play – policeman – can take on a policeman's perspective.

11. Why does Theory of mind develop? Language ability predicts preschoolers’ false-belief understanding (Milligan, Astington, & Dack, 2007).   Children who   are trained to use, mental-state words in conversation are better at false-belief tasks (Hale & Tager- Flusberg , 2003; San Juan & Astington, 2012). -  think / know / remember / guess  (Milligan et al., 2007) Quechua people of the Peruvian highlands (language lacks mental-state terms ), children have difficulty with false-belief tasks longer than other children ( Vinden , 1996).   Astington and Pelletier (2005) - predicts early reading comprehension – ToM involved in understanding the beliefs and intentions and therefore plots of different characters. Executive function — inhibition, cognitive flexibility (flexible shifting of attention ), and planning— predict   false belief task success -  enhance children’s ability to reflect on experiences and mental states of others – these skills have a developmental trajectory as well (Benson et al., 2013; Drayton, TurleyAmes , & Guajardo, 2011; Müller et al., 2012). Inhibition is related to false-belief understanding, i.e. tasks require suppression of an irrelevant response— the child's own point of view (Carlson , Moses, & Claxton, 2004 ).   Social experiences  -  maternal “mind-mindedness” experienced by securely attached babies (frequent commentary on their mental states) is positively associated with later performance on false-belief and other theory-of-mind tasks (Laranjo et al., 2010; Meins et al., 2003 ; Ruffman et al., 2006). Securely attached children   experience more   parent– child narratives, including discussions of mental states (Ontai & Thompson, 2008).

12. Why does Theory of mind develop? Children with siblings – especially older -  tend to be more aware of false belief because they are exposed to more family talk about varying thoughts, beliefs, and emotions (Hughes et al., 2010 ; McAlister & Peterson, 2006 , 2007).   Preschool friends who often engage in mental-state talk— as children do during make-believe play— are advanced in false-belief understanding (de Rosnay & Hughes, 2006). Hughes et al., (2010) - ToM is a good predictor of social skills These exchanges offer children extra opportunities to talk about inner states, receive feedback, and become increasingly aware of their own and others’ mental activities.  

13. Conservation Being able to conserve -  knowing that a quantity doesn't change if it's been altered (by being stretched, cut, elongated, spread out, shrunk, poured, etc). Piaget's (1966) studies – number, volume, mass, area etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnArvcWaH6I&ab_channel=munakatay McGarrigle and Donaldson (1974) - naughty teddy moved the counter.

14. Concrete Operational Stage (7 – 11 years) Approximately school age and above. Children can begin to logically use cognitive operations for tasks.  Conservation (number, volume etc) - children can typically pass these – shows evidence of cognitive 'operations' - mental actions – logic.  Decentration – children can focus on several aspects of a problem and relate them – rather than centering on just one. Reversibility – children can think through a series of steps and then mentally reverse direction - reversibility is part of logical operation.

15. Concrete Operational Stage (7 – 11 years) Classification – (Borst et al., 2013) - specific vs general categories – e.g. children can order plants based on several categories at once, order them by size, but then reorder by colour, or size or number of flowers and colour – cognitive flexibility? Can order and reorder.  Seriation – ordering objects along quantitative dimension e.g. length – smallest to largest stick. Transitive Inference  - Wright (2006) - Children can make inferences about number – i.e. if stick A is bigger than stick B, and stick B is bigger than stick C, children can infer stick A is bigger than C. Wright, Robertson and  Hadfeild (2011) - even younger children age 6 can do this if the topics are relevant to their everyday experiences – e.g winners of races between cartoon characters they are familiar with. 

16. Spatial Reasoning School age children are good at drawing maps or visual representations of spaces – inferring the distance between things and the overall space (Liben, 2009) Parameswaran (2003) - Indian children drew maps with more social and cultural landmarks than US children.

17. Limitations of thought at this stage Concrete operations – clue is in the name.  Children are good at performing logical operations on concrete stimuli – but not as good with hypothetical stimuli. Continuum of acquisition (Fischer & Bidell, 1991) - gradually children master each next step of logical operations – number, length, liquid, mass, weight – each less concrete. Rather than applying logical principles to all concepts – this comes later.  But surely this sounds like continuous development? Not discontinuous – or stage like? Neo- piagetian theorists combine both (more in a moment).

18. But it's not all about Piaget!!

19. Karmiloff-Smith (1992) - Representational-Redescription model (RR-model) Neo-Piagetian model (as it involves assimilation and accommodation) Starts off with high performance but low understanding.  I.e. children apply 'ed' - but can't explain why. Distinction between understanding and performance – understanding follows linear trajectory (children gradually develop a more explicit understanding of the skills they are performing).  Performance undergoes a u-shaped curve-  can dip – i.e. over apply rule and make mistakes – e.g. Everything as 'ed' as past tense – leads to errors.   Ignores feedback from the environment – but integrates this overtime and performance then increases.  Domain specific change - multiple representations for different skills 21

20. RR model: more recent - Evidence in children’s development Evidence of the RR levels have been sought in various domains: Spelling (Critten, Sheriston & Mann, 2016; Critten, Pine & Messer, 2013; Critten, Pine & Steffler, 2007). Understanding of balance (Pine & Messer, 1998, 1999, 2003). Numeracy ( Chetland & Fluck, 2007). Language (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). 22

21. Siegler (1996) Overlapping Waves (OW) Model – theory of cognitive evolution – variability and adaptability . . .  Competition of ideas Leads to adaptive outcomes Cognitive variation and selection Children have a variety of ways of thinking about any given topic: These strategies compete Eventually the most advanced strategy will become prevalent With experience, less successful strategies are used less and more successful strategies are used more! 23

22. OW model: Evidence in children’s development Evidence of overlapping waves / stratergies in different topics: Spelling and reading ( e.g. Coyne, Farrington-Flint, Underwood, & Stiller, 2012; Critten, Sheriston & Mann, 2016; Rittle-Johnson & Siegler , 1999; Sheriston , Critten & Jones, 2016 ). Numeracy ( Chetland & Fluck, 2007). Addition Serial recall             Please see Siegler (1996). Time telling  24

23. Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development A theory of ‘social constructivism’ - cognitions are constructed through interaction / help of others.  Focus on culture: how values, beliefs, customs and skills is transmitted to the next generation Social interaction: children learn their culture’s thinking and behaviour via more knowledgeable members of society Importance of adults AND more expert peers. Can you think of any examples from different stages of childhood? Stages of progression occur due to: Language acquisition: participate in dialogues Schooling: metacognition, reasoning and problem solving 25

24. Vygotsky’s process of learning Learning occurs via joint activities with an adult or     more expert peer. Zone of proximal  development: Tasks children cannot do alone but can do with help Scaffolding: Adult/peer supports the child     through the task offering     increasingly less help until     they can step back and the     child can do it alone  26

25. Break

26. Formal Operational – the integration of abstract ideas

27. What can teenagers do? (Inhelder & Piaget, 1955, 1958) According to Piaget – adolescents develop capacity for abstract, systematic, scientific thinking.  Prior to this concrete operational children 'operate on reality or concrete concepts'. Require objects or events to operate. In formal operations stage, adolescents 'operate on operations' Meta-cognition? Can generate and apply general logical rules – internal reflection.

28. Hypothetico-Deductive Reasoning When faced with a problem – adolescents start with a hypothesis (prediction about variables on an outcome) From this they deduce logical and testable inferences.  They then systemically isolate and combine variables to see which inferences are confirmed in real world This is problem solving that begins in the abstract and is then applied to reality. 

29. Piaget's Pendulum Problem Participants asked to deduce what effects the speed of swing. Adolescents in formal operational stage  isolate variables - string length, weight, height of swing and force, test each one and in combination.  Concrete-operational children might test a short string / light weight combination compared to a long string / heavy weight  - ignore non-concrete variables like force and height of swing. 

30. Propositional Thought Evaluating the logic of verbal statements without depending on real-world / visual reference points.  E.g. being able to discuss the logic of the space-time continuum / theory of relativity at the dinner table. Osherson and Markman (1975). Condition 1 – hidden poker chip Asks adolescents and younger children to evaluate statements as 'true, false or uncertain'. "The chip in my hand is EITHER green or it is not green" "The chip in my hand is green AND it is not green." Condition 2 – visible green / red poker chip Asks participants same questions.  In condition 1, adolescents say 'true' and 'false'. Younger children say 'uncertain' for both. In condition 2, adolescents say 'true' and 'false' - adolescents understand that ' either-or ' statements are always true and ' and ' statements are always false – regardless of colour of visible chip. In condition 2 younger children focus on concrete properties of the visible chip and say 'true' for both if chip is green and 'false' if red. Formal operations require language based and other symbolic systems and verbal reasoning about abstract concepts . 

31. Adults and formal operational thought Does every adult enter a stage of formal operations? - Possibly not  - (Kuhn, 2009 – adults can find these tasks difficult). Taking college courses leads to improved formal reasoning related to the course content – i.e. statistical reasoning for maths courses (Lehman & Nisbett, 1990) Evidence to suggest that this stage is very context dependent and culturally specific. Formal Operations are specific to situations and tasks (Keating, 2004). This thinking is bolstered by school learning and formal education in critical thinking. Cole (1990) - tribal villages societies – less formal schooling - performed less well on tasks requiring formal operations.   Artman, Cahan and Avni-Babad (2006) - after controlling for age, years of full schooling biggest predictor of propositional thought. School gives adolescents opportunity to develop critical thinking skills and abstract thought.

32. Information Processing Approaches

33. Information Processing Theory Information-processing researchers   focus on many aspects of thinking, from attention, memory, and categorization skills to complex problem solving.   They want to know exactly what individuals of different ages do when faced with a task or problem (Birney & Sternberg, 2011).   The computer model of human thinking .  Most information-processing researchers assume that we hold information in three parts of the mental system for processing: the sensory register, the short-term memory store, and the long-term memory store. As information flows through each, we can use mental strategies to operate on and transform it, increasing the chances that we will retain information, use it efficiently, and think flexibly, adapting it to changing circumstances.

34. Attention 2 to 3 months - infants shift from focusing on single, high-contrast features to exploring objects and patterns in detail - visual search behaviour also improves over the first year (Frank, Amso , & Johnson, 2014). Infants gradually become more efficient at managing   attention, taking in information more quickly.   Preterm and newborn babies require 3 to 4 minutes to habituate to novel visual stimuli. Older infants ( 4 or 5 months )  need   5 to 10 seconds   (Colombo, Kapa, & Curtindale , 2011). Why? Young infants have difficulty disengaging attention from a stimulus (Colombo, 2002). Can cry if they get fixated on things! Improves by 4 months—   due to development of structures in the cerebral cortex controlling eye movements ( Posner & Rothbart, 2007 ).   Sustained attention increases with age – i.e., time spent playing one game / stacking blocks or pretend play (Ruff & Capozzoli, 2003 ).

35. Short Term Memory Memory tasks -  memory increases from one item at   6 months to two to four items at 12 months (Oakes, Ross-Sheehy, & Luck, 2007).   2- to 6-month-olds taught to move mobile by kicking panel. Two-month-olds remember how to move  the mobile for 1 to 2 days after training, and 3-month-olds for one week. By 6 months, memory increases to two weeks ( Rovee -Collier, 1999 ; Rovee -Collier & Bhatt, 1993).   6- to 18-month-olds taught to press lever to make a toy train move around a track - 13 weeks after training 18-month-olds still remembered how to press the lever   (Hartshorn et al., 1998 ).  Hulme et al. (2006) - Memory increases over time – adults approx. 6 – 9 items on average in digit span tasks.

36. Inhibition Earliest of the executive functions to reach maturity – key skill for processing? Several types – ignoring irrelevant information (proactive), distractor information, past information (pre-potent).  Tap when experimenter claps, and clap when they tap -  3- and 4-year-olds make many errors. But by age 6 to 7, children pass simple versions of these tasks ( Diamond, 2004 ; Montgomery & Koeltzow , 2010).   Predicts lots of academic skills such as reading and math achievement from kindergarten through high school ( Blair & Razza , 2007 ; Duncan et al., 2007 ; Rhoades, Greenberg, & Domitrovich , 2009).

37. Cognitive Flexibility - shifting Ability to flexibly shift focus of attention, between stimuli or rules or modalities (verbal / nonverbal). Rule-use tasks - ( Zelazo et al., 2013). First asked to sort pictures of boats and flowers using colour rules, put all red boats and red flowers in red box with flower on it and blue boats and blue flowers in blue box with boat on it. Child is asked to switch to shape rules, put all the boats into box with the blue boat and all the flowers into the box with the red flower. Three-year-olds persist in sorting by colour; not until age 4 can children switch rules ( Zelazo , 2006). Increased complexity – ask children to shift from colour to shape rules on a subset of picture cards with an added black border— most 6-year-olds have difficulty (Henning, Spinath , & Aschersleben , 2011). Flexible shifting improves during the preschool years into middle and later childhood. Inhibition contributes to shifting (Kirkham, Cruess , & Diamond, 2003 ; Zelazo et al., 2013) - must inhibit attending to the previously relevant dimension while focusing on current dimension.

38. Working Memory Working Memory – hold a representation in mind and then act on it – manipulate it. 3- to 5-year-olds shown a doll named Molly, a camera, and a miniature zoo with a path, with three cages. Storage box next to first and third cage. C hildren told that Molly could follow path only once and she wanted to take a picture of the kangaroo. Then they were asked, “What box could you leave the camera in so Molly can get it and take a photo of the kangaroo?” (McColgan & McCormack, 2008). From five years children can pass this – shows planning, have to store idea of camera in box and then test the path.

39. Frontal lobe development Development in executive functions and working memory parallel development in the frontal lobe – Phineas Gage. Continues to develop until age of 25 approx.. Last processes to develop fully are planning and organisation. Maybe adults do know best?

40. Early Adulthood Cerebral Cortex and pre-frontal cortex continue to develop. Fine-tuning of cognitive control network. Taber-Thomas and Peres-Edgar, (2016) - higher education, entering a career, balancing multiple demands – FMRI evidence – become specialised in a chosen field and areas supporting this develop in cortex.  Perry (1981) - dualistic thinking - younger adults – tend to adopt one position or another.  - Older students adopt more relativistic thinking - considering diversity of opinions more. 

41. Middle Adulthood Intelligence - ( Schaie , 2016) - intelligence tests suggest this peaks at about 35 – but depends on ability and how tested – i.e. if you follow longitudinally gains are made later – cross-sectionally over several cohorts / ages then you see an on average decline – better school younger generations? Hartshorne and Germine (2015) - depends on type of ability – crystalised intelligence improves (knowing more stuff) - fluid intelligence declines (abstract thinking).

42. Late Adulthood Rieddiger , Li and Lindenberger, (2006) - greatest variation in cognitive ability in later life for a cohort – i.e. huge variation in 80 year olds.  This is because many factors can affect cognitive decline, lifestyle, genetic risk etc.  Crystalised intelligence shows a decline however some people show high maintenance and minimal loss (Baltes and Smith, 2003).  Ebner, Freund and Baltes (2006) - people focuses on preventing loss more in older age.

43. Formative CW Hour For today's CW hour (which I'm now calling it!) We will be focusing on plans and possible structures for your CW. I will give you an outline of the ' MUST ' includes and order. And then it is over to you – to come up with some 'points for paragraphs' or 'areas of focus' These will differ depending on topic chosen. We will also talk about structuring these points. 

44. What 'MUST' you include – structure. I'm aware this is a broad CW topic – so let's narrow it down a little.  Special Educational Needs and Difficulties (SEND) - Early to middle childhood – preschool through to 7 ish years Bullying – late childhood through to adolescence / early adulthood – ideally around secondary school age – > 11 and < 25 years of age. Cognitive Decline – later middle to late adulthood 

45. Structure Part A – Opening / Introduction – 250 - 300 words approx. Begin by clearly stating the topic you are focusing on – i.e. ADHD in preschool children. By limiting the age range you can then be broader for the topic. I.e. talking about hyperactive and inattentive symptoms in very young children. Then give context – i.e. what is the rationale – why is this a key challenge - i.e. ADHD affects X% of children - or children with ADHD struggle with 'modern teaching' - think of arguments for why the topic is important. Then give some key definitions – i.e. what do we mean by each sub type.

46. Structure Part A – middle section (400 words approx.) The Theory – what are the key theories in your chosen topic area Are they relevant – substantial? Are they flawed? Critical consideration of the key theories.

47. Structure Part A – third section – empirical evidence (600 – 700 words approx.) What we know currently from academic journals / studies. Studies that have investigated the topic experimentally with variables or qualitatively by talking to people about it or analysing spoken / written experience on the topic. What is the scientific and research picture? This should be the main body. This should be considered critically with key points of argument. Start each paragraph or point with the argument – still should be paragraphs (one clear point each) not just a large body of text.

48. Over to you . . .  Based on the previous points . .  I'd like you to – fill out the plan for your topic for the CW. Create your part A CW structure – fill in the blanks Swop with a peer next to you - (different topic group) Peer feedback.

49. Next Week – we will focus on part B structure in CW hour!