PSYC20008 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Active Child, Object Permanence, Mental Representation
14 Jun 2018
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Lecture 4 - Thursday 9 March 2017
PSYC20006 - DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURE 4
INFANCY
WHY USE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORIES TO UNDERSTAND COGNITION?
•Developmental theories raise crucial questions about the nature of “mind” and the nature of the
“starter kit”. What is it that the infant comes with?
•If our description of infancy is incorrect or questioned, it is going to cause following
developmental aspects to come into question.
THE ACTIVE CHILD
•This is a key concept. Infants explore and do many interesting
things; however there are obvious differences for children who
grow up in orphanages. It is a mediation between being
explorers in their own right and being influenced by things
around them. Some aspects of interaction are requires to
provide scaffolds for development.
•Infants pay attention to specific features in their environment
very early on.
FETUSES
•Can hear and learn sounds during the last two months of pregnancy and can recognize their
mother’s voice at birth.
NEWBORNS
•Cannot hear soft sounds as well as adults.
•Are fairly good at determining the location of a sound.
•Many inborn mechanisms for infants to recognise and interact with their world.
PIAGET BEYOND INFANCY
•Some very quick reminders before focusing on infant cognition;
•Had discrete stages;
•Sensorimotor; no cognitive representation of world.
•Preoperational; world through mental images.
•No ability to see world from other’s perspective;
mountain task.
•Concrete operational: operate on their world.
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (0-2)
•Substage 1 (birth–1 month)
•Modify reflexes
•Centered on own body
See: image on last page
Lecture 4 - Thursday 9 March 2017
PSYC20006 - DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
•Substage 2 (1–4 months)
•Organize reflexes
•Integrate actions
•Substage 3 (4–8 months)
•Repetition of actions resulting in pleasurable or interesting results
•Substage 4 (8–12 months)
•Begin searching for hidden objects
•Fragile mental representations
•A-Not-B Error; looking for an object where it was last found, not last hidden.
•Substage 5 (12–18 months)
•Active exploration of potential use of objects
•Substage 6 (18–24 months)
•Enduring mental representations
SIMPLE HIDING PROBLEM: A REVIEW
•0-5 months
•An attractive toy is shown to the baby and then is placed under a towel as the baby watches
•Infants typically follow the toy with their eyes as it disappears under the towel
•But no active search
•Mastered between 6 and 9 months
OBJECT PERMANENCE
•The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or
touched.
•Why is this an important developmental idea?
CHANGED HIDING PLACE
•8-12 months
•The toy is first placed under towel A for a series of trials and the baby retrieves it each time
•Then the toy is a hidden under towel B, next to the first, in plain view of the child
•Despite having watched the object disappear under the new napkin, the baby reaches under
the original napkin
•Mastered between 10 and 12 months
INVISIBLE DISPLACEMENT
•12-18 months
•The infants watches as the researcher's hand closes around the toy, hiding it from view
•The researcher's closed hand then moves under a napkin and deposits the toy
•When the hand is brought back into view, the infant looks in and under the hand, but not
under the napkin
•Mastered by 18 months
PIAGET’S LEGACY
•Positives;
•A good overview of children’s thinking at different points.
•Broad spectrum of development and ages.
•Fascinating observations.
•Negatives;
•Stage model depicts children’s thinking as more consistent than it is.
•Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognised.
Document Summary
Why use developmental theories to understand cognition: developmental theories raise crucial questions about the nature of mind and the nature of the. What is it that the infant comes with: if our description of infancy is incorrect or questioned, it is going to cause following developmental aspects to come into question. The active child: this is a key concept. Infants explore and do many interesting things; however there are obvious differences for children who grow up in orphanages. It is a mediation between being explorers in their own right and being influenced by things around them. Some aspects of interaction are requires to provide scaffolds for development: infants pay attention to specific features in their environment very early on. Fetuses: can hear and learn sounds during the last two months of pregnancy and can recognize their mother"s voice at birth.
