PSY 213 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Active Child, Joint Attention, Psy
Chapter 7 – Conceptual Devel’ PSY 213
MAR/18
Understanding who or what
-Dividing objects in categories
-Knowledge of other people + oneself
-Knowledge of living things
Understanding why, where, when, + how many
-Space
-Time
-Causality
-Number
Themes
-Nature + nurture
-The active child
-Mechanisms of change
-Sociocultural context
Conceptual Devel’
Concepts
-General ideas or understandings used to group together objects, events, qualities, or
abstractions that are similar in some way
-Crucial for helping people make sense of the world
Perspectives
-Nativists argue that innate understanding of concepts plays a central role in devel’
-Empiricists argue that concepts arise from basic learning mechanisms
Understanding Who or What: Dividing Objects into Categories
Dividing the objects children encounter in the world into categories helps children answer two
questions
1. What kinds of things there are in the world
2. How are those things related to each other
Young children attempt to divide the objects they perceive in three general categories
1. Inanimate objects
2. People
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Chapter 7 – Conceptual Devel’ PSY 213
MAR/18
3. Living things
-Children divide objects into category hierarchies (i.e. categories related by sub-set
relations)
Young children organize their knowledge of things into informal theories
-Theory of physics – born w/some, learn quickly
-Theory of psychology – approx. 18mo
-Theory of biology – approx. 3yrs
Share characteristics w/formal scientific theories
-Identification of fundamental units for division of all objects + events into basics
categories
-Explanation of many phenomena into fundamental principles
-Explanation of events in unobservable causes
Dividing Objects in Categories: Categorization of Objects in Infancy
First Months
-Infants form categories of objects
-Key element in infants thinking in perceptual categorization – grouping together of
objects that have similar appearances
Approach 2nd birthday
-Increasingly categorize objects on basis of overall shape + function
-Use their knowledge of categories to determine which actions go w/which type of objects
Ability to categorize expands beyond infancy
-This involves knowledge of relations among categories + increased understanding of
category hierarchies + causal connections
Categorization of Objects Beyond Infancy: Causal Understanding + Categorization
-Understanding why objects are the way they are helps children learn + remember new
categories
-In general, understanding cause-effect relations helps people of all ages learn + remember
Knowledge of Other People + Oneself
-Children as young as 3yrs have a naïve psychology that involves a common sense level
of understanding other people + oneself
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Chapter 7 – Conceptual Devel’ PSY 213
MAR/18
-Desires, believes, + actions
-Infants find people interesting, pay careful attention to them, + learn an impressive
amount about them in the first year
-1 to 1.5 years
-toddlers begin to show a grasp of several ideas that are crucial for psychological
understanding
-Standing/walking/reaching
-Intention
-Joint attention
-Intersubjectivity
-Own + others emotions
Theory of mind – well organized understanding of how the mind works + its b’
-2yr olds
-Understand the connection between other people’s desires + their specific actions,
but show little understanding that beliefs are also influential
-3yr olds
-Understand that desires + beliefs affect b’, but have difficulty w/false belief
problems (i.e. smarties task)
-5yr olds
-Find false belief problems v. easy
Development Beyond Infancy: Explaining the Devel’ of Theory of Mind
Nativist Empiricists Empiricist w/General Information
Processing Skills
There is a theory of mind module
(TOMM), a hypothesized brain
mechanism devoted to
understanding other human beings
Interactions w/other people are
crucial for developing theory of
mind
General IP skills are necessary for
children to understand people’s
minds
Autism + False-Belief Tasks
Children w/autism continue to find false-belief tasks very difficult to solve even when they are
teenagers
-Difficulty establishing joint attention
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
General ideas or understandings used to group together objects, events, qualities, or abstractions that are similar in some way. Crucial for helping people make sense of the world. Nativists argue that innate understanding of concepts plays a central role in devel". Empiricists argue that concepts arise from basic learning mechanisms. Understanding who or what: dividing objects into categories. Dividing the objects children encounter in the world into categories helps children answer two questions: what kinds of things there are in the world, how are those things related to each other. Young children attempt to divide the objects they perceive in three general categories. Chapter 7 conceptual devel": living things. Children divide objects into category hierarchies (i. e. categories related by sub-set relations) Young children organize their knowledge of things into informal theories. Theory of physics born w/some, learn quickly. Identification of fundamental units for division of all objects + events into basics categories. Explanation of many phenomena into fundamental principles.
