Cognitive Development ( Part 1 of 3)

Coginition-

Refers to all inner processesand products of the mind that leads to knowing. It includes all mental activicties- attending, remembering, symbolizing, catagorizing, planning, reasoning, problem solving, creating, fantasizing. Other species have camouflage, feathers and fur coats. We stand out in our extraordinary mental capablities.

Children move from a simpler to more complex coginitive skills, ie, cognitive skills are not developed in one day. This chapter intend to learn how these coginitive skills develop stage by stage.

Jean Piaget, a zoologist by education, proposed a theory with biological favour. According to Piaget, human infants does not start out as coginitive beings. Instead, out of their perceptual and motor activicties, they build and refine psychological structures. Piaget viewed children as discovering, or constructing virtually all knowledge about their world through their own activicties. Hence his approch is called a constructivistic approch to cognitive development.

Basic Characteristics of Piaget’s Stages-

 Piaget believed that children move through 4 stages in course of cognitive development. These stage sequence has three important charecteristics.

a.    Stages provide general theory of development, in which all aspects of coginition change in an integrated fashion, following a similiar course.

b.    Stages are invarient- they always occur in fixed order.

c.    The stages are universal- they are assumed to characterize children everywhere.

But he did mention that individualistic difference can affect in speed at which development takes place.

Piaget’s Ideas About Coginitive Change-

Schemes- Organized way of making sense of an experience. These schemes change with age. At first, schemes are sensorymotor action patterns. A 6 months old baby’s throwing scheme is different from that of an 18 month baby.

Mental Representation- Internal description of information thst mind can manipulate. At a later stage, than just acting on objects, toddler shows evidence of thinking before he acts. Generally they are two kinds-

a.    Images- mental pictures of objects, people, spaces.

b.    Concepts- Catagories in which similiar objects or events are grouped together.

According to piaget, two processes causes change from sensorymotor to higher stages. They are-

1.   Adaptation-

Adaptation involves building schemes through direct interactions with the environment. It consists of two complimentary activicties-

a.    Assimilation- We use our current scheme to interpret the external world.

b.    Accomodation- We create new schemes or adjust old one’s after noticing that our way of thinking does not capture

According to Piaget, balance between assimilation and accomodation varies over time. When they assimilate, they are in a state of coginitive equlibrium. But when drastic changes happens, accomodation is needed and it changes into a state of 

disequilibrium.

2.   

Organization-

This process takes place internally, apart from direct contact with the environment. Once child forms new schemes, they rearrange them, linking them with other schemes to create a strongly interconnected coginitive system.

Stage 1

Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 years)

The basic concept is that infants and toddlers think with their eyes, ears, hands and other sensorimotor equipments. They cannot yet carry out many activicties inside their head.

At birth infants know little about their world that they cannot purposefully explore it. The circular reaction provides special means of adapting their first schemes. It involves stumbling onto a new experiences caused by baby’s own motor activicty. 

The reaction is circular as infant tries to repeat the event again and again. As a result, a sensorimotor response that first occured by chance becomes strengthened inro a scheme. At the first circular reaction is focussed on infants own body, later it turn outwards.

There are 6 substages in Sensorimotor Stage-

1.    Reflexive Schemes (0-1)- New born reflexes

2.    Primary Circular Reactions (1-4)- Simple motor habits centered around the infants own body

3.    Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8)- Actions aimed at repeating intresting effects in the surrounding world; imitating of familiar words

4.    Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions (8-12 mnths)- Intentional or goal-directed behaviors, ability to find a hidden object

5.    Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18)

6.    Mental representation (18-24)-

Repeating Chance Behaviors-

When babies enter substage 2, they start to gain voluntary control over there actions through primary circular reactions, ie, repeating chance behaviors largely motivated by basic needs. Eg- sees hands touch, open and close.

During substage 3, infants sits up and become skilled at reaching for and manipulating object. Using secondary circular reactions, they try to repeat intresting events that are caused by their own actions.  Eg-playing with swinging toy.

Intentional Behavior-

In substage 4, infant combine schemes into more complex action sequences. Hence, the behaviors that lead to new schemes are no longer random but intentional. Intentional behaviors involve coordinating schemes delibrately to solve simple problems. Eg- Object hiding task- showing object and hiding, babies find it, which is major advancement in coginitive development

                                  Finding hidden objects indicate that child have begun to master object permanence ie, understanding object continue to exist even when out of sight. But awareness is still not complete because babies make A not B search error- if they reach several times for an object at first hiding place (A), and see it moved to second (B), they will still search for it in first hiding place (A). Also infants can better anticipate events in substage 4.

                                  In substage 5, toddlers repeat behaviors with variation, provoking new outcomes. Eg- Push objects from table some forcefully, some slowly.

Mental Representation

                                  In substage 6, sensorimotor development completes with formation of mental representation. One sign of this capacity is that 18-24 month olds arrive at solutions to problem suddently, rather than through trial and error method. This representaation results in several other capacities.-

a.    Invisible displacement-

                        Finding a toy moved while out of sight.

b.    Deferred Imitation-

                        The ability to remember and copy the behavior of models who are not present.

c.    Make believe play-

                        Children acting out everyday and imaginary activicties.

INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROCH

This approch analyze how individuals manipulates information, monitor it, and create strategies for handling it. Affective information processing involves attention, memory and thinking, one after other in sequential order.

These process may overlap, but always goes in left to right sequence.

Information Processing Approch Applied to development-

According to seigler, three mechanism works together to create changes in children’s cognitive skills-

1.    Encoding-  process by which information gets into memory. Changes in children’s cognitive skills depend on increased skill at encoding relevant information and ignoring irrelevant information.

2.    Automaticity- ability to process information with little or no effort.practice allows children to encode increasing amount of information automatically. Eg- learning to read. This automaticity increases speed as they can encode more at a given time.

3.    Strategy Construction- creation of new procedures for processing information. Ie, a strategy that makes information processing more effective.

Sieglar argues that childrens information processing is charecterized by self modification- ie, Child learns to use what they have learned in previous circumstances to adapt their response to new situation. This happens due to presence of metacognition in child. Ie, cognition about cognition.

Speed of processing information-

          Increases drastically over childhood years. Can be due to biological maturation or due to experience. Speed declines at middle adulthood and slowdown continues as late adulthood progress. But the strategies aew used to compensate slowdown in processing. 

Vygotsky’s socio-cultural Theory

Piaget emphasises biological side of cognitive development.  Social and cultural context emphasised in Vygotsky. Child is active learner as in piaget, but rejects individualistic view of developing the child.

Basic idea- Individuals are endowed with basic perceptual, attention and memory capacities like all animals which grows in first 2 years. Aquisition of language leads to profound change in thinking through participation in social dialogues and masters culturally important tasks. As a result basic mental capacities are transformed into uniquely human higher cognitive processes.

 Private speech- Piagets ego centric speech reflects childs difficulty in taking perspectives of others. Changes as cognitive develpment. Sees others have diff. Openions, so changes it into social speech. But vygotsky objects it, calls it self guidance. Tasks difficult at begining so self talk to keep motivated, decision making etc. Later it goes off coz task easy. Accepted version.

Social Orgin of Cognitive development- learning of new cognitive skills happens in zone of proximal development- tasks too difficult for child to do alone but possible with help of adults or more skilled.  To promote cognitive development, social interaction must have certain features-

(a)  Intersubjectivity- process by which two paricipants who begin a task with different understanding arrived at a shared understanding. Common ground for communication

(b)  Scaffolding- adjusting the support offered during teaching session to fit child’s current level of performance. Also called guided participation

Make believe play-  its important source of development during preschool days.- learns in two ways- (i) create imaginary situation,learn to act acoording any internal ideas, and not just react to external stimuli. (ii) its rule-based nature, also strengthens childs capacity to think before they act.  Make believe play serves as a zone of proximal development, supporting emergence and refinement of many competencies.

Vygotsky and Education-

Emphasises the importance of social context. Vygotskian classroom is similiar to Piagetian in terms of accepting individual differences and promote active participation, yet goes beyond a step by promoting assisted discovery. Teachers intervent in each students zone of proximal development. Two typical Vygotskian educational innovations are-

(a)  Reciprocal Teaching- a  teacher and two to four children take a group and takes turn leading dialogues on content of text passage. Within dialogues, group members apply four coginitive strategies- questioning, summarizing, clarifying and predicting.  (Reading Comprehension)

(b)  Cooperative Learning- among more expert children. Peeers help fellow being to fit less mature child’s zone of proximal development.

Evaluation of Vygotsky’s Theory

Vygostsky’s theory includes cultural variation in cognitive skills unlike Piaget who spoke of universal . Undervalues role of teaching in coginitive development.

 -ves- Over emphasis on language, Overseeing biologivcal contribution to childs cognition.

Pro Social Behaviors- Part III (Final Part)

BASIC MOTIVATION FOR ENGAGING IN PROSOCIAL ACTS

Basic motivation to engage in prosocial acts are explained through three Hypothesis-

1.    Empathy-Altruism

2.    Negative State relief Model

3.    Empathetic Joy

4.    Genetic Determinism

1.Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis-

     Batson and his colleagues (1981) offered empathy altruism hypothesis to explain why people engage in pro social behaviors despite various contrains. They suggest that atleast some pro social acts are solely motivated by the desire to help someone in need. Such motivation can be sufficiently strong that the helper is willing to engage in unpleasant, dangerous and even life threatening activicty.

To test this hypothesis Batson and colleagues devised an experminet procedure where participants were shown a video in which a person (who is reserch assistant) gets a mild shock while doing the experiments, and he reports that he had traumatic experiences with electricity. The participants are divided into two groups. One group is told facts that arouses empathy of them by describing the victim as being very similiar to him and other group is given dissimiliarity and hence not envoking an empathy feeling. The reserch assistant gives a chance for altruistic behavior, people with empathy were the one to react.

              Because empathy is strongly motivating, people prefer not to recieve information that will arouse empathy.(Shaw, Batson $ Todd, 1994). When helping was costly, participants preffered to avoid detailed information about the victim. Feeling empathy also become complicating when multiple victims are present. Generally we tend to show Selective altruism- when a large group of individual is in need, and only one individual is helped. In appeals for charities there is frequently a picture and information about one child, designed to arouse empathy towards him and the result is selective altruism.

2. Negetive State Relief: Helping makes you feel less bad-

 

     The proposal that prosocial behavior is motivaated by the bystanders desire to reduce his or her own uncomfortable negetive emotions. (Cialdini, Baumann & Kenrick, 1981). This negetive feel can be due to distress of victim or due to other causes too.

3.Empathetic Joy: Helping as an accomplishment-

     The proposal that prosocial behavor is motivated by positive emotion a helper anticipates experiencing as a result of having a beneficial impact on life of someone in need. The person who helps feels the act as an accomplishment. Hence the person has to know that his actions had a positive impact on the victim.

     A study was conducted to test Empathetic Joy hypothesis by Smith, Keating, and Stotland. Empathy (similarity & Dissimilarity) was tested against Empathatetic joy, thats knowing the effect of end result of their pro social behavior. Results indicated that empathy is not enough but, knowledge of it after effect is also needed.

4.Genetic Determinism- Helping as an adaptive response.

          The proposal that behavior is driven by genetic atributes that evolved because they enhanced the probablity of transmitting one’s genes to subsequent generations. Those charecteristics that is relevant to reproductive succes is been passed on to next generation through evolutionary process.

          Inclusive fitness- the concept that natural selection not only applies to individuals but also involves behaviors that benefit other individuals with whom we share genes. Also called kin selection. Ie, we save  a person who is similiar to us. Hence when we save a person like us, we are saving genes that are common to us.

PRO SOCIAL BEHAVIORS- Part 2

EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL INFLUENCES ON HELPING BEHAVIOR

EXTERNAL FACTORS-

1.    1.Helping those you like-

Very likely to help family members oe friends. More likely to help person from race you prefer. Also, attractive victims recieves more help than unattractive one. Men are more liklely to help women in distress,. Holding similiar values also results in a victims recieving help.

2.    2.Helping those who mimic us-

Mimicry is the automatic tendency to imitate the behavior of those with whom we interact. Its both automatic and unconcious. Mimicry increases liking, empathy, and rapport.  It plays an important role in survival and reproductive success- as it enhances cohesion and safety among animals in groups. Mimicing gives an non-verbal message- we are similiar.

3.  3.  Helping those who are not responsible for their problem-

We might not help a drunkard laying in bustop, but if we see a welldressed person falling ill, we might. We areless likely to act if we believe the victim is to be blamed for his predicament.

4.   4. Exposure to prosocial models increases prosocial behavior-

Pro social behavior can be modelled. If we seen one person doing it, we might follow the lead and do the same. Helpful models in the media also contribute to the creation of social norm that encourages pro social behavior. In an ivestigation of power of TV, Sprafkin,Liebert and Poulous (1975) were able to improve pro social behavior on six year olds.

INTERNAL FACTORS-

1.Emotions-

Positive emotion- person is more willing to help a stranger, when their mood is elevated. Emotions are influenced by smell too. Other way round, positive mood can decrease the probablity of responding in a prosocial way and person might label it as non emergency.

Negetive emotions- person who is focussing on his or her problem is less likely to engage in pro social behavior. At the same time, if act of helping involves behavior that makes you feel better, the person in negetive mood may participate.

2.Empathy and other personality dispositions-

          We saw that being in same emotional mood, does not produce identical response. This individual differences are based on personality dispositions- the charecteristic behavioral tendencies of the individual which are relatevely stable. It can change as per genetic compositions, learning experiences, or combination of two.

        Empathy is the most important personality dimension. Empathy consists of affective and cognitive responses to another person’s emotional state and include sympathy, a desire to solve problem, and taking perspective of another person. Empathetic person feels what another person is feeling and understands why that person feels as he or she does. Includes an affective and effective component. Appears after we  progress beyond infancy.

Empathy includes perspective taking- ability to put yourself in someone’s else shoes. There are different types of perspective taking-

a.    Imagine how the other person percieves an event.

b.    Imagine how you would feel if you were in that situation.

c.    Feeling empathy towards a fictional charecters.

How does empathy develop?

a.    Genetic Factors- (Davis,Luce,Kraus; 1994) twin study-

b.    Specific experiences(Janet Strayer)- everyone born with biological capacity for empathy but specific experiences determine its expression.

c.    Parents

d.    Peers- influence of parents is been replaced sometimes

e.    Gender- Women are more empathetic.

Empathy is rare in those who are aggressive. People who exibit interpersonal trust, engage more in pro-social behavior. Machiavellianistic people are unlikely to engage in pro social acts

Person who have all or most these above mentioned features are said to be having altruistic pesonality. They are generally high on five dimensions-

a.    Empathy.

b.    Belief in just world.

c.    Social Responsiblity

d.    Internal locus of control

e.    Low egocentrism.

LONG TERM COMMITMENT TO PROSOCIAL ACTION

VOLUNTEERING-

          Its engaging in work for a worthy cause, often over a long period of time. The steps mentioned in pro social behavior is applicable  in volunteering too. What motivates the person to give up a portion of their life when most have more than enough to do as it is? There seems to be many reasons  and patterns. For ex, diferent class of Americans lend assistance to different causes.

 Volunteering due to motivation-  

          Clary and Snyder (1999) studied group of AIDS volunteers. Generally AIDS people are most stigmatized.  Still they accept to volunteer because of 6 motives-

a.    Personal Values- they believe its important to help others

b.    Understanding- more about the world, disease and develop skills.

c.    Enhancement- develop one self- make oneself better.

d.    Career- To gain career related experience

e.    Social- To strengthen social relationship- people I know does this.

f.     Protective- escape from one’s own problem.

Benefit of identifying motivational differences- while recruiting (maximum motives works best).

Volunteering because of Mandates, Altruism or Generativity-

Mandate- Many organisations and schools mandate its members to participate in specific hours of volunteering activicty. Negetive- The person looses in volunteering activicty in future due to forced labour.

Altruism- <The same personal dispositions as mentioned in prosocial behavior>

Generativity- adults intrest in and commitment to the well being of future generations. They engage in teaching young people, and on acts that have effect after our lifetime.

SELF INTREST, MORAL INTEGRITY, AND MORAL HYPOCRACY-

          Most often even after being morally sound, we tend to make an excuse to save ourself from the event of pro social behavior. Thats when a conflict between our moral integrity and self intrest happens.

          Batson and Thompson(2001) suggests that 3 major motives are relevant when a person is faced with moral dilemma sucah as whether to help someone or not. These are-

Self Intrest-  the motivation to engage in whatever behavior provides the greatest satisfaction for oneself. They simple do whats best for themselves.

Moral Integrity- motivation to be moral and actually to engage in moral behaviors.Theay care about fairness and godness. Moral integrity and self intrest conflict is resolved by selecting the moral choice.

Moral Hypocrisy- The motivation to appear moral while doing one’s best to avoid the cost of involved in actually being moral.

 

HOW DOES IT FEEL BEING HELPED-

         

Being helped can be unpleasant-  usually when giving the help reminds the person of his disabilities. This happen because, when help is been recieved, self esteem can suffer. Hence person giving help should be aware of such reactions.  Helper is liked the best when person recieving the help  believes that help was offered because of positive feelings towards the individual in need. Such helping evokes reciprocity norms- the person who recieved help gets motivated to provide such kinda help in future to others.

          When help is Unpleasant, it can motivate self help- the positive of being unhappy while recieving help is that he is motivated to engage in self help.