Theories of Cognitive Development

Mental Representation #

Types of Representations #

There are four main types of representation:

1. Primary representation creates a model that is as close to reality as possible.
   • equivalent to mind to world fit, also known as epistemic mental states (seeing, knowing, believing): we’re trying to match our mental models to the real world
2. Secondary representation allows us to relate models with the past, future, nonexistent entities, and hypotheticals. We can create fictitious worlds in our mind and play around with them.
   • world to mind fit, also known as conative mental states (wants, desires, goals): we’re trying to alter the state of the world to look more like what we envision in our mind
3. Misrepresentation occurs when you create an inaccurate model of reality.
4. Metarepresentation is the ability to represent another individual’s representation.

Belief-Desire Psychology #

Also known as folk psychology, we often represent what other people think and desire to make inferences about the behaviors of others.

For example, if a friend says ‘I’m going to a cafe’, you can infer that they desire to obtain a cup of coffee, or do some work.

Large-scale ritualistic behaviors tend to increase prosociality and altruism

Development of Representation #

For an introduction to the Sally-Anne task: cross cultural psychology

The Sally-Anne task is an example of both misrepresentation (for younger children, who have not yet developed theory of mind) and metarepresentation (for those who have).

Secondary Representation #

One experiment to test secondary representation is to place a reward into a tube with two exits. Younger children will only cover one of the exits, whereas older children will cover both of the exits. This is an example of secondary representation because the older children can predict that there are two future possibilities for where the reward will go, and address both of them.

Chimpanzees may also have the ability to model secondary representations. When presented with two opaque boxes (where an apple could be in any one of them), they are likely to pull both ropes to retrieve both boxes if they don’t know where the food will be.

Piaget’s Theory #

Piaget revolutionized developmental psychology in the 60s by making the basic assumption that babies and children have feelings and should be taken seriously.

Piaget created the Stage Theory of Cognitive Development, which has four main stages:

• 0-2 years: sensorimotor stage: infants can explore the world through direct sensory and motor contact
  • development of object permanence (awareness that objects exist even after it leaves our sensory domain, e.g. when covered or moved) and separation anxiety
  • goals are very concrete: rooted in physical world and in the present moment
• 2-6 years: preoperational stage: children use symbols, words, and images to represent objects
  • egocentric thinking: belief that everyone else’s thoughts and preferences are exactly the same as the self
    • Three mountain task- child sits on opposite side of table with a mountain model as a puppet, and is asked to describe what the puppet sees. Instead of describing the correct image, they will just repeat what they personally can see.
  • Centration: focusing on a perceptually striking feature of an object and ignoring more subtle features
    • example: pouring water from a shorter glass into a taller glass will make children believe that the taller glass has more water than it originally did
  • development of ability to imagine and pretend (can understand difference between pretending and reality)
• 7-12 years: concrete operational stage: children are able to think logically about concrete objects
  • basic arithmetic
  • conservation: objects retain certain properties when moved or reshaped
• 12+ years: formal operational stage: ability to reason abstractly

Properties of Piaget’s Theory #

• Stage changes are qualitative: factors in changes to emotion and social thinking
• Changes in thinking have broad applicability, propagating to many topics and contexts
• Transitions are brief
• The sequence of development is invariant: all stages apply to all children in the same order

Core Knowledge Theories #

Main idea: children have innate knowledge in domains of special evolutionary importance and domain specific learning mechanisms for rapidly and effortlessly acquiring additional information in these domains.

• Even when children/babies have not explicitly learned anything, they already represent ideas in four core knowledge systems: objects, actions, numbers, and space
  • Possibly a fifth system (social relationships) currently being researched: 6-month-old infants favor prosocial behaviors

Sociocultural Theories #

Main idea: Children are biologically prepared for many complex ways to learn and acquire knowledge from others. Cultural environment has an extreme contribution on cognitive development.

• Example: egocentric vs geocentric frame of reference

Shared intentionality theory: our desires are linked to our surrounding community. Someone growing up alone on an island would have very different psychology from a typical individual.