PSYC 216 Exam 2

What numerical abilities do we have before formal schooling?

- Approximate Number System and Object Tracking System

Identify and explain the 3 physical principles that guide early physical reasoning. At what age do infants detect violations to these principles?

- Continuity: objects exist continuously in time and space; they cannot spontaneously appear or disappear (2.5 months) - Solidity: objects are solid entities that cannot pass through other objects (2.5 months) - Gravity: objects cannot remain stable in midair (2.5 months)

discontinuous development

- Each stage has qualitatively different cognitive structures - For example: a pre-operational child's understanding of number is qualitatively different from that of a concreteoperational child

What is it's signature limit?

- System is capacity-limited -3-4 item capacity limit

Explain how Piaget characterized children' mental representations during the pre-operational stage.

-- With the emergence of sophisticated mental representation, the preoperational stage begins --Definition of mental representation: Capacity to have one thing stand for or represent another --Four manifestations of mental representation: 1. Delayed (deferred) imitation (mental images that stand for past events) 2. Anticipation in problem solving (mental images that stand for future events) 3. Pretend play (objects or actions that stand for other things) 4. Language (words that stand for objects, people, places, actions, events, and so on)

Describe the principle of fairness

--Individuals should be fair when dividing: --resources --rewards for effort or merit --punishments --and so on --Based on "just deserts": all other things being equal, individuals should get what they deserve

What is the ANS: approximate number system ('number sense')

-Allows for rough approximation (not exact) and comparison of number without counting -Limited precision (ratio signature) -Abstract mental representations/not tied to non-numerical sensory properties of individual objects - Can be used productively for arithmetic - Specialized cortical regions of the parietal lobe—Play causal role in numerical abilities -universal to all humans -Present from birth, continuous across the lifespan (only changes in precision) -shared with many non-human animals

parallel development

-Development proceeds at about the same rate across all cognitive areas - For example: a child who is pre-operational in his understanding of number will also be pre-operational in his understanding of time, space, causality, logic, etc.

Numerical cognition studies with the Munduruku of the Amazon tell us what about core number systems?

-Even with restricted numerical language and no formal number system, Munduruku have intuitions of approximate number -ANS and basic intuitions of arithmetic are universal in humans -Munduruku perform nearly as well as French control subjects in an approximate addition task

• Explain how the principle of ingroup support has been tested (HINT: We focused on 3 main findings, Jin & Baillargeon, 2017; Bian & Baillargeon; Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007)

-Infants view helping the ingroup as obligatory, so they detect a violation if the ingroup member does not help -• In each country, infants were reliably more likely to reach for the toy offered by the woman who spoke their native language -Infants expect adults to prefer ingroup over outgroup individuals

Is core number related to symbolic number/math? What are three pieces of evidence for this?

-Overlap in brain regions for core and symbolic number -Evidence of a relationship of ANS to mathematics --Training the ANS improves math in children and adults -Practicing an approximate number task improves arithmetic in 1st graders Evidence provided suggests that there is an important relationship between the ANS and mathematics learning

sensorimotor stage

-ages 0-2 -major achievement: - learn to represent objects when they are out of view: Object Permanence

formal operational stage

-ages 12 and up -major achievement: - think about abstract concepts and logically test hypotheses

pre-operational stage

-ages 2-7 -major achievement: - learn to think about things symbolically, but thinking is still egocentric Internalization of actions: child learns to carry out (represent) actions mentally

concrete operational stage

-ages 7-12 -major achievement: - think and reason logically about concrete objects: Operational Thought

Describe Piaget's findings related to object permanence including the task used and the age Piaget thought children had OP.

-piaget thought children had OP at 9 months -To find out if infants could represent hidden objects, Piaget used a simple hiding task: • Cover object with cloth, pillow, etc. • See whether infant searches for object

Piaget's 3 radical claims

1. Child plays active role in knowledge acquisition: Constructivist view 2. Major qualitative discontinuities in cognitive development: Stage view 3. No innate cognitive basis to development (against Chomsky)

Explain the two theoretical views of why 3-year-olds fail at traditional false belief tasks.

1. Fundamental-change view FB understanding is achieved through significant conceptual change at about age 4. It constitutes a major milestone in the development of human psychological reasoning (or Theory of Mind) 2. Processing-load view • The reason why young children fail standard FB tasks must be that the processing load of these tasks is too high

Explain how infants learn about the physical world. (Hint: there are 3 main findings)

1. Infants form events categories (e.g., occlusion, containment) 2. Infants learn about the variables that help predict outcomes within each category... • For example: infants learn that width matters for containment starting at ~4 months old 3. Infants learn separately about each category: they don't transfer knowledge from one category to another

Name and describe the 3 types of mental states infancy researchers study

1. Motivational States: what motivation the agent has in the scene - Goal - Preference 2. Epistemic States: what knowledge the agent has/lacks in the scene - Knowledge - Ignorance 3. Counterfactual States: what false information the agent has in the scene - False beliefs - False perceptions

List and describe the 3 sets of principles that guide infants' sociomoral reasoning

1. Principles that apply to all individuals (e.g., fairness, harm avoidance) 2. Principles that depend on the prior interactions of the individuals involved (e.g., reciprocity) 3. Principles that come into play when individuals are identified as members of the same group (e.g., ingroup love)

What do manual search studies with infants tell us about the OTS?

Capacity limit of 3: Only 3 objects can be tracked in any given location at one time

How does natural number differ from the 2 core number systems?

Core number can not represent the integers/natural number used in basic counting • Difficult developmental process • Seems to require cultural access to natural number • Occurs between 2-5 years of age (in Western societies)

Describe the Detour task and what researchers concluded from it's findings (e.g., what does it tell us about the principle of rationality?).

Experimental Condition: - Infants identify the circles as agents - Infants attribute to the small circle the goal of reaching the large circle - Infants realize small circle must jump over obstacle to get large circle - Infants expect small circle to pursue goal efficiently and to go to large circle in straight line when obstacle is removed

Define what a false belief is

False beliefs are beliefs that an individual holds about the world that are not true. • For example: believing your favorite shirt is in your dresser when your roommate moved it to their bedroom.

Understand that infants form perceptually based object categories and explain how this was tested by Quinn et al.

Familiarization Trials: - One each trial, two color photos of cats (or dogs) - 6 total trials with all different cats (or dogs) • See 12 cats (or dogs) total RESULTS: - familiarized with cats, preferred dogs - Familiarized with dogs, preferred cats conclusion: Infants are capable of perceptual categorization (categorization based on perceptual features of the stimulus). • Infants can categorize at different levels (superordinate vs. subordinate). • Categorization is essential for knowledge acquisition

Explain how the principle of fairness has been tested (i.e., third-party and first party distribution tasks)

First-Party Distribution Tasks • Resource distribution tasks with older kids (3-5 years old) - children are asked to divide a reward (e.g., stickers) between themselves and an experimenter or another child - Result: children take the bigger reward for themselves • children's own self-interest gets in the way here Third Party --Infants have an expectation of fairness --Infants expect workers to be rewarded, but not slackers

Define what an agent is

For adults, an agent is an entity that has control over its actions (i.e., decides when and how to act) - People - Animals - Fictional characters

During the "Piaget Revisited" portion of the lecture, we evaluated Piaget's claims that development was discontinuous and parallel. What did the lecture conclude about these claims?

General development appears more gradual or continuous than Piaget suggested • Young children appear more competent than Piaget suggested - We will continue discussing this in upcoming lectures • Researchers became progressively more skeptical of the stage view that Piaget proposed

Describe the principle of ingroup support and its two main components

Individuals in a social group should act in ways that support the group and its members • The ingroup-support principle has two main components - ingroup care: one should act prosocially toward ingroup member, limit negativity - ingroup loyalty: when dealing with ingroup and outgroup individuals, we should prefer ingroup and favor ingroup when resources are limited • Not about outgroup hate

Understand how group membership affects the principle of fairness when resources are scarce

Infants expect fairness when there are sufficient resources for all parties present, but they expect ingroup support to override fairness when resources are limited

What is the ratio signature of the ANS?

Number discrimination is a function of the ratio between the two numbers to be compared Comparison equal for equal ratios: e.g. 8 vs. 16; 16 vs. 32; 32 vs. 64; 50 vs. 100

What is the specialized brain region for the number sense?

Region of Intraparietal sulcus (IPS): responds specifically to number

Describe the Preference task and what researchers concluded from it's findings (e.g., what does it tell us about the principle of rationality?).

Two-object condition: - Infants identify the arm as part of a human agent - Based on unvarying choice of information, infants attribute to the agent a preference for the target object - Infants expect the agent to maintain this preference when the object's positions are switched (in accordance with the consistency principle)

Do infants take into account effort when generating expectations about fairness?

YES

Do infants have ANS? What does this tell us about nature/nurture in numerical cognition?

YES its present from birth - this tells us that it is nature not nurture

Know the earliest age infants can reason about counterfactual states. (HINT: We focused on 3 main studies here, Onishi and Baillargeon, 2005; Southgate, Senju, and Csibra, 2007; Hyde et al., 2018)

earliest age is 4

At what age do infants use the variables height, width, and color in containment and occlusion events?

height in occlusion- 3.5 months height in containment- 7.5 months color in containment- 14 months width in containment- 4 months

Name each stage in Piaget's theory

sensorimotor (0-2 yrs) pre-operational (2-7 yrs)** concrete-operational (7-12 yrs) formal-operational (12- )

What is the object tracking system (OTS). What does it allow one to do?

• Ability to represent, remember, distinguish between, and track individual objects • Allows comparison using 1 to 1 correspondence • Ability to enumerate a limited number of items instantaneously and very accurately - Usually limited to about 3-4 items in adults - Comparisons are not ratio dependent • Indicative of a system for representing individual objects simultaneously • Present in infants - Similar capacity limit/signature

Describe the principle of rationality and describe it's two corollaries

• After they infer an agent's mental states, adults use these mental states with a principle of rationality, to predict the agent's actions as the scene changes • The principle of rationality states that, all other things being equal, agents act rationally The principle has several corollaries: - Consistency: Agents act in a manner consistent with their mental states - Efficiency: Agents pursue their goals in an efficient manner

What sort of preferences do infants attribute? Do infants view preferences as agent-specific?

• At least by 12 months of age, it appears to be a preference for a kind of object - Teddy bears in general • After seeing that an agent always chooses a teddy bear over a ball, 12-month-olds will expect the agent in test to prefer a new teddy bear over a new ball -YES, when infants attribute a preference to an agent, they typically view it as a disposition or attribute specific to that particular agent

Define causal reasoning

• Causal reasoning means making sense of events in the world • Causal reasoning in each core domain (physical, psychological, and sociomoral) is guided by an innate skeletal framework

• In this lecture, you heard about 2 studies that evaluated the motivation behind infants' looking behavior during violation-of-expectation experiments. These studies were Stahl & Feigenson (2015) and Perez and Feigenson (2019). What do these experiments tell us about why infants look a long time at unexpected outcomes?

• Conclusion: infants spend more time exploring objects that are involved in continuity, solidity, or gravity violations than they do other objects • Infants have a set of core expectations about the world and are surprised if these expectations are violated. - Expectations come from their skeletal framework

What do cross-modal comparisons tell us about the nature of the ANS?

• Cross-modal (audio- visual) comparison is nearly as accurate as visual comparison • Suggests comparisons are being made over an abstract notion of number rather some direct non-numerical sensory property of the stimulus (e.g., amount of visual stimulation)

In this lecture, we learned that infants distinguish between positive and negative actions, and that they engage in prosocial behavior. You should be familiar with the studies that support these claims.

• Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom (2007) - 10-month-olds - Habituation phase: help and hinder events, shown in alteration - Test phase: 1. VOE task 2. Choice task - Both measures focus on evaluation of characters Results: • Infants distinguish between positive and negative actions directed at others • Infants prefer someone who acted positively over someone who acted negatively, and they expect others to do the same • Infants show this preference even if the positive and negative actions were failed attempts! • Infants evaluate someone who acts positively more favorable than someone who acts negatively Warneken & Tomasello (2006): Infants help an experimenter in need of assistance (prosocial behavior) • 18 month olds • First, warm-up phase with experimenter (E) • Then, 10 different test scenarios • each child receives 5 experimental scenarios (E needs help) and 5 control scenarios (E does not need help), randomly determined • scenarios include: out of reach, obstacles, achieving wrong result, or using wrong means (see next slide) Results: • Reliable difference between experimental and control in 6/10 scenarios; out-of-reach scenarios seem easiest • Most infants helped in at least one experimental scenario • In most cases, infants did so spontaneously, before E looked at or spoke to them • Even 12month-olds help with out-of-reach scenarios

How did giving 3-month-olds "sticky mittens" affect their performance in the detour task?

• Infants looked reliably longer at the old action than at the new action if they first played at picking up toys when wearing grey Velcro mittens!! • Interpretation: This experience helped babies understand what goal the mittened agent was pursuing. They then expected her to pursue this goal efficiently

What are the stages of counting development?

• One-knower: Learn the meaning of "one" (but no other number word meanings) • Two-knower: Know "one" and learn the meaning of "two" (but no other number word meanings) • Three-knower: Know "one" and "two" and learn the meaning of "three" (but no other number word meanings) • Counting principle (CP)-knower: Somewhere around "three" or "four", generalize the counting principles to other numbers.

Understand and explain how modifications to Piaget's tasks affect preoperational children's success in the task (i.e., number conservation tasks and the 3-mountains task).

• Results with pre-operational children across modified tasks: - Standard condition: do poorly - Modified condition: do better -More competence than meets the eye!

Review the study with the Piraha. What do these tell us about natural number?

• Suggests natural number may not be innate/universal • Requires more than just core number abilities and/or brain development - Instruction - Number list/language/other cultural invention

Describe Baillargeon's new tests of OP, what age children show OP within the new tasks, and explain why children fail Piaget's tasks (Hint: processing load account).

• Used VOE method to show infants two events: - Possible event: consistent with OP - Impossible event: violates OP • If infants look reliably longer at impossible than at possible event, then they have OP -children show OP at 3.5 months and 4.5 and 6.5 months -children fail piagets tasks because: • Processing-load account (Bushnell, Keen): - Infants have limited processing resources - Infants fail search tasks because their processing resources are overwhelmed by the combined load of: • Representing the hidden object • Planning and executing an appropriate sequence of actions to retrieve the object

1. Child plays active role in knowledge acquisition: Constructivist view

• a child is not a vessel in which society pours knowledge, moral norms, etc. (against Freud) • a child is not a passive entity (e.g., ball of clay) shaped by rewards and punishments (against Skinner)

We discussed 3 types of tasks that concern epistemic states: barrier, orientation, and absence. Describe each type of task and what the findings suggest about infants' ability to keep track of an agent's knowledge about a scene

• barrier: there is a barrier blocking the agent's view of an object or event -• Evidence that 12-month-olds are not egocentric: they distinguish between what they can see and what others can see • orientation: the agent is facing in a different direction when an event occurs -• Infants are not egocentric: they understand that an agent may be unaware of an event in a scene because she was facing in a different direction when it happened • absence: the agent is absent from the scene when an event occurs -• From a very young age, infants are very clever at keeping track of what others do and do not know

2. Major qualitative discontinuities in cognitive development: Stage view

• children are fundamentally different thinkers than adults

3. No innate cognitive basis to development (against Chomsky)

• only innate general tendencies for adaptation and organization, that are shared with all other animals • Piaget emphasized primarily nurture, not nature, in cognitive development: as they interact with the world, children construct their cognitive structures