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Cognitive Development - Coggle Diagram

- - - - 1A - Simple reflexes
        
        First month of life
        
        Various inborn reflexes, e.g.,
        
        Moro (startle) reflex
        
        Root reflex
        
        Walking reflex
        
        Grasp reflex
        
        Some reflexes begin to accommodate infant’s experiences
      - 1B Primary Circular reactions
        
        1-4 months of age
        
        Coordination of separate actions into single repeated activities
        
        Example – baby sucks thumb, likes how it feels, and continues sucking thumb
      - 1C Secondary Circular Reactions
        
        4-8 months of age
        
        Begins to act upon the outside world
      - 1D - Coordination or reactions
        
        8-12 months
        
        Beginning of goal-directed behaviour (e.g., purposefullyhits table now knowing itwill make a noise, insteadof just reacting)
        
        Object permanence appears
      - 1E - Tertiary Circular Reactions
        
        12-18 months
        
        Deliberate variation of actions that bring about desirable consequences
        
        For example, children make a game out of dropping different toys from various heights onto the ground
      - 1F Mental Combinations
        
        18 months – 2 years of age
        
        Mental representation (symbolic thought)
        
        Understands causality & ability to pretend
        
        Deferred imitation – can watch what others are doing, remember it, and then do it on one’s own at a later time
    - - Young children’s cognitive development is also intertwined with their growing understanding of the self
      - For example, body self-awareness develops during the preoperational stage
      - Refers to awareness of the self as an individual objective entity (Moore et al., 2007)
      - Develops around 18 months of age
      - Has been tested with the “shopping cart” study
      - Video example of children engaging in this task
  - - - Egocentrism: child can’t distinguish between their own perspective & another person's
      - Syncretic thought: makes associations between ideas, although often the connections are unrelated and illogical
      - Animism: belief that inanimate objects are capable of actions and have lifelike qualities
    - - Finds seriation tasks (ability to sort objects) difficult
      - Difficulty concentrating on more than 2 objects
      - Syncretic thought & animism
      - Example milestones (ages 2- 4)
        
        Counting and colours, age 2 ½
        
        Follow three part commands
        
        Remember parts of stories
        
        Language development
    - - Intuitive thought emerges and interest in why things are they way they are, e.g., “why is the sky blue”
      - Can do seriation tasks but often after trial & error
      - Example Milestones (ages 4-7)
        
        Understand the concept of time
        
        Beginning of reading and writing
        
        Children in this stage vary greatly in terms of their language skills, perceptual abilities, decision rules, and real-world knowledge
    - - False belief task
      - Children develop a ‘theory of mind’, which is an understanding that other people have different perspectives, intends, knowledge, etc. from one’s own
      - The false belief task is used to examine whether children have theory of mind, or if they fail, then they are considered to still be thinking egocentrically
      - Example video of failing and passing false belief task
      - Seriation task
      - Example video of passing seriation of objects by capacity (stacking)
      - Notice the child is probably in the intuitive sub-stage
  - - - Conservation - something stays the same in quantity even when its appearance changes
        
        Video example of failing and passing conservation
        
        Number conservation develops first, then mass and length (age 7), and volume conservation last (age 11)
        
        Example: a child not yet in concrete operations complains about “fairness” because her friend got “more” crayons than her
  - - - Abstract thinking
      - Example: A is taller than B and B is taller than C, who is tallest?
      - A child in the formal operations stage can solve this using their head, whereas a child who needs to use pictures/objects is in the concrete operations stage
      - Video example of more complex abstract thinking
      - Imagine where you would want a third eye if you had one?
      - What would someone in preoperational or concrete operations say?
      - What would someone in formal operations say?
- - - - Children’s play can be imaginary, explorative, constructive, creative, or physical
      - “In playing, we learn to move, think, speak and imagine, as well as to cope with other people” (Cohen, 1987)
      - Play supports child development, not onlycognitively, but physically, socially, andemotionally too
    - - Pretend play requires the ability to transform objects and actions symbolically (abstract thinking)
      - Play relates to divergent thinking: exploring many possible solutions (Wyver & Spence, 1999)
      - Play helps develop metacognitive thinking and self-regulated learning (Whitebread et al. 2009)
      - 3-5 year old children who were given “instructions” had limited ideas and gave up quickly, while those who were “playing” had more inventive ideas and were more persistent (Sylva et al., 1976)