Cecil Community College Cognitive Development & Mid Childhood and IQ Paper Page 1: Cognitive Development, Culture (10 pts) Let’s pretend the pandemic is o

Cecil Community College Cognitive Development & Mid Childhood and IQ Paper Page 1: Cognitive Development, Culture (10 pts)

Let’s pretend the pandemic is over and students are returning to school under “normal” circumstances. Oh, and you are in charge of UIC. You find that many students want to return to the classroom, but you also find that many students prefer to stick with online instruction. It is your job to tell professors teaching large lecture classes (150+ students) how to set-up their course. What do you think would be the ideal set-up and how would your plan be consistent with the principles of “scaffolding” and “zone of proximal development”? (1 page).

Page 2: Mid Childhood and IQ (10 pts)

Based on our discussion of lead exposure in Chicago, discuss one other environmental factor that impacts the academic performance of students in the Chicagoland area that you believe does not receive sufficient attention (½ page).
Based on our discussion of IQ testing, discuss two skills/abilities that you believe are particularly important for success in 2020 that are not measured by typical IQ tests. (½ page).

Overall quality of writing and editing (5 pts)

NOTE: To maximize your grade, make sure to demonstrate knowledge of the concepts we have discussed in class in addition to making effective arguments. There should be NO citations or outside references, we are interested in your opinions and arguments based on the lecture and textbook material. Cognitive Development and
Information Processing
Schema: Basic Organization of Thinking
• Basic knowledge of a concept
• Meaningfully organize concept
• Tells us what to expect
Was this item in the previous scene?
• Textbooks?
• Coffee machine?
• Chair?
• Skull?
• Dead body?
Typical Results*
• Correctly recall schema-consistent items in scene
– chair, desk
• False memory for schema-consistent items not in scene
– books
• Poor memory for atypical items
– wine bottle, skull
Cognitive Development: Jean Piaget
• Children try to make
sense of their world by
coming up with theories
and testing them like
scientists.
Stages Cognitive Development*
Sensorimotor (birth to 2)
• Experience world through
movement and senses
• Differentiate self from objects and
begin to act intentionally
• Achieve object permanence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSGWh2C
WJnA
Stages Cognitive Development
Pre-operational (2-7 years)
• Learn to use language and represent objects with images and words
• Thinking is still egocentric: see the world through own eyes only
• Centration: tendency to focus, or center, on one aspect of a situation
• Children cannot conserve, appearance is reality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnArvcWa
H6I
Stages Cognitive Development
Major Criticisms*
• Underestimating infant abilities
• Development not as consistent as stages suggest
• No appreciation of culture/social context
• Piaget believed that rationality, logic, and
scientific thinking have “universal applicability for
all developing individuals in all societies”
Information Processing
Attention: Active
– We actively move information detectors (e.g.,
eyes, ears) toward the information of focus
Neural Correlates of Attention: Brainstem
• Superior colliculus
Unconscious visual input
goes directly from the optic
tract (~10%) to the
colliculus.
Output goes to motor areas
responsible for visual
orienting behaviors (eye
movements).
Neural Correlates of Attention: Cortex
• When something pops out at us:
– parietal lobe directs eyes toward
stimulus
• When we purposefully look for
something:
– prefrontal cortex (e.g., dorsolateral
PFC)
Habituation
• Habituation
– Repeated exposure
results in reduced
responsiveness
– Simplest form of
learning
Infants and Attention*
• Infants show both orienting responses and
habituation.
• Provides information on what they are interested in
(or is new) and what they are no longer interested in
(or is familiar).
Sociocultural Cognitive Theory
• Lev Vygotsky’s (1896-1934) approach that
emphasized culture and social interactions as
influential factors in the development of
individuals
Sociocultural Cognitive Theory*
• Cognition develops in social settings first. Not
simply an individualistic experience.
• We don’t learn because we have developed, we
develop because we have learned.
Zone of Proximal Development
• Easy tasks that don’t expand present abilities are
boring, do not promote learning.
• Tasks that are too complex are frustrating, do not
promote learning.
• Tasks that are just beyond present abilities can
promote learning with proper support.
Zone of Proximal Development
• Guidance and encouragement from
knowledgeable person.
Scaffolding*
• Giving assistance
to match the
learner’s needs.
Wood and Middleton Study
• 4 year old children had to use a set of blocks to build a model
shown in a picture. Building the model was too difficult for the child
to complete alone.
• Observed how mothers interacted with their children:
– General encouragement (e.g. ‘now you have a go.’)
– Specific instructions (e.g. ‘get four big blocks.’)
– Direct demonstration (e.g. showing the child how to place one block
on another.)
Wood and Middleton Study*
• No single strategy was best for helping the child
to progress. Mothers whose assistance was most
effective were those who varied their strategy
according to how the child was doing.
Wood and Middleton Study
Processes that aid effective scaffolding:
• Gaining and maintaining the learner’s interest in the task.
• Making the task simple.
• Emphasizing specific aspects that help with the solution.
• Controlling the child’s level of frustration.
• Demonstrating the task.
Private Speech*
• During preschool years, child shifts from using
language for communication only to using it also as a
tool to regulate his/her behavior.
• Link between control provided by caregiver’s speech
and that provided by inner speech (i.e., self-control).
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuDeh_raBxM
Associations between private speech,
behavioral self-regulation, and cognitive
abilities (2014)
• Examined associations between 5-year-old children’s
private speech, behavioral self-regulation, and
cognitive abilities
• 76% performed better on experimental task when they
used speech
• Poorer the child’s neuro-cognitive test performance,
the more he/she benefited from using speech
• http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_l
inguistic_genius_of_babies?language=en#t3426
Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood
Piaget’s Stages Cognitive Development
Concrete Operational (7 to 11)
• Begin to think logically but are very “here and now”
• Can conserve, no longer egocentric
• No abstractions or theorizing
Formal Operational (11+)
• Abstractions and theory
• Capable of “scientific reasoning”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wlRH3rcI
I4
Stages Cognitive Development
Criticisms*
• Doesn’t indicate “how” these changes occur
• Major individual differences
• No appreciation of culture/social context
Information Processing: The “How”
• As children age, they
change the strategies
they use to process and
remember information.
• This can be attributed to
experience, culture,
education.
Information Processing: The “How”*
• Also, increased
efficiency of processing
as neural connections
are made and
strengthened.
Information Processing: Changing Strategies*
• Early strategies focus on rehearsal
Information Processing: Changing Strategies*
• Then a greater focus on organizing
information in meaningful ways
Information Processing: Changing Strategies*
• Using elaboration to engage in a deeper level
of processing.
Network of Information
• Semantic network with spreading activation
• Links vary in strength of connection
• Node activated by almost anything (person sees,
reads, hears, thinks about concept)
• Activation spreads to adjacent nodes
Deese-Roediger-McDermott Paradigm
remember the following words…..
butter
food
crust
sandwich
flour
crumbs
slice
toast
rye
jelly
bakery
dough
loaf
wheat
Deese-Roediger-McDermott Paradigm
write down all the words you remember…..
Proceduralization*
• From deliberate declarative knowledge to an automated skill
• As we become better at task, brain activation shifts backwards
– Prefrontal
– Hippocampus
– Basal Ganglia
Neurological Changes & Expertise
• With expertise comes…
– Increased activity in
basal ganglia
• Associated with
procedural knowledge
– Reduced activity in
hippocampus
• Associated with
declarative knowledge
Meta-Cognition*
• Elementary school children begin to become
aware of their own cognitive processes.
• Memory
– what causes it to fail / succeed
• Attention
– when is it controlled, when is it automatic
What is Intelligence?
Alfred Binet: Birth of Intelligence Testing
• French govt. passes law requiring all children attend school.
• Need way to objectively identify students’ abilities.
• Binet: measure cognitive processes
– memory
– mental imagery
– judgment and comprehension
• Binet introduced 1st standardized intelligence test in 1905
Alfred Binet’s Perspective
• Child’s score on test
NOT fixed measure of
intelligence
• People can always
become more
intelligent through
education and personal
experience
Sir Francis Galton (Darwin’s cousin)*
• Intelligence is genetic
• Eugenics: selective
breeding of highly
intelligent people
Intelligence Testing in America
• Support scientific beliefs
that intelligence is genetic
• Support popular belief that
low intelligence cause of
criminal behavior
• Blame immigrants and
“mental defectives” for
diminishing genetic pool in
America
Pattern Learning: de Groot
• Chess masters not more intelligent in non-chess domains
• Patterns consequence of time-on-task
• Experts perform same as novices for unlikely
configurations
Expertise: All Time-on-Task?*
• Studied early life of experts
• Early natural abilities modest, not predictive of genius
• Resources and encouragement key
• Motivation to succeed during practice key
John R. Hayes: Study of Genius
• Across artistic and scientific domains, “no one reached
genius levels of performance without at least 10 years
of practice”
• “All of the variable which discriminate between
creative and non-creative people are motivational. No
cognitive abilities were discovered which discriminate
between these groups”
Reflections on a Century of
College Admissions Tests
What are current tests missing?*
What do they test:
• Memory and analytics
What don’t they test:
•
•
•
•
Creative
Adaptability/flexible
Practical skills to execute ideas
Wisdom and ethics for common good
May 2015: Chicago Tribune Investigation
• In impoverished, crimeridden neighborhoods like
Austin, Englewood and
Lawndale, more than 80
percent of children tested
in 1995 had dangerous
lead levels.
Journal of Environmental Health (2015)
• 58,000 children born in the city from 1994 to
1998, compared results with performance on
standardized tests in 3rd grade.
• At 75% of Chicago Public Schools, average lead
level of 3rd graders exceeded standards
established by the CDC.
Journal of Environmental Health (2015)*
• After controlling for poverty, race, birth weight and
mother’s education level, lead exposure during early
childhood significantly increased chance student would:
– Fail 3rd grade reading and math tests
– Drop out of high school
– Be incarcerated

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