Cognitive Development:Gender Identity, Learning Mathematics, Sensory Memory

<< Cognitive development:Assimilation, Accommodation, Stage Theory

Cognitive Psychology PSY 504

Lesson 45

Cognitive Development

Gender Identity

By the age 5 boys and girls know their genders are permanent. Before this time, they assume it is

their clothes that make them boys or girls. This is called the gender constancy.

Learning Mathematics

Mathematics teaching poses the greatest challenge to teachers. Math has two components:

concepts and skill. Concepts have to be understood and skills have to be learnt and practiced.

There are four skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. Drills are useful for understanding

rules. Learning in pairs and groups are also useful.

Learning Science

Science can be taught to the teachers by different ways; Inquiry based teaching, Making children

discover, learning by projects, using direct experience, and learning in pairs and groups.

Learning Thinking

Children are not taught how to solve problems. A recent research in Pakistani schools shows that

teachers solve problems for children on the board and ask them to copy. Children are not taught

how to think.

Overview of all lectures of cognitive Psychology

This lecture will move from sensation to perception, from perception to learning, from learning to

memory, from memory to imagery, from imagery to thinking and problem solving, from thought to

language and finally to development of cognition.

Cognitive Psychology is about knowing or knowledge. Cognitive Psychology deals with cognition.

Cognition can be understood as "thinking" or "knowing." We can say, in other words, that

cognitive psychology deals with the processes involved in thinking and acquisition and storage of

knowledge. For this purpose it adopts an information processing approach.

The information processing approach looks at how input is transformed into output. In other

words, what happens between sensation and behavior is amore important question for cognitive

psychologists than just which sensation produced which behavior. Cognitive Psychology treats

the sensation as bits of information which are subjected to various processes in the mind and

ultimately behavior may or may not result from this.

These processes are usually performed in stages. There are also different layers or levels of

processing in each stage. We can talk about these layers as levels of description rather than

actual process itself. Human information processing have a hardware level description - such as

what happens in the brain or nervous system when a sensation occurs and a software level

description like when we close our eyes to recall an image of that sensation, how are we able to

recall the image. The hardware level description may consist of studying the visual sensation

itself.

Step 1: Sensation

First we studied neurons, brain, and the nervous system. A neuron is a specialized cell that

transmits and stores information of different kinds. The brain can be divided into four lobes:

Occipital lobe, frontal lobe, temporal lobe and parietal lobe. In each lobe are performed certain

specialized functions. Then we studied the structure and function of eye and ear, auditory and

visual pathways. Visual information passes through the lens of eye which helps focus the image

on the retina. The information goes from the retina to the optic nerve which transmits it to the

brain. The visual pathway can be simply described as starting from the retina where the image is

formed to the optic nerve. The auditory information in the ear comes in the form of sound waves

and impacts the ear drum. From this the information is transmitted via Cochlea to the auditory

nerve.

136

Cognitive Psychology PSY 504

Information processing (of visual information) is done in our visual cortex. Then

Then we studied the different experiment of sensation such as, David Marr and Cat's brain.

At sensation level there are visual cortical cells, Edge and Bar Detectors. Edge detectors help us

to understand where an object ends and other starts. Edge detectors respond positively to light

on one side of line and negatively to light on the other side. And Bar detectors respond positively

to light in the center and negatively to light at the periphery, or vice versa.

Sensory Memory

When information first enters the human system, it is registered in sensory memories. Sensory

memory allows us to take a snapshot of our environment, and to store this information for a short

period. Sensory memory holds a short impression of sensory information even then the sensory

system does not send any information anymore. There are 5 basic senses, vision, hearing, smell,

taste and touch. There are also The Icon and the Echo. Iconic memory represents visual sensory

memory and echoic memory represents auditory memory.

We also studied two paradigms, Whole report versus partial report.

Dichotic listening tasks are also discussed in auditory process.

Different experiments were studied in earlier lectures such as, Neisser, Sperling, Moray, Turvey.

Attention

Attention is conceived of as being a very limited mental resource. Numerous metaphors can help

us to think about the limited-resource characteristics of attention. Some common metaphors of

attention are;

Filter models, capacity models

Adjustable filter models

Limited capacity and bottleneck

We also discussed Attention and Automaticity it means The more a process has been practiced,

the less attention it requires, and there is speculation that highly practiced process require no

attention at all such highly practiced processes that require little attention are referred to as

automatic. Different experiments on attention are the experiments of Treisman, Broadbent, and

Norman. In pattern recognition some talked about top down processes and some talked about

bottom up processes then there was a new process that called parallel processes that talked

about top-down and bottom-up levels.

Working Memory

Short Term or working Memory

Memory that we use to function is called short term memory. Attention is very important in short

term working memory. Miller talked about the Magic Number 7 + or 2, that is easily learn by

normal people.

Then we studied decay and interference in short term memory. it means information in Short

Term Memory is lost rapidly unless it is preserved through rehearsal. Then we discussed,

chunking, spreading activation, executive function, thinking and decision making.

Long Term Memory

A memory that lasts more than 20 seconds is Long term memory.

So if you can recall something after 20 seconds it is in your LTM. Different Kinds of long term

memory are;

1. Procedural versus Semantic Memory

2. Episodic Memory

137

Cognitive Psychology PSY 504

Encoding in LTM is happened and there is a relationship between STM and LTM. Different

experiments on this relationship have been conducted and models were presented such as

Atkinson & Shiffrin, and Andersen models.

Categories and Concepts

"A category refers to a group of objects sharing the same essential features. And "Concept is a

mental representation of a category."

The Classical Views are, Prototypes and Exemplars. Proto means "essential or basics" when we

make new things first of all we make a proto that explain briefly the new things. Concepts are

represented by exemplars. For example when we close our eyes and think about a bird then a

typical bird such as sparrow is recalled.

Then other important things are Schemas and Scripts. Schema is a Greek word which means

frame. A general knowledge structure that provides a framework for organizing clusters of

knowledge And scripts, that is we can encode our knowledge about stereotypic events, such as

going to a movie, according to their parts- for instance, going to the theatre, buying the ticket,

buying refreshments, seeing the movie, and returning from the theater.. There are different Study

Methods such as, PQ4R and Method of Loci.

Imagery

Images are tools of thinking. Many times when we are thinking about a scene an object no longer

present, we experience an image of that scene or object. People often refer to this as "Seeing in

one's mind. Farah and colleagues (1988) have made suggestion that there might be two kinds of

imagery, one that involves visual properties and one that involves spatial properties. Then we

studied different important things in imagery like, rotation, size, detail, and location.

Hierarchical nature of images

Complex images tend to be organized into pieces where each piece represents part of the whole

structure.

Eidetic Imagery refers to people's ability to see an image that is a perfect representation. Anees

A. Shaikh, a Pakistani psychologist in the USA has done a lot of pioneering work on eidetic

images. Akhtar Ahsen also worked on editic imagery. Kosslyn also conducted experiment on

mental imagery.

Psycholinguistics

Language and Thought

Grammar: Sound, Structure and Meaning

Universal nature of language

Superiority of human language

Competence versus Performance

Productivity and Regularity

Chomsky

Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget (1970), a Swiss biologist, philosopher, and a Psychologist studied own children in

great detail. And eh has developed the most detailed and comprehensive theory of cognitive

development. Piaget proposed his cognitive development theory that consists of distinct Stages.

5. Sensorimotor stage 0-2

6. Preoperational stage 2-7

7. Concrete operational stage 7-11

138

Cognitive Psychology PSY 504

8. Formal operational stage 11 onwards

Language Development

Children less than 2 years make and use small sentences: From 2 words to longer.3 Years and

onwards children have fully developed language. And they can make and use complete

sentences. 5-6 years children have developed amazing level of competence.

Social Development

Children devolo0p their social relationship first from their mothers, siblings and then peers. As the

children social world expands to include classmates and teachers, children's ways of thinking

about people show a corresponding change.

Gender Differences

Boys are different from birth and they indulge in rough and tumble, aggression. Girls play

differently. As boys get older, they become interested in rule based games. As girls get older,

they become interested in relationship based games. Boys spend their lives with other boys. Girls

spend their time with other girls.

The Approach

By studying all of these in cognitive psychology you can also develop an approach. We all have

information processing approach. Its process consists of these steps,

Theorize

Develop a model

Test it through experiments

Test it through computer simulation

Examine Results

Theorize further

And then learn from developments in ICT and AI.

139

Table of Contents: