multi-media kids

during mondays lecture, we briefly were presented with various forms of media that are meant to enrich childrens cognitive development and provide a means of basic education that may be lacking in the home. I wonder what the long term effects of relying on media devices for entertainment and educating our children will be. In the more rescent past (~30 yrs or so) TV has been used as a form of entertainment and education for younger and younger audiences. this is not in itself inherently bad, and is likely good, though it is easy for parents to abuse. Coincidently, over the past 30 years or so, we have seen a sharp increase in childhood obesity, and social problems (ADD/ADHD). Can this be a result of not allowing kids to be kids, and burn off excess energy through providing their own entertainment? This concept came to me this thanksgiving when my 6 yo nephew spent the ENTIRE day infront of the playstation, which both entertained him, and baby-sat him. Is this society trading convenience for parenting? What social lessons are being learned from spending 4+ hours a day watching TV? I feel that parents need to take a more active role in allowing kids to discover the world as it really is (developing naive world concepts) and to allow learning through observing real-life, which is how humans have learned throughout the ages.

Social development

The lecture Monday of week nine, discussing social cognitions, was really interesting to me. Social skills are vitally important to functioning well, so naturally it is something that likely develops early, and is something that is important to study, at these young ages. Social skills are vital for success, popularity, networking, communication, even survival. Not to mention, it arguably complements any other skill one might have as well. One can be extremely smart, but with out the ability to be socially aware they will not progress as far as they could. Obviously the key to success in social skills is the ability to gage and understand other experience, outside of your own experience. In other words to be able to understand what they know from their vantage point, and based on what they have and have not been present for. This is seen in 12-18 month olds in the barrio study. In addition to being adorable to watch, this is a very important skill to have. In the study babies saw an experimenter looking and talking about a spot on the wall. Some times the spot is visible to them and sometimes it isn’t, in both cases the baby is directed to that spot, through the actions of the experimenter. The ability to ascertain that, when another person has a different vantage point they are able to see different things, seems really basic, but if you think about it this is an important skill. We are very limited in what we can see, and lean on others to help us. This is especially true for babies. They are often less Mobil, meaning that taking cues as to were to go could be very advantageous. Also, if you look at child cognitive development through the Paigetian perspective children learn like little scientists, so the ability to take information of what to explore by reading cues from other people can also be very advantageous. The importance of these findings is also congruent with the sociocultural perspective, in that babies can learn more by using other people’s guidance. If they were left alone they might not be know what to look for. This might also give them clues about what is dangerous as well as interesting. The other study that we talked about, that gave insight into the social abilities of 18month olds is the what’s new study, where 18 month old babies were able to determine which toy an experimenter would want to play with based on what they had been present for, or attentive to. This social skill has important implications to social interacting. It is important to be aware of what others around you are aware of in order to successfully communicate with them. If you assume that others have the same information that you do, it would be impossible to communicate with them. This is just a beginning stage in understanding that other people don’t have the same information you do, and they might also have information you do not. We saw that with the little boy touching the chocolate cake and blaming it on his brother, whom his mother knew was at school, but he didn’t know was at school. It is interesting to see that primitive versions of important social skills develop so early in infants. Because they are so important it is really interesting and important to see how they develop. An understanding of this development can give us insight into how to better facilitate socialization, as well gauge the capabilities of babies.

Curse of Knowledge

When we discussed false beliefs and the curse of knowledge phenomenon, I thought mainly of differing teaching styles. My finance class is taught by a 70+ older man who lost his outstanding 3 page resume in a study guide that he had prepared for us. I also laugh to myself that someone could be so knowledgeable about a subject but so poor at teaching it. He probably has dreams about finance and is so good at what he does that he no longer has to pay complete attention while he is doing something. The problem is that when he comes into the classroom he doesn’t really turn on. We spend most of our time listening to his life stories and looking at chicken scratch diagrams that he scribbles up on the board. Whenever he asks a question and the whole class doesn’t have the faintest idea what the answer is, he gets this confused look on his face as though we all must have simply forgotten. When no one answers he points to his nonsense diagram where only he sees the answer popping off the board. It wasn’t something that we discussed, but all of this seems to follow in with the hindsight bias. When individuals already know something, they are more likely to argue that they knew it earlier then they did. For an elderly teacher, teaching students a new subject like in my class, the results are pretty disastrous. There are the occasional surprises when you get an older teacher that is really good, but my experience has usually been to learn more from younger teachers. What’s interesting about older teachers, and I guess older people in general, is that they are well aware of how hard it can be too learn new things! Our classroom in Lillis has one of those new projector document cameras, and someone has to go up every class time and turn it on for him. This is interesting because despite his own confusion in a new area, he is incapable of recognizing his students’ ignorance in another. My point is not to rant on old people or my finance teacher, but to point out how to effectively learn, teach, and basically communicate. We all know that the best way to learn something is to teach it, but it may also be that the inverse is true. What if the inverse is true and the best way to teach something is to learn it again. By re-learning you’d have a better chance at identifying the common pitfalls and steering the students around them. This all seems to support a hybrid theory like was mentioned in lecture. We seem to have a more incremental ability when we are younger to learn and teach others, and it seems like this ability gradually gets worse until it appears to resemble the Entity theory.

Intelligence and Theory of Mind

The article relating inhibitory control and theory of mind really caught my memory. It reminded me of back in my childhood, when I too was developing a theory of mind. I think it took me awhile to learn that other people not only have thoughts and feelings of their own, but that they occasionally differ from mine. One thing that I always used to get in trouble for was comparable to the Whisper task mentioned in the study. I always used to get in trouble when my cousin and I were spending the night together, because I had no concept of whispering. She used to get so mad at me because her mom would have to come downstairs late at night and tell me to be quiet, because other people were trying to sleep. But the idea was preposterous to me. This was just one instance of many, which indicate to me that I may have had a harder time developing a theory of mind than other kids. I also specifically remember in first grade telling the teacher that she was doing something wrong (a math problem she was teaching the class, it seems). I was sent to the office, because I could not be persuaded otherwise. I never did find out which of us was right, except that I think she was probably right because she was the teacher.

The strangest thing about all of this is that while I may not have had a well developed theory of mind, I had a highly developed sense of intelligence. When I was in kindergarten, I was tested and placed in Academically Talented classes, with other children that had performed well on these tests. We all formed a little group together, and we were taught separate lessons from the other children of our age group. It was a very strange experience, and one that after having taken this class, I’m not sure that I would subject my children to. All of my life I was given that generic feedback that I was smart. As I got older, I stopped trying hard to do well in school, and instead got feedback along the lines of “she has potential, if only she would apply herself.” Perhaps my life would have been different if my teachers and parents and family members would have known what they were really doing, when they thought they were being helpful to my well-being.

The reason I mention all of that is because it, along with studies that have been done on the topic, points to the fact that there seems to be a negative relationship between intelligence and Theory of Mind. I was very pleased to see that they were able to draw conclusions between inhibitory control and theory of mind, and would like to see how inhibitory control is related to intelligence. It would make sense that highly intelligent children would have a harder time with inhibitory control, for multiple reasons. The first reason is that, at least in my experience, a high intelligence is often accompanied by a brain that works very quickly. It has taken a lot for me to be able to shift things down enough to actually be able to understand most of everything that happens up there, but perhaps that’s the experience for everyone. Another thing that would make it hard for intelligent children to master inhibitory control is that they are often encouraged by the people around them to explore their intelligence. In my household, it was quite acceptable for me to interject in adult conversations, because they were so amazed that I was able to contribute at all. These sorts of behaviors are exactly what inhibitory control would control. As I’ve gotten older, institutional settings like school and work have indicated to me that these behaviors need to be controlled, and only at that time was I able to master the ability to keep my thoughts inside of my head.

This leads to a similar conclusion that the study came to. In intelligent children, who are observing and commenting on most everything in their environments, it must take some time for them to develop a theory of mind because they have to learn to shut up before they can listen to what other people are saying. All the observation in the world isn’t going to help them to see what others are thinking. Only through discussion can things like desires and beliefs be ascertained. I’m just glad that I, along with most kids, finally learn that there is a lot more to be absorbed through our ears than through our tongues.

Advice

Monday’s lecture on Applications of Cognitive Development was a lecture that stood out for me. The lecture was interesting to me because I wanted to explain the concepts taught in class to my brother. Over the holiday weekend I had a chance to visit my brother and interact with my niece. During the weekend while I was socializing with him I made a comment to him about how shy my niece was. He explained to me that she was always quite and asked for my advice. I told him that she needs more social interaction with children her age. My initial suggestion was later confirmed when I saw her playing with her cousin and talking with each other. When I brought this to my brother attention, my parents chimed in and stated that she talks all the time at church. Once again I thought that I was on the right track. As I was leaving for home at the end of the weekend, my brother asked me to call him if I thought of anything else. I didn’t think much more of the topic until I heard the lecture on Monday.

The lecture was on two approaches to children learning. The first approach was the “child as scientist” perspective and second was the “child as apprentice” perspective. The first approach is often referred to as the “theory” theory or the Piaget theory. The concept behind this approach is for the child to do the learning and have the parent aid only when needed. The “child as scientist” approach is based off three ideas. The first one giving your child an opportunity to explore and observe things as they happen. The second idea is to answer questions that your child has explanations that lead back to underlying principles. The third idea is to have your child interact with their peers. The other approach that you can have with your child is the “child as apprentice” perspective. This concept is based off interaction with adults. The first point behind this approach is to give your child an opportunity to interact with their parents. The second point is to set up scaffolding concepts for the child. The third point is to have your child participate in cultural relate activities.

After Monday’ lecture, I went home and called my brother to discuss what I just learned. As I was talking with him, I was explaining to him about the different approaches that were discussed in class. I was explaining to him about the ideas and the points of each approach. I give him my advice that he should use a combination of both approaches. The first thing that I recommend to him was to enroll her in a day care system where she can socially interact with her peers. I than advised him to try and include her in activities that he does. The last thing that I recommend to him was to start reading to her. Reading to her will start to simulate her mind with new concepts and she will start to question him about the reading. The reading will also simulate her imagination.

Autobiographical memory and culture

According to Fivush and Nelson(2003), autographical memory is related to language development. So, Fivush and Nelson(2003) argued that most people have childhood amnesia before age 3, because we have not developed verbal language well enough to describe an event. In addition, Fivush and Nelson(2003) argued that the vividness of the autographical memory depends on how a mother to describe past events. More specific, mothers from Western culture might focus on describing children’s personal emotion and action. On the other hand, mothers from Eastern culture might describe more moral emotion and lessons. Personally, my autographical memory supports Fivush and Nelson(2003) that we need to develop verbal language in order to develop autographical memory. However, I am not certain that culture might directly influence how parents elaborate a past event.

Consistent with Fivush and Nelson(2003), I have very little or nearly no memory before or around age 3. Although I know what I was doing and where I had been before age 3 by seeing photos, I have hardly to recall how I was feeling and what I was doing in detail from photo. Also, when my mom told me that I cried so loud when she placed me in a kindergarten around age 2 and half, but I have no memory about this event. Furthermore, one of my nannies speaks Cantonese and she told me that I knew how to speak Cantonese when I was around age 3. Nevertheless, Cantonese always sounds like another foreign languge to me. In general, my earliest autographical memory is after age 3. It is possible I started to understand more vocabularies in Chinese, which is my mother tone. Consequently, I understand the conversations among my families and I could recall some fragmented past events after I was 3 year old. Nevertheless, my childhood memory is more vivid after age 5. I could recall more vividly that my teacher asked me to sleep during the nap time when I was age 6. Or, I can easily recall that I was crying and sitting on the ground because my mom did not buy the toy for me. By comparing my childhood memory among different stages, I agree that we need to acquire verbal language first in order to encode an event vividly.

Clearly, every mom from different culture has different styles to describe their children’s past events. Nevertheless, I do not agree that mother from Chinese culture described less children’s own activities and emotion in past events. At least, my mom and my aunts describe their children’s own activities and emotions in the past events. Usually, my mom describes that I laughed a lot and I seldom had unpleasant mood when I was a baby. Likewise, my aunts describe that how my cousins behave jealously and angrily when everyone paid more attention to their newborn siblings. Thus, mothers from Chinese culture still pay attention to their children’s own emotion in the past event. Additionally, my mom and my aunts focus on describing their children’s own activities in a past event as well , however, they might not be able to focus on describing their children’s own activities every time when describing a past event. Obviously, parents might not remember past events through time. They probably remembered the past events vividly only if they were impressed. For instance, my parents can recall vividly that my brother got burned by boiling water when he was age 3. On the other hand, my parents could not focus on describing my own activities in other daily past events, because they were distracting by something like their work, TV or talking to others. For instance, parents might not pay much attention to children,if they felt exhausted after they finished work or when they pay more attention to doing the work . So, although the culture might indirectly influence how parents elaborate a past event, how vivid and how much detail parents could recall children’s activities in a past event mainly depends on how much attention parents pay to children at that time.
In short, verbal language development influenced how well we recall a past event in different stages. Futhermore, how parents elaborate a past event would influence how well we recall a past event. However, the cultural and economic ( i.g. bringing work to home was normal for every parent at that time) factor might directly or indirectly influence how well parents recalled the past events of their children.

Can babies learn from Hoover?

When looking at the video of the Qrio robot and children's reactions at an object that seems to interact with its surroundings we learn that children will attend to and interact with objects that contingently react to them. We also know that children follow eye gaze of objects that appear to be consciously avoiding obstacles. I would be curios to view an experiment in which these theories were combined, would babies follow the "eye" gaze of an electronic vacuum cleaner with two dots on top?
Based on the research we have read the answer would be yes. Electronic vacuums are compacts spheres about the diameter of a frisbee which buzz around your house vacuuming on their won, all the while, specially programmed to avoid running into your furniture. If previous data holds true, if we were to place two "eyes" on top of it, babies would follow it's "gaze". This experiment would be along the same lines as the blob experiment and I find that both of these result sets would be difficult to believe. The thought that babies need so few morphological features in order to elicit an action so crucial to learning as eye gaze seems to be absolutely absurd and very difficult to devote any validity to. A more believable explanation may be that babies attention is drawn to movement of any kind and merely the movement of the direction of two dots is enough to elicit a head turning response; these babies are most likely more observant than we give them credit for and are to discriminate between when a blob moves it's eyes and when even a dog moves it's eyes

Social Cognition: Desires and Beliefs

In the article, “From simple desires to ordinary beliefs: The early development of everyday psychology”, authors Henry Wellman and Jacqueline Woolley state that “before young children construe human actions in terms of beliefs and desires they understand action only in terms of simple desires.” “Naïve Psychology” also called simple desire psychology, is how younger children understand human action. They can understand that desires motivate behaviors, but not that beliefs can also have an affect. Young children are able to understand their own drives and desires, such as being thirsty. However, drives and desires are different motivational forces. For example, Wellman and Woolley say that drive (hunger) is based on a physiological need and no particular object, but desire (wants an apple) is about the object wanted. Desires are formed through basic emotions such as love, hate and fear, and can be understood without beliefs involved. One must be able to take into account another person’s knowledge of the world in order to understand beliefs. Young children may not understand the intentions of others because they cannot appreciate the fact that others may have different beliefs as their own. For example, two children could be looking for a toy that they desire to play with, yet one might look in the kitchen because they believe they left it there last. The other child might not understand why the other is going into the kitchen, because they believe it is in the bedroom.

Since behavior is “mentalistic” for adults and children older than preschool, it makes sense that language is required to form these mental representations. Children under the age of two are mostly non verbal and therefore not able to understand the beliefs of others. It is obvious that language is needed to be able to organize thoughts and recognize the fact that others have their own beliefs and desires that may be motivated by different circumstances. To understand and to be able to predict the actions of others, there must be a mutual understanding of feelings, emotions, perception and intention. These concepts give clues about other people’s behavior and why they may act the way they do. First a person must be able to perceive their world to form beliefs, and then they must take into account their emotions to form desires. With the understanding of beliefs and desires, a person can act or see why another person may act the way they do. Along with beliefs, desires can motivate potential actions, and therefore an understanding of beliefs is necessary to fully appreciate the actions of others.

Susan C. Johnson, author of the article “The recognition of mentalistic agents in infancy”, says that the mental states needed in order to understand others behaviors have to be inferred by others and not just directly perceived. In the example above, the child that didn’t understand why the other was looking in the kitchen when the toy is usually found in the bedroom was simply perceiving a behavior. They were not inferring that the other child was looking in the kitchen because they knew it was left there last. Mental states are formed through “unobservable” internal states that are directed at the world. With the ability to form internal states, children are then able to see themselves and others as things with minds that perceive and believe different things. With this understanding, people can communicate with each other and comprehend that other’s beliefs may manipulate their behavior and intentions. Evidence of the use of mental states is shown through the ability to reason about false beliefs. If a person can understand that sometimes beliefs may be false, they can recognize the fact that the person is acting a certain way based on their belief of some false information. This can help people better understand others intentions and how desires are different from beliefs.

Applications

It was briefly discussed in class on Monday, the influence that computers/technology is having on children’s development. Watching television last night, I found myself paying more attention to the leap frog commercials, in which they advertise that children play their video games (educational) before going to bed. I believe I saw about five different commercials each attesting to how these computer and video games can aid in a child’s learning. This prompted to me check out the leap frog web site. They offer toys for children from 6months all the way to high school. Everything that was found in class, I saw true for the toys/video games offered by leap frog. They give the correct answer which doesn’t elicit curiosity in the child and are not a substitute for the parent/adult as teacher. They offer a parent guide for each toy they offer, stressing the importance of the parent as a teacher, and that these toys are merely to aid in the child development by offering a rich environment. This parent guide also offers step by step instructions on the usage of the toy and what aspect of learning it enhances. I think that these toys can be educational and aid in a child’s development, it’s important that parents interact with these toys with their children. Some of the commercials portray these toys as a substitute to teaching that can be done by a parent or adult. When these toys are used in conjunction with a parent’s teachings and guidance they can be beneficial. Looking at this website it made me wonder what kind of theories of intelligence it promotes. What does the computer say when the child does a good job, or solves the problem correctly? Do the programmers or developers take this concept into account when creating these games?

These toys were also offered internationally and in many different languages. I can see how these toys can be more beneficial to children who don’t receive the same parental attention, potentially children in more impoverished situations. I can see this same benefit from children programming as well. I guess something, is better than nothing. These computer games and children’s programming can offer a buffer to children who don’t receive the same cognitive stimulation at home.

I found it interesting how much research went into the development of children programming, particularly Sesame Street. While this programming can be beneficial as well, I think some parents also take this as a substitute, and plop their children in front of the television. I have seen this happen with the child I have mentioned in previous blogs. She spends most of the day being watched by someone who just sits her in front of the television. Whenever I get the opportunity I make sure to interact with her, read to her, and encourage her to use her words. I have learned a great deal in this class that I can apply to my life, when I’m around children or have some of my own.

Recently seasons of Sesame Street from the seventies have been released on DVD with a warning label stating that it was for adults because content may not be suitable for young children. It is interesting how far research regarding children and cognitive development has come, that past episodes of Sesame Street are no longer deemed suitable.

The Computer Tutor.

When I started writing this post, I intended to reiterate the points that I made in my first post about the relevance and applicability of Piaget’s ideas and principles, even in the face of new research. His idea of developmental stages and his laying down of what the majority of children can and cannot do at each stage has made it possible for programs like Sesame Street to be as effective as it is in educating the masses. This utilization of the different developmental stages is especially important because as pointed out in the article by Lepper et al., the luxury of having a personal tutor is limited to a select few.

I was going on to talk about how I thought that although it is possible that technology may one day come close to being as good a tutor as a human being, I doubted that a machine could ever be equally effective. As Lepper et al. said, the computer might be able to meet the cognitive requirements for tutoring, but the socioemotional aspect to tutoring seems to be a bit more out of reach. I was then listing a few reasons why I thought the socioemotional aspect would unattainable for computers, and they all revolved around the computer not having Theory of Mind. The more reasons I listed, the more plausible the idea of computers having Theory of Mind actually seemed!

This change of heart occurred when I wanted to say that teaching our young was a biological characteristic, and was a task that could not be taken over by an inanimate object. It struck me then that this was a contradiction to what I had said I my last post about psychological and biological mechanisms being distinct. That being the case, it is possible for a mechanical object to be a mentalistic agent, perceive the mental states of other mentalistic agents, and to react contingently even though it is not a live being.

One of the main barriers to a child’s development of Theory of Mind is the level of inhibitory control needed. Theory of Mind has been found to increase when a child’s inhibitory control increases (Carlson & Moses, 2001). This is because the child needs to repress the most salient beliefs and desires available to them – that of their own – and identify the beliefs and desires of others. Computers would not face these problems because for one, they do not have beliefs and desires of their own per se. Even if they did, computers are machines – they should not have any trouble inhibiting their own “mental states” and prioritizing the input they are receiving about their tutees.

Beliefs and desires are sometimes presented inaccurately on purpose. Computers can be programmed to be especially sensitive to social cues such as facial expressions, body language, and even physiological states. All this information combined might give the computer an even better representation of the tutee’s emotional and mental states than would be available to even the most expert human tutors. Thus, modulating a problem’s subjective and objective difficulties “intuitively” would be possible, and maybe even easier.

It is true that with a human tutor, modifications can be made to teaching styles according to the different personalities of different tutees, and this flexibility might be a problem for computers. Something similar might be accomplished, however, by including a personality inventory with the teaching software, and different teaching styles modeled on the styles used by expert tutors can be utilized appropriately. As for creating playful competition, the fact that many computer games are played against computers, and that children are motivated to do so, show that this aspect of human tutoring is achievable in computers too.

Given the rate of technological advancement today, it is possible that children all over the world will be given the opportunity to have one-on-one tutoring sessions with computers, tailor-made to suit their individual needs, relatively soon. When such a computer or computer software is created, it would be interesting to compare these computer tutors to human tutors to see if the biological feature of human tutors plays an imperative role in expert tutoring, or if psychological mechanisms are sufficient.

Child as "Scientist" and "Apprentice", Aren't They a Bit Of Both?

Throughout this class I have found the idea of children acting as small scientists somewhat fascinating. Just the thought alone that a 10 month old is testing gravity by tossing a stuffed toy from the high chair 30 times in a row is great stuff. I always assumed it was just a simple version of fetch that I was taking part in, when my nephew would make toss after toss, I hadn't a clue that he was doing an investigation.

Some of the points that were made in class gave some support to ideas that until that time I had failed to think of. For example I remember a sand box in my preschool classroom. When I think of preschool children I think of messes, and one doesn't really need to add sand to the equation to see that. But by adding the sand box we were given a jump start to conversion tasks, so it really did have a purpose.

Another point made involved a small child asking question after question, to the point you feel like you are being interrogated by the police. The thing that comes to mind for me here is the scene from "Big Daddy" with Adam Sandler, and the toddler he is taking care of. They are in a rush to make it to McDonald's before they stop serving breakfast, and they encounter a homeless person sitting on the street. The child not knowing what to make of the situation asks the homeless person why he is homeless. The homeless man gives a generic answer and the child responds with "why" and they continue this pattern until the homeless man pretty much gives his life story to Adam Sandler and the child. Even though this was a movie the premise is believable in this scene, the child doesn't understand something and will investigate to reach the answer, I've seen it, and taken part in it before.

But not all the time is the child a "scientist" sometimes they require some help to learn so they are deemed the "apprentice". The best example that I can think of for this is "scaffolding". This occurred the last time my brother brought his kids to town for a visit. I don't have much to entertain small children so they brought some puzzles to work on. His daughter was just starting to work on one, by starting I mean sitting there looking at the pieces not knowing how to get started. Her brother sat down and attached several of the border pieces without saying a word. Jensen took the cue from her older brother and worked on the border before tackling the middle. Without his little bit of help she wouldn't have gotten as far as she did, so I believe that was an example of scaffolding before my eyes.

Another example of the child as the "apprentice" happened the same day as the puzzle incident. In fact it was occurring as Jensen worked on the puzzle. She was coyly told of how hard a puzzle it was and cheered every time she got a piece together with another (I was even encouraged to clap along like I was at some sort of sporting event), and every time the crowd went wild she would just light up as she looked around the room, before diving for another piece. when the puzzle was done her mother was right there to tell her how well she did on that hard puzzle. I believe the emphasis was placed on that particular puzzle, not all puzzles in general (at least I hope so, I'd hate to see her develop some sort of complex like you discussed in class).

Anyways these are just a couple of simple examples of times where I have seen a child as both a "scientist" and "apprentice" so I feel safe to say that children are in fact both.

Computer and Cognitive Development

Toward the end of Thursday’s lecture, we talked about how computer technology can help children in their cognitive development, and this has reminded me of my childhood experiences with computer facilitating programs. Remember when I was in elementary school, we have a computer class which the class will go to the library to learn to use computer. Of course, the computer back then was really old and I don’t quite remember what program that I played with. However, one interesting thing about the class is that we get to play a simulation game about opening a dinosaur park of your own. And starting from choosing land, organizing the park, buying dinosaur and all other business plan, we would need to decide for ourselves the action that we wanted to take. The game required a lot of hard problem solving skills, especially for elementary students, and it was then I realized that not everyone in the class can successfully master the game, and that not everyone’s cognitive development happens at the same age. Personally, I was one of the students struggling with the game and having difficulty to bring my park’s revenue up to a positive number; however, thinking back now, I think the game helped me in developing problem skills as well as training me to be an incremental theorist. I kept on trying each time I failed to open a park, and eventually, I gained enough experience to successfully managing my own business. This experience with the game taught me that success is not determined by innate ability, but with constantly trying and never giving up. I think this is one of reasons that, even until today, I still follow the incremental theory rather than entity theory.

Social Cognition

It is astounding how much children understand about the social world. Children are able to differentiate between themselves and those around them. They have astounding knowledge about human agency and what humans can do that non-human objects can do (Sigler & Alibali, 307). Children are able to move from an understanding of the observable physical characteristics to an understanding of internal psychological traits (Sigler & Alibali, 309). Children are also able to understand to some extent the workings of the human mind: such as goals, intentions, desires and expectations (Sigler & Alibali, 313). Younger children tend to have an understanding of others that is based on the child’s experiences and beliefs and desires (Sigler & Alibali, 318). However as they get older, after three years of age, children seem to be able to differentiate between their own knowledge of the world and that of others (Sigler & Alibali, 318 & 319). They also have knowledge of social categories, such as knowledge about gender and race and ethnicity. The belief is that children have gender schemas, which determine what they view as correct behavior and action for a particular gender (Sigler & Alibali, 334). These schemas are developed and refined by their interactions with others in the society (Sigler & Alibali, 335). Children’s understanding of race also seems to be based on schemas of some sort that are refined and developed more through time (Sigler & Alibali, 336). Their understanding of race, ethnicity, and social class has stages with the child moving from a merely physical understanding of these concepts to a more complex understanding of the ways that various different factors interact and how there is great variability within and throughout these categories (Sigler & Alibali, 337). It is astonishing that children can accomplish all of this but that adults often seem to have a difficult time with social cognition. Children are able to take into account the experiences of others in evaluating what those people will believe and how they will react however; adults often do not take the experiences of others into account. This is evident in the conflict between people of different economic classes or different races and genders because people rarely take the experiences of other’s into account. Perhaps this is because we depend on others when developing our schema and concepts about the world around us. If we are not exposed to the experiences of others or are taught that these experiences are not important than we will not incorporate them into our schemas. Not everyone reaches all the stages in understanding of race, ethnicity, and social class and not everyone has as developed a schema for gender as others. Perhaps as children relying on schemas makes sense but as we get older we need to think beyond our schemas or consider the schemas of others and how they differ from ours and modify ours.

Naive theories of intelligence

The topic that I would like to discuss in this last blog post has to do with Naïve theories of Intelligence. This was pretty interesting for me. I did not know any of this before this class. I really do not agree with the Entity intelligence theory. I am sure that some of this theory is true, but it just does not make that much sense to me. I also feel like this theory could really cripple children’s imitative and drive for school. I feel like if children were labeled with this intelligence then they would underperform children that are classified as Incremental intelligence. I feel that entity intelligence would give certain children an excuse for why they underperform. I also feel that this would only hurt a child if they knew. I just really cannot comprehend this theory because I just cannot understand it. I feel that if you work hard for something that you can achieve it. And under the entity theory intelligence is fixed and does not change. You either have it, or don’t. So why would there be so many people in college if there were people out there that would not benefit from learning? If certain people cannot change how smart they are then why are more people just accepting that they cannot become a genius? I do however; have one piece of evidence in favor of the entity theory. This would be IQ tests. According to researchers your IQ score will stay the same across time. They say that, for the most part, you cannot change your score. It may move up a couple points, (or even move down) but it pretty much stays the same throughout your lifetime. This supports the entity theory. You are born with a certain amount of intelligence and you cannot change that no matter how much you learn, or how much you study. However, I feel that the incremental theory is more correct. It makes much more sense that intelligence is malleable, context dependent, and acquired through experience and hard work. This is how I feel I am. I feel that through hard work I have become more intelligent. Of course it could just be that I was smart to begin with and that just continues. I just feel like the incremental theory fits better. It also makes sense then that within the incremental theory, there is more self-esteem. It seems that people feel better about themselves if they know they can improve something as opposed to “being stuck with what you got.” Again, the answer probably is a mixture of both theories. (Like the nature/nurture debate). There are probably elements of both within intelligence.

Education in schools US versus other countries

In chapter 11: The Development of Academic skills, Siegler and Wagner explain how children acquire basic educational skills such as writing, reading and arithmentics. They state that "children's educations, as well as theories of cognitive development, depend on the mutual influence of intra- and extra-classroom factors." Children not only learn in school but also learn by their social interactions. Family is a big influence in the development of cognitive skills.

In the U.S. children are expected to learn fast and more emphasizes is given on the amount that is learned rather than teaching at a slow pace with greater understanding on one topic rather than a lot. The U.S. where everything moves fast and where everyone expects to get a fast response with everything they do, education is not at the same level compared to other countries. The U.S. fails when it comes to education and a study conducted by the UNICEF, shows that from 24 nations the U.S. was ranked 18 in terms of relative effectiveness of its education system.

I asked myself, why is that one of the richest countries in the world, where a lot of money is put into education, where primary education is free and where class sizes are not too big, why is it that students in grade school perform worse than other countries?

I did some research and found that one of the main reasons why the US is ranked lower than other countries is because here we focus on procedure learning meaning that we teach many things at once while not really focusing on one particular thing. For example when children are taught to add fraction, they are taught how to do it but not much emphasizes is put in the actual concept of fractions. In other countries emphasizes is given on understanding what fractions really are and they tend to break topics in more depth, teaching less but in more depth can help children understand and gives them the opportunity to rehearse what has been learned and is easier to encode into long term memory.

Another big problem that I think we should address is the time parents spend with their children. Parents are usually away from home and children are left by themselves sometimes unattended and with little parental supervision. These children end up doing other things rather than their homework and when parents come home they are often times too tired or not interested in helping their children. In other countries education is a priority for children. Maybe parents should take aside a few hours for their children to do homework because children not only learn in classrooms but also learn by doing homework. Parents play a big role in children's performance in school. I think parents should teach their children to study and should force them to spend a few hours each day doing some educational activity in order to learn good study habits.

I was born in Peru and went to school both here and there. I remember always being behind my classmates when I moved from the US to Peru, but when I would move back here after spending some time in Peru, I would perform better than my American classmates. It is very surprising for most people since Peru is a third world country but I know for a fact that education there and in other countries is better than in the US.

I also see the difference in the way parents push their children to excel in other countries. In other countries where education is not as available as here, parents tend to push and spend more times with their children doing homework. Students tend to show more ambition and motivation because often times they are rewarded in schools for their performance. There is greater competition to excel in other countries while in the US students tend to have less ambition to excel. Perhaps I am wrong but from what I have experienced , education in the US is not so good unless a child goes to a private school. Not until college does education in the US excel compare to other countries but perhaps we should try to focus more on early education rather than just in universities.

Hopefully some education programs can be developed to improve education in the US and hopefully public school will have the same level of education as private school. I think we should focus on children's education more now because they are the future of our country.

Naïve Theories of Intelligence

This class has taught me so much about not only child development but also human cognitive development in general. There are so many topics that I want to write about in this last blog, but the topics that stood out to me was the Naïve Theories of Intelligence. Incremental theorists say that intelligence is flexible and is context dependent and is acquired through in experience and hard work. Entity theorists say that intelligence is fixed or stable, resulting on a person either having it or not. I believe it’s a combination of both. I’ve struggled watching some of my friends party the night before an exam while I stay in and study, only to watch them get higher scores than me. So in my case, I would agree with the Incremental theorists simply because the theory of intelligence from the entity theorists perspective would pretty much assume I will never succeed. I have always been the type of person that goes above and beyond with studying but still gets average grades.
I believe my inability to go through school with ease comes from the way I was brought up. We have learned so much about how important family interaction is with a child’s learning and it made me realize the lack of it that came from my family. It just shows how different cultures are when it comes to values and raising a child. I was born in the Philippines and don’t recall ever doing things with my parents such as play games and regular housework with them. My parents were always so busy with work that I ended up spending most my time playing and interacting with my brothers. Then at age six my family moved to Oregon and my transition was a little difficult because my parents didn’t know English very well. So it was hard to go to school ad learn so much but not have what I learned exercised at home.
I think the entity theory of intelligence is somewhat similar to the administration and results of tests in classes. You either do well or you don’t. What it doesn’t account for is how much effort you put into your work. The idea of tests also reminds me of basic computer tutors that say “you right” or “your wrong.” Lepper’s article says that even if a computer could accurately diagnose the student’s affective state and respond to that state there is still a plausibility problem. The plausibility (acceptability) problem is, if the same actions and the same statements that human tutors use will have the same effect if delivered by a computer. The emotional response is taken away if a computer replaces a human and this could cause issues when trying to tutor a child.

I Can’t Tell You What I Remember!

Although memory has been a favorite topic in many of the psychology courses that I have taken, I have not had memory and language acquisition concepts presented together. These two developmental processes and the way in which they interact can have crucial implications for later treatment of trauma experienced in the preverbal stage of early childhood. Research indicates that memories that may have been formed before a child acquires language will be difficult at best to be described verbally by the child once language is acquired. It seems that the most likely of reasons for this phenomenon is that the memory was not encoded using language and therefore not retrievable using verbal cues, discovering the precise retrieval cues may be problematic.

When an adolescent or even an adult is experiencing inexplicable difficulties in their everyday life, there can be a link to early childhood trauma. Symptoms of mood disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, dysthymia, and major depression often find their roots in the early childhood stress/trauma experienced by individuals. What interests me is how we can begin to treat a client who is unable to recall and articulate in words events that may be contributing to their disorder. Some individuals have flashes of memory, like snapshots in time or just a ‘sense’ that they were abused, neglected, or mistreated as very young children but cannot retrieve the memories. The inability to remember or recall more than scant details of the past may lead to further complications when the client is unable to substantiate their feelings with memories.

I am interested in working with children who have experienced trauma and am aware that simple talk therapy may not be completely effective. I have been investigating alternative ways in which traumatic memories can be accessed in an effort to guide a client toward better mental health. One such alternative to talk therapy is art therapy. The notion behind art therapy is that creative artwork gives clients an additional language to explore their current situation, identify issues, and cope with their feelings. The use of paint, clay and puppets are a few of the ways that children create in art therapy. Art therapy may be particularly effective with preverbal memories because although language originates in the left side of the brain, artwork engages the right side of the brain, which matures and develops earlier than the left/language side. Through use of creativity and the right brain children may retrieve memories, gain insight, and/or be able to ‘describe’ events that have activated trauma responses and abetted a detrimental life course.

If I weren’t already sold on art therapy…the connections that I have made between the developmental concepts of language acquisition and memory would have led me in that direction.

Let's Pretend- More than a Game

Children often begin to pretend from around the age of 12 months, or when they start talking. There are three different types of pretend play that children engage in: self as vehicle, toy/object as vehicle, or nothing as vehicle. In all of these situations, children ascribe physical or behavioral traits to a person, object, or imaginary being that aren't actually there. For example, in Alison Shawber's guest lecture, we were introduced to a little boy who's pretend identity was Spiderman. When spiderman, the boy pretended to shoot webs from his wrists and jump from building to building (couch to couch). We met a few personified objects, like Lamby Baby, the pregnant lamb, too. We also learned about imaginary friends, one of whom, Elfie Welfie, had rainbow hair and sometimes bossed her creator around. Research with children has shown that pretend play, specifically "role play," is correlated with better performance in many areas of development, such as verbal ability, sociability, creativity, theory of mind, and executive function. A question I wish I'd asked is, "Have there been any long term studies regarding pretend play and adult behavior and beliefs?" Of course, adults can self report on whether or not they played pretend as a child, but they may have insufficient memories of that age to accurately report it all the time. What I want to know is, does pretend play predict important social skills that we value as a society once an individual reaches adulthood, like empathy, cultural sensitivity, charity, ingenuity, diplomacy- all of which, on some level, require us to put ourselves in someone else's place? If we have practice pretending to be someone other than we are, that might make us more able to understand someone else's circumstances. This is related to the Simulationist View, which suggests that we understand what someone else is thinking or feeling by "simulating" that experience in our own mind. If we are able to better simulate what someone else might be going through, that may lead to the above valued behaviors.

We know from experience that not all imagining produces good results- many criminals fantasize about doing harm to others before they carry it out. This pretending does not seem to help them put themselves in their victim's place. But pretend play in a healthy childhood environment seems to be a positive predictor of many mental and social skills. Pretend play may be a tool that parents and schools can use more effectively to benefit children's development.

Social Learning

Learning is a process that occurs through relationships and interaction with the external environment. The sociocultural theory addresses the effect of a child's social environment on their cognitive development. Lev Semenovich Vygotsky was one of the first researchers to develop sociocultural theory. In this thoery, Vygotsky cites two central ideas which are as follows; "(1) cognitive development occurs in social interaction, and (2) psychological functioning is mediated by cultural tools, including language (Alibali & Siegler 109). " A great deal of research has recently been shifted to focus on cultural differences and what effects these differences have on psychology. In general, most people adopt the beliefs and customs of the culture they are immersed in. One's culture can shape the way they learn about the wrold and their place within it. Community and culture also depict the way a child will spend the majority of their time and what activites they will be exposed to.
Learning is thus very subjective and dependent on the environment in which it ensues. To me this seems to counteract the theories of conceptual development learned in Chapter 8. In an earlier post I discussed biological concepts and my skepticism that they are innately determined. From the biological concepts theory, it is stated that preschoolers eventually come to understand the concept of inheritance without direct instruction on the concept. However, in some Native American cultures where folk lore plays a large part in their belief system, it is believed that humans have animal relatives and can often morph into animals. In such cultures, inheritance is often determined by the will of the gods and is not necessarily genetically based. Their concpet of biology is very different from the concept of biology that I was taught. Thus as seen in sociocultural theory, learning takes place largely through community and social interaction causing it to be a product of nurture over nature.

Social Cognition: Machine VS Human's and their role in learning

Although some of the topics that apply to social cognition seem to be very obvious I found this subject extremely interesting. Of course humans have evolved to learn how to imitate and observe other people in order to gain new knowledge about the world, but I think that the research involving human vs machine and their roles in learning give a really interesting insight into the way that we interact with the world as children.
While reviewing the lecture slides I couldn't help but find it strange that children treated QRIO as if he were a mentalistic agent yet further on in the lecture we learned that other research had found that children are able to distinguish between hands and tools. Although QRIO behaved and responded in the same ways that mentalistic agents do, he still had the physical qualities of a machine. The tools in which were used to grasp the objects in the Woodward studies also responded in similar ways as the human hand had shortly before it and yet the children were able to distinguish it as an inanimate object. And even more interesting is the fact that the children were unable to learn the same task from a machine that a human had performed previously in the "unfulfilled goal study".
I feel like this information can be beneficial to improving how we teach infants and children novel tasks. I think that in today's society we rely greatly on machine's and these studies prove that children are better able to learn when they are observing real human interaction. By using this information we can come up with new techniques that involve teachers or parents showing them things which aid in children's development. Unfortunately I think that a lot of new toys are being developed to teach kids new tasks that are based on using inanimate objects but this may not be the best way in which the teach them. I think that parents should be aware that children respond much better the observing humans and can imitate their actions much better.
I think that it would also be interesting to see how beneficial some of the new programs that are offered for the TV and computer are to children's development. Do they really learn new skills from these things? Even if they were shown to be learning from these machines I wonder how much more efficient they are than if they were to be taught these things through more conventional ways. It seems to me that human interaction is extremely important and by eliminating that would have negative effects on children's development. Because in today's world we do relay so heavily on machine's I don't see things moving in the opposite direction and so it would be important to continue studies that emphasize the importance of human interaction to child development and learning.

Blog #5 Final Post - Forgotten sexual abuse

One of the most controversial topics in regards to child development is the existence of false memories. I believe that any memories implicating sexual or physical abuse by an adult should be taken very seriously and investigated immediately. However, overwhelming evidence suggests that children can be easily persuaded and manipulated into believing stories, facts, or narratives that may have never occurred. In the documentary “Capturing the Friedman’s”, a variety of sexual abuse allegations surfaced against Mr. Friedman and his youngest son. Many of the children denied that any abuse supposedly took place while others adamantly accused Mr. Friedman of continuous and detailed sexual abuse. The question is who does one believe if there is minimal evidence except for a child’s testimony? The topic of false memories came up a lot while I was taking a course this summer called Psychology of Trauma. I was most fascinated with those children who denied that abuse had occurred when overwhelming evidence proves that in fact it had. There are a number of theories why children would deny the existence or experience of abuse. One in particular is especially alarming. Jennifer Freyd here at the University of Oregon proposes a theory called Betrayal trauma that may explain why children may truly forget that a traumatic sexual abuse has occurred. An extremely high proportion of children are sexual abused by someone whom they have an emotional attachment with. This person is often their caregiver, parent, friend, or relative. When a child is sexually abused by person they share an attachment relationship with it violates and undermines the trust and power that is in place. Most children depend upon attachment relationships with their caregiver or parent(s) in order to secure a healthy psychological and emotional wellbeing. In order to maintain this attachment relationship they adapt to the abusive situation by “forgetting” the abuse. Children in this situation unknowingly experience psychogenic amnesia of the abusive memories, which allows them to sustain the attachment relationship. Interestingly, many children who initially forgot documented sexual abuse have been known to remember many years later. Often by this time is difficult to prosecute (statute of limitations) and even harder for victims or overcome. Although this theory may help explain the existence of false memories it is not easily applicable for the Friedman case. Many of the children supposedly abused were older and little physical evidence existed which could prove that Mr. Friedman and his son were guilty. Also, many of the children may not have considered Mr. Friedman or his son persons with whom they shared an emotional attachment with although the children likely respected them both. Because of this the male students would have no emotional or psychological need to suppress or “forget” sexual abuse memories. Although the Betrayal Trauma theory may not explain why some children swore by the abuse while others denied that it happened, I personally believe that by the end of the documentary both Mr. Friedman and his son were compelled to tell the absolute truth: that they did in fact sexually abuse some of the male students.