Cognitive development

Assessing Social and Symbolic Development in Pre-operational Children

by Paul Wesley Scott

paper written for an early childhood assessment class

Early Educators are charged with the duty of preparing pre-operational kids with the social skills necessary to be... more Early Educators are charged with the duty of preparing pre-operational kids with the social skills necessary to be ready for school and to teach them basic symbolic skills required for literacy, mathematics, and spatial awareness.  For this reason it is proposed that we assess for these two skill sets together in order to devise appropriate educational plans.  The goal of this assessment is to capitalize on the relation between social and symbolic behaviors in such a way that we can use particular social and symbolic strengths to facilitate overall social and symbolic development, both with children on an individual basis and also in designing inclusive work groups that put children together on the basis of strengths and weaknesses.

Cognitive Development and Interaction Contexts

by Adolfo Perinat

2010. In collaboration with Mariela Orozco Hormaza & Hernán Sánchez Ríos. En A. Bastos & E. Rabinovich, Living in Poverty. Developmental Poetics of Cultural Realities (pp. 375-399). Charlotte, Estados Unidos: Information Age Publishing.

Reflections arising from more than a decade work with Colombian children living in poor urban areas (and with their... more Reflections arising from more than a decade work with Colombian children living in poor urban areas (and with their care-givers) have originated a confrontation between the idea that deficits in cognitive development are produced by socioeconomic conditions and the reduction of context to categories related with socioeconomic status. This confrontation has motivated us to search for new ways to approach these children’s cognitive development and characterize their context in terms of other dimensions, which are different but complementary to the socioeconomic dimension. This will allow for a more detailed description of children’s interaction contexts, making it possible to evaluate what factors positively affect the children’s cognitive development.

Simulating others: the basis of human cognition?

by Stephen J. Cowley

This appeared as:
Cowley, S.J. (2004). Simulating others: the basis of human cognition? Language Sciences, 26/3: 273-299.

The paper critiques the argument of Michael Tomasello’s Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (1999). This culture-first... more The paper critiques the argument of Michael Tomasello’s Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (1999). This culture-first theory is judged to be a good sketch of how nature predisposes humans for talk. Above all, this is because if language mediated perspective-taking depends on cultural process, no innate linguistic representations are necessary in learning to talk. Unfortunately, the model is flawed by Tomasello’s claims for a putative species-specific competency. Rather than posit a simulation mechanism to link orthodox views of language with Gricean models of communication, I follow Dennett in treating ‘intentions’ as folk constructs. Talking, on this view, arises from encultured contextualizing. Situated, embodied activity turns infants into perspective-takers who, far from learning or acquiring ‘forms’, slowly become persons. Gradually, the infant’s developing social capacities produce activity that invites others to attribute linguistic knowledge to the child.

Contextualizing bodies: human infants and distributed cognition

by Stephen J. Cowley

This paper that appeared as:
Cowley, S.J. (2004). Contextualizing bodies: how human responsiveness constrains distributed cognition. Language Sciences, 26/6, 565-591

By their second birthday caregivers treat infants as ‘using’ words that have grammatical properties. How do... more By their second birthday caregivers treat infants as ‘using’ words that have grammatical properties. How do brain-bodies develop the relevant capacity? In addressing this issue, the paper stresses how babies exploit other people’s understanding. It is argued that joint activity uses ‘shallow thinking’ to gradually develop both caregiver biases and infant predispositions. Using how activity is integrated, the baby's skills are gradually transformed. Taking part in competitive and co-operative activity is sufficient to nudge the infant towards strategic syllable-use. Gradually, a baby’s contextualizing body comes to exploit vocalizing in ways heard as arrangements of arbitrary signs. Far from relying on ‘language acquisition’, telegraphic speech arises from co-ordination, affect and adult interpretation. It emerges in infant agents whose anticipative strategies allow them to distinguish, say, ‘gone dada’ [gondada]’ (e.g. “please get it back, dad”) from ‘dada gone’ [dadagon] (e.g. “father is hiding again”).

A claw is like my hand: Comparison supports goal analysis in infants

by Sarah Gerson

The goal trumps the means: Alignment of goals is more beneficial than alignment of means in means-end training

by Sarah Gerson

Dealing with conflicting information: Young children’s reliance on what they see versus what they are told.

by Patricia Ganea

Developmental Science (2010)

Changing your mind about things unseen: Toddlers' sensitivity to prior reliability.

by Patricia Ganea

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2011)

Toddlers’ referential understanding of pictures.

by Patricia Ganea

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2009)

Symbol Based Learning In Infancy.

by Patricia Ganea

In A. Needham & A. Woodward (Eds.), Learning and the infant mind. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.

Transfer between picture books and the real world by very young children.

by Patricia Ganea

Journal of Cognition and Development (2008).

Thinking of things unseen: Infants’ use of language to update object representations.

by Patricia Ganea

Psychological Science (2007)

Infants’ use of shared linguistic information to clarify ambiguous requests.

by Patricia Ganea

Child Development (2007)

Students Lost in Digital Wasteland

by Eric Fox

After five years of teaching distracted and rigid students in my composition courses, I bolted for the woods to get my soul back.

The effects of experience on concept development: Illness concepts of healthy, asthmatic, and diabetic children

by Susan Gerrity

Red blood cell and plasma phospholipid arachidonic and docosahexaenoic acid levels at birth and cognitive development at 4 years of age.

by Esther Bakker

Ghys A, Bakker E, Hornstra G, Hout M van den. Red blood cell and plasma phospholipid arachidonic and docosahexaenoic acid levels at birth and cognitive development at 4 years of age. Early Hum Dev. 2002 Oct;69(1-2):83-90.

What baboons, babies and Tetris players tell us about interaction: a biosocial view of norm-based social learning

by Stephen J. Cowley

This is a draft of a paper that appeared as:
Cowley, S.J. & MacDorman, K.F. (2006). What baboons, babies and Tetris players tell us about interaction: a biosocial view of norm-based social learning. Connection Science, 18/3, 363-378.

Could androids use movements to build relationships? For people relationships are created with the help of... more Could androids use movements to build relationships? For people relationships are created with the help of behavior-shaping norms, which infants begin to discover and manipulate by the third month. To build relationships, machines can also learn to exploit human reactions in real-time decision making. In the video game Tetris, for example, affect co-opts computer generated patterns to simplify cognitive tasks: norms mediate what Kirsh and Maglio (1994) term epistemic actions, which allow implicit knowledge to shape key pressing in ways that, given past games, are likely to be informative and valuable. Experts act to change their cognitive states by allowing the game’s higher-level states to constrain their lower-level actions. Since this process enables the development of expertise, we might expect it to be widespread. But it seems marginal in hamadryas baboons, although they use affect and complex norms. In humans, by contrast, infants use adults as cognitive resources in developing their epistemic abilities. This has engineering implications for android designers. Because androids can elicit epistemic actions, engineers need to develop an affect-sensitive interface. If successful at this, even rudimentary coaction may prompt people to report experiencing androids as both making choices and violating expectations.

Using a cognitive architecture to examine what develops

by Gary Jones

Jones, G., Ritter, F. E., & Wood D. J. (2000). Using a cognitive architecture to examine what develops. Psychological Science, 11, 93-100.

Computer Simulations of Developmental Change: The Contributions of Working Memory Capacity and Long‐Term Knowledge

by Gary Jones

Jones, G., Gobet, F., & Pine, J. M. (2008). Computer simulations of developmental change: The contributions of working memory capacity and long-term knowledge. Cognitive Science, 32, 1148-1176.

Speed of Processing, Time, and Interference in the Attentional Blink: Application to Children.

by Nicholas Badcock