Spring, 2000

Instructor: Dr. David F. Bjorklund TA: Mr. Jesse Bering

Department of Psychology Office: Biological Sciences 105-G

Office: Biological Sciences 105-B Telephone: 297-3374

Telephone: 297-3367 E-Mail: jmbering@juno.com

E-Mail: DBjorklund@fau.edu Office hours: TBA

Office hours: TuTh: 9:30-10:30

4:00-5:00 PM

or by appointment

Tentative Exam Schedule: First Exam: February 15, 2000

Second Exam: March 28, 2000

Third Exam: May 2, 2000

Each exam will cover approximately one-third of the course material (they will not be comprehensive) and will be equally weighted. Dates for make-up exams for the first and second exams will be arranged the class day following the exam. All make-up exams are essays. There will be no make-up for the third exam.

Tentative Dates for Short Studies: Assignment #1: February 1

Assignment #2: February 22

Assignment #3: March 23

Assignment #4: April 11

Assignment #5: April 27

Tentative Dates for Optional Term Paper: Select topic by: April 4

Paper due: April 25
 
 

I. Introduction to Cognitive Development, Children's Thinking, Chapter 1.

A. Concepts and history

B. Issues in cognitive development

II. Biological Bases of Cognitive Development, Children's Thinking, Chapter 2.

A. Developmental systems approach

2. Neurological basis of cognitive development

IV. Piaget's Theory, Children's Thinking, Chapter 3 and Chapter 7, pp. 194-207.

A. Principles and assumptions of Piaget's theory

B. Stages of cognitive development,

1. Sensorimotor period

2. Preoperational and concrete operational periods

3. Formal operational period

3. An evaluation of Piaget's theory
4. NeoPiagetian theories

Thinking, Chapter 5.

A. The information processing system

B. The development of strategies

C. The role of knowledge in cognitive development

VI. Perception, Children's Thinking, Chapter 6.

A. Perceptual development through infancy

1. Development of visual perception

2. Development of auditory perception

B. Perceptual development beyond infancy

VI. Representation, Children's Thinking, Chapter 7 (excluding 194-207).

A. The development of representation

B. Children's theory of mind

C. Classification

VII. Memory Development, Children's Thinking, Chapter, 8.

A. Event memory

B. The development of strategic remembering

C. Factors influencing memory development

VIII. Language Development, Children's Thinking, Chapter 9.

A. From words to sentences

B. Is there a critical period for language?

2. Language and thought

XI. Social Cognition, Children's Thinking, Chapter 11.

1. Social cognitive theory and social information processing
2. The development of self
3. Perspective taking

XI. Schooling and Cognition, Children’s Thinking, Chapter 12.

A. The development of reading skills

2. Children's number and arithmetic concepts
3. Schooling and cognitive development

A. Approaches to the study of intelligence

B. Behavioral genetics and the heritability of intelligence

C. Experience and intelligence

D. The stability of intelligence over infancy and childhood

XIII. Tying it all together, Children's Thinking, Epilogue.
 
 

DEP 4163: Cognitive Development

Dr. David F. Bjorklund

2000, 1999

2. Discuss the plasticity of the brain and its relation to cognitive development.
3. Discuss the concepts of the zone of proximal development and apprenticeship in thinking as they relate to cognitive development. How can a sociocultural perspective of cognitive development interface with a biological perspective of cognitive development?

6. Contrast children's "thinking" at the preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational periods of cognitive development.
7. Discuss theory theories of cognitive development. How do such theories similar and different from Piaget’s theory?
8. Describe the neo-Piagetian theories of Kurt Fischer and Robbie Case and discuss how they are alike and how they differ from Piaget's account of cognitive development.

Students will complete and write-up five small studies by the dates listed below. Each write-up for each study will consist of an introduction based on material from your textbook or from lectures, a brief description of the procedures used, a summary of the results, and a brief discussion of the results. Each write-up should be between 3 and 5 pages in length (typed, double spaced). Other projects, based upon research described in the textbook (e.g., working memory, selective attention, object permanence, formal reasoning), can be substituted, with permission of the instructor, for the studies listed below.

Assignment #1, Conservation of number: Date due: February 1, 2000

Try this with children between the ages of 4 and 7 years of age (preferably at least two children). Take five marbles (or buttons, or crackers, etc.) and place them in a row in front of the child. From a set of marbles, ask the child to make another row of marbles that match up with the row that you made, as below:

X X X X X

O O O O O

Ask the child if he or she believes that there are the same number of marbles in each row. After an affirmative response, move the marbles in one row, as the child watches, so the rows now look like this:

X X X X X

O O O O O

Now ask the child if the rows still have the same number of marbles in them, and why he/she thinks they do or do not.

Assignment #2, False Beliefs: Date Due: February 22, 2000

Interview one or more children between the ages of 3 and 4 years of age. Show the child a box of M & Ms, or other distinctive box that a child would recognize (e.g., juice box, small cereal box). Ask the child what he or she thinks is in that box. They should say "M & Ms" or "juice." Then, open the box and reveal that it actually contains something else (e.g., pencils, ribbons). Then, place the pencils back in the box and ask the child what another person (a friend, sibling, etc.), who is not in the room, would think is in the box. Then ask the child what he or she thought was in the box originally ("What did you think was in the box the first time I showed it to you?").
 
 

Assignment #3, Location memory: Date Due: March 23, 2000

Interview at least three males and three females at each of three different ages (one age can be adults). Make copies of the two figures of objects shown on page 188 of your text book. Tell the participants that you wish to test their memories. You will show them a picture with many objects in it, and you wish them to study it for 30 seconds. Remove the picture after 30 seconds and engage the participant in conversation for about 1 minute. Then, give them a pen or pencil, show them the second picture, and ask them to circle only the objects in the second picture that were also in the first picture. Give them 1 minute to do this. To score their performance, count the number of items they circled that were correct (hits), and the number of items that they circled that were incorrect (false alarms).
 
 

Assignment # 4: Sort/Recall; Date Due: April 11

Interview two or more children between the ages of 6- and 14 years of age.

Word list:

Mammals: lion, goat, dog, monkey, cow, hamster

Fruits: orange, peach, banana, grapes, pineapple, cherries

Furniture: chair, bed, stool, couch, desk, lamp

Print each word on a note card. Shuffle the cards so that words are randomly arranged. Tell children that you are going to test their memory. You will give them 18 cards with words on them. They will first read each word, after which you will place it on a table in front of them. They will then have two minutes to study the cards. They can do anything they wish during that two-minute period to help them remember the cards. They can move the cards if they like, but they don't have to. After the two-minute study period is complete, you will cover the cards (or pick them up). You will then give them a number (e.g., 100) and ask them to count backward by 5s from that number for 15 seconds. You will then ask them to remember as many of the words as they can, out loud, in any order that they like. They will have one minute to remember as many words as they can.

Record any study behavior the children display during the two-minute study period (for example, rehearsal, sorting the cards into groups, self-testing, mentioning category names). Record their recall, in the order in which they remember the words. At the end of the one-minute recall period, reshuffle the cards, and repeat the procedure for a second trial. At the end of the second trial, ask children how they went about remembering the words. Was there anything special they did to help them remember? You can use adults for a contrast group if you like.

In addition to recording study behavior, compute the number of words that each child remembered correctly. Don't count repetitions or intrusions, although keep track of the intrusions (words "remembered" but that were not on the list).

Also compute a clustering score for each trial. To do this, count the number of repetitions of correct recall there are for each category. For example, if a child remembered:

lion, dog, banana, orange, goat, desk, cherries, peach, grapes, cow, lamp

a repetition would be any two words recalled consecutively from the same category, here:

lion, dog;

banana, orange

cherries, peach;

peach, grapes

Thus, for this recall list there are 4 repetitions.

Count the number of words recalled correctly. In this case, the number of 11

To compute clustering, the formula is:

Number of repetitions (4) divided by total correct minus 1 (11-1), or

r/n-1; 4/11-1 = 4/10 = .40. This reflects the degree to which children used the categories in the list to organize their recall.

Assignment #5, Young Children's Addition Strategies: Date due: April 27

Interview two or more children between the ages of 4 and 7 years. Play a board game with children, such as "Chutes and Ladders" or "Monopoly Junior" in which moves are computed by throwing two dice. Record the manner in which children figure their moves from the dice (e.g., counting all the numbers on both dice, counting only the numbers on one die, fact retrieval, see pages 331-384 of your text). Present age differences and variability in children's arithmetic strategies.