Cognition & Development

In Piaget's theory, the process of altering an existing schema to deal with new information that does not fit is called:

• AAssimilation
• BAccommodation✓
• CEquilibration
• DConservation

Answer: Accommodation occurs when new information cannot be fitted into existing schemas, so the schemas must be changed or new ones created. Assimilation, by contrast, is fitting new information into an existing schema without altering it.

A child who fails a conservation-of-liquid task, claiming a tall thin glass holds 'more' than a short wide glass after water is poured across, is most likely in which of Piaget's stages?

• ASensorimotor stage
• BPre-operational stage✓
• CConcrete operational stage
• DFormal operational stage

Answer: Failure to conserve is characteristic of the pre-operational stage (roughly 2 to 7 years), where children are misled by appearance (here, the height of the liquid) and cannot mentally reverse the operation. Conservation is typically mastered in the concrete operational stage.

Piaget and Inhelder's 'three mountains' task was designed to demonstrate that pre-operational children show:

• AObject permanence
• BClass inclusion
• CEgocentrism, an inability to appreciate a scene from another person's viewpoint✓
• DHypothetico-deductive reasoning

Answer: In the three mountains task, young children typically chose the photograph showing their OWN view rather than the doll's, indicating egocentrism: difficulty in decentring and seeing a situation from another's perspective.

In Vygotsky's theory, the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is best defined as the gap between:

• AThe sensorimotor and pre-operational stages
• BAssimilation and accommodation
• CEgocentric speech and inner speech
• DWhat a learner can do alone and what they can achieve with guidance from a more knowledgeable other✓

Answer: The ZPD is the region between a child's current level of independent performance and the higher level they can reach with help from a more knowledgeable other. Learning is most effective when it targets this zone.

Gradually withdrawing support as a learner becomes more competent, so that they take on more of the task themselves, is the essence of which concept associated with Vygotsky's approach?

• AScaffolding✓
• BEquilibration
• CConservation
• DDecentration

Answer: Scaffolding (a term developed by Wood, Bruner and Ross from Vygotsky's ideas) refers to the support a more knowledgeable other provides within the ZPD, which is progressively reduced as the learner's competence grows.

Baillargeon's research using the violation of expectation (VOE) method typically infers infant understanding of the physical world from the fact that infants:

• AReach for a hidden object under a cloth
• BLook reliably LONGER at an 'impossible' event than at a 'possible' one✓
• CImitate an adult's facial expressions
• DPass a false-belief task before the age of two

Answer: In VOE studies, infants are shown possible and impossible events; longer looking at the impossible event is taken to mean it violated their expectations, implying they possess the relevant physical knowledge. Baillargeon used this to argue object permanence appears earlier than Piaget claimed.

Baillargeon's 'drawbridge' and occlusion studies are frequently cited as a challenge to Piaget because they suggest that:

• AObject permanence develops much later than Piaget proposed, around age two
• BInfants have no understanding of the physical world until they can crawl
• CInfants only a few months old show object permanence and physical reasoning, earlier than Piaget's account allowed✓
• DConservation of number is innate from birth

Answer: Baillargeon's findings indicate that infants only a few months old appear surprised by physically impossible events, implying an early-developing understanding of object permanence and physical principles. This challenges Piaget's claim that such understanding emerges late in the sensorimotor stage.

In Selman's levels of perspective-taking, a child who can step outside a two-person interaction to take a third-party 'spectator' view, considering both viewpoints at once, has reached which level?

• ALevel 0: socially egocentric
• BLevel 1: social-informational role-taking
• CLevel 2: self-reflective role-taking
• DLevel 3: mutual role-taking✓

Answer: Selman's Level 3 (mutual role-taking, around 10 to 12 years) is when a child can take a third-party perspective, simultaneously considering their own and another's viewpoint as an outside observer. Level 4 extends this to a wider social-system perspective.

In the Sally-Anne false-belief task (Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith, 1985), a child who correctly says Sally will look for her marble where SHE left it, not where Anne moved it, demonstrates that the child:

• ALacks object permanence
• BPossesses a theory of mind, understanding that Sally holds a false belief✓
• CHas failed to conserve
• DCannot yet use language to describe the scene

Answer: Correctly saying Sally will look where she last saw the marble shows the child understands Sally holds a false belief that differs from reality, evidence of a theory of mind. The study found most children with autism, unlike controls, failed this task.

The mirror neuron system is most strongly associated in developmental psychology with which proposed function?

• AEncoding long-term episodic memories in the hippocampus
• BRegulating circadian rhythms via melatonin release
• CFiring both when an action is performed and when it is observed, supporting imitation, intention-reading and possibly empathy✓
• DProducing speech exclusively through Broca's area

Answer: Mirror neurons, first identified in macaques by Rizzolatti and colleagues, fire both when an animal performs an action and when it observes the same action in another. They are proposed to underlie imitation, understanding others' intentions, and aspects of empathy and social cognition.