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This chapter explores the individual differences in cognitive development, focusing on Piaget's stages of development, studies of conservation, the development of cognitive abilities, the importance of knowledge, cognitive aging, psychometrics, factor theories, and different kinds of abilities.
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Cognitive ProcessesPSY 334 Chapter 13 – Individual Differences in Cognition August 28, 2003
Cognitive Development • Humans are born with immature brains. • Brain doubles in size during first year. • Brain size doubles again by puberty. • Much neural development takes place after birth. • Slow physical growth may provide a longer dependence on adults, giving time for the acquisition of knowledge.
Piaget’s Stages • Provides a structure for organizing observations of child behavior. • Currently being revised, corrected and restructured. • Controversy over idea that development progresses in stages rather than as a continuous process.
Studies of Conservation • Knowledge of what properties of the world are preserved under various transformations. • Object permanence – sensorimotor stage • Conservation of quantity, volume, weight changes at 6, the boundary between preoperational and concrete-operational.
What Develops • Two explanations for changes in children’s thinking: • They think better – more working memory. • They know better – more facts. • Probably both occur, due to neural changes: • Increase in synaptic connections. • Myelination increases neural transmission speed.
Memory Space Theory • Case – growing working memory capacity is key to developmental changes. • Some problems require more facts to be kept in memory. • Increased neural speed leads to increased memory capacity. • Practice reduces demands on working memory.
Examples • Noelting’s juice problems: • < 4 – all orange juice must be in one pitcher • 4-5 – pick pitcher with most orange juice • 7-8 – compare OJ with water • 9-10 – compute difference between OJ & water • Kail’s mental rotation problems – mental speed may increase due to practice.
Importance of Knowledge • Chi suggests developmental differences may be knowledge-related. • Kids do worse on memory tasks because they know less about the world. • Chess expert children do better at chess memory, worse on digit span. • Adults more familiar with digits, so do better. • Soccer memory study – only expertise mattered, not grade level.
Cognition and Aging • Decreases in IQ performance scores occur after age 20: • Related to speed of response on tests. • Older adults do better on jobs. • Age-related declines in brain function: • Cell loss, shrinkage & atrophy. • Compensatory growth of remaining cells. • Brain-related degenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s.
Productivity in Old Age • With age, loss of neural function is steadily offset by growth of knowledge. • While the 30s may be the time of peak performance, very high performance frequently continues into 40s & 50s. • Speed of neural processing changes so less information can be held in working memory.
Psychometrics • Measures of performance of individuals on a number of tasks – examination of correlations across such tasks. • IQ Tests – Binet, Stanford-Binet, Wechsler • Mental age vs deviation IQ. • Factor analysis of performance scores: • Attempt to explain intercorrelations among subtests. • Ongoing debate about identifying factors.
Factor Theories • Spearman – one general factor called “g” • Multiple factors: • Thurstone – 3 (verbal, spatial, reasoning) • Guilford – 120 • Cattell’s theory: • Crystallized intelligence (acquired knowledge) – increases with age • Fluid intelligence – decreases with age. • Horn added spatial intelligence to fluid.
Carroll’s Three Strata • Lowest stratum – specific abilities (e.g., be a physicist), not inheritable. • Second stratum – broader abilities (verbal & spatial ability, reasoning, crystallized vs fluid). • Third stratum – correlations among second stratum abilities to form “g”
Kinds of Abilities • Reasoning ability: • Sternberg connects psychometrics to the information-processing approach. • People who score high on IQ tests also perform reasoning steps more quickly. • Verbal ability: • People who recall words more rapidly do better on verbal ability tests. • Working memory capacity is related to verbal ability.
Kinds of Abilities (Cont.) • Spatial ability: • Rate of mental rotation is slower for those with lower spatial ability test scores. • People with high spatial ability may choose to solve a problem spatially, not verbally. • Differences in abilities may result from differences in rates of processing and working-memory capacities. • Unclear whether this is innate or a difference in practice (nature vs nurture).
Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences • Gardner proposed that seven different intelligences are supported by different kinds of knowledge representation: • Separate neural mechanisms. • Separate developmental histories. • Cross-cultural universals in the display of such abilities. • Abilities: linguistic, musical, mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, personal (self-understanding, social).
Critique of Multiple Intelligences • Strong evidence for distinct linguistic and spatial intelligence. • Mathematical intelligence closely related to spatial so may not be distinct. • Remaining intelligences not usually considered cognitive but may be universal. • Gardner argues that intelligence is not unitary and thus hard to compare.
