Environmental factors play a huge role in cognitive development
Rats raised in “enriched” environments with other rats and lots of toys develop larger brains (greater cortical mass) than those raised in “impoverished” environments
Similarly, there is evidence to suggest that a stimulating environment is more likely to facilitate development of a child’s neural connections
Most brain development occurs between the ages of 0 and 2
Less than 3% of general population are intellectually challenged, but 10% to 30% of those in lower socioeconomic groups – research indicates that this is primarily due to environmental factors
Researchers found that pioneering day-care program at the University of North Carolina (Smart Start Initiative) cut incidence of intellectual disability by as much as 80% among kids whose unstimulating home environment put them at high risk for low IQ
By age 3, privileged children have heard 30 million more words than those who are underprivileged
Postmortem brain analyses reveal that highly educated people die with more synapses (17% more in one study) than those less educated due to greater neural development during younger years
Early experience of neglect can result in cognitive as well as social deficits
Mice that are not licked by their mothers as pups are more prone to developing learning and memory impairments later in life
Premature infants that are physically stroked in incubators show superior cognitive as well as physical and emotional development
It is estimated that simply stroking premature infants in neonatology wards is saving hospitals across the country approximately a billion dollars a year!
Comparison of brain of neglected Romanian infant raised in orphanage with that of a typical American infant
Stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it actually is
Draw a line to show how the water line would look.
50% or male undergraduates and 75% of female undergraduates failed this “formal operations” test! (Sholl & Liben, 1995)
Later research found that children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized
Figure A shows a bottle with some water in it. In Figure B, the bottle has been tilted.
Understates contribution of the social world
Does not explain underlying mechanisms
As mentioned, research has indicated that children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized; Ex: Object permanence:
Piaget thought understanding of object permanence developed in infants around the age of 8 months
However, Renée Baillargeon argued that Piaget’s finding was rooted in lack of motor ability in infants since experiments required infant to manually search for the hidden object by pulling a cover off to reveal the object
More recent studies have indicated that infants as young as 3.5 months of age and perhaps younger understand that objects continue to exist when hidden, that they can’t just disappear
Babies show surprise when object seems to just disappear, demonstrating rudimentary understanding of object permanence
Spot of red rouge is surreptitiously placed on child’s nose, then child is placed in front of mirror
15-month-olds respond by touching own nose to feel or rub off rouge
A younger child touches mirror or tries to look behind it to find red-nosed child
The only other animals capable of passing rouge test are other apes – chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, gorillas – dolphins, orcas, elephants, and magpies
Pretend play, which typically emerges around 14 months, is considered a major milestone in cognitive and social development
Tends to follow a standard trajectory:
Self-directed: Pretending to carry out familiar activity, e.g., drinking from empty cup
Other-directed: Pretending that some object has properties it doesn’t have, e.g., pretending that a doll is saying something
Object substitution: Pretending that some object is a different object, e.g., that banana is a telephone
In pretend play, some of infant’s primary representations of the world and other people become “decoupled” from their usual functions while preserving their ordinary meaning
Both pretend play and mindreading involve metarepresentation – use of a representation to represent another representation, rather than referring directly to the world
Children with autism spectrum disorder show impoverished pretend play, as well as impairments in mindreading
One of the best-known tests for mindreading ability
Tests whether children are able to abstract away from their own knowledge to understand that someone else can have different (and mistaken) beliefs about the world
Container test
Child is shown a familiar kind of container (M&Ms bag) that contains an unexpected object (marble)
Asked to predict what other person will think is inside
False belief task tests children’s theory of mind mechanism (TOMM) – their ability to identify and reason about other people’s complex mental states, such as beliefs, desires, hopes, and fears
Pretend play emerges during the second year of life, but children do not typically pass the false belief test until they are nearly 4
Indicates that the BELIEVES operation is much harder to acquire than the PRETENDS operation
However, research by Kristine Onishi and Renée Baillargeon demonstrated that children may develop an implicit understanding of false belief well before age 4
Experiment similar to false belief displacement task measured looking time in 15- month old infants
Results indicated that children looked significantly longer – indicating surprise – when actor’s behavior violated expectations that someone with an understanding of false belief would have
Suggests that children may develop an implicit understanding of false belief by 15 months, but that explicit understanding, involving explicit conceptual abilities manifested in verbal responses and explicit reflection, develops later
TOMM (theory of mind mechanism) is the end point of the development of mindreading, but there are several stepping stones on the way
High-level mindreading is a complex phenomenon that depends upon a complex system of lower-level mechanisms that emerge at different stages of cognitive development
The intentionality detector: is responsible for perceptual sensitivity to purposeful movements
The eye direction detector: makes it easier to identify where other people’s attention is focused
The emotion detector: gives a basic sensitivity to emotions and moods, as revealed in facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.
These first three basic components of mindreading are typically in place by the time the infant is 9 months old
In addition, the shared attention mechanism (SAM): occurs when infants look at objects (and take pleasure in looking at objects) because
They see that another person is looking at that object
I see (Mother sees the cup) OR
They see that the other person sees that they are looking at the object
Mother sees (I see the cup)
This requires infant to be able to embed representations – to represent that an agent is representing someone else’s representation
Makes possible a range of coordinated social behaviors and collaborative activities
Children with autism spectrum disorder have difficulties with this type of joint attention
There is a strong correlation between severity of social impairments and inability to engage in joint attention
Attunement between caregiver and child – child’s understanding that caregiver knows how he feels – is critical for normal development
From SAM emerges the empathizing system (TESS), which is responsible for affective responses to other people’s mood and emotions (as opposed to simply identifying them)
In Baron-Cohen’s model, TESS is a component of TOMM, but he also acknowledges that TESS and TOMM are distinct and can come apart, e.g., in psychopathy
Psychopaths can be very good at working out what is going on in other people’s minds
According to criminal psychologist, Robert Hare (Baibak & Hare, 2007):
About 1% of general population meets clinical criteria for psychopathy
Around 3-4% of CEOs meet criteria
More recent study by forensic psychologist Nathan Brooks indicated that around 21% of CEOs meet criteria for psychopathy, the same percentage as for prison inmates
Ability of psychopaths to do well in business is due in part to their ability to read others accurately, as well as their charm, ruthlessness, and ability to thrive on chaos
Many cognitive scientists think there is a dedicated theory of mind system responsible for identifying and reasoning about other people’s beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes
Evidence for this view is provided by neuroimaging studies that have identified a number of brain areas that show increased activation during mindreading tasks, including
In contrast, simulationists think that mindreading is carried out by “ordinary” information-processing systems that are co-opted for mindreading
According to standard simulationism, we understand the psychological states of others by analogy with our own psychological states
Research indicates that medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) plays an important role in self-reflection, lending support to this theory
Radical simulationism holds that mindreading does not involve representing other people’s psychological states but, rather, representing the world from their perspective
Neurocognitive research has found that the same mechanism that mediates the experience of a particular emotion is recruited when a participant recognizes that emotion in someone else
For instance, brain-injured patients show paired deficits – in problems experiencing relevant emotions and in identifying emotions in others
Fear
S.M., a patient with damage to amygdala on both sides of the brain does not experience fear and is also significantly impaired in her ability to identify expression of fear in others (Adolphs & Trannel, 2000)
Anger
Neurotransmitter dopamine plays an important role in experience of anger
In rats, level of aggression can be directly manipulated by raising/lowering rat’s dopamine level
In humans, temporary blockage of dopamine production using sulpiride causes selective impairment in recognition of expression of anger (Lawrence, Goerendt & Brooks, 2007)
Disgust
Neuroimaging studies have shown that the insula is area of brain most associated with experience and recognition of disgust
N.K., a patient with damage to the insula and basal ganglia, has severe difficulty both in experiencing and recognizing disgust in other (Calder, Keane, Manes et al., 2000)
Damage to the somatosensory cortex severely compromises people’s ability to recognize and identify facial expressions (Kragel & LaBar, 2016)
Theory that when we see a facial expression of an emotion, we unconsciously imagine ourselves making that expression and that is what helps us to identify the expression
Injections of Botox impaired people’s ability to read facial emotions, as well as to experience emotions (Lewis, M.B., 2018; Neal & Chartrand, 2011; Havas, Glenberg, Gutowski et al., 2010)
Mirror neurons: neurons located in premotor area of frontal lobe that provide a neural basis for observational learning
Seeing a loved one’s pain triggers activity in many of the same brain regions as those activated in the person actually experiencing the pain (Iacoboni)
Researchers have identified a set of neurons in the premotor cortex that lights up when participants hear someone munching on potato chips or ripping paper
Same neurons flash when participants perform similar actions themselves
People who display particularly strong activity in response to sound cues alone score higher on a questionnaire gauging their ability to put themselves in another person’s shoes (Gazzola, Aziz-Zadeh, & Keysers, 2006)
Early research indicated that ASD is associated with impairments in emotion perception and empathy
Empathizing-systemizing theory (Baren-Cohen, 2009)
People may be classified on the basis of their scores along two dimensions:
Empathizing: reading facial expressions and gestures
Systemizing: understanding things according to rules or laws, as in mathematical and mechanical systems
Individuals with ASD are more likely to to score low on empathy and high on systemizing
Also, parents and close relatives of those with ASD score higher on systemizing
Other research indicating impairments in emotion perception and empathy in ASD
Research has found atypical function in the occipital gyrus, fusiform gyrus, and amygdala, as well as in mirror networks, during face perception in those with ASD (Spezio, Adolphs, Hurley et al., 2007)
Individuals with ASD primarily show deficient performance on face perception when those faces display emotional expressions (rather than a neutral expression)
Also, eye-tracking studies have found that, whereas control participants fixate on major features of the face that convey emotions, such as the eyes, a majority of the time, those with ASD tend to fixate on portions of the face that do not contain core facial features
A new theory, however, proposes that the fundamental problem in ASD is not social deficiency or lack of empathy, but on the contrary, a hypersensitivity to experience, which induces an overwhelming fear response(Patil, Melsbach, Hennig-Fast et al., 2016; Markram, Rinaldi, & Markram, 2007)
“I can walk into a room and feel what everyone is feeling. The problem is that it all comes in faster than I can process it.”
Follow-up neuroimaging research has indicated that in children with ASD may show impairments in performance on face perception tests and reduced activity in fusiform gyrus primarily because they are avoiding looking at people’s eyes due to the discomfort and anxiety they feel when they do that
In the original studies, children with autism – who are highly sensitive to environmental stimuli – were placed in a deafening, claustrophobia-inducing MRI tube and instructed to perform tasks involving perception of faces
It’s likely they either simply stared unfocused into space to try to calm themselves or just shut their eyes until the whole ordeal is over (Davidson)
Follow-up study was done in which children were outfitted with eye-tracking goggles while in fMRI; Asked to classify faces as emotional or neutral
Children with autism classified about 85% of faces correctly
Non-autistic controls had a 98% accuracy rate
Children with autism also showed diminished activation in the fusiform gyrus
However, children with autism spent an average of 20% less time looking into the eyes of the faces in the pictures compared with controls
This explained virtually all of the variation in how activated the fusiform region was
Children with autism also evidenced greater activity in the amygdala during the face perception task
This was similarly correlated (negatively) with gaze fixation
Looking at faces made these children profoundly uncomfortable, even fearful
Only by looking away could they stop this onslaught – which is what they did (Dalton, Nacewicz, Johnstone et al., 2005)
The earlier children start reading books with their families, the better their test scores later
6-year-olds given 6 weeks of music lessons (keyboard or voice) or drama lessons
Music group showed greater increases in full scale IQ (about 4 points) than those in drama and control groups
Drama group showed substantial improvements in adaptive social behavior that were not evident in the music group (Mol & Bus, 2011) (Schellenberg, 2004)
Research has found that exposure to infectious diseases around time of birth is a better predictor of IQ than education
Everyone has retroviruses in their bodies, but the body normally works hard to keep them under tight control
However, infections by agents like toxoplasma, herpes, or the Epstein-Barr virus around the time of birth destabilizes the defense system
The retrovirsuses pour into the newborn’s blood and brain fluid, triggering a huge immune response that causes inflammatory cytokines to flood the system…
Active forms of retroviruses found in 49% of those with schizophrenia, compared with just 4% of normal controls (Perron, Mekaoui, Bernard et al., 2008)
John Stuart Mill: Child prodigy; took walks with father every morning during which he summarized what he had learned the previous day
Age 3: reading Greek philosophy, Plato and Herodotus, in original
Age 8: reading Cicero, Virgil in Latin; responsible for teaching younger sibs Latin
Age 12: mastered calculus
Age 20: nervous breakdown
Virginia Axline’s Dibs: In Search of Self
Age 3: psychologists thought he was intellectually disabled/autistic
Given intensive play therapy
Turned out that he was very, very bright – scored at genius level on IQ tests
Parents were overachievers who had pushed him so hard to learn so much at such a young age that he basically just shut down
Pushing a child too hard can backfire!
On the other hand, there are kids who push their parents i.e. Arjun Ayyangar:
By the time he was 2 years old, he could…
Name all the US presidents; identify all the states and their capitals, as well as countries around the world and their flags
Name 80 symbols of elements from the periodic table
Calculate squares and square roots
In addition, he was learning German from his father, Spanish from his mother, French and ASL from his cousin; and four Indian dialects from his grandmother
His parents didn’t think there was anything unusual about any of this until they started talking with the neighbors… “Arjun wants to learn something new everyday. He would get bored and cry if we didn’t teach him things.”
He’s now a 22-year-old musical prodigy who regularly performs for charity fundraisers as well as in piano competitions –
http://www.thekidshalloffame.com
“In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work… This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment” – Carol Dweck
Research by Blackwell and Dweck (2007) on students who were predominantly minority and low achieving
Control group was taught study skills
Experimental group got study skills and a special module on how intelligence can be improved that was taught in two lessons totaling 50 minutes
Those who got the special module showed dramatic improvement in study skills and grades
They pushed themselves harder
They tried new things
This very brief intervention basically reversed the students’ longtime trend of decreasing academic scores
The kids who had cultural reasons to be anxious about their skills were the ones most affected by the message, e.g., girls and math
Recent research has found that
Programs to develop growth mindset are most beneficial in students with low socioeconomic status or who are academically at risk (Sisk, Burgoyne, Sun et al., 2018)
Low income students are less likely to hold a growth mindset than their wealthier peers
However, low income students who exhibit a growth mindset show academic performance as high as that of fixed mindset students from higher income brackets (Claro, Paunescu, & Dweck, 2016)
Parents and teachers with growth mindset do not necessarily pass that on
A sustained focus on the process of learning is critical for developing growth mindset (Haimovitz & Dweck, 2017)
Does praising kids boost their confidence and increase their likelihood of success?
85% of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart
But a growing body of research strong suggests that giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming
It might actually be causing it…
Study by Carol Dweck and Lisa Blackwell
Fifth graders were given a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of fairly easy puzzles
Researchers told each student their score, then gave them a single line of praise
Half the children were praised for their intelligence: “You must be smart at this”
Half were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard”
Researchers used just a single line of praise to see how sensitive children were
Students were given a choice of test for the second round, either…
A test that would be more difficult than the first – researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting these puzzles; OR
An easy test, just like the first
Results:
Of those praised for their effort, 90% chose the harder set of puzzles
Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test
The “smart” kids took the cop-out
Final round: easy test like the first
Those who had been praised for their effort significantly improved on their first score—by about 30%
Those who’d been told they were smart did worse than they had at the very beginning—by about 20%
What happened? If children who had been labeled “smart” tried hard and failed, they would lose their “smart” label, so better not to try hard
Another problem with praising ability: image maintenance becomes the primary concern
Over-praised kids are more competitiveand more interested in tearing others down
Students were given two puzzle tests (Dweck)
Between the first and the second, they were offered a choice:
Learning a new puzzle strategy for the second test OR
Finding out how they did compared with other students on the first test
Students praised for their intelligence chose to find out their class rank, rather than use the time to prepare for the second test
When ego-boosting parents exclaim “Great job!” not just the first time a young child puts on his shoes but every single morning he does this, the child learns to feel that everything he does is special… (Lori Gottlieb)
What starts off as healthy self-esteem can quickly morph into a self-absorption and sense of entitlement that looks a lot like narcissism
As adults, they don’t like being told by a boss that their work might need improvement
They feel insecure if they don’t get a constant stream of praise
In general, it’s best to give specific, rather than general, praise
“Really impressive how much effort you put into getting that ball”
Reason for difference: older cohort from era in which people generally lesseducated, less affluent, and raised in larger families
Variability spread of scores in intellectual function greater in older adults than in younger adults
Decline greatest in people with low verbal ability
Age is less a predictor of intelligence than is proximity to death
The good news: Studies have consistently found that there is a small group of people who do not show stress-induced psychological/physical deterioration as they age!
Comparison of brain of neglected Romanian infant raised in orphanage with that of a typical American infant
