Child Cognitive Development Lecture Notes

Object Permanence in Infants

• Definition: Understanding that objects exist even when out of sight.
• Development Stage: During the first year of life.
• Example: Peekaboo is engaging because infants haven't fully developed object permanence.
• Observation: Maya's age babies (around 10 months) may look for objects in the last place they found them, not where they saw them being hidden.

Classic Mistakes by Infants

• Example: Simon (10 months) saw a toy placed under a white cloth but looked for it where he last found it, not where it was hidden.

Conservation Task

Liquid Experiment

• Two identical glasses with equal amounts of juice.
• Juice from one glass is poured into a taller, narrower glass.
• Question: Which glass has more juice?
• Common Answer: Taller glass has more juice (appearance-based reasoning).

Coin Experiment

• Two rows of five quarters each, arranged differently.
• Question: Which row has more quarters?
• Common Answer: Longer row has more quarters (appearance-based reasoning).

Fair Sharing Game

• Sharing a snack (graham crackers) between two people.
• Initial Perception: Unequal sharing noticed easily by children.
• Adjusting Perception: Rearranging shares to appear equal can change perception of fairness.

Egocentric Thinking

• Understanding different perspectives by changing viewpoints.
• Experiment: Child describes what they see from their own viewpoint vs. other viewpoints.
• Findings: Difficulty in understanding what another person sees from a different position.

Logical Reasoning and Conditional Rules

• Example Statements:
  • "If you hit a glass with a hammer, the glass will break."
  • "Don’t hit a glass with a hammer."
• Experiment: Applying conditional logic to understand rules.
• Findings:
  • Logical reasoning develops over time.
  • Younger children may struggle with hypothetical and conditional statements.
  • Understanding depends on concrete experiences (e.g., knowing that a hammer can break glass but a feather cannot).