Cognitive development

Cognitive development

1. Brain development

   • Universal characteristics in newborn babies
     • Inborn reflexes
       • Grasping
       • Sucking
     • Basic abilities
       • Visual
       • Auditory
     • Inned capacity for social interaction
       • Response to human faces
       • Exchange sounds and non-verbal signals
       • Might be due to mirror neurons
   • The brain of a newborn
     • More than a trillion nerve cells, synapses and glial cells
     • The CNS continues to grow
     • There's synaptic growth
       • & an increase in the brain's activity
     • Investigation
       • By looking at the energy demands of brain regions
       • Chunagi 1999
         • PET scan of glucose metabolism
           • Little activity in the cerebral cortex
             • Associated with higher level functioning
           • High activity in the brain stem and thalamus
             • Related to inborn reflexes
           • Activity of the limbic system
             • Amigdala, hippocampus and cingulate cortex
             • Associated with memory, emotional processing, and bonding
             • Infant's capacity to observe and read facial expressions
       • Bachevalier et al. 1999
         • Lesioned brain areas of a newborn monkey
           • It gradually lost the capacity for social behaviour
             • Eye contact decreased
             • Blank facial expressions
             • Similar to children with autism
   • Neuroplasticity
     • Ability of the brain to develop and change in response to the environment

2. Early stages

   • Six to nine months
     • Growth and myelinization
       • Functioning of the frontal lobes and prefrontal areas of the cortex
         • Maturation of the frontal cortex
           • Appears to develop according to a fixed order
             • Might be genetically programmed
       • Growth of the hippocampus (memory) and cerebellum (movement)
         • Ability to engage complex motor behaviour and to learn
   • PET scans of glucose metabolism
     • Increases around the second year of life
       • Due to surplus of synaptic connections
         • Retain synapses that are used and eliminate those that are not
           • Pruning
     • Then, excedeeds adult levels
       • Drops again during adolescence
   • Middle childhood
     • Growth of the frontal lobe
       • Case 1999
         • Pattern of brain changes
         • The lobe coordinates activities of other brain regions
           • More complex behaviors become possible
         • Evidence
           • Frontal lobe damage makes impossible to plan ahead or stick to plans

3. Early stages

   • Adolescence
     • Abstract thinking
     • Reorganization and myelinization of higher brain centres
       • Faster procesing
       • Higher level of cognitive activities
         • Strategic planning
     • The prefrontal cortex develops at the latest
       • Controls impulses
       • Giedd 2004
         • Longitudinal study
           • MRI scans every second year
         • Normal children
         • 95% of the structure of the brain is formed at 5 or 6 years old
         • The prefrontal cortex grows before puberty
           • Hypothesis
             • Different parts of the brain mature at different times
               • Does not show a relationship between behaviour and brain structures
               • Interpretation
                 • Problem in behaviour in adolescents is due to their immature brains

4. Evaluation of brain development theories

   • There's no cause effect relationship between neuroscientific findings of maduration and behaviour
     • Knowledge is limited

5. Piaget's theory of cognitive development

   • CHildren think differently from adults
   • Maturation and social environment are both important
     • Constructionist approach
       • Interaction with the environment changes people
         • Cognitive development is dependent of interaction
   • The essence of knowing is activity
     • Children get to know by physical and mental manipulation of objects
     • Strategies in thinking and problem solving reflect different stages of cognitive development