week 5: spatial cognition

week 5: spatial cognition

1. different areas of understanding that children have = spatial, social and number

   • what are the processes by which the basic capacities are extended? LANGUAGE is an important means of developing these basic skills into more sophisticated capacities which older children have

2. distinguishing 2 ways in which language alters ability: 1. language alters what we attend to >>> the way in which we use existing abilites, 2. language alters what possible tings we can hold in mind >> new representations

   • colour, whorf = the language we speak fundamentally alters the way in which we conceptualise the world around us.
     • colour space = 3 dimensions, english speakers tend to have 11 basic colour terms. russian speakers have 2 terms for blue. variations across languages
       • Northern Namibia - geographically isolated which means their language had not adopted colour terms from the majority language. only 5 basic distinctions = green-blue-indigo all one colour term. browns-yellows-orange = one term. different types of orange/red

3. What does this do to their cognitive abilites and colour perception? give colour blindness tests to give a basic test of colour discriminations, they performed in the same way monolingual speakers would

   • give someone individual colour blocks and memories it >> later need to distinguish it from other colour blocks, if your performance in this task was only informed by basic visual properties than colour categorisation would be distinguished by language - therefore english speakers would find it easier to distinguish blue and green but Northern Namibian tribe would be able to distinguish between oranges
     • language does not change the distinctions we make - it helps attend to relevant features

4. children and infants have 3 ways of representing spatial framework

   • 1. EGOCENTRIC = coding in relation to own spatial framework, when relation between your body and the thing you're interested in is STABLE this is good e.g. gearstick always to my left
   • 2. LANDMARK BASED = coding spatial relations in terms of land marks e.g. behind the doors - as long as door does not move
   • 3. ALLOCENTRIC = north, south, east, west. an absolute frame of reference

5. distinctive ways of representing space, when do we see these abilities in infants?

   • Y shapes, cannot see either side, must go down the top prongs. Learning trial = finding out your teddy is in either one of the prongs.
     • next time you put the infant in different prong, would expect infant to turn left if they would represent spatial relations
       • would expect the infant to turn right if they could represent spatial representations. if not they would search at random.
         • infant searches to left which is error as they saw the position had changed --> however, it shows the first time they egocentrically code the location of the toy
           • 6-11 months fail = egocentric coding pattern. 16 months pass = update their representations and overcome

6. LANDMARKS - give children a sandpit, 2 landmarks in the pit, infant is placed to the right of the sandpit when the items are being buried and moved to the front and told to retrieve the object

   • this is to rule out egocentric coding, up to 1 year = only use 1 landmark at a time e.g. near the green square gives a radius around the green square. 5 year olds = can use 2 or more landmarks due to improvements in memory development
   • what do adults have that rats and infants lack? getting adults to not use language during the task. verbal shadowing and rhythm shadowing = attentionally demanding.
     • language shadowing = act in the same way as infants and rats, cannot solve the task
     • rhythm shadowing = can still combine landmark and allocentric cues

7. ALLOCENTRIC - Herman and Spelkie - 4 possible locations in a room with 2 short walls and 2 long walls. if you encode in terms of geometry to the room you should be able to encode 1/2 of the time. infants are more likely to search in the geometrically equivalent areas in a room!

   • we coordinate allocentric and landmark cues, e.g. one of the walls coloured = we can discriminate based on the wall colour. The location is defined uniquely >>> infants cannot combine the allocentric and landmark cues; they systematically use the allocentric

8. language is necessary for combining landmark and allocentric information

   • challenged by other species that are able to solve the tasks bby combinging allocentric and landmark without the use of language, fish have more complicates spatial environments (up-down, right-left, back-front)
     • adults and children do combine these cues when the room is much larger and when they are given repeated trials and more specific instructions about what to do (even without langauge)
       • weaker claim = language provides an efficient means of combing landmark and allocentric info - it is not necessary but useful
   • in relation to Unal and Paparagarou 2016 - language does alter what we attend to and what we can represent. infants can encode space in 3 distinctive ways - share this with rats (biologically guided/innate).
     • inflexible and readily combined at early age consistent with these systems being low-level automatic (innate)
     • increased flexibility of spatial reasoning in older children may be due to an ability to combine info from independent spatial coding systems in langauge as well as memory