Induction is an important cognitive ability in which inferences extend knowledge beyond the available information (Farrar, Raney, & Boyer, 1992). For instance, knowing an object belongs to a specific category can lead to beliefs that it shares additional properties with other category members. This can be crucial to learning and interacting with the world around us and can be considered one of the most basic functions of living creatures. Induction appears early in development (Sloutsky, Kloos, & Fisher, 2007). Preschool children have been shown to expect categories to promote induction and they use category membership to predict underlying similarities among objects – even when perceptual similarity would lead to a different prediction (Gelman, 1988). For example, a study conducted by Gelman and Markman with 3- and 4-year-olds, children were shown two objects, a tropical fish and a dolphin, and were taught a new fact about each that one breathes under water and the other pops up to breathe (Gelman, 1988). They were then shown a third object, a shark, and had to infer which of the facts about the first two objects would be applied to the new third object. However, the third object looked like the dolphin, but given the same category as the tropical fish.
According to Bornstein & Arterberry (2010), categories are especially valuable in infancy and early childhood, when new objects, events, and people are encountered, because without the ability and proclivity to categorize, children would have to learn to respond anew to each novel entity they experience. Examining whether children value the same sample of characteristics as adults do when solving induction problems provides a window into how inductive abilities develop (Rhodes,...
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Rhodes, M., Gelman, S. A., & Brickman, D. (2008). Developmental changes in the consideration of sample diversity in inductive reasoning. Journal of Cognition and Development, 9, 112-143. doi: 10.1080/15248370701836626
Sloutsky, V. M. & Fisher, A. V. (2004). Induction and categorization in young children: A similarity-based model. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 133, 166-188. doi: 10.1037/0096-3445.133.2.166
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According to Jean Piaget, a Swiss developmental psychologist, children build their cognitive world through a series of stages. The way he saw it, children understand the world and make sense of their experience by using schemas or a mental concept. In Paget’s view, two processes needed to happen in order to develop a schema: assimilation and accommodation (King 298). With assimilation we take in new information and apply them into our already existing knowledge. For example, my 4 year old niece believed that dogs weren’t animals. She was told they were dogs so every time I would see a dog and call it an animal she used to say “No! That’s a doggie.” On the other hand we have accommodation which is an adjustment of schemas that are changed because
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Piaget proposed that cognitive development from infant to young adult occurs in four universal and consecutive stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations (Woolfolk, A., 2004). Between the ages of zero and two years of age, the child is in the sensorimotor stage. It is during this stage the child experiences his or her own world through the senses and through movement. During the latter part of the sensorimotor stage, the child develops object permanence, which is an understanding that an object exists even if it is not within the field of vision (Woolfolk, A., 2004). The child also begins to understand that his or her actions could cause another action, for example, kicking a mobile to make the mobile move. This is an example of goal-directed behavior. Children in the sensorimotor stage can reverse actions, but cannot yet reverse thinking (Woolfolk, A., 2004).
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Representations allow cognitive models to work as they are the ‘substance’ the models work on. The models for discussion share common features but are equally differentiated from each other at some level. Before looking at each of the theories mental representations it would be helpful to take a snapshot of the model structures and approaches to learning and processing to gain a fuller understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.
Siegler, R. & Alibali, M. (2005). Children’s thinking 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-
Singer, D.G. & Revenson, T.A. (1997). A Piaget Primer: How a Child Thinks (Revised Edition). Madison, Connecticut: International Universities Press Inc.
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development describes his belief that children try to actively make sense of the world rather than simply absorbing knowledge as previously thought. Piaget’s theory claims that as children grow and develop they experience four different cognitive stages of life. As a child grows through each stage they not only learn new information but the way he or she thinks also changes. “In other words, each new stage represents a fundamental shift in how the child thinks and understands the world” (Hockenbury, page 368).The first stage of Piaget’s theory, known as the sensorimotor stage, begins at birth and continues on until about age 2. As the name suggest, this stage is when children begin to discover