Week 10

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Week 10

• Problem Solving

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Problem Solving

• GROUND
• FEET
• FEET
• FEET
• FEET
• FEET
• FEET

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Problem Solving

• What is it? Goal-directed, means-end behaviours
• When can we do it?
• 8 months (Piagetobject retrieval)
• 7 months (Diamond)
• 4 months (Baillargeon)
• BUTHave to make problem relevant and interesting!

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Topics

• Inducing rules
• Planning
• Reasoning by analogy
• Formal reasoning
• Bilingualism II

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Inducing Rules in an Oddity task

• One of these things is not like the other

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• One of these things is not like the other
• Pike
• Plate
• Pleather

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• One of these things is not like the other
• Piaget
• Information Processing
• Connectionism

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Inducing Rules in oddity tasks

• Kids can learn to do this at a very young age
  with concrete objects
• Move from needing hints (lt6), to concrete items
  (6), to more abstract sets of items
• Adults typically get it on their own
• WCST eg

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Sieglers Theory

• Believes that all of cognitive development can be
  explained by improvement in problem solving
  abilities, with increasingly powerful use of
  rules

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Scale Problem
What way would the scale tilt?
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Sieglers Theory

• Believes that all of cognitive development can be
  explained by improvement in problem solving
  abilities, with increasingly powerful use of
  rules
• Used Rule-Assessment approach to determine what
  rules children were using

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Sieglers Theory

• Predicted 4 identifiable rules that could be used
• If weight is same, balance If different, side
  with more weights goes down
• Same as 1, but if weight is equal, then farthest
  from center goes down
• Can use both above, but if there is a conflict
  (more weights on side that is closer to middle),
  then guess
• If situation above arises, calculate torque
  (weight X distance), and side with greater torque
  will go down

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Rule 1 Rule 2 Rule 3 Rule 4
Balance 100 100 100 100
Weight 100 100 100 100
Distance 0 balance 100 100 100
Conflict-W 100 100 33 (chance) 100
Conflict-D 0 right down 0 right down 33 (chance) 100
Conflict-B 0 right down 0 right down 33 (chance) 100
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Conflict - Weight
Balance
Weight
Conflict - Distance
Conflict - Balance
Distance
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Sieglers Theory of problem solving

• Adaptive Strategy Choice Model
• All 4 strategies are available at all times
• They compete to be used
• Younger more perceptual
• Applies to many other aspects of problem solving

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Card Sorting TaskPre-switch Condition
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Card Sorting TaskPost-switch Condition
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Following RulesCognitive Control and Complexity
Theory

• Devised by Zelazo and colleagues
• 2-year-olds can sort cards by 1 rule, but not 2
• 2 ½ can sort by concrete categories but not
  abstract
• 3 years can sort a deck into 2 boxes, but cant
  switch into opposite boxes (DCCS)
• Show an Abulic Dissociation

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The CCC

• Perseverate on pre-switch if
• rules repeated on every single trial
• after only one trial
• regardless of shape or colour on card
• regardless of order
• Why?

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The CCC Rule Hierarchy
If colour game and
If shape game and
Blue
Red
Circle
Square
Then here
Then here
Then here
Then here
Cannot reflect on rule system as a whole and use
it all.
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Planning (A kind of problem-solving)

• 3 characteristics of planning
• Occurs in novel and complex situations
• We plan opportunistically, in an abstract way,
  with gaps in the plan so as to revise as we go
  along
• Planning has both costs and benefits, in that it
  saves time, but is cognitively demanding

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Planning (A kind of problem-solving)

• Children have trouble planning ahead until the
  age of 5
• 5 reasons why
• Inhibitory failure
• Tend to act impulsively, rather be quick than
  correct
• Planning seen as difficult and time-consuming
• Not always rewarded for it
• Just take task for what it is, fun!
• E.g. Tower of Hanoi

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• 3-year-olds can solve two disc problems, but just
  cheat if they confront barrier
• Can solve longer problems with increasing age
• Older children know to establish subgoals
• Even at age 6, have a hard time moving away from
  main goal when completing subgoal

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Reasoning by Analogy

• Examples
• Your brain as a computer
• RiceSake Grape??????????
• CarRoad Boat??????
• Bird Nest Dog??????

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Analogical Reasoning

• Goswami Can do so from very young
• Relational Primacy Hypothesis (Chen, Sanchez,
  Campbell, 1997)
• 29 solved 1st problem, 43 solved the 2nd, and
  67 solved the 3rd

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Factors affecting Analogical Reasoning

• Relational Shift
• Shift from focus on perceptual features to focus
  on relational similarities
• Knowledge
• What we know can help us
• Eg. Goswamis Three little bears task
• Metacognition
• Training improves performance
• Eg. Brown Kane

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Formal Reasoning

• Where form of argument and logical, not actual,
  truth must prevail
• This is very difficult until teens, sometimes
  beyond (Piaget was right!)
• We use syllogisms to examine this form of logic

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Formal Reasoning Examples

• If there is a cow, then there are horns.
• There is a cow
• There are horns
• True or false?

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Formal Reasoning examples

• If there is a cow then there are horns.
• There is no cow.
• There are no horns.
• True or false?

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Formal Reasoning

• Adults
• go through all possible combinations of
  conditions to arrive at the correct answer
• lt 10 or 11
• children fail to consider all possibilities
• But we can all do badly on false implication
  conditions!
• However, sometimes young children can solve these
  syllogisms

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Hawkins study

• 3 kinds of syllogism
• Congruent with reality
• Bears have big teeth, animals with big teeth
  cant read books. Do bears read books?
• Incongruent with reality
• Glasses bounce when they fall, everything that
  bounces is made of rubber. Are glasses made of
  rubber?
• Fantasy
• All Zaphods are plaid. Plaid things have webbed
  feet. Do Zaphods have webbed feet?

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Hawkins study

• 4- and 5-year-olds can do congruent syllogism
• But not incongruent couldnt ignore what they
  know to be true
• They all did well on the fantasy items

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• Relate childrens problem solving to other
  cognitive developmental featsmove away from
  perceptual towards conceptual, can handle more
  and more info with age

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Bilingualism II

• Remember No reliable effects of a second
  language on any forms of actual language
  development
• Effects are seen on metalinguistic tasks
• Sun/Moon
• Grammaticality
• Moving Word

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Bilingual children and problem solving

• What do these tasks have in common?
• They all contain some kind of distracting
  information!
• There are no differences on tasks with no
  distracting information
• Move away from language to lower-level cognitive
  processes

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Bialystok Majumder, 1998

• Piagets Water Level task
• Contains misleading info
• Block Design
• Contains misleading info
• Noelting Juice task
• Does not contain misleading info
• Children were English, Chinese-English, and
  Bengali-English

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Water Level Problem
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Block Design Task
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Noelting Juice Task
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Results of Tasks
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Card Sorting TaskPre-switch Condition
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Card Sorting TaskPost-switch Condition
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Mean number correct in Post-Switch
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Bialystok Codd (1997)

• Towers Task (Duplo VS Lego)
• Contains distracting info
• Sharing Task
• Does not contain distracting info

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Towers Task Congruent Condition
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Towers TaskCongruent Condition 2
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Towers TaskCongruent Condition 3
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Towers TaskIncongruent Condition
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Sharing Task

• Children are told
• Here are 2 friends. Here are some cookies. Your
  job is to give everyone some cookies, and you
  have to make sure you all have the same number of
  cookies. Make sure you count them out!

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Results

• (Surprise) Bilingual children outperformed the
  monolingual children on the incongruent
  conditions of the Towers task
• Both groups did the same on the congruent
  conditions as well as on the sharing task

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Simon Effect

• Stimuli contain target and position cues, and
  subjects must ignore position
• Simon effect is RT cost when position leads to
  the incorrect solution

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When you see a red square, press the button on
the left.When you see a green square, press the
button on the right.
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Simon Task by Group
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Features of Tasks Showing Bilingual Advantage

• Misleading cue
• Choice between (apparently) valid options
• Problem domain irrelevant

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What is the advantage?

• Bilingual children excel in situations where
  there are 2 pieces of conflicting information,
  one very salient, but incorrect, and one less
  salient, but correct
• They do not excel if the task is too difficult,
  or if there is no conflicting information
  inherent in display

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Interpretation of Advantage

• 2 languages are on line at all times
• Must suppress one to use the other
• These children have continual life long practice
  in cognitive inhibition!
• These effects are manifest throughout the
  lifespan, and may even even help delay cognitive
  aging (Bialystok, Craik, Klien, Viswanathan,
  2004)
• MEG evidence