Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a psychology class.
Professor: Ok, each of you is here to learn, to further your cognitive development. But what was the very first thing you learned? Before high school, you knew basic math and language. Before elementary school, you knew how to speak and maybe even how to read, right? Well, how–how does a child first start this process of cognitive development?
Before the eighteenth century, there were, um… a few speculations on what knowledge was already present within a newborn child. Some thought children were born evil, others thought they were naturally good, and still others thought they were a blank slate, waiting to be taught. And… and these theories were based on… well–well, they‘re based on a combination of religion and philosophy, not the scientific processes that I want to talk about today. So–so let’s focus on when childhood development started to be studied scientifically. OK? It–it could be that there is some innate knowledge every child is born with, and it builds on that as it grows up. That’s one theory. Another option is that children are born with, um, with no knowledge, but learn from their environment. And that idea… um, that children learn exclusively from interactions, um… that was the original scientific theory of childhood cognitive development introduced by Jean Piaget.
Jean Piaget hypothesized that there were four cognitive stages that every child had to go through. So… Piaget thought that a newborn would start interacting with his or her environment, learn everything it could at that stage, then move on to the next stage, building on the previous experiences. Everybody understand? While each child could reach these different stages at different ages, Piaget believed that the stages must be completed in order. Modern theories have broadened that to allow for some… for some overlap of the stages. These theories also include the possibility that different domains, like language and mathematics, could advance at different rates. So–so for example, a child could be at stage three of language learning, but only stage one of mathematical reasoning. And this model is still in use and heavily re–relied upon today.
Well, later theories have questioned this progression of stages. Studies have shown that infants—as young as a few months—do have the ability to reason at the supposedly advanced stages. Studies show children separating models of living things from models of inanimate things. They act surprised when an inanimate object moves, but not when a living object moves. They even seem to understand the basic laws of physics. Adults created a room that was half covered with glass, with what appeared to be a drop of a few feet to the room below. At a certain age, children refuse to crawl over the glass floor, believing it would let them fall. But how could they have that knowledge? Presumably, they have never experienced a fall from that height. This inductive reasoning should only exist after years of learning in Piaget’s model. Similarly, infants were shown two solid objects that seemed to approach each other, but stop before colliding, then an illusion of the same two solid objects seeming to move through each other. Infants were more attentive to the apparently impossible situation. Even children as young as five months old! Now, if they haven’t had time to advance through the lower stages, how can they be showing advanced stage reasoning? That’s a hard question to answer, since our knowledge is generally built from the bottom up. I guess I should add that it is very hard to assess a child’s reasoning when it’s less than a few months old, so we don’t have studies on children at the earliest stages of life. But that’s not the main issue here…
Some reasoning, especially with language, seems impossible to learn as completely as infants do with the inputs that they have. Even if you assume they start to hear and learn language while still in the womb, there doesn’t seem to be enough time and exposure to language for an infant to become fluent. How do children understand sentences they have never heard? Some theorize that children must be born with some innate ability to perceive and translate a grammatical structure… sort of a skeleton on which a child can build a language. But how would we test for that? Current scientific thinking is that there must be some mix between innate and staged learning, but we’ll need much more study to say for sure.
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What is the main purpose of the talk? |
Gist-purpose. The primary focus of the lecture is different theories about the cognitive development of children. |
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| ✓ | A To discuss possible ways infants learn |
Correct. The lecture touches on multiple theories and studies related to how children learn. |
| ✗ | B To describe key considerations of learning language |
The lecture is not limited to learning language, but is about childhood learning in general. |
| ✗ | C To explain processes used to test learning in infants |
While studies are discussed, the main purpose is not to talk about the studies, but to talk about what they imply. |
| ✗ | D To discuss why it is so difficult to learn a language after infancy |
No learning after infancy is discussed. Moreover, the lecture is not restricted to languages. |
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Why does the professor ask students about the first thing they learned? |
Organization. This was asked in the first part of the lecture. |
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| ✓ | A To engage students in the topic she is about to discuss |
Correct. This introductory question is never answered, but is used to get students to start thinking about the topic of the lecture—childhood learning. |
| ✗ | B To establish that everyone learns similar things in infancy |
This is never suggested in the lecture. |
| ✗ | C To introduce the difficulty of learning a language |
Language is not brought up until later, and the students’ experience with learning language is never discussed. |
| ✗ | D To illustrate that learning stages can occur at different times for different people |
This is stated later, but not in reference to the students’ experiences. |
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What does the professor imply about some of the theories for how infants begin learning? |
Inference. Several theories are discussed. Piaget’s is the only one discussed in depth, but others are mentioned and dismissed or described as needing further study. |
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| ✗ | A They cannot be scientifically proven or disproven. |
This is too extreme. The professor thinks some of them haven’t yet been proven or disproven, but doesn’t comment on whether they could be. |
| ✓ | B They do not have scientific evidence to support them. |
Correct. This is why she dismisses the theories based on the innate morality of a child. They are based on religion and philosophy, not scientific evidence. |
| ✗ | C They explain only how a child learns language. |
None of the theories focus on any particular learning area. |
| ✗ | D They have been disproven by her research. |
The professor never discusses her own research. |
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The professor mentions a number of theories for early learning methods. Select each of the following that is one of the theories she mentions. |
Connecting Content. The professor mentions a variety of theories about learning throughout the lecture. Most theories mentioned are either dismissed as unproven or are noted as being worthy of further study. |
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| ✓ | a When children are born, they are inherently good. |
Correct. This is dismissed as scientifically unproven, but this theory is presented. |
| ✗ | b Learning occurs at a constant rate over a lifetime. |
This idea is never mentioned in the lecture. |
| ✓ | c Children are born with some innate knowledge. |
Correct. This is presented as a possible explanation for how language learning occurs. |
| ✓ | d Learning occurs in progressive stages. |
Correct. This is Piaget’s theory on how childhood learning occurs. |
| ✗ | e All children master stages of learning at essentially the same time. |
This is contradicted in the lecture. Different stages start and end at different times for each child. |
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How was advanced reasoning studied in infants? |
Detail. The professor mentions several studies conducted to assess advanced reasoning capabilities in children. |
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| ✗ | A By recording how often infants made reasonable decisions |
There was no decision-making testing discussed in the lecture. |
| ✗ | B By observing how children interacted with one another |
This idea was never mentioned in the lecture. |
| ✗ | C By having children repeat the actions of the researchers who conducted the experiments |
This idea was never mentioned in the lecture. |
| ✓ | D By monitoring the attention levels of infants to possible and seemingly impossible events |
Correct. Different objects were moved in front of children, and the children were more engaged in those that seemed to violate the laws of physics. |
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The professor mentioned a study that tested the ability of children to understand a seemingly dangerous fall. What did the researchers conclude from this study? |
Detail. This refers to the study of infants who refused to crawl over a glass floor, believing they would fall. |
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| ✗ | A Infants learn by progressing through different stages of understanding. |
This is Piaget’s theory, but the described study does not support it. |
| ✓ | B Infants sometimes show more advanced reasoning than is suggested by Piaget’s theories. |
Correct. This study showed an understanding of basic laws of physics and advanced reasoning techniques that should only be present at the highest of Piaget’s stages. |
| ✗ | C Infants typically demonstrate reasoning starting at about nine months. |
The age of the children in the study is not mentioned. |
| ✗ | D Advanced reasoning skill development is dependent upon rational thought. |
Rational thought is not mentioned, and there’s no discussion about what the understanding of the situation depends upon. |