Preface

How does a child make sense of her world? Every day, children are exposed to a plethora of stimulation, only little of which has apparent structure. Take visual stimulation, for example: With every motion of the eyes, the head, or the body, the retinal image changes – at least to some extent. Add to that the changes in apparent size and orientation due to object motion, changes in lightening, and changes that occur though the actions of others Yet, even babies learn to perceive stabilities in the environment, learn to make predictions about their surroundings, and learn to control situations through their own actions. At the center of this impressive feat is a child's ability to connect separate pieces of information into larger wholes. The resulting pattern of Gestalt makes it possible for children to distinguish relevant from irrelevant stimulation, and as a result, ignore stimulation that is potentially overwhelming. In short, it allows children to make sense of their surrounding (cf., Thagard, 2000).

The mental process of linking isolated events into overarching patterns of Gestalts, despite appearing trivial on some levels, is not well understood. How do children connect individual events spontaneously without any top-down guidance? How does the rate of linking events change over the course of development? And how is it possible to tune out some stimulation, while still being open to that which yields learning and development? These are only some of the many questions in the area of children's learning and cognition that have eluded a clear answer. This difficulty in generating a clear answer has its roots both in theory and empirical data.

On the theoretical level, the area of cognitive development has experienced something of a vacuum, ever since Piaget's stage theory was challenged. Challenges pertained not only to the specific time course of concept development (e.g., underestimating infant abilities), but also to having to explain substantial performance variability as a function of seemingly irrelevant task details. Other mainstream theories did not fare much better in terms of shedding light on how children make sense of their surrounding. This is because they traced the emergence of a knowledge organization to the presence of some already existing knowledge (cf., Spelke et al., 1992), leading to an infinite regress of explanations (cf., Juarrero, 1999). A more complete theory of learning and cognitive development would have to explain the emergence of a knowledge Gestalt without reducing it to yet another knowledge Gestalt. Such theories, geared towards explaining self-organization of coherent patterns (e.g., Jensen, 1998), provide promising tools for developmental scientists to investigate the dynamic processes underlying cognition and

#### XII Preface

learning (cf., e.g., Stephen et al., 2009; Thelen & Smith, 1994). However, they have not found their way into mainstream cognitive development (e.g., Siegler, 1998).

In addition to lacking a powerful theory on children's learning and cognition, progress in understanding children's sense-making has been slow due to issues with empirical data. Data collection with children is more time consuming and expensive than with adults. And methods are limited by children's interest, competence, attention span, and willingness to follow instructions. These factors are at least partially responsible for the fact that far more publications merely document the time course of a child's concept, not the nature of processes that give rise to these concepts. Given this state of affairs, the topic on children's learning and cognition is still in its beginnings, leading to the collection of essays published in this volume.

As a whole, the essays address theoretical and empirical issues related to children's learning and cognition. The first essay, titled *Learning in Cognitive Niches*, treats the process of sense making on a theoretical level, discussing the complexity of factors that give rise to children's learning. It is followed by an essay, titled *Using the Dynamics of a Person-Context System to Describe Children's Understanding of Air Pressure,* that applies ideas from complexity science and dynamics-systems theory to children's learning about science. The next four essays summarize and synthesize already published findings, in an effort to go beyond individual viewpoints and present a more nuanced picture of children's sense making. In particular, two of these summaries, *Preschoolers Learning Science: Myth or Reality?* and *The Emergence of Scientific Reasoning*, focus on children's ability to make sense of their physical environment. The essay *Cognition and the Child Witness: Understanding the Impact of Cognitive Development in Forensic Contexts* seeks to shed light on children's sense making relevant to forensic issues. And the essay *Beyond the Black-and-White of Autism: How Cognitive Performance Varies with Context* ventures in the area of autism, a disorder that demonstrates atypical processes of combining pieces of information. The final two essays provide original data to add to the discussion of what factors affect cognitive functioning. In particular, the essay *Cognitive Fitness in Young Adult Video Game Players* seeks to re-assess the often-assumed relation between video gaming and various aspects of thinking, memory, intelligence, and visual-spatial abilities. And the essay *Impact of Moving Away from Home on Undergraduate Metacognitive Development* explicitly connects life circumstances to the ability to monitor and control one's thinking. Together, the collection of essays are a further step towards understanding the process of sense making as children and young adults interact with their environment.

> **Heidi Kloos** Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati OH, USA

> > **Bradley J. Morris** Kent State University, USA

Preface IX

**Cited References**

Press, Cambridge.

Jensen H.J. (1998). *Self-Organized Criticality. Emergent Complex Behavior in Physical and*

Juarrero A. (1999). *Dnamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System*. MIT

Siegler, R. S. (1998). *Children's thinking* (3rd ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Spelke, E. S., Breinlinger, K., Macomber, J. & Jacobson, K. (1992). Origins of

Stephen, D. G., Dixon, J. A., & Isenhower, R. W. (2009). Dynamics of representational change: Entropy, action, and cognition. *Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human*

Thelen E. and Smith L.B. (1994). *A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of*

Thagard, P. (2000). *Coherence in thought and action.* Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

*Biological Systems*. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

knowledge. *Psychological Review, 99,* 605–32.

*Cognition and Action.* MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

*Perception & Performance, 35,* 1811-1822.

**Joseph L. Amaral** University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

#### **Cited References**

VIII Preface

learning (cf., e.g., Stephen et al., 2009; Thelen & Smith, 1994). However, they have not

In addition to lacking a powerful theory on children's learning and cognition, progress in understanding children's sense-making has been slow due to issues with empirical data. Data collection with children is more time consuming and expensive than with adults. And methods are limited by children's interest, competence, attention span, and willingness to follow instructions. These factors are at least partially responsible for the fact that far more publications merely document the time course of a child's concept, not the nature of processes that give rise to these concepts. Given this state of affairs, the topic on children's learning and cognition is still in its beginnings, leading

As a whole, the essays address theoretical and empirical issues related to children's learning and cognition. The first essay, titled *Learning in Cognitive Niches*, treats the process of sense making on a theoretical level, discussing the complexity of factors that give rise to children's learning. It is followed by an essay, titled *Using the Dynamics of a Person-Context System to Describe Children's Understanding of Air Pressure,* that applies ideas from complexity science and dynamics-systems theory to children's learning about science. The next four essays summarize and synthesize already published findings, in an effort to go beyond individual viewpoints and present a more nuanced picture of children's sense making. In particular, two of these summaries, *Preschoolers Learning Science: Myth or Reality?* and *The Emergence of Scientific Reasoning*, focus on children's ability to make sense of their physical environment. The essay *Cognition and the Child Witness: Understanding the Impact of Cognitive Development in Forensic Contexts* seeks to shed light on children's sense making relevant to forensic issues. And the essay *Beyond the Black-and-White of Autism: How Cognitive Performance Varies with Context* ventures in the area of autism, a disorder that demonstrates atypical processes of combining pieces of information. The final two essays provide original data to add to the discussion of what factors affect cognitive functioning. In particular, the essay *Cognitive Fitness in Young Adult Video Game Players* seeks to re-assess the often-assumed relation between video gaming and various aspects of thinking, memory, intelligence, and visual-spatial abilities. And the essay *Impact of Moving Away from Home on Undergraduate Metacognitive Development* explicitly connects life circumstances to the ability to monitor and control one's thinking. Together, the collection of essays are a further step towards understanding the process of sense making as children and

Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati OH, USA

**Heidi Kloos**

**Bradley J. Morris**

**Joseph L. Amaral**

Kent State University, USA

University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

found their way into mainstream cognitive development (e.g., Siegler, 1998).

to the collection of essays published in this volume.

young adults interact with their environment.


**Chapter 1** 

*"Once the hegemony of skin and skull is usurped,* 

Andy Clark and David Chalmers

*we may be able to see ourselves more truly as creatures of the world*"

In 2002, the first season's first episode of the Brazilian TV series City of Men, named "The Emperor's Crown", began with a scene of a History lesson in a public school of Rio de Janeiro. The teacher described the facts related to the journey of the Royal Portuguese Family from Portugal to Brazil in 1808, to escape from the threat of Napoleon's inbreak. She used a map of the Western World as a support to locate some countries involved in important historical events in the early nineteenth century: France, England, Germany, Italy, Russia, Portugal and Brazil. The children, characterized as students who lived in the slums built on the hills of Rio de Janeiro, asked questions about information not given by the teacher, but objects of interest to boys and girls familiar with the slum environment in Rio: modern weapons handling, war, violence and death. Some students expressed that the subject of the lesson was not clear for them (one of them thought that there was a participation of the Ancient Romans in the episode), and some had problems about the meaning of some words, such as the polysemous Portuguese word "coroa" (in English

At the end of the episode, one of the students, called Acerola (actually a nickname), faced with the need to repeat the information given by the teacher, went towards the map and transposed the History of napoleonic invasions to the current reality of Rio: the countries became hills, each one of them managed by a head, who behaved as a brazilian druglord; the trade of manufactured goods and raw materials, which were pivotal do the emergent industrial capitalism, became drug trade; Brazil, which was a colony of Portugal at that time, became an immense and available space for occupation, conquer and mightiness. But

"crown"), but their doubts and questions were not solved by the teacher.

© 2012 Lopes Magela Gerhardt, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Learning in Cognitive Niches** 

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Ana Flávia Lopes Magela Gerhardt

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/33628

**1. Introduction** 

**Chapter 1** 
