Every human society has a variety of symbols and symbol systems that support cognition and communication. To participate fully in any society, children must master a set of culturally important symbols and symbol systems. Their earliest steps involve the acquisition of language and symbolic gestures. Young children in picture-rich societies like ours come to understand the nature of different kinds of pictures, as well as television and video. Preschool children learn to count and start to understand simple numerical representations.
Drawing also emerges in the preschool years and undergoes steady improvement for years afterward.
Young children also develop an understanding of simple maps and models of the environment. From the second year, they engage in increasingly elaborate forms of pretend play. We will read and discuss some of the developmental psychology literature relevant to these different aspects of symbolic functioning. Memory This seminar explores the causes and consequences of memory distortion from both cognitive and neuropsychological perspectives. Topics include amnesia, eyewitness memory, flashbulb memories and ways of minimizing memory errors.