Sociocultural Tradition and Infant Learning

¶ … perceptual development led formulation moderate-discrepancy hypothesis. Provide analysis hypothesis text additional scholarly sources a .Define moderate-discrepancy hypothesis. b.Identify describe types educational materials moderate-discrepancy hypothesis predicts hold children's attention.

Define the moderate-discrepancy hypothesis

According to Kinney & Kagan (cited by Kidd 2010), "infants will preferentially attend to stimuli that are 'optimally discrepant,' meaning those that are most distinct from the representations they already possess" (Kidd et al. 2010: 2777). This means that infants and small children prefer things which are different but not too different from what they already know. The moderate discrepancy hypothesis is also based upon the notion that children cannot cognitively process material before they are capable of doing so -- the hypothesis is based upon relative similarity between the learned novel and the existing stimuli: totally new stimuli are very difficult to assimilate. In a study of children's television-watching behavior, it was found that "children pay most attention to television content that is only moderately discrepant from their existing knowledge and capabilities" (Murray & Murray 2008). While "loud noise, bright or fast visual changes in the display" were preferred by younger viewers, even though "these features also attracted the attention of the older viewers" the older children were attracted to the "non-salient content features such as moderate action by the characters, letters, and numbers and meaningful dialogue" (Murray & Murray 2008).

Q2.Identify and describe the types of educational materials the moderate-discrepancy hypothesis predicts are most likely to hold children's attention.

This suggests that educational materials which are more novel in content yet still build off of infant's current framework of knowledge are likely to hold infant's attention, versus materials which are very similar or very dissimilar. For example, to teach colors, showing a young child a red ball (versus his or her favorite blue ball) will hold the infant's attention. "The preference for novelty explains why infants learn about things only when they are ready to learn about them. They do not waste their time attending to completely familiar things, or to things so new that they are overwhelming" (Intelligence, n.d., What when how).

Q3.Discuss whether or not this prediction is consistent with the type of instruction that research in the sociocultural tradition has shown to be most effective.