1. Infancy Cognitive, Physical, Language Development

3. Neonates States of Arousal Reflexes Neonatal Assessment
Learning and Habituation

4. States of Arousal Peter Wolff (1966)
Waking activity
Crying
Alert inactivity
Drowsiness
Regular sleep
Irregular sleep

5. Survival Reflexes
Breathing
Rooting
Sucking
Pupillary
Eye-blink

6. Primitive Reflexes Moro (startle) Palmar Plantar Babinski Stepping
Swimming
Tonic neck

7. Swimming Startle (Moro)

8. Tonic Neck

9. Babinski

10. Plantar

11. Stepping Palmar

12. Brazelton’s Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (BNBAS)
An assessment measure that hospitals use the first few days of a baby’s life.
28 measures are grouped into 7 clusters
Includes
Neurological examination
Assessment of social responsiveness
Assessment of behavioral capabilities

13. Clusters of Brazelton’s Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale
Habituation
Orientation
Motor tone and activity
Range of State
Regulation of state
Autonomic stability
Reflexes

15. Habituation and Learning Habituation Method
To study infant perceptual abilities, researchers habituate infants to certain stimuli and then change the stimuli.
Examples
Habituating neonates to turn their heads to the left to obtain milk whenever a bell was rung
Neonates learned to turn on a light by turning their heads to the left.

16. Man is the only animal that can be bored
Erich Fromm
Man is the only animal that can be bored

17. Physical and Motor Development
Erik Erikson
First Psychosocial Stage
Trust vs. Mistrust

18. First 4 Months
doubled in weight
eyes have begun to focus
the 1st tooth is about to erupt
most reflexes have disappeared
From 5 to Eight Months
increasing competence in fine and
gross motor skills
playing games
crawling, bearwalking, scooting

19. From 9 to 12 Months
about three times heavier than they
were at birth
may be walking
can manipulate the environment
using a pincer grasp
From 13 to 18 Months
are walking on their own
can stack blocks
can feed themselves
May be able to undress partially

20. From 19 to 24 Months
are called toddlers
can pedal a tricycle
can jump in place
can climb stairs
can scribble
can dress and undress without
assistance

22. Sensory and Perceptual Development
Sensation
The translation of a stimulus by a sense organ
Perception
The complex process by which the mind interprets and gives meaning to sensory information

23. Studying Infant Perceptual Capabilities
The novelty Paradigm
Closely related to habituation method
The Preference Method
Gives a choice of stimuli to look at or listen to
The Surprise Method
Relies on the fact that infants react with surprise when their expectations are violated
Event-Related Potential Method
Provides the equivalent of a complex electroencephalograph

24. Vision and Visual Perception
Infants are born with a full intact set of visual structures.
Newborns’ eyes are sensitive to brightness
They have some control over eye movement
Newborns focus optimally on objects at a range of 7 to 10 inches
They look primarily at the edges and contours of objects
Are responsive to human face and are able to imitate facial expressions
By the first 4 to 6 months, infants can focus almost as well as adults, acuity sharpens, and they can discriminate between most colors

25. Visual Cliff

26. Depth and Distance Perception
Because the newborn eyes are not well coordinated and the infant has not yet learned to interpret all of the information transmitted by the eyes.
Early depth perception is probably not very sophisticated.
Even when coaxed by their mothers, infants 6 months or over will not crawl over the edge of the visual cliff.

27. Auditory Perception
Neonates can hear. They are startled by loud sounds
Newborns are soothed by low-pitched sounds such as lullabies
Infants seem able to localize sounds, and prefer human voices

28. Taste, Touch, and Smell
They are fully operating at birth, and the sense of touch is well developed.

29. Sensory Integration and Intermodal Perception
Research generally indicates that either the senses are integrated at birth or integration occurs early and rapidly.
Behavior and emotion become integrated over time as a result of the interaction of experience and maturation

30. Cognitive Development
The Active Mind
Infants take an active role in their cognitive development.
This was the basic position of Jean Piaget.
Infants possess mental structures called schemes that process and organize information.
This occurs in a series of stages.

31. Jean Piaget

32. Jean Piaget 1- Knowledge = motor behavior
2- Universal stages in a fixed order
3- Qualitative and quantitative acquisition of knowledge
4- Mental Structures or schemes
5- Two Principles:
Assimilation
Accommodation

33. 1- Acquisition of Knowledge
Action = Knowledge
Infants attain understanding of the world by doing.
Knowledge is a product of direct motor behavior
Children don’t learn:
Through sensation and perception
From facts communicated by others

34. 2- Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Stage
(birth – 2)
Preoperational Stage
(2 – 7)
Concrete Stage
(7 – 11)
Formal Operations Stage
(12 – adulthood)

35. Piaget’s Cognitive Stages

36. Sensorimotor Stage Substages
1- Simple Reflexes (first month)
Reflexes determine the infant’s interaction with world
2- First Habits & Primary Circular Reactions (1 – 4 months)
Coordination of actions
Repeating enjoyable actions on the infant’s own body

37. Sensorimotor Stage Substages
3- Secondary Circular Reactions (4 – 8)
Repeated actions meant to bring about desirable consequence on the outside world

38. Sensorimotor Stage Substages
4- Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions (8 – 12)
Goal Directed Behavior
Several schemes are combined and coordinated to generate a single act to solve a problem
Object Permanence
The realization that people and objects exist even when they cannot be seen

39. Object Permenence

40. Sensorimotor Stage Substages
5- Tertiary Circular Reactions (12 – 18)
The deliberate variation of actions to bring desirable consequences
6- Beginning of Thought (18 – 24)
Symbolic Representation
The use of a word, picture, gesture or other sign to represent past & present events, experiences, and concepts.
Understanding Causality
Deferred Imitation

41. 3- Quality and Quantity
Until the 1930s, children were considered like miniature adults as far as intelligence was concerned.
They were supposed to differ from adults in the quantity of knowledge they had managed to acquire.
According to Piaget, children acquire knowledge in a qualitative and quantitative manner.

42. Constructivism
All we know is based on our mental construction or ideas.
We don’t passively discover knowledge ready-made.
We actively construct knowledge.
How?

43. 4- Schemes/Mental Structures
Infants have mental structures or schemes:
(organized patterns of sensorimotor functioning)
Sensorimotor Functioning
Physical activity that changes with mental development

44. 5- Principles for Children’s Schemes
1- Assimilation
2- Accommodation

45. 5- Principles for Children’s Schemes
1- Assimilation is when people understand an experience in terms of their current stage of cognitive development or way of thinking.
Example:
A flying squirrel = a bird
The child is assimilating his existing scheme of a bird.

46. 5- Principles for Children’s Schemes
2- Accommodation is change in existing ways of thinking that occur in response to encounters with new stimuli or events.
Example:
A flying squirrel = a bird with a tail
The child is accommodating to new knowledge, modifying her scheme of “bird”

47. Criticism on Piaget’s Theory
Piaget constructed his view by mainly observing his three children (not a representative population)
A stable and differentiated perceptual world is established much earlier in infancy than Piaget envisioned
Memory and other forms of symbolic activity occur by at least the second half of the first year.

48. Memory in Infancy Infants as young as 3 months old show memory skills.
The Large Black Boxes Study
Infants predicted a four-step sequence and most could remember it up to 2 weeks later.
Carolyn Rovee-Collier
Infants can remember intricate material.
Nancy Myers
An infant’s experience at 6 months can be remembered 2 years later.

49. Infants’ Memory Infantile Amnesia
The lack of memory for experiences that occurred prior to three years of age
Although memories are stored from early infancy, they cannot be easily retrieved.
Early memories are susceptible to interference from later events.
Memories are sensitive to environmental context.

50. Infants’ Intelligence
1- Development Quotient
Arnold Gesell
2- Bayley Scales of Infant Development
Nancy Bayley
Are useful in identifying infants who are significantly behind their peers
Are not good for predicting future behavior

51. Development Quotient Arnold Gesell
An overall developmental score that relates to performance in 4 areas:
1- Motor Skills (balance and sitting)
2- Language Use
3- Adaptive Behavior (alertness & exploration)
4- Personal-Social (feeding and dressing)

52. Bayley’s Scales of Infant Development Nancy Bayley
A measure that evaluates an infant’s development from 2 to 3 months
It focuses on 2 areas:
1- Mental Scale
Senses, perception, memory, learning, problem solving, language
2- Motor Scale
Gross motor skills
Fine motor skills

53. Contemporary Approaches to Assess Infant Intelligence
Visual-recognition Memory
Cross-modal Transference
Measure how quickly infants process information
These measures correlate moderately well with later measures of intelligence

54. Visual-Recognition Memory
Measures how quickly an infant can retrieve previous experiences of a stimulus from memory
1- Measures how quickly infants lose interest in stimuli that have already been seen
2- Measures their responsiveness to new stimuli.

55. Cross-Modal Transference
Measures the ability to identify a stimulus that has previously only been experienced through one sense by using another sense.
Example
Identifying a screw driver that she has only previously touched, but not seen

56. Other Criteria in Determining Adult Intelligence
The degree of environmental stimulation
Intelligence measured by IQ tests relates to a particular type of intelligence, one that emphasizes abilities that lead to academic success but not artistic or professional success.
So, predicting that a child will do well on IQ tests does not necessarily indicate success in life.

57. Linguistic Competence
Phonemes Basic sounds of
language
Morphemes words, suffixes,
prefixes
Semantics Rules that govern
the meaning of words
Syntax How words are combined into meaningful
statements
Pragmatics The use of language in
context

58. 12 weeks cooing, smiles when talked to
16 weeks turns head in response to human voice
20 weeks makes vowels and consonant sounds
6 months babbling (all sounds)
8 months repeat certain syllables (ma-ma)
12 months understands and says some words
18 months can produce up to 50 words
24 months more than 50 words, two-word phrases
30 months about 100 words, phrases of 3-5 words
36 months vocabulary of about 1,000 words
48 months most basic aspects of language are well established

59. Terms
Holographic Speech the use of single words to convey complete thoughts
Overextensions the tendency to overgeneralize words
Telegraphic Speech omitting the less significant words and including the words that carry the most meaning
Pivot Grammar action words + nouns (see Daddy)

60. A Different Language for Boys and Girls
Hear twice as many diminutives
Parents respond with a soft answer
Are exposed to warmer phrases
Boys
Don’t hear as many diminutives
Parents respond with a firm “no”
Hear clearer language
As adults they tend to be more assertive

61. Language Acquisition
Cognitive
Piaget
Rationalist
Chomsky
Social
Learning
Behaviorist
Skinner
-Mental schemes that child can apply a linguistic label to it
Innate tendency to acquire language
-Innate acquisition device
-learned
-imitation
-Acquired by consequen-
ces or by reinforce-ment

62. Information Processing Approaches
Encoding Recorded in memory
(Keyboard)
Storage Saved in memory
(on hard drive)
Retrieved Brought into awareness
(on screen)

63. Information-Processing Automatization
1- Knowledge acquisition is automatic when processes require little attention
Children are automatically aware of how often they have encountered people.
Automatically, children develop an understanding of concepts, categorizations of objects, events, or people.
2- Knowledge is deliberate and controlled when processes require large amounts of attention.

64. Information Processing Approaches
Cognitive Architecture
Determines the specific steps through which material is processed as it travels through the human mind.
Assume that the basic architecture of information-processing systems is constant over the course of development, although the speed and capacity of the system are thought to grow.

65. Prelinguistic Communication
2 – 3 months to 1 yr babbling
10 – 14 months holophrases
15 months 15 words
16 – 24 months 100 words
18 months telegraphic speech
19 months first sentence