1. The Emergence of Thought and Language: Cognitive and Development in Infancy and Early Childhood
Chapter 4

2. Piaget’s Account Learning Objectives -How do schemes, assimilation and
accommodation provide the foundation for
cognitive development throughout the life
span?
-How does thinking become more advanced
as infants progress through the
sensorimotor stage?
-What are the distinguishing characteristics
of thinking during the preoperational stage?
-What are the strengths and weaknesses of Piaget’s theory?
-How have contemporary researchers extended Piaget’s theory?

3. Basic Principles of Cognitive Development
Children make sense of the world through schemes
Children adapt to their environment as they develop by adding and refining their schemes
Schemes change from physical to functional, conceptual and abstract as the child develops

4. Assimilation and Accommodation
-new experiences fit into existing schemes
-required to benefit from experience
Accommodation
-schemes have to be modified as a
consequence of new experiences
-allows for dealing with a completely new
data or experience

5. Equilibration Equilibrium -balance between assimilation and
accommodation
Disequilibrium
-more accommodation the assimilation
Equilibration
-inadequate schemes are replaced with
more advanced and mature schemes
-occurs three times during development
-4 stages of cognitive development

6. Period’s of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Period (0-2 years)
-Infancy
Preoperative Period (2-7 years)
-Preschool and early elementary school
Concrete Operational Period (7-11 years)
-Middle and late elementary school
Formal Operational Period (11 years and up)
-Adolescence and adulthood

7. Senorimotor Thinking 1-4 months reflexive response to stimuli
8 months deliberate intentional behavior develops, moves Father’s hand to grasp toy
12months - active experimenters – may shake objects to produce sounds

8. Senorimotor Thinking
Object permanence – not fully understood until age 18 momths
Using symbols – 18months uses gestures and words

9. Preoperational Thinking 2-7 yrs.
Egocentrism
Animism
Centration
Conservation
Appearance as reality

10. Preoperational Thinking 2-7 yrs.
Egocentrism – sees objects from their vantage point only
Animism – credit inanimate objects with lifelike properties
Centration – focus on only one aspect of an object
Appearance as reality – confuse appearance with reality – ie sibling with makeup

11. Criticism’s of Piaget’s Theory
Piaget underestimates cognitive ability in infants and overestimates in adolescents
Piaget is vague about mechanisms and processes of change.Accomodation and assimilation too vague to test.
He does not account for variability in children’s performance
His theory undervalues the influence of sociocultural environment

12. Children’s Naïve Theories
Core knowledge hypothesis – infants are born with a rudimentary knowledge of the world based on children’s experiences

13. Children’s Naïve Theories
Naïve Physics
-Studies that investigate the age at which
children learn there is conflict between
current understanding and the true nature
of objects. Infants understand permanence much younger than Piaget believed.

14. Children’s Naïve Theories
Naïve Biology
-4 year olds know that living things move,
grow, and heal themselves,and inherit traits, understand illness can be transmitted to others
-know that inanimate objects have to be
move, do not grow, and have to be fixed

15. Children’s Naïve Theories
Teological explanations – children believe that living things and parts of living things exist for a purpose
Essentialism – children believe that all living things have a essence that can’t be seen but gives a living thing it’s identity. Learned by observation and culture (from parents)
Do not believe plants are alive because they do not move until 7-8 years of age

16. Information Processing
Learning Objectives
What is the basis of the information- processing approach?
How well do young children pay attention?
What kinds of learning take place during infancy?
Do infants and preschool children remember?
What do infants and preschoolers know about numbers?

17. Information Processing: General Principles
Human thinking is understood along a computer model
Mental hardware are neural and mental structures that enable the mind to operate
Mental software are mental programs that allow for the performance of specific tasks

18. Information Processing: Attention
-sensory information that receives additional cognitive processing
-orienting response - emotional and physical reactions to unfamiliar stimulus
Habituation
-a lessening of the reaction to a repeated
stimulus

19. Information Processing: Learning Forms
Classic Conditioning
-A neutral stimulus becomes able to elicit a
response that was previously caused by
another stimulus
Operant conditioning
-Behaviors are affected by their
consequences
Imitation
-Older children learn by observing others

20. Information Processing: Memory
Studies show that as early as 2-3 months children remember past events, forget them over time, and remember them again with cues Memory improves over the development of the hippocampus and amygdala the first 6 months and the rest of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortes over 24 months

21. Information Processing: Memory
During the preschool years, children develop autobiographical memory for significant events in their own past
Autobiographical memory depends on sense of self, language skills, conversations with parents about past, present, and future and basic memory skills

22. Preschoolers on the Witness Stand
Children’s responses to questioning about facts are quite vulnerable to suggestion and leading questions
Preschoolers have limited ability to use source monitoring skills: the ability to remember the source of the information they recall
This may lead to answers that reflect their memories without regard to whether they experience the event, or were told about it

23. Information Processing: Learning Number Skills
Infants can distinguish 2 objects from 3
Notice when the wrong number appear from behind the screen
Can perform simple addition and subtraction
Can compare ratios

24. Information Processing: Learning Number Skills
Mastered by age three
One-to-one principle:
-There is only one number name for each object counted
Stable order principle:
-Number names must be counted in the
same order
Cardinality principle:
-The last number in a counting sequence
denotes the number of objects

25. Mind and Culture: Vygotsky’s Theory
Learning Objectives
What is the zone of proximal development?
How does it help explain how children accomplish more when they collaborate with others?
Why is scaffolding a particularly effective way of teaching youngsters new concepts and skills?
When and why do children talk to themselves as they solve problems?

26. Leo Vygotsky ( )
- Russian psychologist, sociacultural theorist
-cognitive development is an apprenticeship
in which children advance by interaction
with others more skilled.
- he died young and did not fully develop
his theory beyond childhood

27. Leo Vygotsky (
Intersubjectivity – mutual, shared understanding among participants in an activity
Guided participation – cognitive growth results from children’s involvement in structured activities with others who are more skilled
Basic premise – cognition develops first in a social setting and only gradually comes under the child’s independent control

28. Mind and Culture: Vygotsky’s Theory: Major Contributions
Zone of Proximal Development
-The difference between what children can
do with and without help from a more
experienced guide
-Teachers should attempt to keep students
in this zone in order to achieve maximum
achievement
Scaffolding
-a style in which teachers gauge the amount of assistance they offer to match the learner’s needs
-Studied show that students do not learn as
well when told everything to do, nor when
left alone to discover on their own

29. Mind and Culture: Vygotsky’s Theory: Major Contributions
Private Speech
Children talk to themselves as they go about difficult tasks
The speech is not intended for others, but for self guidance and regulation
Eventually this private speech becomes internalized and becomes inner speech
_Vygotsky’s term for thought

30. Language Learning Objectives
When do infants first hear and make speech sounds?
When do children start to talk? How do they learn word meanings?
How do young children learn grammar?
How well do youngsters communicate?

31. Language: The Road to Speech
Perceiving Speech
-Phonemes -the smallest sound
-as early as of 1 month old infants can
distinguish between sounds
-Different languages use different sets of
phonemes
-Children practice all phonemes, gradually
restricting their use to only those
phonemes to which they are exposed
-Eventually, they lose the ability to
distinguish unused phonemes

32. Language: Indentifying Words
Children learn to pay more attention to often repeated and emphasized words
Parents use infant-directed speech in which they speak slowly and exaggerate changes in pitch and volume
Sometimes call motherese because it was first observed in mothers

33. Language: Steps to Speech
At 2 months, infants begin cooing, early vowel like sounds
Around 6 months, toddlers begin babbling
At 8-11 months, children incorporate intonation, or changes in pitch that are typical of the language they hear
Babies understand
words before they can
talk

34. Language: Words as Symbols First Words and Many More
Around the 1 year, children use their first words, usually consonant-vowel pairs such as “dada” or “wawa”
By 2 years, children have a vocabulary of around a few hundred words
By age 6, children know around 10,000 words
Some children use a referential style vocabulary to name objects, persons, or actions
Other children use an expressive style to make statements resembling single words

35. Language: Fast Mapping of Words
Connecting new words to that which they refer helps to infer the meaning of the new word
Parents pay attention to what children are attracted to and provide guidance, which is called joint attention
Children seem to understand constraints on word names that help to infer meaning

36. Types of constraints on word names include:
-If an unfamiliar word is heard in the
presence of objects that already have
names and objects that don’t, the word
must refer to one of the objects that
doesn’t have a name
-Names refer to the whole object and not
just a part of it
-When a second name is give to an object that name refers to a subcategory
- Given several category members a word applied consistently to only one is a proper noun

37. Children use sentence cues to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words i
Children use sentence cues to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words i.e. An unfamiliar verb refers to the subject of the sentence. Know that adjectives precede the word they modify.
Cognitive factors, such as better attentional
and perceptual skills, assist in learning language. Intention is also an important motivator to learn language. Learn that shape is a way to learn words. Ie all balls are round. Round objects are balls.

38. Language: Fast Mapping of Words
Naming errors result from underextension (defining words too narrowly) ie car for only the family car, and overextension (defining words too broadly) ie dog for all 4 legged animals.

39. Language: Individual Differences in Word Learning
Vocabulary ranges from 25 to 250 words at 18 months
Factors in differences in naming explosion age:
Heredity
Phonological Memory
-the ability to remember speech sounds
briefly correlates with size of vocabulary
Language environment single most important factor in vocabulary size

40. Language: Individual Differences in Word Learning
Bilingual: children are slower at first, but soon catch up and know more words when both languages are considered. Better understand that words are arbitrary symbols, better at switching between tasks and inhibiting inappropriate responses.

41. Language: Individual Differences in Word Learning
Word learning styles:
Referential Style
-Mainly naming objects, persons, or actions
Expressive Style – uses phrases as single words
-Includes social phrases such as go away, I want it, What’d you want?
Most children are a blend of styles

42. Language: Encouraging Language Growth
Parents assist in learning language by:
-Speaking to children frequently
-Naming objects of children’s attention
-Using speech that is more grammatically
sophisticated
-Reading to them, naming pictures and asking questions as they read
-Encouraging watching television programs
with an emphasis on learning new words
such as Sesame Street

43. Language: Speaking in Sentences
Two and three word sentences, called telegraphic speech, begin at 18 months
Children may leave out grammatical morphemes, or words and endings that make a sentence correct
The application of rules to words that are exceptions to the rules is called overregulation i.e. saying mans for men

44. How do Children Acquire Grammar?
The Behaviorist answer
-Imitation B.F.Skinner
Problems:
Most children’s language is novel
Children do not imitate adult grammar
Grammatical rules are too complex for children

45. How do Children Acquire Grammar?
The Linguist answer
-Born with “grammar learning processor, innate mechanisms that simplify the task of learning grammar, By 2 specific regions of the brain (left hemisphere) are activated when sentences break simple grammatical rules. Chimps learn two word grammar only with difficulty, if grammar not mastered by 12 it is never truly mastered. Grammar is naturally learned with words.
Mastery of grammar is closely related to vocabulary growth

46. How do Children Acquire Grammar?
The Cognitive answer
Look for patterns, detect irregularities, create rules, store rules in memory
The Social-Interactive answer
-Eclectic use of all of the explanations to
describe language development. Emphasis on environment from behaviorists, linguists that children are born with mechanisms that simplify learning grammar, cognitive that children have powerful cognitive skills.

47. Language: Communicating with Others
Effective communication requires:
-Taking turns as speaker and listener learned by age 2
-Making sure to speak in language the
listener understands
-Paying attention while listening and
making sure the speaker knows if he/she
is being understood

48. Speaking Effectively
Attempts to communicate begin at about 10 months with gestures and noises
Begin to use speech at 12 months
Toddlers begin talking about themselves and soon include objects in their environment
Preschoolers clarify their messages
Elementary scholars master elements involved in determining whether a message is consistent and clear.