Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Cognitive Development During The First Three Years Cognitive Development During The First Three Years Lecture: Chapter 7 Lecture: Chapter 7

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Guideposts for Study Guideposts for Study  1. How do infants learn, and how long can they remember?  2.Can infants' and toddlers' intelligence be measured, and how can it be improved?

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Guideposts for Study Guideposts for Study  3.How did Piaget describe infants' and toddlers' cognitive development, and how have his claims stood up?  4.How can we measure infants' ability to process information, and how does this ability relate to future intelligence?

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Guideposts for Study  5. When do babies begin to think about characteristics of the physical world?  6.What can brain research reveal about the development of cognitive skills?  7.How does social interaction with adults advance cognitive competence?

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Guideposts for Study  8.How do babies develop language?  9.What influences contribute to linguistic progress?

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Studying Cognitive Development  1. Behaviorist Approach  Studies the basic mechanics of learning  2. Psychometric Approach  Measures individual differences in quantity of intelligence using intelligence test  3. Piagetian Approach  Looks at changes, or stages, in the quality of cognitive functioning  4. Social-Contextual Approach  Study how cultural context affects early social interactions that may promote cognitive competence

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or displayIQ  Intelligence Quotient  Goals of psychometric testing are to measure the factors that thought to make up intelligence (ie. Comprehension, reasoning) and from the results, predict future performance (ie. School achievement)  Fairly reliable for school-aged children but not always accurate or reliable for infants and toddlers

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display 2. Psychometric Approach: Developmental And Intelligence Testing  Measures quantitatively the factors that are thought to make up intelligence  Binet developed tests to identify children who could not handle academic work and needed special training  Bayley Scales of Infant Development  Standardized test of infants ’ mental and motor development between the ages of 1m to 31/2yrs. Table 7-1: Sample Tasks

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Early Intervention  Developmental Priming Mechanisms  Aspects of the home environment that pave the way for ‘normal’ development and help make children ready for school 1.Encouragement to explore 2.Mentoring in basic cognitive & social skills 3.Celebration of accomplishments 4.Guidance in practicing & expanding skills 5.Protection from inappropriate punishment 6.Stimulation of language

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Early Intervention con’t  Early Years report  Demonstrates how intervention in the first 3 years can influence developmental gains more than at any other time in the lifespan (Table 7-2)  Most effective early intervention:  Start early and continue throughout the preschool years  Highly time-intensive  Provide direct educational experiences  Comprehensive (health, family, counseling etc.)  Tailored to individual differences and needs

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or displayQuestion?  Identify six developmental priming mechanisms and summarize the findings about the value of early intervention.

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display 3. Piagetian Approach: Sensorimotor Stage  Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2yrs)  first stage in cognitive development, during which infants learn about their world through sensory and motor activity  Change from creatures who respond primarily through reflexes and random behaviour into goal-oriented toddlers

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display  Circular reactions:  infants learn to reproduce pleasurable or interesting events originally discovered by chance

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Object Permanence  Understanding that a person or object still exists when out of sight (ie. peekaboo)  This realization allows a child to understand that when their parent leaves the room they still exist

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or displayImitation  Visible imitation  Imitation with parts of one’s body that one can see  Invisible imitation  Using parts of the body that a baby cannot see (ie. mouth), develops around 9 months  Deferred imitation  Imitate an act they saw sometime before (18-24 months)

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display 4. Social-Contextual Approach: Learning From Interactions With Caregivers  Researchers influenced by Vygotsky's sociocultural theory study how cultural context affects early social interactions that may promote cognitive competence  Cultural context influences way caregivers contribute to cognitive development  The ways adults involve themselves in children’s learning in one culture may be no better or worse than in another (adult activities vs play)

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Social-Contextual Approach  Guided participation  Participation of an adult in a child’s activity in a manner that helps to structure the activity and to bring the child’s understanding of it closer to that of the adult  Example: Guatemalan town – mothers sewing and weaving, India accompanied mothers to work in the fields, U.S. interacted with mother in the context of child’s play

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Sequence of Early Language Development  Prelinguistic speech: Utterance of sounds that are not words  crying, cooing, babbling  Gestures: (9-13 months)  pointing, social gestures (waving), symbolic gestures (blowing=hot)

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Sequence of Language Development con’t  First Words: (10-14 months says 1 st word)  “ ouchy ”, “ dada ”  Most common: “ bow-wow ” =dog, “ bye-bye ”  Holophrase – single word that conveys a complete thought  First Sentences: (18-24 months)  Telegraphic speech – early form of sentence consisting of only a few essential words  Omission of functional words (is, the)  “ Damma Deep ” =grandma is sweeping the floor  By age 3 speech is fluent, longer, and more complex

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Language Development  Characteristics of Early Speech  Children simplify language  Children understand grammatical relationships they cannot yet express  Children underextend (restricting its meaning to one object) and overextend word meanings (everything that looks similar is the same)  Children overregularize rules ( “ I thinked ” instead of “ I thought ” )

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display  Can you…  Trace the typical sequence of milestones in early language development, pointing out the influence of the language babies hear around them?  Describe five ways in which early speech differs from adult speech?

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Language Development  Classic Theories of Language Acquisition: The Nature-Nurture Debate  Skinner (1957) maintained that language learning, like other learning, is based on experience: children learn language through operant conditioning  Observation, imitation, and reinforcement contribute to language

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Language Development  Classic Theories of Language Acquisition: The Nature-Nurture Debate  Chomsky suggested an inborn language acquisition device (LAD) that programs children's brains to analyze the language they hear and to figure out its rules: nativism  Most developmentalists today believe that language acquisition depends on an intertwining of nature and nurture

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Language Development  Social Interaction: The Role of Parents and Caregivers  Prelinguistic period  Vocabulary development  Child-Directed Speech (CDS)

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display Language Development  Preparing For Literacy: The Benefits of Reading Aloud  Early readers are generally those whose parents read to them frequently when they were very young  Children read to using a dialogic, or shared, reading style show better language, comprehension, and prereading skills

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display  Can you…  Assess the arguments for and against the value of child-directed speech (CDS)?  Tell why reading aloud to children at an early age is beneficial?  Describe an effective way of reading aloud to infants and toddlers?