Infancy Cognitive Development  “Baby Human – Face Recognition” “Baby Human – Face Recognition” 2 key ideas from birth: Born with more neurons than an adult - “Pruning” Hyperattentive - Pay attention to everything (usually considered an inability to focus)

Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development  Schema  a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information  Assimilation  interpreting one’s new experience in terms of one’s existing schemas  Accommodation Accommodation  adapting one’s current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information

Typical Age Range Description of Stage Developmental Phenomena Birth to nearly 2 yearsSensorimotor Experiencing the world through senses and actions (looking, touching, mouthing) Object permanence Stranger anxiety About 2 to 6 years About 7 to 11 years About 12 through adulthood Preoperational Representing things with words and images but lacking logical reasoning Pretend play Egocentrism Language development Concrete operational Thinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations Conservation Mathematical transformations Formal operational Abstract reasoning Abstract logic Potential for moral reasoning Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Cognitive Development: Sensorimotor Stage  Object Permanence  the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived  No object permanence No object permanence  A-not-B Error A-not-B Error

Cognitive Development: Sensorimotor Stage  Circular Reactions  Primary  Primary – baby accidentally does something and repeats simply because it feels good  Saliva bubbles, waving arms  Secondary  Secondary – similar to primary, but involve objects in the environment  Example Example  Tertiary  Tertiary – infant devises new ways to act on objects to produce interesting results.

Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development  Baby Mathematics  Shown a numerically impossible outcome, infants stare longer (Wynn, 1992) 1. Objects placed in case. 2. Screen comes up. 3. Object is removed. 4. Impossible outcome: Screen drops, revealing two objects. 4. Possible outcome: Screen drops, revealing one object.

Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development  Scale Error in the Judy DeLoache Study  Found 18 – 30 month olds commonly make  Scale Errors Scale Errors

Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development  Scale Error  Typical scale error ages

Cognitive Development  Self-Awareness – shopping cart study shopping cart study  Animism – belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and mental lives.  Preoperational  Seriation – Ability to arrange objects in ascending or descending order based on characteristic like length or weight  Concrete operations  Much later than people think

Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development  Conservation  the principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects  Preoperational vs. Concrete operational PreoperationalConcrete operational  Number, Mass, Length, Volume, Area, Weight

Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development  Egocentrism  the inability of the preoperational child to take another’s point of view  Example in Child’s answers:  Why does the sun shine? To keep me warm.  Why is there snow? For me to play in.  Why is the grass green? Its my favorite color.  Have a 4 year old close her eyes and ask her if you can still see her. Her answer?  How many siblings? vs. how many kids do your parents have?

Social Development  Health, happiness, and even survival depends on forming meaningful, effective relationships with family peers, and later, on the job (Zimbardo, 2007)  Nature brings our 1 st step in this direction – a biological predisposition to smile.

Social Development: Temperament  Temperament – An individual’s characteristic manner of behavior or reaction  Assumed to have a strong genetic basis.  10-15% babies “born shy”, 10-15% “born bold”  Nature / Nurture connection – which temperaments encourage interaction?

Social Development  Attachment  an emotional tie with another person  shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and displaying distress on separation  Develops in phases over 1 st 24 months.  Once attachments are formed, fears and anxieties also appear.

Social Development  Stranger Anxiety  fear of strangers that infants commonly display  beginning by about 8 months of age  Separation Anxiety  Distress the infant shows when object of attachment leaves  Peaks between 14 and 18 months

“The Strange Situation”  Mary Ainsworth – Attachment studiesAttachment studies  Displays attachment  Secure Attachment (Ideal) – 60%  Children show some distress when parent leaves, seek contact at the reunion, explore when parent gone, play and greet when parent present.  Insecure Attachments lack 1 or more of these traits  Behaviorists: What should the parent do in this scenario (assuming its real)?

Social Development  Groups of infants left by their mothers in a unfamiliar room (Kagan, 1976) Percentage of infants who cried when their mothers left Age in months Day care Home

Origins of Attachment  Critical Period  an optimal period shortly after birth when an organism’s exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development  Imprinting – Konrad LorenzKonrad Lorenz  the process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life

Origins of Attachment  Harlow’s Surrogate Mother Experiments  Monkeys preferred contact with the comfortable cloth mother, even while feeding from the nourishing wire mother

Social Development  Monkeys raised by artificial mothers were terror-stricken when placed in strange situations without their surrogate mothers.

Social Development  Basic Trust (Erik Erikson)  a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy  said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers  Self-Concept  a sense of one’s identity and personal worth

Social Development: Child- Rearing Practices  Authoritarian  parents impose rules and expect obedience  “Don’t interrupt.” “Why? Because I said so.”  Permissive  submit to children’s desires, make few demands, use little punishment  Authoritative  both demanding and responsive  set rules, but explain reasons and encourage open discussion

Social Development: Child-Rearing Practices