1. What does an infant feel and perceive?
Infant Abilities and Perceptions
What does an infant feel and perceive?
William James : “booming, buzzing confusion.” ??

2. Infant Abilities immature visual system
can detect movement and large objects
Other senses function well on day 1
will orient to sounds
turn away from unpleasant odors
prefer sweet to sour tastes
Born with a number of reflex behaviors

3. Methods for Studying Infants
Infant reflexes provide insight into their mental life
gaze duration related to visual perception
head turning related to auditory attention
sucking, reaching, kicking can be used to measure interest

4. Infant Perception Not just a blur or a buzz In first week
will recognize their mother’s smell
will show preference for novel stimuli
gaze at face-like pattern rather than similar non face-like pattern

5. Infant Perception How does knowledge of physical laws arise?
Research on infant selective attention
habituation; measure gaze duration
physically impossible events: infants notice at 3-4 months
rudimentary arithmetic around 5 months (Wynn, 1992)
Depth perception- visual cliff

7. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget ( )
“children are active thinkers, constantly trying to construct more advanced understandings of the world”

8. Stages and Schemas
Schemas: frameworks; help organize knowledge; structures of “understandings”:
Assimilation - new information or experience is fit it into existing schema
Accommodation - existing schemas are changed or new schemas are created to fit new information
operations: reversible actions

9. Sensorimotor Stage (birth - 2)
Information gained through senses and motor actions
child perceives and manipulates but does not reason
Object permanence is acquired

11. Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)
Emergence of symbolic thought
video: symbolic hiding place
Lack the concept of conservation
operates on appearance rather than principles

13. Adult Conservation problem
Jar1: 200 red jelly beans
Jar2: 200 black jelly beans
scoop holds exactly 15 beans
take 1 scoop out of red jar, put in black jar
mix up black and red beans in jar
take 1 scoop out of (mostly) black Jar2, put in Jar1
How does number of black beans in Jar1 compare to number of red beans in Jar2

14. Concrete Operational Stage (7-12years)
Understanding of mental operations leading to increasingly logical thought
Inability to reason abstractly or hypothetically

15. Formal Operational Stage (12 - adult)
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
think theoretically, apply principles to hypothetical cases

16. Critique of Piaget’s Theory
Underestimates children’s abilities
Overestimates age differences in thinking
Vagueness about the process of change
Underestimates the role of the social environment

17. Information-Processing Perspective
mind as system, like computer, for analyzing information
Developmental improvements reflect
increased capacity of working memory
faster speed of processing
new algorithims (methods)
more stored knowledge

20. Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective
interaction with the social world as cause of development (zone of proximal development)
language : foundation for social interaction and thought (dialogue for critical thinking)
Piaget -
interaction with the physical world
language was a byproduct of thought

21. Language development Evidence of prenatal speech detection:
Mothers read “Cat in the Hat” aloud each day of last 6 weeks of pregnancy
by changing suckling pattern (IBI), 2 days old infants could change story played over earphones (IBI had to increase in some, decrease in others)
infants changed pattern so that they could hear “Cat in the hat”
(this worked for other stories, too…)

22. Language Development MONTH Speech Characteristic 2 Cooing vowel sounds
4 Babbling consonant/vowel
10 Babbling native language sounds
12 One-word stage
24 Two-word stage
24 + Sentences

23. Supports for Language Development
Chomsky’s language-acquisition device (LAD) - innate foundations for grammar and learning unique rules of a language
critical period
Language-acquisition support system - aspects of the social world that help infants acquire language (e.g., parentese)