1. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN INFANCY
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN INFANCY
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget
Technology Tip: Have students learn about the life and works of Piaget on the Jean Piaget Society website.
URL:

3. Cognitive Processes Adaptation - adjusting to new environments
Mental structures help us adapt
Children actively construct their own cognitive worlds
Schemes: Organized patterns of information.
Assimilation: Fitting new information into existing schemes
Accommodation: Adjusting schemes to fit new information and experiences

4. Sensorimotor Stage First stage (Birth-2)
Infants construct understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with motor responses
Six substages focus on:
Simple reflexes
First habits and Primary circular reactions
Secondary circular reactions
Coordination of secondary circular reactions
Tertiary circular reactions (Novelty and curiosity)
Internalization of schemes (Thought)

5. Substages of the Sensorimotor Stage
Simple Reflexes
Birth to 1 month
Modify reflexes based on experience
Primary Circular Reactions
1 to 4 months
Primary = focus on infant’s own body
Circular = repeated behaviors
Secondary Circular Reactions
4 to 8 months
Secondary = focus on objects or environmental events
Track moving objects until they disappear from view

6. Substages of the Sensorimotor Stage
Coordination of Secondary Reactions
8 to 12 months
Coordinate schemes to attain specific goals
Begin to imitate others
Tertiary Circular Reactions
12 to 18 months
Deliberate trial and error behaviors
Internalization of Schemes/Thought
18 to 24 months
External exploration is replaced by mental exploration
Teaching Tip: Have students develop a set of tasks that can be administered to infants of different ages. Based on Piaget’s stages, how do they think each age group will perform?

8. Sensorimotor Stage Object permanence:
Understanding that objects continue to exist, even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched
Neonates show no response to objects not within their immediate grasp
2 month - show surprise when a screen is lifted after an object was placed behind a screen and now is not there
Child makes no effort to search for the missing object
6 month - try to retrieve a preferred object partially hidden
8- to 12-month - try to retrieve objects completely hidden
More recent research – object permanence in some form as early as 2½ - 3½ months

9. Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
New way of looking at infants
Piaget’s views need modification; his explanations of cause are debated
Object permanence occurs earlier
Gain many skills earlier than Piaget expected

10. Ideas stemming from Piaget’s work
Nature vs. Nuture
Core knowledge approach: View that infants are born with domain-specific innate knowledge systems (Spelke, 1991, 2000, 2011).
Infants have “soft biases to perceive and attend to different aspects of the environment” (Johnston, 2008).

11. Conditioning Consequences of behavior produce
Classical conditioning - Pairing of new stimulus to conditioned response
Operant conditioning - Consequences of behavior affect probability of that behavior reoccurring

12. Attention Focusing of mental resources on select information
Habituation - Decreased responsiveness to stimulus after repeated presentations
Dishabituation - Habituated response recovered after a change in stimulation
Joint attention: Occurs when individuals focus on the same object or event and are able to track each other’s behavior
One individual directs another’s attention, and reciprocal interaction is present

13. Memory
Memory: A central feature of cognitive development, involving the retention of information over time.
Implicit memory: Memory without conscious recollection; involves skills and routine procedures that are automatically performed.
Explicit memory: Conscious memory of facts and experiences

14. Memory Memory Neonates show memory for previously exposed stimuli
By 12 months dramatic improvement in encoding and retrieval
Rovee-Collier (1993) studies of infant memory
Given a reminder (priming), improves memory
Teaching Tip: In groups, have students design tasks that would test an infant’s memory. If possible, have them try out their tasks and see if their predictions match the results.

15. Figure 6. 4 Investigating Infant Memory
Figure 6.4 Investigating Infant Memory. In this technique, developed by Carolyn Rovee-Collier, the infant’s ankle is connected to a mobile by a ribbon. Infants quickly learn to kick to make the mobile move. Two and 3-month-olds remember how to perform this feat after a delay of a few days. If given a reminder of simply viewing the mobile, their memory lasts for 2 to 4 weeks.

16. Use of Conditioning
Conditioning techniques are used to study processes like memory
Consequences of behavior produce
Classical conditioning - Pairing of new stimulus to conditioned response
Operant conditioning - Consequences of behavior affect probability of that behavior reoccurring

17. Imitation
Meltzoff (2007, 2011)– Infant can imitate facial expression within a few days after birth; others disagree
Deferred imitation:
Imitation that occurs
after a delay of hours
or days
May aid in attachment
Mirror Neurons

18. Concept Formation and Categorization
Concepts: Ideas on what categories represent
Conceptual categories - Perceptual variability found in 7- to 9-month-old infants
These categories help us organize our knowledge.

19. Language Development

20. Defining Language Language Infinite generativity
Form of communication (verbal, written, gestures) based on system of symbols; highly organized
Infinite generativity
Ability to produce endless number of meaningful sentences using finite set of words and rules

21. Language’s Rule Systems
Five systems of rules
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics

22. How Language Develops Recognizing language sounds
Babbling and vocalizations
Crying - Present at birth, signals distress
Cooing - Begins about 1 to 2 months
Babbling - Occurs in first year, strings of consonant-vowel combinations
Gestures: Begins about 8 to 12 months

23. How Language Develops First words
Infants understand about 50 words at 13 months (receptive vocabulary)
Overextension and underextension of words
Telegraphic speech

24. Biological and Environmental Influences
Evolution of CNS and vocal apparatus
Human language about 100,000 years old
Children’s language acquisition similar all over the world (biological basis)

25. Biological and Environmental Influences
Broca’s area: Left frontal lobe, produces words
Wernicke’s area: Left hemisphere, involved in language comprehension
Language acquisition device (LAD): Noam Chomsky’s term.

26. FIGURE 6.15 - BROCA’S AREA AND WERNICKE’S AREA

27. Biological and Environmental Influences
Behaviorists: language is complex, learned
Behaviorists’ view cannot explain novelty, learning of a native language syntax without reinforcements
Motherese (Child-Directed Speech)
Recasting, Expanding, Labeling
Research
Environment influences language skills
Importance of social context: ‘Wild Boy of Aveyron’

28. AN INTERACTIONIST VIEW
Biology and sociocultural experiences contribute to language development
Parents and teachers construct language acquisition support system
Children acquire native language without explicit teaching