Chapter 5 Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

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Chapter 5Cognitive Development in Infancy and
Toddlerhood

• Development Through the Lifespan 2nd edition Berk

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Jean Piaget
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PIAGET'S COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY

• Children move through four stages of development
  between infancy and adolescence.
• Sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete
  operations and formal operations

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Piagetian Concepts Schemes

• Psychological structures
• Organized ways of making sense of experience
• Change with age
• Action-based (motor patterns)
• Later will move to a mental (thinking) level

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Building Schemes

• Adaptation
• Process of building schemes through direct
  interaction with the environment
• Assimilation
• Part of adaptation in which the external world is
  interpreted through existing schemes
• Accommodation
• Part of adaptation in which new schemes are
  created or old ones adjusted

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Scheme Examples
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Building Schemes (cont.)

• Equilibrium
• Not changing steady, comfortable cognitive state
  
• Assimilation used more than accommodation
• Disequilibrium
• Cognitive discomfort during rapid change
• Accommodation used more than assimilation
• Movement between equilibrium and disequilibrium
• More effective schemes are produced.

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Sensorimotor Stage (0 to 2 Years)

• Infants and toddlers "think" with their eyes,
  ears, hands, and other sensorimotor equipment.

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Circular Reactions 0-12 mths

• Infants explore the environment and build schemes
  by trying to repeat chance events.
• First centered on own body (e.g. sucking)
• Change to manipulating objects for effect
• Object permanence

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Mental Representation (18 Mths. To 2 Yrs.)

• Mental representations
• Internal images of absent objects and past events
• A toddler can solve problems through symbolic
  means instead of trial and error.
• Permits make-believe play

Figure 5.6

• Deferred imitation
• Ability to copy behavior of models who are not
  present

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Research on Sensorimotor Stage

• Piaget underestimated infant capacities.
• Infants display certain cognitive capacities
  earlier.
• Young babies are aware of object characteristics.
• Evidence for object permanence as early as 3 1/2
  months
• What infants know may not yet be evident in
  searching behavior.
• Infants develop in a continuous manner and not in
  step-like stages.

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Research on Sensorimotor Stage Mental
Representation

• Deferred Imitation
• Research shows that deferred imitation is present
  at 6 weeks.
• As motor capacity improves, infants start to copy
  actions with objects.
• By the end of 2nd year, toddlers imitate actions
  of adults, even if not fully realized.

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INFORMATION PROCESSING

• Focus is on different aspects of thinking
• Attention
• Memory
• Categorization
• Problem solving

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Memory

• Sensory register
• Represented directly and very briefly
• Short-term (working) memory
• Actively "work" on limited information
• Long-term memory
• Permanent knowledge base
• Limitless capacity
• Sometimes problems with retrieval

Figure 5.9
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Attention and Memory

• Infants gradually become more efficient at
  managing their attention.
• Recognition
• Simplest form of memory
• Recall
• Remembering something not present
• By toddlerhood, recall for people, places and
  objects is excellent.

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Categorization

• Infants can organize their physical, emotional,
  and social worlds.
• Early categories are perceptual.
• By the end of the 1st year, categories become
  conceptual.
• During the 2nd year, children actively categorize
  items during their play.

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THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

• Vygotsky
• Complex mental functions originate in social
  interaction.
• tools of the mind i.e. language, pivot objects,
  social interaction
• Role of private speech

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Zone of Proximal Development

• Tasks a child cannot yet handle alone, but can
  with help of skilled partners
• Guidance within the zone of proximal development
  is related to advanced play, language, and
  problem-solving skills.

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Infant Intelligence Tests

• Measure early language and problem solving
• Test perceptual and motor responses
• Test scores may not accurately reflect abilities.
• Bayley Scales-mental and motor tasks

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Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

• Scores performance on test
• Compared to the performance of others of the same
  age
• Infant tests are poor predictors of later
  intelligence.
• IQ fluctuates between toddlerhood and adolescence.

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Early Environment and Mental Development

• Early childhood mental development predicted by
• Organized, stimulating physical setting
• Parental encouragement, involvement, and
  affection
• Regardless of social-class and ethnic group

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Care Outside of Home

• Child care has an impact on children's mental
  development and social skills.
• Care standards are set by the states and vary
  greatly.
• USA study showed few provided care adequate for
  healthy development. Note higher standards in
  Australia
• Developmentally appropriate practice
• Program standards that meet the developmental
  needs of children

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Early Intervention for At-Risk Infants and
Toddlers

• Children of poverty
• Often show gradual declines in intelligence test
  scores
• Achieve poorly when at school age
• Interventions are center- or home-based.
• The more intense the intervention, the greater
  the intellectual gains

Figure 5.11
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LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Ma-ma
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Theories on Language Development

• Skinner - conditioning e.g.parents reinforce
  baby's sounds that most sound like words.
• Imitation combines with reinforcement.
• Chomsky (nativist) - language acquisition device
  with which children are born
• Interactionist- inborn capacity interacts with
  social and linguistic environment

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Getting Ready to Talk

• Cooing (2 mos.)
• Vowel-like noises
• Babbling (6 mos.)
• Consonants combine with vowels.
• Babies must hear human speech for babbling to
  develop further.
• Adult-infant interaction increases the amount of
  spoken language.

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Becoming a Communicator

• By 4 months, infants and adults follow each
  other's gaze.
• Adults label what is seen.
• Joint attention speeds up language development.
• By 1st year, preverbal gestures influence the
  behavior of others.

• Infant games demonstrate conversational
  turn-taking.

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First Words

• Build on the sensorimotor foundations
• Underextension
• Word is applied to a smaller number of objects
  and events than is appropriate
• Overextension
• Word is applied to a wider collection of objects
  and events than is appropriate
• Language comprehension develops ahead of
  production.

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Two-Word Utterance Phase

• Vocabulary builds
• Slowly from 12 to18 mos.
• Quickly from 18 to 24 mos.
• Telegraphic speech
• Two-word utterance phase of toddlers
• Leaves out smaller and less important words

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Individual and Cultural Differences

• Girls are ahead of boys in early vocabulary.
• Referential style
• Toddlers use language mainly to label objects.
• Expressive style
• Toddlers talk about feelings and needs and those
  of other people.
• Parental speech is related to variations in early
  word learning. Class and cultural variations
• Child directed speech supports development