Infancy: Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction

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Chapter 6Infancy Cognitive Development
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Infancy Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction?

• For 2-month-old infants, out of sight is out
  of mind,
• A 1-hour-old infant may imitate an adult who
  sticks out his or her tongue.

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Infancy Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction?

• Psychologists can begin to measure intelligence
  in infancy.
• Infant crying is a primitive form of language.

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Infancy Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction?

• You can advance childrens development of
  pronunciation by correcting their errors.
• Children are prewired to listen to language in
  such a way that they come to understand rules of
  grammar.

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Cognitive Development

• Jean Piaget

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Cognitive Development Jean Piaget

• Focus on development of childrens way of
  perceiving and mentally representing the world
• Schemes
• Concepts
• Assimilate
• Fit new ideas into existing schemes
• Accommodate
• Modify schemes to accept new ideas

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What is the Sensorimotor Stage of Cognitive
Development?

• Development through sensory and motor activity
• Birth through 2 years
• Progress from reflex responses to goal oriented
  behavior
• Form mental representations
• Hold complex pictures of past events in mind
• Solve problems by mental trial and error

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What are the Parts or Substages of the
Sensorimotor Development?

• Simple Reflexes
• Birth to 1 month
• Modify reflexes based on experience
• Primary Circular Reactions
• 1 to 4 months
• Primary focus on infants 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

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What are the Parts or Substages of the
Sensorimotor Development?

• Coordination of Secondary Schemes
• 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
• Invention of New Means Through Mental
  Combinations
• 18 to 24 months
• External exploration is replaced by mental
  exploration.

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Lessons in Observation Piagets Sensorimotor
Stage

• Describe Jean Piagets sensorimotor period of
  cognitive development. How do sensory and motor
  activities interact in the development of
  cognitive skills, according to Piaget?
• Describe the behaviors of 1-week old Aiden and
  2-month-old Giuseppina. Are their behaviors
  purposeful? Discuss differences in their
  behaviors with regard to Piagets concept of the
  circular reaction.

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Lessons in Observation Piagets Sensorimotor
Stage

• Describe the behaviors of 6-week-old Aislynne and
  5-month-old James. Do their behaviors illustrate
  primary or secondary circular reactions? Why?

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Lessons in Observation Piagets Sensorimotor
Stage

• Which infant presented in the video illustrates
  Piagets concept of the coordination of secondary
  schemes? Describe the infants behavior. How
  old is the infant?
• Which infant illustrates a tertiary circular
  reaction? Describe the infants behavior.
  Approximately how old is this infant?

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Lessons in Observation Piagets Sensorimotor
Stage

• Outline the development of object permanence by
  describing the behaviors of 2-month-old
  Giuseppina, 6-month-old Anthony, and 20-month-old
  Tess with respect to hidden objects.What do
  their behaviors indicate regarding their mental
  representation abilities? Which of them has
  developed object permanence?

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How Does Object Permanence Develop?

• 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
• 6 month - try to retrieve a preferred object
  partially hidden
• 8 to 12 month - try to retrieve objects
  completely hidden
• Commit A not B error
• After 12 months no longer show A not B error
• More recent research object permanence in some
  form as early as 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 months

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Figure 6.2 Object Permanence Before 4 Months of
Age?
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What are the Strengths of Piagets Theory?

• Comprehensive model
• Confirmation from research of others
• Pattern and sequence appear cross culturally

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What are the Limitations of Piagets Theory?

• Stages are more gradual than discontinuous
• Underestimate infants competence
• Emergence of object permanence
• Deferred imitation
• Computational concepts

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A Closer Look

• Counting in the Crib?
• Findings from a Mickey Mouse Experiment

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Information Processing
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What are Infants Tools for Processing
Information?

• Memory
• Neonates show memory for previously exposed
  stimuli
• By 12 months dramatic improvement in encoding and
  retrieval
• Rovee-Collier (1993) studies of infant memory

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What are Infants Tools for Processing
Information?

• Imitation
• Deferred imitation 9 months
• Neonates imitate adults who stick out their
  tongue
• Not present in older infants
• May indicate reflexive response

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Individual Differences in Intelligence Among
Infants
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How do we Measure Individual Differences in the
Development of Cognitive Functioning?

• Scales of infant development or intelligence
• Bayley Scales of Infant Development
• 178 mental-scale items
• 111 motor-scale items
• behavior rating scale based on examiner
  observation
• Screening for handicaps
• Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale
• Denver Developmental Screening Test

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How Well do Infant Scales Predict Later
Intellectual Performance?

• Overall infant scale scores do not predict school
  grades or IQ of schoolchildren
• Visual recognition memory ability to
  discriminate previously seen objects from novel
  objects
• Good predictive validity for IQ and language
  ability

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Language Development
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What are Prelinguistic Vocalizations?

• Prelinguistic vocalizations do not represent
  objects or events
• Examples of prelinguistic vocalizations
• Crying
• Cooing vowel-like, linked to pleasant feelings
• Babbling combine vowels and consonants
• Echolalia repetition of vowel/consonant
  combinations
• Intonation patterns of rising and falling melody

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Developing in a World of Diversity

• Babbling Here, There,
• and Everywhere

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How Does Vocabulary Develop?

• Receptive vocabulary outpaces expressive
• First word typically 11 to 13 months
• 3 or 4 months later 10 to 30 words
• First words generally nominals
• general (class nouns) and specific (proper nouns)
• 18 to 22 months rapid increase from 50 to more
  than 300 words

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A Closer Look

• Teaching Sign Language to Infants

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Styles in Language Development

• Referential language style
• Use language to label objects
• Expressive language style
• Use language as means for engaging in social
  interactions
• Overextensions
• Extend meaning of one word to refer to things or
  actions for which the word is not known

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How do Infants Create Sentences?

• Telegraphic speech
• Brief expression with the meanings of sentences
• Mean length of utterance (MLU)
• Average number of morphemes used in sentence
• Holophrases
• Single words used to express complex meanings
• Two word sentences
• 18 to 24 months telegraphic two word sentences
  begin
• Demonstrate syntax

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Figure 6.6 Mean Length of Utterance in Three
Children
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Developing in a World of Diversity

• Two-Word Sentences Here, There, and

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How do Learning Theorists Account for Language
Development?

• Imitation
• Children learn from parental models
• Does not explain utter phrases that have not been
  observed
• Reinforcement
• Sounds of adults language are reinforced
• Foreign sounds become extinct
• Use of shaping

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Developing in a World of Diversity

• Talking to Infants

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Language Development

• The Nativist View

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What is the Nativist View of Language Development?

• Innate or inborn factors cause children to attend
  to and acquire language in certain ways
• Psycholinguistic Theory
• Interaction between environmental influences and
  inborn tendency to acquire language

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Language Acquisition Device

• The inborn prewired tendency to acquire a
  language
• Evidence for LAD
• Universality of language abilities
• Regularity of early production of sounds, even
  among deaf children
• Invariant sequences of language development,
  regardless of language
• Chomsky children are prewired to perceive and
  use a universal language

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What Parts of the Brain Are Involved in Language
Development?

• Key structures for most people are based in left
  hemisphere
• Brocas area
• Wernickes area
• Aphasia caused by damage in either area
• Brocas aphasia slow laborious speech with
  simple sentences
• Wernickes aphasia impairment comprehending
  speech of others and expressing their own
  thoughts
• Angular gyrus
• Translates visual information into auditory
  sounds
• Impairment can cause reading difficulties and
  dyslexia

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Figure 6.7 Brocas and Wernickes Areas of the
Cerebral Cortex
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What is Meant by a Sensitive Period in Language
Development?

• Plasticity of brain provides a sensitive period
  of learning language
• Begins about 18 to 24 months and continues
  through puberty
• Left hemisphere injuries
• Children recover good deal of speech, utilizing
  right hemisphere
• Case studies
• Genie
• Simon and ASL

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A Closer Look

• Motherese