PSYC 2314Lifespan Development

Chapter 6

The First Two Years:

Cognitive Development

Perception and Cognition

• Gibson’s Affordances– Perception is an active cognitive process in

which each individual interacts selectively with a vast array of perceptual possibilities

– “the environment affords opportunities”

Perception and Cognition

• Which particular affordance an individual perceives and acts on depends on that person’s:– Past experiences– Current developmental or maturational level– Sensory awareness of the opportunities– Immediate needs and motivation

Perception and Cognition

• Dynamic Perception– Perception primed to focus on movement and

change

• Object Permanence– The ability to understand that objects exist

independently of one’s perception of them

Cognitive Growth

• Infants younger than 6 months can categorize objects according to their shape, color, angularity, density, number (up to 3 objects) and relative size.

Cognitive Growth

• Conditions in which infant memory can be more developed:– Using situations that are similar to real life– Ensuring that the infant’s motivation is high– Providing memory-priming retrieval cues

Cognitive Growth

• Deferred Imitation– Ability to remember and imitate behaviors that

have been witnessed but never personally performed.

Cognitive Growth

• Launching event– Research using the habituation technique to

determine that 6 month-olds notice whether an object is moving along or not, but they do not seem to understand cause and effect; by 10 months, they can properly interpret the cause-and-effect nature of simple launching events.

Piaget’s Sensorimotor Intelligence

• Stage One: Reflexes (birth-1 month)– Newborn’s reflexes represent its only ways of

gaining knowledge about the world.

• Stage Two: First Acquired Adaptations (1-4 months)– When the infant starts to adapt its reflexes to

the environment and to coordinate two actions.– Adaptation occurs through assimilation or

accommodation

Piaget’s Sensorimotor Intelligence

• Stage Three: Making Interesting Sights Last (4-8 months)– Infants become more responsive to people and objects

in the environment as they learn to repeat specific actions that have elicited pleasing responses.

• Stage Four: New Adaptation and Anticipation (8-12 months)– Infants become more purposeful in responding to

people and objects, anticipating events, and engaging in goal-directed behavior.

Piaget’s Sensorimotor Intelligence

• Stage Five: New Means Through Active Experimentation (12-18 months)– The little scientists become more active and creative in their

exploration of, and trial-and-error experimentation with, the environment.

• Stage Six: New Means Through Mental Combinations (18-24 months)– By using mental combinations, toddlers begin to anticipate

and solve simple problems without resorting to trail-and-error experimentation.

– Enables the toddler to remember much better, to anticipate future events, and to pretend.

Language Development

• Babbling: repeating certain syllables

• Underextension: words are applied more narrowly than they should be

• Overextension: overgeneralization

• Holophrases: one word sentences

Language Development

• BF Skinner– Language is acquired through conditioning and

differential reinforcement of appropriate usage.

• Noam Chomsky– Children have an innate predisposition to learn

language, language acquisition device (LAD).

• Sociocultural– The actual language-learning process occurs in social

context, framed by the adult’s teaching sensitivity and the child’s learning ability.

Language Development

• Baby Talk (motherese)– Distinct in pitch, intonation, vocabulary and

sentence length.– Employs more questions, commands, and

repetitions and fewer past tenses, pronouns and complex sentences