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Cognitive Development In Infancy

Chapter 5

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Chapter Outline

• Piaget’s theory of infant development• Learning, remembering, and conceptualizing• Individual differences and assessment• Language development


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Piaget’s Theory of Infant Development

• Cognitive processes• The sensorimotor stage• Evaluating Piaget’s sensorimotor stage


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Cognitive Processes

• Schemes: Actions or mental representations that organize knowledge– Behavioral scheme– Mental scheme

• Assimilation: Using existing schemes to deal with new information or experiences

• Accommodation: Adjusting schemes to fit new information and experiences


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Cognitive Processes

• Organization: Grouping of isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher-order system

• Equilibration and stages of development– Equilibration: Mechanism by which children shift

from one stage of thought to the next– Individuals go through four stages of development• Cognition is qualitatively different from one stage to

another


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Figure 5.1 - Piaget’s Six Substages of Sensorimotor Development


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The Sensorimotor Stage

• Lasts from birth to about 2 years of age– Construct an understanding of the world by

coordinating sensory experiences– Substages• 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


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– Object permanence: Understanding that objects and events continue to exist:• When they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched


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Learning, Remembering, and Conceptualizing

• Conditioning• Attention• Memory• Imitation• Concept formation and categorization


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Conditioning

• Operant conditioning• Information retention• Attention: Focusing of mental resources on

select information– Orienting/investigative process– Sustained attention


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Conditioning

• Habituation - Decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations of the stimulus

• Dishabituation - Increase in responsiveness after a change in stimulation

• Joint attention: Requires – Ability to track another’s behavior– One person’s directing another’s attention– Reciprocal interaction


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Memory

• Retention of information over time– Implicit memory: Without conscious recollection• Memories of skills and routine procedures that are

performed automatically

– Explicit memory: Conscious remembering of facts and experiences

– Childhood amnesia


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Imitation

• Involve flexibility and adaptability• Deferred imitation: Occurs after a delay of

hours or days


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Concept Formation and Categorization

• Concepts: Cognitive groupings of similar objects, events, people, or ideas

• Perceptual categorization• Conceptual categorization


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Individual Differences and Assessment

• Measures of infant development• Predicting intelligence


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Measures of Infant Development

• Developmental quotient (DQ): Score that combines subscores in:– Motor, language, adaptive, and personal-social

domains in the Gesell assessment of infants


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Measures of Infant Development

• Bayley Scales of Infant Development: Used to assess infant behavior and predict later development– Current version has three components: • Mental scale • Motor scale• Infant behavior profile

• Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence evaluates an infant’s ability to process information


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Predicting Intelligence

• Tests for infants contain items related to perceptual-motor development – Include measures of social interaction


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Language Development

• Defining language• Language’s rule systems• How language develops• Biological and environmental influences• An interactionist view


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Defining Language

• Language: Form of communication– Spoken, written, or signed– Based on a system of symbols – Consists of the words used by a community and

the rules for varying and combining them

• Infinite generativity: Ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences using:– Finite set of words and rules


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Figure 5.12 - The Rule Systems of Language


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How Language Develops

• Recognizing language sounds• Babbling and other vocalizations– Crying– Cooing– Babbling

• Gestures– Showing and pointing


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• First words– Receptive vocabulary considerably exceeds spoken

vocabulary– Vocabulary spurt– Overextension - Tendency to apply a word to

objects that are inappropriate for the word’s meaning

– Underextension - Tendency to apply a word too narrowly


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Figure 5.14 - Variation in Language Milestones


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• Two-word utterances– To convey meaning child relies on:• Gesture, tone, and context

– Telegraphic speech: Use of short and precise words without grammatical markers:• Articles, auxiliary verbs, and other connectives


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Biological Influences

• Regions involved in language– Broca’s area: In the brain’s left frontal lobe that is

involved in speech production– Wernicke’s area: In the brain’s left hemisphere

that is involved in language comprehension


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Biological Influences

• Language acquisition device (LAD): Chomsky’s term that describes a biological endowment enabling the child to:– Detect the features and rules of language,

including phonology, syntax, and semantics


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Figure 5.16 - Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area


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Environmental Influences

• Behaviorist view of language learning has several problems

• Interaction view - Children learn language in specific contexts

• Vocabulary development is linked to:– Family’s socioeconomic status – Type of talk that parents direct to their children

• Child-directed speech: Higher pitch than normal, with simple words and sentences


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Environmental Influences

• Three strategies to enhance child’s acquisition of language:– Recasting– Expanding– Labeling


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Interactionist View

• Biology and experience contribute to language development
