Infancy: Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction

1
Chapter 6Infancy Cognitive Development
2
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.

3
Infancy Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction?

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

4
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.

5
Cognitive Development

• Jean Piaget

6
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

7
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

8
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

9
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.

10
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.

11
Lessons in Observation Piagets Sensorimotor
Stage
12
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?

13
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?

14
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?

15
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

16
Figure 6.2 Object Permanence Before 4 Months of
Age?
17
What are the Strengths of Piagets Theory?

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

18
What are the Limitations of Piagets Theory?

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

19
A Closer Look

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

20
Information Processing
21
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

22
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

23
Individual Differences in Intelligence Among
Infants
24
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

25
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

26
Language Development
27
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

28
Developing in a World of Diversity

• Babbling Here, There,
• and Everywhere

29
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

30
A Closer Look

• Teaching Sign Language to Infants

31
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

32
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

33
Figure 6.6 Mean Length of Utterance in Three
Children
34
Developing in a World of Diversity

• Two-Word Sentences Here, There, and

35
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

36
Developing in a World of Diversity

• Talking to Infants

37
Language Development

• The Nativist View

38
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

39
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

40
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

41
Figure 6.7 Brocas and Wernickes Areas of the
Cerebral Cortex
42
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

43
A Closer Look

• Motherese