Class 6

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Class 6

• Read Berk Ch. 6 Infant Toddler Cognition
• How do babies think?
• Piagets theory of sensori-motor stages
• Information Processing
• Early language
• Stages
• Test 1 results

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How babies think

• Key Points
• How infants understand learn about the world
  from a Piagetian perspective
• Object Permanence studies
• Infants understand more than they show us

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Cognition Defined

• Three levels macroscopic to microscopic
• 1. Organized series of cognitive actions
• 2. Specific thoughts, language, learning
  abilities, problem solving
• 3. Mental processes that underlie those
• Attention,
• memory,
• processing speed,
• inhibitory ability

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Studying Infants

• Infants
• not able to say what theyre thinking
• not good at follow instructions
• nor do they have great motor skills
• Assessing infant cognition requires creative
  experiments

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Why Piaget?

• Broad comprehensive theory
• infant behaviours
• Starting point for other developmental theories
• Help you understand other infant cognition
  theories

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Piagets Theory

• Piagets primary goal was to
• understand how infants children develop ways of
  knowing acquiring knowledge
• Key Parts
• What are cognitive knowledge structures
• How do cognitive structures change

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Piaget Cognitive Structures

• Infants in 1st Year start with reflexes
• a perceptual physical approach to world
• sucking anything
• looking grasping objects
• shaking or banging objects
• dropping objects over-and-over
• done with fascination pleasure

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Piagets Cognitive Structures

• What they are in infancy
• thoughts, strategies, action patterns
• Called schemas
• What they do
• Determine the ways infants relate to, interact
  with, understand the world

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Piagets Cognitive Structures

• Infant Schemas
• Use mouthing, grasping, looking to explore
• start simply -gt more complex
• start separately -gt more coordinated
• In older children
• Cognitive structures are called operations

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How do cognitive structures change or develop?

• In Piagets theory schemas change when
• 1. Infants re-organize existing schemas
• to integrate, coordinate, combine schemas
• Eg, 2 simple schemas -gt one complex schema
• eg, grasp or suck -gt grasp suck
• eg, look or touch -gt look touch

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How do cognitive structures change or develop?

• 2. Infants adapt to new experiences
• Assimilate
• fit new experience into current cognitive
  structure (existing knowledge)
• Accommodate
• change the current cognitive structure to fit
  with new experience

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To Assimilate or to Accommodate?

• Suck All Things Schema Example
• New plastic cat arrives
• Sucking works fine -gt ?
• Start Drinking from a Cup
• Im getting all wet still thirsty -gt ?
• Advice
• Assimilate if you can,
• Accommodate if you must (J. Block)

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Benefits of Change

• Re-organization Adaptation
• leads to cognitive growth improved function
• more organized, accurate representation of reality

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Sensorimotor Stages
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Piagets Sensorimotor Stage

• Piaget saw infants as scientists
• actively engage environment to understand it
• use intentional behaviour (means-end activity) as
  foundation of all problem-solving

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Key task of infants in Piagets sensorimotor
stage?

• to form mental representations or schemas using
  senses motor activities by age 2 yr.
• evidence of development of mental thought is
• infants ability to understand that objects exist
  
• even when they cant be seen.
• Called Infant Object Permanence

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Object Permanence

• Do infants know that objects (or moms) exist even
  when they cant see them?
• Out of sight, out of mind?
• Piaget believed that when infants know objects
  continue to exist they have achieved object
  permanence

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Piagets Object Permanence

• Understand that objects continue to exist even
  when out of sight.
• develops 8 12 months.
• Same time as intentional, goal-directed actions,
• Imitation,
• use both hands for same actions
• Incomplete at first
• A-not-B Error

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Infant Object Permanence

• Piagets test A-not-B error
• Show a toy to infant,
• show-and-hide toy in 1 place - infant watches,
• show and hide toy in 2nd place - infant watches
• let infant reach for object in new hiding spot
• Does the infant remember where toy is?
• you switch locations, what does the infant do?

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Object Permanence A-not-B Error (L. Camras
website)
A-not-B error led Piaget to notion that infants
do not have a firm grasp of object permanence
until about 18 months of age.
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A-not-B error findings questioned

• Does object permanence really take so long?
• Can they do it earlier?
• With different tasks
• Vary the delays - between Hiding Reaching
• Vary of A trials (practice) - before switching
  to B
• Assess length of time - spent searching

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Object Permanence contd

• Vary the delays
• Vary delay between Hide Reach
• Longer delays produce more A-not-B errors
• Young infants need less delay to show error
• Older infants need more delay to show error
• Interpretation
• May not be object permanence problem
• May be evidence of a memory problem

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Object Permanence contd

• Just a habit? (Marcovitch, Zelazo, Schmuckler,
  2002)
• Is A-not-B error just a habitual reaching error?
• Varied of A trials before switching to B
• 3 groups 1 A-trial, 6 A-trials, or 11 A-trials
• Results 6 A-trials had most A-not-B errors
• Conclusion other cognitive activity going on
• Some habitual reaching (6 trials gt 1 trial),
• But not just habitual reaching problem
• By 11 trials - more understanding of task

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Object Permanence contd

• New A-not-B study (Ruffman et al., 2005)
• 61 infants, 8 12 months of age
• Measured length of time infants spent searching
• Why would infant search if toy no longer exists?
• Results infants search longer at A after B
  switch
• Conclusion infants believe object is at A
• Object location problem -
• Check wrong place, but toy still exists
• not simply memory, attention, or motor inhibition
  problems
• not an object permanence failure

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A-not-B errors

• What have we learned?
• Infants
• have greater memory capacity with age
• form habits easily, but then cant inhibit
• learn from repeated experience
• have unusual cognitive beliefs expectations

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Apply to Real World

• Infants
• Form habits easily use to your advantage
• Regular bath time, feeding time, etc
• Learn via sensori-motor experience
• let them explore the world
• Actively trying things best
• Cognitive beliefs may be unusual
• Dont assume that an infant interprets the world
  the same as us
• They see things differently, and we need to
  adjust.
• They might be scared, bored, fascinated

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Piagets Contribution

• Broad Comprehensive Theory
• how we think about infant cognition
• infants active explorers of their world
• Basis many modern infant cognitive studies

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Piagets Cognitive Stages

• How infants relate, interact, understand the
  world
• qualitative stages
• sequential invariant developmental order
• across all domains at the same time
• eg, understand that object permanence applies to
  all people objects at same time
• eg, knowledge should be consistent across all
  sensorimotor modalities (touch, vision etc)

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Some Problems with Piaget

• Recent refined studies do not support his Stage
  view
• Studies show evidence of
• Continuous development (vs stages)
• Older are better than younger
• Different Developmental pathways (vs invariant)
• Individual differences in infant responses
• Domain specific (vs all domains)
• Do not learn new skills in all areas at once

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Information Processing Perspective

• Basic cognitive structure similar through life.
• What changes is capacity of processing
• Increasing speed amount of information
• more complex thinking possible with age.
• Improvements in capacity due to
• Brain development better strategies
• ie attention, memory, strategies gets better

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Information Processing

• Infant memory
• Habituation studies
• Show that infants can remember
• 3-mo olds can remember visual stimuli for 1 day
• 1-yr olds for several days
• Better memory when they actively manipulate
• But, not clear what they will remember

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Visual Expectation Paradigm

• present infant with 1 stimulus repeatedly until
  they habituate
• reduce their visual attention (viewing time)
• then switch to a novel stimulus
• ie, a distraction task
• Does greater visual attention return?
• ie Dishabituation to new unexpected event

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Habituation Display
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Test 1 Possible Event
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Test 2 Impossible Event
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Results

• 6-month-olds look longer at impossible events.
• Why?
• Something unexpected happened
• Car should not have come through block
• Why is this evidence of object permanence?
• Young infants understand that objects continue to
  exist even after being hidden behind a screen.

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Object permanence begin to develop by 3 to 4
months

• Baillargeon (1987, 1991) Impossible event
  paradigm
• Habituation trials

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• Baillargeon (1987, 1991) Impossible event
  paradigm
• Test trials

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Results

• 3-4 mo infants looked longer at impossible events
• was carrot top expected?
• So unexpected, novel events -gt Dishabituation
• Why is this evidence of object permanence?
• Carrot continues to exist even as it moves behind
  screen.

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Visual Expectation Results

• Object permanence can explain longer looking
  times
• as early as 3 - 4 mo, well before 18 mo
• Two points
• Infants likely recognize understand more than
  their behaviours show
• Important to use the right measure

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Infant Language

• Stages of Language Development
• Prelinguistic period - crying, smiling, fussing
• communicative, but not language
• Joint attention
• Give- and -take
• Preverbal gestures
• Language-like sounds period
• Linguistic period

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Stages of Language Development

• First language-like sounds
• Phonation birth to 2 mo
• Comfort sounds
• Cooing 2 4 mo cooing,
• quasi-vowels, precursors of consonants

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Stages of Language Development

• Language-like sounds
• Expansion 4 7 mo cooing differentiated
• New sounds yells, whispers, growls, squeals
• Fully formed vowels
• Babbling begins - da

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Stages of Language Development

• Language-like sounds
• Cononical Stage 7 10 mo
• Increase in babbling
• Consonant vowels sounds
• Duplicated babbling da-da-da
• Intonations imitating sound of real speech

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Stages of Language Development

• Language-like sounds
• Contraction Stage 10 14 mo
• Initial broad range of babbling sounds disappears
• Only sounds found in mother-tongue remain

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Linguistic period

• General Principles
• Comprehension precedes production of speech
• Maturation important - stages are universal
• Begin to understand words middle of 1st yr
• Say first word at 10 17 mo (avg 13.6 mo)
• But also are cultural differences
• In English, 1st words are usually referential
• Refer to objects or people, not verbs or
  adjectives
• In other languages (eg Chinese, Korean)
• Verbs are preferred first

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Linguistic period

• One-word stage just after 1st birthday
• Individual words, no sentences
• Words may mean something different to child
• Overextension may over-generalize word meanings
• Eg all 4-legged animals are horseys
• Underextension may use words in too specific
  ways
• ie under-generalize word meanings
• Eg, bear refers to one toy, not other bears

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Linguistic period

• First Sentences in middle of 2nd year
• May be single words, but imply a statement
• ie holophrases
• Eg Me, meaning I want to do it.
• Two-word stage 18 20 mo
• Universal phenomenon
• Child can now use descriptive language
• Eg, naming (that house)
• Possessive (my book)
• Actions (kitty go)
• Questions (where ball?)

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3 Theories of Language Development

• Infants are taught
• Behaviourist (Skinner)
• Babies learn through operant conditioning
• ie reinforcement and imitation
• Infants teach themselves
• Nativist (Chomsky)
• Language too complex to learn by conditioning
• Biologically primed
• Interaction of both in social context
• Children observe participate in social
  exchanges
• Communication vital
• Nature likely provides many pathways to the goal

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Ways to Support Early Language Learning