THE EMERGENCE OF THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE

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THE EMERGENCE OF THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE

• Chapter Four

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LECTURE OVERVIEW

• Cognitive Development
• Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development
• Information Processing
• Vygotskys Theory
• Language Development

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INTRODUCTION

• Childrens cognitive abilities are not at adult
  levels
• develop through series of stages
• Several theories on how children develop in terms
  of cognition
• Development of language and meaning relates to
  cognitive development

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BASIC PRINCIPLES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
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COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

• Piaget children are like scientists
• exploring environment
• forming theories
• Schemes psychological structures that organize
  experience
• relate events, objects, and knowledge
• categories ex. food apple, rice
• with age comes more abstract categories

6
Cont.

• Assimilation new experience are incorporated
  into existing schemes
• ex. lion deer placed in category of animals
• Accommodation schemes are modified based on
  experience
• ex. lion can also be put into category of cats,
  while deer goes into category of ungulates

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EQUILIBRATION

• Assimilation and accommodation are usually in
  balance
• sometimes unbalanced too much time accommodating
  and not enough time assimilating
• too many categories, not enough experiences
• changes with experience new theories
• reorganization of schemes equilibration

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PIAGETS THEORY
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PIAGETS STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

• Sensorimotor Period
• - infancy 0- 2 years
• Preoperational Period
• - preschool and early elementary 2 to 7 years
• Concrete Operational Period
• - middle to late elementary 7 to 11 years
• Formal Operational Period
• - adolescence to adulthood 11 years

ages only approximations
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SENSORIMOTOR THINKING

• 6 substages
• Exercising Reflexes
• - increase in coordination
• Learning to Adapt
• - Primary Circular Reaction re-creation of
  pleasant events
• 3. Making Interesting Events
• - Secondary Circular Reaction novel actions
  that are repeated

11
Cont.

• 4. Behaving Intentionally
• means to an end
• combining schemes
• 5. Experimenting
• - Tertiary Circular Reaction repeat old schemes
  with new objects
• 6. Using Symbols
• - beginning of talking and gesturing
• - anticipating consequences to actions

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PREOPERATIONAL THINKING

• Working with symbols and perspectives
• Egocentrism difficulty in seeing world from
  anothers outlook
• simply do not comprehend
• Centration narrow focus of thought
• concentrate on one aspect/perspective

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Cont.

• Appearance as Reality appearance is reality
• ex. costumes, make-up
• ex. scale models
• understanding alterations to an object do not
  necessarily change meaning of the object

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EVALUATING THEORY

• Much support for theory
• Good for teaching and fostering development by
  focusing on childs ability
• encouraging development to next level
• Some criticisms..

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CRITICISMS OF PIAGETS THEORY

• Alternative explanations of performance
• importance of understanding language
• ex. in conservation task
• importance of memory ability
• ex. intervals in object searching tasks
• object permanence occurs at earlier age than
  suggested

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Cont.

• Consistency in Performance
• Piaget each stage consists of an unified set of
  mental structures
• Children may be delayed on some tasks, but
  advanced on others while in a certain stage
• suggests that do not move through a stage in a
  fashion that pervades all tasks

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EXTENDING PIAGETS THEORY

• Children Naïve theories
• attempt to explain a large number of phenomena
  with one theory
• Core Knowledge Hypothesis
• born with rudimentary knowledge of world
• expand knowledge through experiences

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Cont.

• Naïve Physics
• Physical matters and energy
• Infants know
• objects move along continuous connected paths
• objects cannot move through other objects
• one object striking another while cause second
  object to move

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Cont.

• Naïve Biology
• Animate objects from inanimate objects
• Infants/Preschoolers know
• Movement
• Growth
• Internal Parts
• Inheritance
• Healing

VS.
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INFORMATION PROCESSING
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GENERAL PRINCIPLES

• Process information like computers
• Mental Hardware
• mental and neural structures to process
  information
• Mental Software
• mental programs that are the basis for performing
  tasks

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ATTENTION

• Whether sensory information requires extra
  cognitive processing
• conscious processing
• Orienting Response strong or unfamiliar stimulus
• fix with eyes, increased heart rate and brain
  activity
• Habituation decreased response to repeated
  stimulus
• Sensitization increased response to repeated
  stimulus

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LEARNING

• Classical Conditioning
• Pavlov (1849-1936) dog-salivation experiments
• gives sense of order and predictability to
  environment
• infants are easily conditioned to pleasant
  stimuli, but not to aversive stimuli

unconditioned stimulus (UCS) unconditioned
response (UCR)
neutral stimulus (NS) UCS UCR
conditioned stimulus (CS) conditioned response
(CR)
(NS CS and UCR CR)
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LEARNING

• Classical Conditioning
• Pavlov (1849-1936) dog-salivation experiments
• gives sense of order and predictability to
  environment
• infants are easily conditioned to pleasant
  stimuli, but not to aversive stimuli

FOOD (UCS) SALIVATION (UCR)
BELL (NS) FOOD SALIVATION
BELL (CS) SALIVATION (CR)
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Cont.

• Operant Conditioning
• consequences of behaviour and likelihood to
  reoccur
• pleasant consequences increased occurrence
• unpleasant consequences decreased occurrence
• Reinforcement increasing behaviour
• Punishment decreasing behaviour

26
Cont.

• Imitation
• learning vicariously watching others
• seen even in newborns
• ex. imitating facial expressions

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MEMORY

• Memory exists as early as 2-3 months of age
• Retrieval cues can stimulate memory retrieval of
  forgotten memories
• Memory improves with age
• remember for longer periods
• increased complexity
• growth of brain and neural substrates

28
Cont.

• Autobiographical Memory
• memory of events in own life
• originates in preschool years
• Suggestions changing memories

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NUMBER SKILLS

• Increase in learning and memory skills increase
  experiences and knowledge
• Ability to distinguish amount occurs in infancy
• Ordinality numbers differ in magnitude

DIFFERS FROM
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Cont.

• By age 3 mastered basic principles of counting
• dependent on language skills
• One-to-one principle one number name for each
  object
• Stable-order principle number names counted in
  same order
• Cardinality principle last number differs from
  previous by denoting different objects

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VYGOTSKYS THEORY
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ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT

• Difference between abilities with assistance and
  abilities when unaided
• Cognitive abilities develop slowly
• First with assistance from others
• Then without assistance until independence is
  reached
• Giving structure helps with independence

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SCAFFOLDING

• Teachers gauge amount of assistance needed to
  advance learning
• With time, only reminders are needed
• Dividing difficult tasks into subtasks
• Promotes learning
• Transferring skills to child

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PRIVATE SPEECH

• Comments not intended for others, but are
  designed to help children regulate their own
  behaviour
• Intermediate step toward self-regulation
• Instruct themselves when others are not present
  especially with difficult tasks
• With age, private speech becomes inner speech

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LANGUAGE
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SPEECH DEVELOPMENT

• Perceiving Speech
• infants are able to hear speech early on
• phonemes basic building blocks of speech
• able to distinguish phonemes by 1 month
• Language Exposure
• different languages use different phonemes
• infants can initially distinguish large range of
  phonemes

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Steps to Speech

• Cooing at 2 months begin to produce sounds
• Babbling at 6 months, make speech-like sounds
• Intonation of language reflected in babbling
• Vary pitch and stress some syllables at 8 to 11
  months
• Reinforcement for correct words

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Cont.

• Identifying Words
• identifying recurring sounds words
• stressing syllables to identify words
• able to identify words that indicate
  objects/people by 6 months
• ex. Daddy or Mommy
• Infant Directed Speech
• adults speak slowly with exaggerated changes in
  pitch and loudness

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FIRST WORDS.

• Understanding of words precedes speech
• 1 year first words begin to emerge
• Objects and actions are first words
• Vocabulary levels vary greatly
• Learning style
• Referential style speech dominated by names
• Expressive style names and social phrases

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Cont.

• Speech more than just sounds
• Words as labels with meaning
• Fast mapping ability to quickly connect new
  words with proper referent

TREE
or is a tree an action?
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GRAMMAR

• Begin with 2 word sentences
• Longer sentences found in 3 year old speech
• Telegraphic speech only relevant words to
  meaning missing grammatical morphemes

ACTOR ACTION ACTION OBJECT POSSESSOR
POSSESSION
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Cont.

• Learn grammatical rules
• Exceptions to the rules more difficult to learn
• when applying rules to the exceptions
  overregularizations

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COMMUNICATING WITH OTHERS

• Rules of communicating
• Taking turns speaking and listening
• - less help by 2 years of age
• 2. Remarks should be clear to listener
• matching knowledge of listener
• Pay attention to speaker
• - ask for clarification
• - do not assume

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CONCLUSION
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CONCLUSION

• Major Milestones for Language Development
• Birth to 1 year
• Hear phonemes
• Begin to coo and babble
• 1st birthday
• Begin to talk and gesture
• Begin use of symbols
• 1-2 years
• Vocabulary expands
• Referential and expressive styles appear
• 2 word sentences appear
• Turn-taking in communicating

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Cont.

• 3-5 years
• Vocabulary expansion continues
• Grammar added
• Adjust speech to listeners, but ignore problems
  as listeners
• Piagets theory through several stages of
  cognitive development
• Information processing learning through
  consequences and associations