Infancy Cognitive Development

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Infancy Cognitive Development

• Baby Human Face Recognition

• 2 key ideas from birth
• Born with more neurons than an adult - Pruning
• Hyperattentive - Pay attention to everything
  (usually considered an inability to focus)

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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Schema
• a concept or framework that organizes and
  interprets information
• Assimilation
• interpreting ones new experience in terms of
  ones existing schemas
• Accommodation
• adapting ones current understandings (schemas)
  to incorporate new information

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Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development
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Cognitive DevelopmentSensorimotor Stage

• Object Permanence
• the awareness that things continue to exist even
  when not perceived
• No object permanence
• A-not-B Error

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Cognitive DevelopmentSensorimotor Stage

• Circular Reactions
• Primary baby accidentally does something and
  repeats simply because it feels good
• Saliva bubbles, waving arms
• Secondary similar to primary, but involve
  objects in the environment
• Example
• Tertiary infant devises new ways to act on
  objects to produce interesting results.

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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Baby Mathematics
• Shown a numerically impossible outcome, infants
  stare longer (Wynn, 1992)

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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Scale Error in the Judy DeLoache Study
• Found 18 30 month olds commonly make
• Scale Errors

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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Scale Error
• Typical scale error ages

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Cognitive Development

• Self-Awareness shopping cart study
• Animism belief that inanimate objects have
  lifelike qualities and mental lives.
• Preoperational
• Seriation Ability to arrange objects in
  ascending or descending order based on
  characteristic like length or weight
• Concrete operations
• Much later than people think

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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Conservation
• the principle that properties such as mass,
  volume, and number remain the same despite
  changes in the forms of objects
• Preoperational vs. Concrete operational
• Number, Mass, Length, Volume, Area, Weight

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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Egocentrism
• the inability of the preoperational child to take
  anothers point of view
• Example in Childs answers
• Why does the sun shine? To keep me warm.
• Why is there snow? For me to play in.
• Why is the grass green? Its my favorite color.
• Have a 4 year old close her eyes and ask her if
  you can still see her. Her answer?
• How many siblings? vs. how many kids do your
  parents have?

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Social Development

• Health, happiness, and even survival depends on
  forming meaningful, effective relationships with
  family peers, and later, on the job (Zimbardo,
  2007)
• Nature brings our 1st step in this direction a
  biological predisposition
• to smile.

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Social DevelopmentTemperament

• Temperament An individuals characteristic
  manner of behavior or reaction
• Assumed to have a strong genetic basis.
• 10-15 babies born shy, 10-15 born bold
• Nature / Nurture connection which temperaments
  encourage interaction?

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Social Development

• Attachment
• an emotional tie with another person
• shown in young children by their seeking
  closeness to the caregiver and displaying
  distress on separation
• Develops in phases over 1st 24 months.
• Once attachments are formed, fears and anxieties
  also appear.

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Social Development

• Stranger Anxiety
• fear of strangers that infants commonly display
• beginning by about 8 months of age
• Separation Anxiety
• Distress the infant shows when object of
  attachment leaves
• Peaks between 14 and 18 months

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The Strange Situation

• Mary Ainsworth Attachment studies
• Displays attachment
• Secure Attachment (Ideal) 60
• Children show some distress when parent leaves,
  seek contact at the reunion, explore when parent
  gone, play and greet when parent present.
• Insecure Attachments lack 1 or more of these
  traits
• Behaviorists What should the parent do in this
  scenario (assuming its real)?

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Social Development

• Groups of infants left by their mothers in a
  unfamiliar room (Kagan, 1976).

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Origins of Attachment

• Critical Period
• an optimal period shortly after birth when an
  organisms exposure to certain stimuli or
  experiences produces proper development
• Imprinting Konrad Lorenz
• the process by which certain animals
• form attachments during a critical
• period very early in life

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Origins of Attachment

• Harlows Surrogate Mother Experiments
• Monkeys preferred contact with the comfortable
  cloth mother, even while feeding from the
  nourishing wire mother

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Social Development

• Monkeys raised by artificial mothers were
  terror-stricken when placed in strange situations
  without their surrogate mothers.

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Social Development

• Basic Trust (Erik Erikson)
• a sense that the world is predictable and
  trustworthy
• said to be formed during infancy by appropriate
  experiences with responsive caregivers
• Self-Concept
• a sense of ones identity and personal worth

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Social Development Child-Rearing Practices

• Authoritarian
• parents impose rules and expect obedience
• Dont interrupt. Why? Because I said so.
• Permissive
• submit to childrens desires, make few demands,
  use little punishment
• Authoritative
• both demanding and responsive
• set rules, but explain reasons and encourage open
  discussion

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Social Development Child-Rearing Practices