Download Chapter 6 outline

Chapter 6 outline
Cognition
Piaget’s Theory and Infancy Piaget’s theory: described the child as actively
constructing and building knowledge (schemes) through the processes of assimilation
and accommodation to achieve equilibrium in understanding.
Piaget believed that cognitive development results from maturational factors and
environmental experiences.
four stages through which all children progress in an invariable order. The first stage,
the sensorimotor stage (birth to two years), is characterized by the child’s actions on
the environment. The child undergoes three major achievements during this initial
stage (which contains six substages). The first accomplishment involves a progression
from actions that are reflexive to more goal-directed actions called means-end
behavior
A second accomplishment involves the child’s gradual changing focus from the self
to a greater orientation to the external world. Of importance is the attainment of the
object concept, or object permanence.
Possession of the object concept (or object permanence) is necessary for the
development of deferred imitation, the ability to imitate a model who is no longer
present, and marks the end of the sensorimotor stage and the beginning of the
preoperational stage. Critics of Piaget’s theory suggest that children demonstrate
object permanence much earlier than Piaget thought.
Concepts The child’s use of concepts, or the way in which the child organizes
information on the basis of some general or abstract principle, increases the efficiency
of cognitive processing.
Classification classes can be based on perceptual groupings (objects that look alike),
thematic relations (objects that function together or complement one another), or
taxonomic groupings (based on some abstract principle). Children’s earliest
classifications (before about nine to twelve months) appear to be largely perceptually
based. This reliance on shared perceptual features decreases with age, particularly as
children begin to understand hierarchical relations among objects that are perceptually
dissimilar. Initial groupings of objects tend to occur at a basic level: objects go
together when they look alike or are used in similar ways.
Numerical concepts-- newborns and very young infants may be able to detect
differences between small numbers of objects.
Memory types of memory.
Recognition memory requires participants to indicate somehow that they have
experienced a stimulus before. Recall memory participants must reproduce
previously presented stimuli. Explicit memory refers to a recollection of a past event
or experience. Explicit memory is a conscious process and can be demonstrated via
either recognition or recall. Implicit Memory refers to non-conscious recollections of
how to do something behaviorally.
The lack of language presents difficulties in obtaining research evidence regarding
infants’ memory. Researchers have utilized two techniques, habituation and operant
conditioning to measure recognition memory. Fagan’s paired-comparison procedure
using human faces demonstrates that infants retain information about previously
viewed faces for surprisingly long periods of time. Rovee-Collier’s experiment with
the model and ribbon tied to the infant’s leg relies on operant conditioning to
demonstrate memory. The infant remembers the mobile, and how to make it spin by
pulling the ribbon. Recall memory is measured through techniques such as deferred
imitation, and elicited imitation, in which the subject repeats a sequence of actions
demonstrated by the experimenter.
As infants mature, they are able to separate memory from context, process
information more rapidly, and remember a greater amount of information.
Problem-Solving Piaget’s descriptions of the development of means-ends behavior
during the sensorimotor stage of development suggest that infants show the
beginnings of problem-solving. Infants are capable of solving problems by combining
several subgoals to reach an interesting toy. Problem-solving can even stake on
complex qualities. In some circumstances, very young children can discern the
similarities across problems and transfer that knowledge from one problem to another.
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development Vygotsky, in contrast to
Piaget, emphasized that development must be understood within the context of the
culture in which a child is reared. The social activity surrounding formal and informal
exchanges with others plays a significant role in development.
Scaffolding Others provide a scaffolding for cognitive development—that is,
temporary support by demonstrating cognitive skills and techniques in which the child
is deficient and that the child eventually incorporates as part of her or his own
thinking. The zone of proximal development stresses that the most effective help the
child can receive from an expert is assistance just slightly beyond his or her
capacities, thereby building on the child’s current level of competence.
The role of skilled collaborators Research indicates that in general, when children
work with a skilled collaborator (whether an adult or a peer), performance on
cognitive tasks improves. An important component in effective collaboration is shared
attention and communication, known as intersubjectivity. Infants show the early
beginnings of participating in shared attention and communication in the first few
months of life as demonstrated through simple routines, such as the game of peek-aboo.
Language A baby’s contact with language is one-sided.
Among the first tasks is to learn to identify the myriad sounds of the native language.
These tasks involve distinguishing specific sounds in the spoken language, noting the
regularities in how they are combined, recognizing which combinations constitute
words, and eventually, after making the transaction from listener to speaker, forming
the consonant-vowel combinations that build words and sentences.
Phonology The first task of the newborn infant is to establish phonological skills in
order to receive and produce messages. Very young infants can discriminate among
different phonemes categorically and are sensitive to the prosody of the language, or
its patterns of intonation, stress, and rhythm that communicate meaning. From an
early age, infants can detect differences in language. By six to eight weeks, the child
begins to produce cooing sounds, vowel-like utterances occasionally accompanied by
consonants. At about three to six months of age, the child produces consonant-vowel
combinations (babbling), and shortly thereafter vocalizations feature canonical
babbling. The discovery of cultural differences in babbling and differences in the
preverbal utterances of deaf and normal-hearing infants suggests that prelinguistic
utterances are influenced by environmental as well as biological factors.
First Words Typically, children say their first words at one year. The child’s
comprehension and production of words also signal a new focus in the mastery of
language: semantic development.
Children begin to speak one word at a time at 12–20 months. Children’s first words
are mostly labels for objects, people, or events. At about eighteen months, most
children show a vocabulary spurt. Many of the child’s first words are bound to a
specific context---child applies a word to a narrower class of objects than the word
signifies. This type of error is called underextension. Another type of error, called
overextension, occurs when the child applies a word to a broader category than the
word signifies.
Children’s comprehension of language, or receptive language, far exceeds their
productive language. In general, children show common trends in the way they
acquire language. But children vary in terms of the age of the first word uttered,
whether or not a vocabulary spurt occurs, and whether their one-word speech displays
a referential style (mostly object words) or an expressive style (words that direct the
behaviors of others). Individual differences may result from differences in
neurological structures that control language or from inborn differences in
temperament. Another possibility is that parents influence the rate and form of
children’s vocabulary development. Cultural differences can be found in how children
speak, even during the one-word stage, bolstering the idea that what children hear
others say influences what they themselves say. Children in Korea and China use
more verbs, mothers from both Asian groups pepper their speech with many more
verbs and action sequences than mothers in the US.
Atypical development occurs when children deviate noticeably from developmental
milestones. Approximately five percent of children under age three display
developmental delays.
Assessment tools include the Denver Developmental Screening Test, the Peabody
Picture Vocabulary Test, and an assortment of questionnaires asking parents to report
their children’s behaviors. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development is widely used to
predict later childhood competence. The test consists of two scales, Mental and
Motor, as well as a Behavior Rating Scale to assess the infant’s interests, emotions,
and general level of activity compared to the standardization sample. Intervention
programs can be developed with a multidisciplinary team to help the child achieve the
most positive outcomes.
Language in the Context of Social Interactions Many researchers hold a central
tenet that language is a social activity. They acknowledge that there may be innate
predispositions to learn language but emphasize the role that experiences with more
mature, expert speakers play in fostering linguistic skill. Parents have a unique way of
talking to their young children. Parents present a version of the spoken language that
contains simple, well-formed sentences and is punctuated by exaggerated intonation,
high pitch, and clear pauses between segments. Caregivers describe concrete events
taking place presently, and model turn taking. Caregivers also elaborate, expand and
explain. Two general principles operate during caregiver-child interactions. Parents
interpret infants’ behaviors as attempts to communicate. Second, children actively
seek relationships among objects, events, and people in their world and the vocal
behaviors of the caregivers.
Parentese (motherese) may serve a number of functions in the child’s growing
competence with language: assisting the child’s acquisition of word meaning,
facilitating the acquisition of phonology and syntax, and providing lessons in
conversational turn taking. The more mothers talk with their children, the more
words the children acquire. It is not just how much talk takes place but the type of
talk that also matters.
Motherese is also not a universal phenomenon. Cultural differences exist both in the
type of talk and in the amount of conversation directed at infants. Linguistic
exchanges with other interaction partners may uniquely influence the child’s
linguistic skill. When communicating with fathers, for instance, children are
challenged to make adjustments to maintain the interaction. Children learn language
by overhearing it on television, in conversations between mothers and older siblings
or even between two strangers.
Research Applied to Parenting: Reading to Children
Speech tends to be particularly diverse, expressive, and socially interactive when
mothers read to their children. A program of dialogic reading presents advice to
parents on how to read more effectively to young children. The program suggests that
parents ask questions that stimulate the child to speak, follow up with further
questions, recast the child’s utterances, model answers, and provide praise and social
support in a gamelike atmosphere.