Download At two months of age

Chapter 5:
Cognitive Development
in Infancy
IN THIS CHAPTER
• Cognitive Changes
• Learning, Categorizing, and
Remembering
• The Beginning of Language
• Measuring Intelligence in Infancy
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
5.1 What are the milestones of Piaget’s sensorimotor
stage?
5.2 How have other theorists challenged Piaget’s
explanation of infant cognitive development?
5.3 What does research tell us about infants’
understanding of objects?
5.4 What kinds of learning are infants capable of?
5.5 How does categorical understanding change over the
first 2 years?
5.6 How does memory function in the first 2 years?
5.7 What are the behaviorist, nativist, and interactionist
explanations of language development?
LEARNING OBJECTIVES (con’t)
5.8 What are some environmental influences on language
development?
5.9 How do infants’ sounds, gestures, and understanding of
words change in the early months of life?
5.10 What are the characteristics of toddlers’ first words?
5.11 What kinds of sentences do children produce between
18 and 24 months of age?
5.12 What kinds of individual differences are evident in
language development?
5.13 How does language development vary across cultures?
5.14 How is intelligence measured in infancy?
COGNITIVE CHANGES
Piaget’s Views
A Quick Review
 Assimilation
 Accommodation
 Sensorimotor intelligence
COGNITIVE CHANGES
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
Sensorimotor Stage
• Basic reflexes
• Primary circular reaction
• Secondary circular reaction
• Coordination of secondary schemas (means–end
behavior)
• Tertiary circular reaction
• Transition to symbolic thought
PIAGET’S SENSORIMOTOR STAGE BY AGE
PIAGET’S SENSORIMOTOR STAGE BY AGE
COGNITIVE CHANGES
Piaget: Object Permanence
Object permanence: the realization that objects
still exist when hidden from sight
At two months of age, infants show surprise when
an object disappears.
At six to eight months of age, infants will look for
the missing object.
At eight to twelve months of age, infants will
reach or search for a completely hidden toy.
PIAGET’S SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
Piaget: Imitation
Imitation: performance of an act whose
stimulus is observation of the same act
performed by another person
PIAGET’S SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
Piaget: Imitation
At two
months old:
imitation of
actions
infants see
themselves
make
At one year
old: imitation
of any action
that wasn’t
in child’s
repertoire
begins
At eight to
twelve months
old: imitate
other people’s
facial
expressions
At eighteen
months old:
deferred
imitation (a
child’s
imitation of
some action
at a later
time) begins
COGNITIVE CHANGES
Challenges to Piaget’s Views
• Underestimation of infant cognitive capacity
• Inaccurate equation of infant’s lack of physical
ability with lack of cognitive understanding
• Underestimation of object permanence
appearance beginning
COGNITIVE CHANGES
Modern Studies of Object Permanence
Recent Theories
• The development of object permanence is a
process of elaboration rather than one of
discovery.
Baillargeon
• Babies as young as four months old show signs
of object permanence, but this may be tied to
experimental situations.
• At around one year of age, babies can use
object permanence sufficiently across situations.
COGNITIVE CHANGES
Summary of Differences
Piaget’s Early Research
• Every baby comes with a repertoire of
sensorimotor schemes by construction—world
understanding via experiences.
Recent Research
• Newborns have considerable awareness of
objects as separate entities that follow certain
rules.
COGNITIVE CHANGES
Spelke’s Alternative Approach
Assumption: Babies have inborn assumptions
about objects and their movement.
Method: Violation of Expectations Method
 Researchers create a pattern of movements
for an object, and then move an object in a
direction the infant does not expect.
COGNITIVE CHANGES
Baillargeon’s Alternative Approach
Assumption: Knowledge about objects is not built
in, but strategies for learning are innate.
Method: Study of Object Stability Perception
 Researchers stack smiling-face blocks in
stable and unstable positions.
Let’s look at the next slide for an example.
OBJECT STABILITY PERCEPTION
STOP AND THINK!
After reviewing the information we have just
covered, how would you explain an infant’s habit of
throwing things out of her crib to a parent who
viewed it as a misbehavior that needed to be
corrected?
LEARNING, CATEGORIZING, AND
REMEMBERING
Conditioning and Modeling
• Learning: permanent changes in behavior that
result from experience
LEARNING, CATEGORIZING, AND
REMEMBERING
Schematic Learning
• Schematic learning: organization of
experiences into expectancies or “known”
combinations (schemas)
• At seven months of age, infants actively use
categories, but not levels, to process information.
• At two years of age, hierarchical or
superordinate categories appear.
WHAT DO DATA FROM SEQUENTIAL
LEARNING STUDIES SUGGEST?
• In infancy, babies respond to superordinate
before basic level categories.
• At twelve months of age, babies understand
basic and superordinate categories.
• At two years of age, toddlers partially
understand smaller categories nested in larger
categories.
• At five years of age, children fully understand
categories.
LEARNING, CATEGORIZING, AND
REMEMBERING
Memory
Carolyn Rovee-Collier’s Research
• Babies as young as three months old can
remember specific objects and their own
actions for as long as a week.
• Young infants are more cognitively
sophisticated than was previously assumed.
LEARNING, CATEGORIZING, AND
REMEMBERING
Operant Conditioning
Pacifier-Activated Lullaby ( PAL) Systems
• Used by music therapists in neonatal intensive
care units
• Rewards infants with music whenever they suck
on specially designed pacifiers
• Improves preterm infants’ sucking reflexes,
which causes more rapid weight gain
LEARNING, CATEGORIZING,
AND REMEMBERING
What else have we learned about memory?
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
Theoretical Perspectives
Let’s consider each!
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
The Behaviorist View: B.F. Skinner
• Parent-reinforced babbling and grammar use
• Correct grammar is reinforced, and becomes
more frequent.
• Non-grammatical words are not reinforced.
Is this what you observe when parents interact with
very young children?
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
The Nativist View: Noam Chomsky
Grammar rules are acquired before exception
mastery.
• Rule-governed errors are made (overregulation).
• Comprehension and production are guided by
the Language Acquisition Device (LAD).
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
More about the LAD
Language Acquisition Device
• Basic grammatical structure for all human
language
• Tells babies that there are two types of sounds
(consonants and vowels)
• Enables infants to divide, analyze, and learn
sounds of the specific language they are
learning
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
Slobin
• Importance of “soundness”
• Infants are preprogrammed to attend to
beginnings and endings of sounds and to
stressed sounds.
• Programming is not attached to verbs or nouns,
but to attention to sounds.
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
The Interactionist View
Four Key Ideas
• Language follows rules as part of cognition.
• Language includes internal and external factors.
• Infants are born with biological preparedness to
pay more attention to language than to other
information.
• The infant brain has generalized tools used
across all cognitive domains—NOT languagespecific neurological model.
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
Bowerman and Bloom
• Language does not initially introduce new
meaning, but expresses meaning already
formulated, independent of language.
• Children attempt to communicate and learn new
words when these aid in the communication of
thoughts and ideas.
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
Influences on Language Development
Infant-Directed Speech
• Higher pitch
• Repetitions with variations
• Infant preferred
THE IMPORTANCE OF READING TO TODDLERS
Toddlers enjoy and benefit from many of the
same preliteracy activities as older preschoolers
do.
• Interactive reading has powerful effects on
toddler language development (Whitehurst and
colleagues).
• Larger vocabulary gains were reported for young
children who engaged in dialogic reading.
Reflection
1. What would you say to a person who claimed
that reading to an infant or a toddler is a waste of
time because of their limited language skills?
2. If a toddler doesn’t want to be read to, do you
think his parents or teachers should try to get
him interested in books? If so, how do you think
they should go about it?
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
Early Milestones of Language Development
Birth–1 month
• Crying is the
predominant
sound
1–2 months
• Laughing
and cooing
sounds
(aaaaa)
6–7 months
• Babbling;
repetitive
vowelconsonant
combinations
9–10 months
• Hand
gesture/vocaliza
tion
combinations
WORD RECOGNITION
Receptive Language
Receptive language: the ability to understand
words
• At eight months of age, babies begin to store
words in memory
• At nine to ten months of age, babies typically
understand twenty to thirty words.
• At 13 months of age, babies typically
understand 100 words.
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
Expressive Language
Expressive language: the ability to produce words
 At 12–13 months of age, babies begin to
say their first words.
 Words are learned slowly, in context, with
specific situations and cues.
EARLY GESTURAL LANGUAGE IN THE
CHILDREN OF DEAF PARENTS
Gestural language is an important for all babies.
• Deaf children who are exposed to sign language
show the same early steps in language
development as do hearing children: sign
babbling; early gestures; first referential signs.
• Hearing children of deaf parents develop
proficiency in two forms of language at about the
same time.
• This provides strong support for the idea that
babies are primed to learn language in some
form.
Critical Analysis
1. Why do comparisons of deaf and hearing
children of deaf parents support the view that
language development is strongly influenced by
an inborn plan of some kind?
2. In your view, what are the benefits and risks
associated with being a hearing child of deaf
parents?
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
First Words
• Now let’s take a look at vocabulary growth
during the toddler years.
Holophrases
Naming Explosion
THE BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE
First Sentences
• Short, simple sentences appear at 18–24
months.
• Threshold vocabulary reaches around 100–200
words.
• Sentences: following rules created
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN THE FIRST
2 YEARS
THE BEGINNING OF LANGUAGE
Individual Differences in Language Development:
Rate
Differences in the Rate of Language Development
• A wide range of normal variations exists in
sentence structures.
• Most children catch up.
• Those who don’t catch up have poor receptive
language.
THE BEGINNING OF LANGUAGE
Individual Differences in Language Development:
Style
Differences in Style
Expressive Style
• Early vocabulary is linked to social relationships
rather than objects.
Referential Style
• Early vocabulary is made up of the names of
things or people.
MEASURING INTELLIGENCE IN INFANCY
What Is Intelligence?
Intelligence: the ability to take in information and
use it to adapt to environment
• Although each infant develops at a different
pace, both genetic and environmental factors
influence infant intelligence.
So how can infant intelligence be measured?
THE BEGINNING OF LANGUAGE LANGUAGE
Development across Cultures
• Cooing, babbling, holophrases, and telegraphic
speech are typically found in all languages.
• Use of specific word order in early sentences is
not the same.
• Particular inflections are learned in highly
varying and specific orders.
ONE LANGUAGE OR TWO?
Research suggests cognitive advantages and
disadvantages to growing up bilingual.
• Attainment of equal fluency is not typically
attained. When less fluency occurs in the
language in which the child is schooled,
problems may arise.
• Preschool and school-aged children:
advantage in metalinguistic ability
• Infants: language vocabulary divided between
two languages; lag in word knowledge
You Decide
Decide which of these two statements you most
agree with and think about how you would defend
your position:
1. Parents who are fluent in more than one
language should raise their children to be
bilingual.
2. Parents who speak more than one language
should decide on which language to speak most
often in the home, and they should ensure that
their children become fully fluent in that
language.
MEASURING INTELLIGENCE IN INFANCY
• Bailey Scales of Infant Development
• Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence