3.3 Cognitive Development: Infancy

3.3 Cognitive Development: Infancy

1. Cognitive Development: Jean Piaget

   • The Sensorimotor Stage
     • first 2 y of development
     • 1. Simple Reflexes
       • 1st m
       • reflex seem stereotypical but begin to modify as result of experience
     • 2. Primary Circular Reactions
       • 1-4 m
       • repeat stimulating actions that first occurred by chance
       • D: focus on the infant's own body
     • 3. Secondary Circular Reactions
       • 4-8 m
       • D: patterns of activity are repeated because of their effect on the environment
         • shaking an object to hear it rattle
     • 4. Coordination of Secondary Schemes
       • 8-12 m
       • lift a blanket to reach a toy under it
       • imitate gestures
     • 5. Tertiary Circular Reactions
       • 12-18 m
       • trial and error to learn how things work
     • 6. Invention of New Means through Mental Combinations
       • 18-24 m
       • transition to next stage
       • replace external with mental exploration
   • Development of Object Permanence
     • D: recognition that an object continues to exist when out of sight
     • tied to development of infant's working memory and reasoning ability
     • 2m: show surprise that object is missing; make no effort to search
     • 1st 6m: out of sight of out mind
     • 6m: will look for a dropped object
     • 8-12m will look for toy completely hidden
   • Evaluation of Piaget's Theory
     • now agree that cognitive development is not as tied to discrete stages
     • deferred imitation
       • imitation of an action that may have occurred hours, or days earlier
         • Piaget believe is appear about 18m but is shown as early as 6-9m
   • schemes: children concepts of the world
     • assimilation: absorb new events into existing schemes
   • accommodation: modify existing schemes

2. Information Processing

   • Memory
     • 1m demonstrate memory of mother's reading in the last weeks of pregnancy
     • ribbon was tied to mobile and infant's foot to move the mobile
       • learned to increase kicking to move mobile
       • would also remember days later
   • Imitation
     • can imitate act right after and several weeks later
     • infants 42 min to 71 hours can imitate adults
     • imitation is built in enabled by so-called mirror neurons
     • imitation skills disappear when reflexes drop out and reappear later
   • information-processing approach to cognitive development focuses on how children manipulate or process information coming on from the environment or already stored in the mind

3. Individual Differences in Cognitive Functioning Among Infants

   • Testing Infants
     • Why?
       • screen for disabilities
       • detect early signs of sensory or neurological problems
   • Instability of Intelligence Scores Attained in Infancy
     • Bayley scales and intelligence later year later have a low correlation
     • can identify lags in development and relative strengths and weakness
   • Use of Visual Recognition Memory
     • D: ability to discriminate previously seen object from novel object
     • infants are shown pictures of two identical faces, the pictures are replaced and then given on new face and a familiar face
       • children with greater visual recognition memory later attained higher IQ scores
   • Bayley Scales of Infant Development
     • mental and motor scale items, behavior rating scale

4. Language Development: The 2 year Explosion

   • Early Vocalizations
     • ex. cooing, babbling
     • does not represent objects or actions
     • early parent-child "conversation": parents respond to coos help foster awareness of taking turns in a verbal way
     • 6-9m babbling is combining consonant and vowel sounds (ba, ga, dada)
     • cooing is linked to pleasure
     • 10-12m echolalia: repeating consonant-vowel combinations (ah-bah-bah-bah)
     • 12m intonation: pattern that resemble the sounds of adult speech
   • Development of Vocabulary
     • children understand more words than they can use
     • The Child's First Words
       • spoken between 11-13m but range of 8-18m is normal
       • by 18m producing up to 50 words
         • most are nouns with some movement words
       • 18-22m vocab increase about 75%
       • through preschool learn average 9 words a day
     • Referential and Expressive Styles in Language Development
       • referential language style: use language primarily to label objects
       • expressive language style: use language primary as means for social interactions
         • use more pronouns and words involved in social routines (stop, more, all gone)
       • more children use expressive but a combination is most common
     • Overextension: extend the meaning of one words to other things
   • Development of Sentences: Telegraphing Ideas
     • telegraphic speech: cutting out unnecessary words
     • mean length of utterance: average number of morphemes that are used in a sentence
       • morphemes: smallest units of meaning in a language (walked has 2 morphemes: walk and -ed)
       • MLU growing with some minor drops as the child get older
     • Holophrases: single words used to express complex meanings
     • two word sentences
       • "That ball" the word is and a are implied
       • show understanding of syntax
         • say "sit chair" not "chair sit"
   • Theories of Language Development
     • nurture
       • Imitation and Reinforcement
         • learn in part by observation and imitation
         • does not explain why children utter phrases they have not heard
         • cooring and babbling is inborn but parents can reinforce certain sounds that are close to words
         • parents are more likely to reinforce accuracy than grammatical correctness
         • growth is enhanced when adults...
           • ask questions or add to child's sentence
           • describe the environment, read and talk to child
           • simplify form of speech
     • nature
       • inborn factors cause children to attend and acquire language in certain ways
     • Psycholinguistic Theory: language acquisition involved interaction between environmental influence and inborn tendency to acquire language
       • underlying set of rules for transforming idea into sentences
     • Brain Structures Involved in Language
       • for all right handed people and most left the left hemisphere is involved in language
       • two areas most involved are the Broca's area and Wernicke's area
         • Broca is located near the motor cortex and controls muscles of tongue, throat and face
           • Broca's aphasia: understand speech
         • Wernicke's aphasia: speak freely with proper syntax but have trouble understanding speech and finding words to express themselves
     • The Senstive Period
       • language learning is most efficient from 18-24m to puberty
       • Genie was locked in a small room from age 20m to 13y with very little social contact
         • five years afterward her language was still poor