Cognitive Development/Language and Communication

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Cognitive Development

Nature v. Nurture

nature= infant is born with the skills it needs to deal with the world [born equipped]

nurture= infant learns about the world by interacting with the world (like Tabula Rasa--John Locke and Aristotle

Maturation v. Learning

​​​​​​​maturation= when we develop due to maturation, we simply gain skills and behaviors as we age

ex: sucking reflect that appears and disappears over time

learning= changes in thought or behavior occur as a result of experience

ex: responding to your name

mixed examples: walking, potty training

Elimination Communication is a process that can be used starting at birth and have a baby potty trained in 3 months

Innate Reflexes

can be used to evaluate the health of babies/children (the doctor looks for reflexes that deviate from the normal range, because this can indicate damage to the CNS)

swallowing, eliminating, crying, breathing, blinking eyes

rooting (stroke cheek, infant turns head that way; lasts until about 4 months)

sucking (lasts until about 3 months, then changes to more learned)

withdrawal (weakens after 10 days; withdraw from painful stimuli)

stepping (looks like walking; lasts until about 2 months)

palmar grasp (very strong finger grip; lasts until about 4 months)

moro reflex (startle at a sudden loud noise; lasts until about 5 months))

Babinski reflex (stroke sole of foot and toes curl; lasts until 1 year)

Perceptual Development: Vision

All 5 senses are functional at birth, but still need to develop further

Vision is 20/600 at birth (legally blind)

best vision at this time is 9 inches away; slowly improves to 20/20 by 2 years of age

Visual preferences: edges and visual contours (more likely to contain important information); complexity (many stripes as opposed to just a few broad bands); curved contours; high contrast between light and dark (black and white); frequent movements

many of these components are contained in the human face; babies often prefer faces to look at!

Perceptual Development: Hearing

the fetus can hear in utero, but amniotic fluid impedes hearing

hearing gets better after birth, once the amniotic fluid has drained and evaporated out of the ears

preference for human voice: especially CHILD-DIRECTED SPEECH (higher pitch, exaggerated, slower, not baby talk)

Neural Development

at birth, the brain stem is almost FULLY developed!

however, premature babies more susceptible to SIDS because of an underdeveloped brain stem

at birth, the cerebral cortex is VERY immature

the sensory and motor cortex develop the most quickly

and the association areas develop later (memory, language, problem solving, & reasoning)

During the first 2 years of life, babies' brains show amazing growth and after 2 years, growth slows dramatically

90% of neural growth is complete by age 6

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor Stage (Birth-2)

Pre-operational Stage (2-7)

Concrete Operational (7-11)

Formal Operational (11-beyond)

many psychologists agree that Piaget's ages for these stages are WAY OFF

many of the characteristics of his theory have also been thought to be wrong:

there is a fixed order for the progression of stages (this part is kind of right)

maturation based stages that occur at about the same age for all children

each stage builds on the previous one

once the stage is mastered, one never regresses

the stages are discontinuous (don't start on skills for the next stage until the previous is finished)

Sensorimotor Stage

babies learn about the world through their senses and motor movements

develop object permanence a the end of this stage

Pre-Operational Stage

begin to represent the world symbolically

rapid development of language

engage in deferred imitation (which is imitating after a delay)

children are still very egocentric (they assume others can see what they see; will shake their head or use other NVC on the phone; ALSO kids don't lie to you during this stage because they think you already know)

Concrete Operational Stage

able to manipulate internal representations of concrete objects (but having trouble with abstract concepts)

less egocentric and can understand the point of view of others

Formal Operational Stage

can apply logical thinking to abstract problems and hypothetical questions

can perform mental manipulations of abstract concepts

Vygotsky's Sociocultural View of Cognitive Development

​​​​​​​zone of proximal development

the child is born with a certain set of capabilities [this range is genetic and you can't go outside of it]

a child's ultimate development depends on the environment (parents, teachers, education, and nourishment)

Measuring Infant Memory

FIRST: Remember, implicit memory in adults

Kunst-Wilson and Zajone (1980) found that adults can have preference for previously seen shapes without recognizing them

similar implicit memory tasks have been used to investigate infant memory

Decasper & Fifer (1980) used the Butterfield and Sipperstein paradigm

infants sucked on the pacifier nipple faster for mom's voice and slower for a stranger woman's voice; the infant changed rate of sucking to hear mom's voice

preferential looking paradigm by Friedman (1972) on 1-4 day olds

found that infants prefer looking at a novel stimulus, compared to a habituated stimulus

the researchers argued that this means infants could remember the stimulus, BUT it might just be an implicit preference, which can be seen even in amnesic patients, who have bad recognition memory

Fox, Kagan, & Weiskopf (1979), looked at object permanence and found:

5-6 months, children can't find the hidden object

7 months, children can find the hidden object if no delay is given

9 months, children can find the hidden object even with a small delay

A, not B Tasks are much better tests of explicit memories in children

prompt children to find an object in one of two locations and continue to place the object in one location for repeated trials (this helps build up a preference for the location)

then, place the object in the other location; they found:

9 month olds can do it with a 3 second delay

10 month olds can do it with a 3 &7 second delay

12 month olds can do it with a 15 second delay

WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?

young children have a functional implicit memory (which doesn't change much with age) and a rather underdeveloped explicit memory

explicit memory begins around 9-12 months

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Language and Communication

Psycholinguistics

examines how people learn and use language to communicate ideas

SIX FUNDAMENTAL PROPERTIES OF LANGUAGE

communicative (has to communicate an idea)

arbitrary symbolic (letters for sounds, words for objects)

regularly structured (symbols must be in the correct order--syntax and semantics)

structured at multiple levels (sounds, words, meaning units)

generative/productive (can produce novel utterances)

dynamic (constantly changing with the times, slang changes over time)

Structure of Language

phonemes= basic units of SOUND

morphemes= basic units of MEANING (made up of word roots and affixes)

1) content morphemes: book, dog, taco

2) function morphemes: un-, -s, -ed

syntax= rules that govern WORD ORDER

semantics= rules that govern WORD MEANING

denotation is the dictionary definition

connotation is the actual meaning (may include emotional overtones or non-explicit messages (like sarcasm)

Surface v. Deep Structure

Deep= the underlying meaning of a sentence

Surface= the actual words that are used

you can change the surface level without changing the meaning: Mike kicked John. John was kicked by Mike.

you can have a sentence with the same surface level that can have many meanings: "New Vaccine May Contain Rabies".

Early Perception of Speech Sounds

Butterfield and Siperstein (1974) wanted to determine if speech was a special/preferred sound

used a pacifier wired to a machine to measure a baby's sucking rate; when presented with music as one sound choice and speech as another choice, babies would suck faster to hear the speech, indicating preference for speech

Can Infants Recognize their Parents?

DeCasper and Fifer (1980) used the Butterfield and Sipersten paradigm and found that infants preferred their mother's voice to another woman and in 1983, they found that infants show no preference for dad's voice versus other men

WHY? Moms have voices that are more similar to child directed speech AND sound is conducted better through the mother's body than from outside in, so the baby can hear the mom more clearly

Pre-Language Development

Crying (strengthens the vocal apparatus and babies learn that sounds get a response; to a lesser degree, it can also be a means of emotional expression)

Cooing (begins around month 2 and CONSISTS OF ALL POSSIBLE PHONEMES--baby is multi-lingual)

Babbling (develops around 6-8 months and consists of only phonemes of the native language by 10 months old)

Language Development

child-directed speech (also dubbed motherese or parentese) is an exaggerated and high pitched way of speaking and it can SERVE A NUMBER OF FUNCTIONS

gets infant's attention and holds it [babies prefer it over normal speech]

marks turn-taking in parent-infant dialogue

communicates affect/emotion

Language Acquisition

Holophrases are one word utterances that have an entire sentence's worth of meaning ("car", "up")

What is interesting is that babies know how to pick the most important word to communicate

Telegraphic speech is 2-3 word utterance that is still missing components ("me up" "milk please")

Overextension Error is when children over apply the meaning of a word (every animal with 4 legs and fur is a dog)

Underextension Error is when children under apply the meaning of a word (only the family dog is a dog)

Overregulation is when children over apply grammatical rules ("Look at my two foots!")

Bilingualism

Additive bilingualism is when a 2nd language is acquired in addition to a well developed first language

Subtractive bilingualism is when a new language is acquired at the expense of the old language

there are TWO MAJOR HYPOTHESES in regards to neural representation of multiple languages

Dual System= both languages are represented in separate systems/areas of the brain

Single System= both languages are represented one area of the brain

Neuro-imaging studies show that IF the 2nd language is acquired between ages 2 and 6, it is the single system and IF the second language is acquired after that, it is the dual system

Characteristics of Speech Perception

phoneme pronunciation varies widely (not including dialects)

visual cues from the speaker helps interpret ambiguous sounds (McGurk Effect= turning "ba's" into "pa's")

context allows listeners to fill in missing sounds [PHONEMIC RESTORATION EFFECT]

Listeners impose boundaries between sounds/words even when none are actually there [SPEECH SEGMENTATION]

Language vs. Communication

what's the difference between them?

communication is a process to exchange or convey information (much more broad in scope)

language is an organized way of combining symbols to communicate (more specific)

GRAMMAR IS A CRUCIAL COMPONENT

Nonverbal Communication

communication requires: a sender/encoder, a message, and a receiver/decoder

ex: deer in rut

doe is the encoder, pheromones are the message, and the buck is the decoder

Chemical NVC

pheromones are chemicals that evoke a particular behavioral response

functions of pheromones [STAARR]:

sexual attraction (pheromones yield a higher rate of attraction)

in a study where a chair was laced with pheromones, men were more likely to sit in that particular chair

territory and home range marking (remembering where to go)

male and female dogs, cats, bears, ferrets, and skunks do this

hiking the leg up can communicate messages about size

recognition of group and rank

social insects and carnivores; for bees, the queen secretes a pheromone that indicates the hive they belong to

recruitment [ants, bees, termites]

when ants travel in lines to food, they lay down a recruitment pheromone

when bees sting someone, they also release a recruitment pheromone that tells more bees to come over

alarm

ants and tadpoles [let each other know when there is danger]

assembly

termites, ants, and brightly colored insects

Visual NVC

Functions (SASA)

alarm (animals fleeing0

aggression (teeth bearing, spiked fur, wide stance, leaning forward, tail straight out, ears full staff)

submission (tail down, peeing, lay on back, expose belly, gaze avoidance, lick corners of dog's mouth)

sexual attraction [peacocks and other visually appealing birds)

Auditory NVC

Functions (MART)

Alarm (barking, making noises)

territory marking (indigo bunting)

mating signals (birds, deer)

recognition group/social rank (seabirds use a call to help the other birds get home)

Is this animal language?

bee waggle dance (looks like a figure 8) and it can be decoded:

# of cycles indicates amount of food

length of waggle indicates distance

angle of the straight line indicates direction relative to the sun

it's controversial about whether or not this is considered

why don't animals spontaneously use language?

they either don't have the capability and/or

they don't have the proper environment

Attempts to establish animal language

Kellog & Kellog (1933)

Gua (7.5 months introduced to family and raised with baby son

he couldn't speak but he could understand 100 words

Hayes & Hayes (1951)

Vicki spoke about 4 words (papa, mama, cup, and up)

but generally unsuccessful with speech

2 Non-Speech Approaches

Premack (1971) used a symbol board

Sarah was able to learn 130 words

had good semantics but poor syntax

Gardner & Gardner (1969) used ASL

Washoe was born in 1966 and by 5 years old she learned 160 signs; 240 total in her life

good semantics, but poor syntax

may have produced the novel sign "water bird", but is more likely just to be 2 circumstantial signs

she taught an adopted son, Loulis, to use ASL as well

Kanzi was able to understand over 3,000 spoken words (used a symbol board) and he was able to use over 400 words

Koko was able to understand over 2,000 words and could sign 1,000 of them

she was able to score 70-95 on an IQ test