Cognitive Development in Infancy and Early Childhood

1. Cognitive Development in Infancy and Early Childhood Chapter 4

2. Cognitive Development • Basic principles • Children as scientists creating theories about how the world works • Schemes: psychological structures organize the world • Infancy schemes involve actions • Post-infancy schemes involve relationships • Schemes change over time

3. Cognitive Development • Assimilation • New experiences incorporated into existing schemes • Grasping scheme extended to new objects • Accomodation • Schemes modified based on experience • Some objects require two hands to lift

4. Cognitive Development • Equilibration: reogranization of schemes to maintain balance between assimilation & accomodation • Analogy of a scientist changing her theory due to inconsistent findings • Changes occur according to Piaget at 2, 7, 11 • 4 stages of cognitive development

5. Sensorimotor Thinking (0-2 years) • Exercising reflexes (0-1 months) • Learning to adapt (1-4 months) • Primary circular reaction: recreation of pleasant bodily experiences • No object permanence • Making interesting events (4-8 months) • Secondary circular reaction: novel actions repeated with objects

6. Sensorimotor Thinking (0-2 years) • Behaving intentionally (8-12 months) • Means & end • Experimenting (12-18 months) • Tertiary circular reasoning: old schemes with new objects • Using symbols (18-24 months) • Talk, gesture and anticipate actions mentally • Full object permanence

7. Preoperational Thinking (2-7 years) • Egocentrism • Believe everyone sees the world as they do • Centration • Psychological tunnel vision • Focus on one feature of problem at a time • Lack of conservation • Appearance as reality

8. Final 2 Piagetian Stages • Concrete Operations (7-11 years) • Conservation of physicality • Formal Operations (> 11 years) • Reasoning includes abstract thinking, hypotheticals

9. Evaluating Piaget • Teaching implications • Scheme construction key • Gradual development • Scheme growth enhanced by inconsistencies

10. Evaluating Piaget • Critiques • Findings based in part on specific procedures used by Piaget • Language sensitivity explains some findings • Procedural changes modified results • Performance not as consistent as Piaget predicts

11. Information Processing • Attention • Infants have orienting responses to strong or unfamiliar stimuli • Staring, eye fixation, physiological changes • Habituation also occurs • Diminished response to familiar/constant S • Both adaptive responses for infants

12. Information Processing • Learning • Infants learn constantly via many forms • Classicial conditioning • Neutral S paired with powerful S evokes a R • Bell + food eventually bell causes salivation • Operant conditioning • Behavior produces consequences (+/-) • Likelihood of future behavior depends on nature of the consequences

13. Information Processing • Learning • Imitation: learning by watching others • Common form of learning • Babies as young as 2 weeks old can imitate

14. Information Processing • Memory • Babies can recall events for a few days/weeks & memory cue can retrieve forgotten memories • Memory improves dramatically in first two years • Due to brain growth • Amygdala, hippocampus (initial storage): 6 months • Frontal cortext (retireval): 2 years

15. Language • First word typically spoken at year 1 • Long process of learning language • Perceiving speech • Infants capable of distinguishing phonemes • Unique sounds making up words (consonants) • Language independent at first (bio prepared) • Language specific eventually • Word identification eventually occurs via stress & other cues

16. Language • Steps to speech • 2 months: vowel sounds (oooooo ahhhhh) • 6 months: babbling speech like sounds (dah) • 8-11 months: stress, pitch varies and nature depends on language • 10-14 months: connect spoken words with objects • Year 1: first word and vocab increases rapidly • 18 months symbolic understanding of words • Fast mapping

17. Language • Development facilitated by • Hearing language • Reading books • TV