Cognitive and Language Development

1. Cognitive and Language Development Developmental Psychology The focus of developmental psychology is on age-related changes in behaviors throughout the life span. Development: The pattern of biological, cognitive, and socioemotional changes that begins at conception and continues through the life span.

2. Developmental Processes Biological processesandgenetic inheritance • Development of the brain • Gains in height and weight • Changes in motor skills • Puberty’s hormonal changes Cognitive processes • Changes in the child’s thinking • Intelligence • Languageacquisition

3. Socioemotional processes • Changes in the child’s relationships with other people • Changes in personality

4. Key developmental issues include: • Nature versus nurture To what extent development is influenced by nature (biological inheritance, maturation) or the result of nurture (environmental experiences)? • Continuity-Discontinuity Issue To what extent development involves gradual, cumulative change (continuity ) or distinct stages (discontinuity) ? • Early-Later Experience Issue To which degree early experiences especially in infancy or later experiences are the key determinants of child's development.

5. Development and Education • Developmentally appropriate teaching practices Teaching should take place at a level that is neither too difficult nor too easy and boring.

6. Life Span Development Stage Approximate Age Prenatal Conception to birth Infancy Birth to 18 months Early childhood 18 mo. to 6 years Middle childhood 6–12 years Adolescence 12–20 years Young adulthood 20–45 years Middle adulthood 45–60 years Later adulthood 60 years to death

7. Cognitive and Language Development

8. Brain Growth

9. Neurons • Neurons are specialized cells that detect sensory events, relay messages to the brain, and control our muscles • Neurons are composed of three major parts: • Somaor cell body, controls the synthesis of transmitters and other cell functions • Dendrites receive information from adjacent neurons • Axons form synapses with other neurons

10. Neuron Structure

11. Myelination Myelination increases the speed at which information travels through the nervous system

12. Verbal Processing In most individuals, speech and grammar are localized in the left hemisphere Nonverbal Processing Spatial perception, visual recognition, and emotions are localized in the right hemisphere. Brain Lateralization the specialization of functions in one hemisphere of the brain or the other.

13. Piaget’s Cognitive Theory • Cognitive processes: What processes do children use as they construct their knowledge of the world? • Cognitive reasoning is primitive at birth and changes from infancy to adulthood. These processes include : • Schemas: Schemas are the basic units of intellect. • Piaget said as the child seeks to construct an understanding of the world, the developing brain creates schemas. These schemas are actions or mental representations that organize knowledge.

14. Cognitive adaptation reflects the actions of two complementary processes: • Assimilation allows an existing schema to adapt to the environment. • Accommodation allows the schema to change in order to handle a new environmental situation.

15. Piagetian Cognition

16. Organization: To make sense out of the world, children cognitively organize their experiences. • Organization is the grouping of isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher order system. • Continual refinement of this organization is an inherent part of development.

17. Equilibration and stages of development: Equilibration is a mechanism that Piaget propose to explain how children shift from one stage of thought to the next. • The shift occurs as children experience cognitive conflict, or disequilibrium, in trying to understand the world. Eventually they resolve the conflict and reach a balance or equilibrium.

18. Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development • Sensorimotor period: Birth through age 2 • Infant schemes are simple reflexes and interactions with people and objects • Preoperational period: Age 2 to 7 • Child begins to use mental representations, but problem solving is limited • Concrete operations: Age 7 to 11 • Child performs mental operations (conservation) • Formal operations: Age 12 through adulthood • Child can use formal problem solving and higher-level abstract thinking

19. The Sensorimotor Stage • Birth through age 2 • The infant constructs an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences( hearing, seeing) with physical actions( reaching, touching). • An infant progresses from reflexive, instinctual actions at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought toward the end of the stage. • Infant schemes are simple reflexes and interactions with people and objects • Infants acquire a basic grasp of the concept of cause and effect.

20. The Sensorimotor Stage Con’t • Coordination of sensory experiences with motor actions .Infants seem to know the world only through motor activities and sensory impressions • Have not yet learned to use mental symbols or images to represent objects • Acquire object permanence (the realization that objects continue to exist over time) at the end of the stage. • Another accomplishment is the gradual realization that there is a difference between oneself and the surrounding environment at the end of the sensorimotor stage.

21. The Preoperational Stage • Age 2 to 7 • At this stage symbolic thought increases but operational thought is not yet present • Preoperational thought can be subdivided into two substages : 1. The symbolic function stage (2-4years): 2. The intuitive stage(4-7years) • The symbolic function stage Child begins to use mental representations, but problem solving is limited Child begins to demonstrate symbolic play Childs thought has two important limitations egocentrism and animism.

22. The Preoperational Stage Con’t • Egocentrism: The inability of young children to understand that others may perceive the world differently than they do • Animism: It is the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action

23. The Preoperational Stage Con’t • The intuitive stage Child begins to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answer to all sorts of questions. Child seems to be so sure about his/her knowledge Many of the thoughts are characterized by centration and lack of conservation • Centration: It is a characteristic of thought that involvesfocusing (or centering ) attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others • Lack of conservation: Do not understand that certain physical attributes of an object remain unchanged even though its outward appearance changes

24. Conservation of Liquid

25. Concrete Operations • Age 7 to 11 • At this stage logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning, but only in concrete situations. • At this stage the child begins to represent the world with words and images. These words and images reflect increased symbolic thinking and go beyond the connection of sensory information and physical actions. • The child can now reason logically about concrete events and classify objects into different sets. • The child performs mental operations (conservation) • The emergence of logical thought • Become aware of the permanence of objects • Understand reversibility which is the fact that many physical changes can be undone by a reversal of the original action

26. Concrete Operations Con’t Conservation:The idea that some characteristics of an object stay the same even though the object might change in appearance. Classification:Coordinate several characteristics rather than focus on a single property of an object. Seriation:Order stimuli along some quantitative dimension. Transitivity: Combine relations to understand certain conclusions. If A>B, and B>C, then A>C.

27. Formal Operations • Age 12 through adulthood • At this stage the child can use formal problem solving and higher-level abstract thinking . • Can now deal with abstractions rather than just concrete objects • Becomes capable of hypothetico-deductive reasoning (forming a general theory and deducing specific hypotheses from it). • The adolescent reasons in more abstract, idealistic, and logical ways.

28. Teaching strategies • Preoperational Thinkers Manipulate groups of objects Reduce egocentrism Draw conclusions and explain why • Concrete Operations Encourage children to discover concepts and principles Assign operational tasks • Formal Operations Propose problems and encourage hypothesis formation Suggest alternative approaches to problems Develop projects and investigations

29. Limitations of Piaget’s view of cognitive development • First, some cognitive abilities are suspected to emerge earlier or later than depicted by Piaget. • Second, emerging aspects of each stage may not appear in synchrony. Rather, a child may develop conservation long before he or she learns to cross-classify. Hence, some developmentalists argue that development is not as stage-like as suggested by Piaget.

30. Limitations of Piaget’s view of cognitive development con’t • Third, it has been shown, contrary to Piaget’s beliefs, that children can be trained to perform cognitive tasks that are beyond their current cognitive stages. • Fourth, culture and education seem to exert stronger influences on children’s development than Piaget believed.

31. Leaning activity Leila , Ralph , and several of their classmates are playing hide-and-go-seek during indoor recess one rainy day. Leila carefully conceals her entire body behind Mrs. Batlouni’s long smock. In contrast, Ralph hides only his upper body behind a jacket hanging on a hook. He giggles, sure that his classmates will never see him. Q:Based on the information given above, at which of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development is Ralph most likely operating? Explain.

32. Leaning activity Mr. Mohammad has a sand table in his kindergarten classroom. He provides his students with many containers of different sizes and shapes to play with in the sand. He watches as his students carefully pour sand from one container to another. One little girl, Mona, seems amazed when she pours sand back and forth between two containers. The sand always fills up one container and only half-fills the other, yet the containers are the same height. Q:Based on the information given above, what skill is Mona most likely developing? Explain.

33. Leaning activity Mr. Munir teaches high school English. He always asks his students to find the symbolism in the great works of literature he assigns. Some students do this with relative ease. For others it is a real struggle. Many are only able to parrot back what he has told them in class. • Q.1:At which of Piaget’s stages are those who understand the symbolism in literature likely operating? • Q.2:At which of Piaget’s stages are those who cannot understand the symbolism in literature likely operating?

34. Vygotsky’s Theory • Levy Vygotskyproposed another major theory of cognitive development. • Vygotsky argued that children develop more systematic, logical, and rational concepts as a result of dialogue with a skilled helper. • Thus, in Vygotsky’s theory, other people and language play key roles in a child’s development.

35. Vygotsky Theory Con’t • Vygotsky said that language and thought develop independently of each other and then merge. • Speech is not only used for social communication but also to help them solve tasks. • He believed that children use language to plan, guide , and monitor their behavior. This use of language for self regulation is called private speech.

36. Vygotsky Theory Con’t • Vygotskybelieved that cognitive skills: • Can be understood when they are developmentally analyzed • Are mediated by words, language, and forms of discourse • Have their origins in social relations and culture

37. Zone of Proximal Development Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)is a term that was coined by Vygotsky for the range of tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be mastered with guidance and assistance from adults or more skilled children. Vygotsky believed that difficult tasks cant be performed by the child alone and therefore requires assistance and guidance.

38. Zone of Proximal Development Con’t • The ZPD has a lower limit and an upper limit. • The lower limit of the zone of proximal development is the level of problem solving reached on these tasks by child working alone. • The upper limit of the zone of proximal development is the level of additional responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor

39. Scaffolding • Scaffolding is a technique that is closely linked to ZPD that involves changing the level of support for learning.Ateacher adjusts the level of support and guidance as performance rises in order to fit the student’s current performance. • Dialogue is an important tool of scaffolding in ZPD. • Asking probing questions is an excellent way to scaffold student’s learning.

40. Teaching strategies for applying Vygotsky’s theory to children’s education. • The teaching strategies for applying Vygotsky’s theory to children’s education are: (a) Vygotsky’s use of zone of proximal development, (b) Vygotsky’s use of scaffolding, (c) using more skilled peers, (d) encouraging collaborative learning and recognizing that learning and knowledge are mutually built and constructed, (e) considering the cultural context of learning, (f ) assessing the ZPD, not IQ

41. Piaget: Constructivist approach Piaget believed that self-talk reflected immaturity. Piaget believed that children construct knowledge through internal processes, View the teacher as a facilitator or guide. According to Piaget, language plays a minor role. Vygotsky: Social constructivist approach believed that children who engage in “private speech” are more socially competent than children who do not. Vygotsky believed that private speech represents an early transition in becoming more socially communicative Vygotsky emphasized external processes. View the teacher as a facilitator or guide. Piaget versus Vygotsky

42. Learning activity • Ali is having difficulty with math assignment. His teacher helps him work through the first problem step-by-step. Ali begins to understand the concepts and begins the other problems. Sara also struggles with the assignment. However, even when Ms. Farah works through the first problem with her, she still cannot grasp how to do the remaining problems. Meanwhile, Nada has breezed through the assignment with no difficulty at all. • Q.1:What would Vygotsky say about the assignment for Ali ? • Q.2:What would Vygotsky say about the assignment for Sara?

43. Learning activity Peter is having difficulty with math assignment. His teacher helps him work through the first problem step-by-step. Peter begins to understand the concepts and begins the other problems. Suzanne also struggles with the assignment. However, even when Ms. Masriworks through the first problem with her, she still cannot grasp how to do the remaining problems. Meanwhile, Hanadi has breezed through the assignment with no difficulty at all. • Q.3:What would Vygotsky say about the assignment for Hanadi? • Q.4:What would Vygotsky call the assistance Ms. Masrigives Peter and Suzanne? Explain.

44. Cognitive and Language Development • Language is a form of communication, spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols. Language involves five systems of rules: • Phonology refers to thesound system of a language including the sounds used and how they may be combined. For example battered and are. • Morphology refers to theunits of meaning involved in word formation. A morpheme is a word or part of a word that cant be broken into smaller meaningful parts such as help . Helper consists of two units help +er.

45. Syntax are the rules for combining words into phrases/sentences. For example the adjective usually precedes the noun as in blue sky . In Arabic its vice versa. • Semantics: Meaning of words and sentences. • Pragmatics: Appropriate use of language in different contexts. Pragmatic rules are complex and they differ from language to another , and they are associated with gender, age and socioeconomic class.

46. Biological and Environmental Influences on Language Development Children are neither exclusively biological linguists nor social architects of language. Interactionists emphasize the contribution of both.

47. How Language Develops • Infancy • Babbling begins at about 3 to 6 months. • Infants usually utter their first word at about 10 to 13 months. • Infants usually speak one  two words by 18 to 24 months.

48. How Language Develops • Early Childhood • Phonology: They become gradually sensitive to sounds andrhymes • Morphology: They over generalize rules. A preschooler might say foots instead of feet. • Syntax: Preschoolers also learn and apply rules of syntax. Complex rules for ordering words • Semantics: Knowledge of meanings rapidly advances in early childhood. 6-year-old: 8,000- to 14,000-word vocabulary • Pragmatics: They talk in different ways to different people

49. How Language Develops • Middle & Late Childhood • Phonology: Alphabetic principle: letter-sound correspondence • Morphology: Appropriate application of rules. • Syntax: Complex grammar; linguistic awareness • Semantics: Vocabulary development continues. 12-year-old: 50,000-word vocabulary • Pragmatics: Culturally appropriate language use

50. How Language Develops • Adolescence • Increased sophistication in use of words • Greater understanding of metaphors, satire that involve wit and caricatures, and complex literary works • Better writers • Dialect includes jargon and slang