Cognitive Development During the First Three Years

1. Cognitive Development During the First Three Years Dr. Arra Chapter 5

2. Piaget Theory of Cognitive Development I.Sensorimotor Stage II. Preoperational Stage III. Concrete Operational Stage IV. Formal Operations

3. Cognitive Development During the First Three Years SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (0 – 2 yrs.) • Schemes – mental frameworks in the mind that provide a model for action (0 – 1 mos.) • Assimilation • Accomodation

4. Cognitive Development During the First Three Years • Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 mos.) • Secondary Circular Reactions (4-12 mos.) goal directed behavior • Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 mos.)

5. Cognitive Development During the First Three Years • Object Permanence (8-12 mos.) • Deferred Imitation (18-24 mos.) Symbolic Thinking

6. Memory • Eyewitness Memory – often inaccurate (eyewitness testimony) research has shown that people’s attention is narrowed during high levels of arousal; in these situations we tend to focus on a few specific details as opposed encoding the entire situation • Weapon focus hypothesis: victim’s of violent crimes may zoom in on the weapon and not encode the criminals face

7. Memory • Flashbulb memories – memories for sudden, specific events, that people feel are burned into their minds forever • Emotionally charged memory • Research shows that in fact over time information is forgotten and distorted

8. Memory • Implicit memories: (0-3 mos.) knowledge of events, procedures, and information that individuals may be quite unaware of; unconscious (Procedural Memory; Conditioning) • Explicit memories: (6-12 mos.) conscious recall/recognition of facts, names, events

9. Memory • Working Memory: (6-12 mos.) STM • LTM • Serial Learning Curve

10. Memory • Context-dependent memory Memories get associated to the context in which they are studied • State-dependent memory Memory or recall associated with state at test matches their state at learning

11. Information Processing • Approach that emphasizes cognition, attention, memory • Looks at how infants proceed through these processes

12. Information Processing Information Processing researchers measure, and draw inferences from what infants pay attention to and for how long Habituation: reduced attention due to repeated presentation of the same stimulus Dishabituation: renewal of interest in a new stimulus

13. Imitation • Deferred Imitation; Piaget (18-24 mos.) Current Research: • Infants can imitate faces within the first few days after birth • Infants are able to demonstrate deferred imitation at 9 mos.

14. Intelligence Tests • Mostly non-verbal • Measure motor skills, adaptive behavior skills, language • DAS, Bracken, Stanford-Binet, WJ-III • Stability of IQ at young ages????

15. Language Language: communication system based on words and grammar Rules of Language: • Phonology: phonemes • Morphology: morphemes – smallest part of a word that has meaning semantics – meaning on a sentence level • Syntax: structure of sentences • Pragmatics: practical use of language; knowing appropriate rules with regards to dialogue and language

16. Language • How is language acquired? Chomsky (LAD) vs. Skinner • Critical period for language development?

17. Language Some definitions: • Motherese – speech used when talking to babies • Recasting – rephrasing what child has said • Echoing – repeating what child has said • Expanding – restating what child has said in a more sophisticated form

18. Language Some definitions: • Labeling – identifying the names of objects • Holophrase – single word that conveys a complete thought (10-15 mos.) • Telegraphic speech – early form of a sentence that consists of only a few words (18-24 mos.)

19. Language How language develops: • 3-6 mos. Babbling, Cooing • 6-9 mos. First words understood (receptive) • 10-15 mos. Infant utters first word Why dada and not mama? • 18-24 mos. Two word statements • 36 mos. Says up to 1,000 words

20. Language What occurs between 18 and 36 mos.? • MLU increases • Number of morphemes per sentence produced