Why isn ’ t Piaget ’ s theory of sensorimotor intelligence universally recognized as insightful ?

2. Why isn’t Piaget’s theory of sensorimotor intelligence universally recognized as insightful? • When and how do infants learn to talk?

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwESWgwWeFc • Why do we talk? BBC Documentary • At 34 minutes

4. Sensorimotor Intelligence • Sensorimotor intelligence • Piaget’s term for the way infants think—by using their senses and motor skills—during the first period of cognitive development • Piaget • Infants are active learners. • Adaptation is the core of intelligence. • Cognition develops in four distinct periods.

5. Sensorimotor Intelligence • Understanding our experiences includes: • Circular reactions: Interaction of sensation, perception, and cognition • Assimilation • new experiences are interpreted to fit into old ideas (an orange is a ball) • Accommodation • old ideas are restructured to include, or accommodate, new experiences

6. Sensorimotor Intelligence • Primary circular reactions (0-4 months) • stages of sensorimotor intelligence involving the infant’s own body • Reflexes and then accommodations and coordination of reflexes • Reflexes evoke brain reactions • Infants adapt reflexes through information as repeated responses provide information about how each action feels (suck soother differently than breast).

7. Sensorimotor Intelligence • Secondary circular reactions (4-12 months) • Interaction between baby and something else; mirror neurons begin to function • Attempts to make interesting things last • New adaptation and anticipation • Goal-direct behavior • Purposeful action that benefit from new motor skills resulting from brain maturation • Object permanence • Realization that objects or people continue to exist when they are no longer in sight

8. Object Permanence Experiment Peek-a-Boo The best hidden object is Mom under an easily moved blanket, as 7-month old Elias has discovered. Peek-a-boo is fun from about 7 to 12 months. In another month, Elias will search for more conventionally hidden objects. In a year or two, his surprise and delight at finding Mom will fade.

9. Sensorimotor Intelligence • Tertiary circular reactions (12-24 months) • Involves active exploration and experimentation; exploration of range of new activities and variations in responses as way of learning • Goal directed and purposeful actions become more creative • Mental combinations; intellectual experimentation via imagination

10. Never Ending

11. Piaget Reevaluated • Many infants reach the stages of sensorimotor intelligence earlier than Piaget predicted. • Small sample size • Simplistic methods • Unseen brain activity

12. Beyond Piaget • Techniques Used by Neuroscientists to Understand Brain Function

13. Beyond Piaget For both practical and ethical reasons, these techniques have not been used with large, representative samples of normal infants. One of the challenges of neuroscience is to develop methods that are harmless, easy to use, and comprehensive for the study of normal children. A more immediate challenge is to depict the data in ways that are easy to interpret and understand.

14. Language: What Developsin the First Two Years? • Listening and responding • Before birth: Language learning via brain organization and hearing; may be innate • Newborn: Preference for speech sounds and mother’s language; gradual selective listening • Around 6 months: Ability to distinguish sounds and gestures in own language

15. The Development of Spoken Language in the First Two Years

16. Aspects of Memory • Infants • Can process information and store conclusions • Can remember specific events and patterns • Early researchers underestimated infant memory. • Failure to differentiate between implicit and explicit memory • Do you know the difference?

17. Too Young for Language? • No. • The early stages of language involve communication through noises, gestures, and facial expressions, very evident here between this !Kung grandmother and granddaughter. • Universal sequence • Timing of language acquisition varies but sequence is universal

18. Language Development • Babbling • Involves repetition of certain syllables, such as ba-ba-ba, that begins when babies are between 6 and 9 months old • Is experience-expectant • Begins to sound like native language around 12 months

19. Language • Gesturing • All infants gesture. • Concepts with gesture are expressed sooner than speech. • Pointing emerges in human babies around 10 months. Happy Talk Ty’s mother and the teacher demonstrate the sign for “more” in a sign language class at the public library in Hudson, Florida. Ty takes the lesson very seriously: Learning language in any form is crucial for 1-year-olds.

20. Language Learning • First words: Gradual beginnings • At about 1 year: Speak a few words. • 6-15 months: Understand 10 times more words than produced • 12 months: Begin to use holophrases; recognize vocalization from universal to language-specific • Naming explosion • Once spoken vocabulary reaches about 50 words, it builds quickly, at a rate of 50 to 100 words per month. • 21-month-olds say twice as many words as 18-month-old.

21. Language Learning • Cultural differences in language use • Cultural and family variation exists in child-directed speech. • Infants seek best available language teachers. • Music tempo is culture-specific. Cultural Values Each culture encourages the qualities it values, and verbal fluency is not a priority in this community.

22. Language Learning • Cultural differences in language use: Parts of speech • Ratio of nouns to verbs and adjectives varies. • Infants differ in use of various parts of speech. • Young children are sensitive to the sounds of words.

23. Language Learning: Grammar • Cultural differences in language use: Grammar • Includes all the devices by which words communicate meaning • Becomes obvious in holophrases between 18 and 24months • Correlates with size of vocabulary Look Who’s Talking Men have a reputation for being strong and silent, but these two are more typical of today’s men—sharing the joys and tribulations of fatherhood.

24. Language Learning: Grammar • Mastering two languages • Quantity of speech in both languages the child hears is crucial. • Children implicitly track the number of words and phrases and learn those expressed most often. • Bilingual toddlers realize differences between languages, adjusting tone, pronunciation, cadence, and vocabulary when speaking to a monolingual person.

25. Theories of Language Learning • Theory One: Infants need to be taught. • B. F. Skinner (1957) noticed that spontaneous babbling is usually reinforced. • Parents are expert teachers, and other caregivers help them teach children to speak. • Frequent repetition of words is instructive, especially when the words are linked to the pleasures of daily life.

26. Theories of Language Learning • Theory One: Infants need to be taught. • Well-taught infants become well-spoken children. • if adults want children who speak, understand, and (later) read well, they must talk to their infants.

27. Theories of Language Learning • Theory Two: Social impulses fosters infant language. • Infants communicate because humans have evolved as social beings. • The emotional messages of speech, not the words, that are the focus of early communication.

28. Theories of Language Learning • Theory Two: Social impulses fosters infant language. • Each culture has practices that further social interaction, including talking. • The social content of speech is universal, which is why babies learn whatever specifics their culture provides.

29. Theories of Language Learning • Theory Three: Infants teach themselves • Language learning is innate; adults need not teach it, nor is it a by-product of social interaction. • Language itself is experience-expectant, although obviously the specific language is experience-dependent.

30. Theories of Language Learning • Theory Three: Infants teach themselves • Chomsky • Language too complex to be mastered through step-by-step conditioning. • Language acquisition device (LAD) is innate. • All babies are eager learners, and language may be considered one more aspect of neurological maturation.

31. Thinking Critically: My baby can read? • When people spend money and time on learning tools, they tend to believe these work. • Rebuttal research findings • The more video exposure a 6-month-old has, the slower the infant’s cognitive and linguistic development • Before age 3, children’s visual, auditory, symbolic, and conceptual skills render them less likely to learn with a video than without it (unless adults interact) • What do you think? Why?

32. Which Perspective Is Correct? • All perspective offer insight into language acquisition. • Hybrid theory • Some aspects of language learning may be best explained by one theory at one age and other aspects by another theory at another age. • Multiple attentional, social and linguistic cues contribute to early language. • Different elements of the language apparatus may have evolved in different ways.