LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT

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Children
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Cognitive Development in Infancy
John W. Santrock
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Cognitive Development In Infancy

• What Is Piagets Theory of Infant Development?
• How Do Infants Learn, Remember, and
  Conceptualize?
• How Are Individual Differences in Infant
  Intelligence Assessed and Do These Assessments
  Predict Intelligence?
• What Are Some Early Environmental Influences on
  Cognitive Development?
• What Is the Nature of Language and How Does It
  Develop in Infancy?

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Images of Children
What Is Piagets Theory of Infant Development?

• The stories of Laurent, Lucienne, and Jacqueline
• Piagets children are the models for his theory
• Meticulous observations on cognitive development

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Cognitive Processes
What Is Piagets Theory of Infant Development?

• Adaptation involves adjusting to new
  environmental demands
• We build mental structures to help us adapt
• Children actively construct their own cognitive
  worlds

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Cognitive Processes
What Is Piagets Theory of Infant Development?

• Schemes mental representations or actions that
  organize knowledge
• Assimilation incorporating new information into
  existing schemes
• Accommodation adjusting schemes to fit new
  information and experiences

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Cognitive Processes
What Is Piagets Theory of Infant Development?

• Organization grouping isolated behaviors and
  thoughts into higher-order system
• Equilibrium mechanism for shifting from one
  level of thought to another
• Disequilibrium result of cognitive conflict
• Cognition qualitatively different in each stage
  of development

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Sensorimotor Stage
What Is Piagets Theory of Infant Development?

• First of Piagets stages
• Lasts from birth to about 2 years of age
• Infants construct understanding of the world by
  coordinating sensory experiences with physical,
  motoric actions use of symbols

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Sensorimotor Substages
Figure 6.1
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Understanding Physical Reality
What Is Piagets Theory of Infant Development?

• Object Permanence
• Understanding that objects and events continue to
  exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or
  touched
• One of infants most important achievements,
  assessed by violation of expectations
• Understanding of causality

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Object Permanence
(a)
(b)
Fig. 6.2
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The Infants Understanding of Causality
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Evaluating Piagets Sensorimotor Stage
What Is Piagets Theory of Infant Development?

• New way of looking at infants
• Piagets views need modification his
  explanations of cause are debated
• Object permanence occurs earlier
• Distinguishing objects by 3 to 4 months
• A-not-B error infant selects familiar hiding
  place (A) rather than new hiding place (B)

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Conditioning
How Do Infants Learn, Remember, and Conceptualize?

• Consequences of behavior produce
• Rovee-Collier experiment on memory
• Classical conditioning pairing of new stimulus
  to conditioned response
• Operant conditioning consequences of behavior
  affect probability of that behavior reoccurring

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Attention
How Do Infants Learn, Remember, and Conceptualize?

• Focusing of mental resources on select
  information helps cognitive processing
• Habituation decreased responsiveness to stimulus
  after repeated presentations
• Dishabituation habituated response recovered
  after a change in stimulation
• Short lookers versus long lookers

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Attention
How Do Infants Learn, Remember, and Conceptualize?

• Joint attention individuals focus on same
  object or event
• Requires
• Ability to track anothers behavior
• One person directing anothers attention
• Reciprocal interaction
• Important to caregiver-infant interactions

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Memory
How Do Infants Learn, Remember, and Conceptualize?

• Retention of information over time
• Attention is important for encoding
• Implicit memory recall is automatic
• Explicit memory recall is conscious effort
• Infantile or childhood amnesia
• Most remember little from first 3 years
• Immaturity of prefrontal lobe

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Imitation
How Do Infants Learn, Remember, and Conceptualize?

• Meltzoff Infant can imitate facial expression
  within a few days after birth others disagree
• Deferred imitation imitate actions seen earlier
  use of unusual gestures (extending arm, pointing
  index finger, etc.)
• Piaget begins about 18 months of age
• Meltzoff begins much earlier than 18 months
• Mirror neurons play role in infant imitation

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Concept Formation and Categorization
How Do Infants Learn, Remember, and Conceptualize?

• Categories grouping objects, events,
  characteristics by common features
• Concepts ideas on what categories represent
• Conceptual categories perceptual variability
  found in 7- to 9-month-old infants
• Object-examination test

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Infant Intelligence
How Are Individual Differences in Infant
Intelligence Assessed and Do They Predict IQ?

• Infant testing movement grew
• Gesell distinguish abnormal babies for adoption
  agencies
• Developmental quotient (DQ) overall
  developmental score, combines domains
• Motor
• Language
• Adaptive
• Personal-social

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Bayley Scales of Infant Development
How Are Individual Differences in Infant
Intelligence Assessed and Do They Predict IQ?

• Widely used in assessment of infant development
  has three components
• Mental scale auditory and visual attention
• Motor scale
• Infant behavior profile
• Assesses infant, predicts later behavior

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Infant Intelligence
How Are Individual Differences in Infant
Intelligence Assessed and Do They Predict IQ?

• Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence
• Increased use focus on infant ability to process
  information
• Encoding attributes of objects
• Detecting object similarities and differences
• Forming and retrieving mental representations
• Similar infant performances across cultures

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Predicting Intelligence
How Are Individual Differences in Infant
Intelligence Assessed and Do They Predict IQ?

• Older children IQ tests focus on verbal ability
• Infants IQ tests focus on perceptual-motor
  development and social behavior
• Gesell and Bayley scales poor predictors
• Fagan good correlation with later IQ tests
• Habituation and dishabituation linked to IQ

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Nutrition
What Are Some Early Environmental Influences on
Cognitive Development?

• Affects physical development
• Malnutrition limits cognitive development
• Early nutritional supplements, proteins and
  calories, have positive long-term effects

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Poverty
What Are Some Early Environmental Influences on
Cognitive Development?

• Positive effects sought by manipulating
  childrens early environments
• Emphasis on prevention, not remediation
• Early intervention programs vary
• Many low-income parents cannot provide
  intellectually stimulating environment

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Early Intervention and Retention in School
Fig. 6.9
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Poverty
What Are Some Early Environmental Influences on
Cognitive Development?

• Best intervention programs are
• Long lasting
• Time-intensive
• Providing direct educational benefits
• Often in educational context
• Does not rely solely on parental training
• Comprehensive and multidimensional

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Defining Language
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Language form of communication (verbal, written,
  gestures) based on system of symbols highly
  organized
• Infinite generativity ability to produce endless
  number of meaningful sentences using finite set
  of words and rules

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Languages Rule Systems
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Five systems of rules
• Phonology
• Sound system of language
• Basis and sequences for sets of words
• Phoneme smallest unit of sound
• Morphology
• Units of meaning in word formation
• Morpheme smallest unit of meaning

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Languages Rule Systems
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Syntax
• Ways words combine to form acceptable phrases and
  sentences
• Semantics
• Meanings of words and sentences
• Pragmatics
• Appropriate use of language in context

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How Language Develops
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Babbling and gestures
• Crying present at birth, signals distress
• Cooing begins about 1 to 2 months
• Babbling occurs in middle of first year, strings
  of consonant-vowel combinations
• Gestures begins about 8 to 12 months about same
  for hearing and deaf children

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Recognizing Language Sounds
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Birth to 6 months
• Citizens of the Word recognize most sound
  changes in any language
• After 6 months, learn own language
• Gradually lose ability to recognize sound changes
  in other languages
• 8 to 9 months detect word boundaries

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First Words
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• First words at 10 to 15 months
• First words name important people, familiar
  animals and objects, body parts, greetings
• Infants understand about 50 words at 13 months
  (receptive vocabulary) but unable to say them
  until about 18 months (spoken vocabulary)

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Variation in Language Milestones
Fig. 6.12
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Language Growth
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Vocabulary spurt 18 months to 2 years
• 50 words at 18 mos, 200 words at 2 years
• Overextension applying words too broadly
• Underextension applying word too narrowly
• Two-Word Utterances
• Telegraphic speech use of short and precise
  words without grammatical markers

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Biological and Environmental Influences
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Biological
• Evolution of CNS and vocal apparatus
• Human language about 100,000 years old
• Childrens language acquisition similar all over
  the world (biological basis)

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Biological and Environmental Influences
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Brains Role in Language
• AphasiaBrain damage that involves a loss of
  ability to use words
• Brocas areaBrains left frontal lobe that
  directs the muscle movements involved in speech
  production
• Wernickes areaBrains left hemisphere involved
  in language comprehension

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Brocas Area and Wernickes Area
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Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Chomsky
• Humans biologically prewired for language
• Children born with LAD biological ability to
  detect features and rules of language
• Theoretical not physical part of brain
• Supporters cite uniformity of language milestones
  across languages and cultures

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Environmental Influences
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Behaviorists view cannot explain
• Creation of novel sentences
• Learning of a native language syntax without
  reinforcements
• Extensive research on environment
• Environment influences language skills
• Importance of social context Wild Boy of
  Aveyron and Genie

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Environmental Influences
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Tomasello interaction view
• Language learned in specific contexts
• In early development children use social skills
  to acquire language
• Childs vocabulary linked to familys
  socioeconomic status
• Type of talk parents direct to child
• Elaborated or restrictive vocabularies

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Environmental Influences on Language
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Child-directed speech
• Spoken in higher pitch than normal with simple
  words and sentences
• Holds attention, maintains communication

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Environmental Influences
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Other strategies used naturally
• Recasting rephrasing what child says
• Expanding sophisticated restating of what the
  child says
• Labeling assigning, identifying objects by name

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How Parents Can Facilitate Infants Language
Development
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Barons Growing Up With Language

• Infants
• Be active conversational partner
• Talk as if infant understands what is being said
• Use a comfortable language style

• Toddlers
• Continue being active conversational partner
• Remember to listen
• Use comfortable and appropriate styles
• Be flexible with child
• Avoid stereotypes

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Language Input in Professional and Welfare
Families and Young Childrens Vocabulary
Development
Welfare
Fig. 6.16 (a)
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Language Input in Professional and Welfare
Families and Young Childrens Vocabulary
Development
Fig. 6.16 (b)
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Interactionist View of Language Development
What Is The Nature of Language and How Does It
Develop in Infancy?

• Biology and sociocultural experiences contribute
  to language development
• Parents and teachers construct LASS language
  acquisition support system
• Children acquire native language without explicit
  teaching

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Children
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• The End