Lifespan Development

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Lifespan Development

• Chapter 5
• Cognitive Development in Infancy

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• Piaget proposed that
• Physical bodies can adapt to the world
• Humans build mental structures to aid adaptation
• Humans interactive with their environment
• Children think differently at various points in
  their development

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• Schemes are patterns of actions and thoughts that
  organize knowledge.
• Actions are behavioral schemes. Their development
  characterizes infancy, such as that of simple
  actions and reflexes.
• Thoughts are cognitive activities or mental
  schemes, which develop in childhood, such as
  classifying objects by size, color, or shape.

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• Assimilation incorporates new information into
  existing knowledge.
• Accommodation adjusts existing knowledge to fit
  new information.
• Organization is Piagets concept of grouping
  isolated behaviors into a higher-order system
• The child becomes skilled at using tools over
  time, one at a time until experiences become
  skills

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• Equilibration
• Piagets mechanism to explain how children shift
  from one stage of thought to another
• It is lost when children have cognitive conflicts
• Achieved when assimilation and accommodation are
  used together to resolve a conflict
• Piagets 6 substages of the sensorimotor stage of
  infant development last from birth to 2 years of
  age

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Piagets 6 Substages of Sensorimotor Development
Figure 6.1
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The Sensorimotor Stage

• The Circular Reaction
• Substage 1 Reflexive schemes (birth to 1 month)
• Substage 2 Primary circular reactions the
  first learned adaptations (1 to 4 months)
• Substage 3 Secondary circular reactions
  making interesting sights last (4 to 8 months)
• Substage 4 Coordination of secondary circular
  reactions (8 to 12 months)
• Substage 5 Tertiary circular reactions
  discovering new means through active
  experimentation (12 to 18 months)
• Substage 6 Mental representation inventing
  new means through mental combinations (18 to 24
  months)

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• At the end of sensorimotor stage
• Object permanence is understood
• Infant understands a differentiation between self
  and world
• At around 5.5 and 6.5 months of age, an infant
  can understand simple causal factors
• Piagets work is criticized as
• Being too vague
• Underestimating infant ability
• Being based mostly on his childrens infancy

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• Conditioning
• Consequences following a behavior affects whether
  behavior is repeated
• Rovee-Collier showed infants have memory of
  conditioned experiences
• Attention
• Infants can scan and fixate on objects
• 4-month-olds show selective attention
• Infant attention governed by novelty and
  habituation, respond to changed stimuli

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• Meltzoff imitation abilities are biological
  because infants can imitate facial expressions
  within a few days after birth
• Piaget deferred imitation occurs at about 18
  months but Meltzoff showed that it occurred at 9
  months

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• Memory retention of information over time
• Implicit memory is performed automatically
  without conscious recollection
• Explicit memory is conscious memory of facts and
  experiences occurs in infants after 6 months
• Infantile or childhood amnesia
• Inability to recall memories of events that
  occurred before 3 years of age
• May be caused by immaturity of prefrontal lobes
  of the brain

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• Individual differences in infant cognitive
  development are important
• Development testing emphasizes norms
• Infants assessed mostly based on assessment
  scales and intelligence tests
• Identifying an infants development as slow,
  normal, or advanced has advantages
• If slow provide more enrichment
• If advanced provide more stimulating toys

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• Types of infant cognitive assessment
• Gesells developmental quotient (DQ) has 4
  categories of behavior motor, language,
  adaptive, and personalsocial
• Bayley Scales of Infant Development have three
  components to predict later development mental
  scale, motor scale, and infant behavior profile

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• Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence focuses on
  infants ability to process information
• Estimates a babys intelligence by comparing
  amount of time spent looking at an object with
  amount of time spent looking at familiar object
• Infant intelligence tests are valuable in
  assessing effects of maternal deprivation and
  environmental stimulation but not highly
  correlated with later childhood IQ scores

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• Wild or feral children are raised in isolation
  and unable to recapture normal language
  development despite intensive intervention later
• For example
• Victor, Wild Boy of Aveyron
• Genie 13-year-old found in 1970 in Los Angeles
• Both cases raise questions about biological and
  environmental determinants of language
• Language is a system of words, symbols, and
  gestures that create shared communication that
  transcends time (future, present, and past)

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• Languages five systems of rules
• Phonology sound system of language, with phoneme
  being smallest unit of sound with meaning
• Morphology units of meaning in word formation,
  with morpheme being the smallest unit of meaning
• Syntax how words are combined
• Semantics the meanings of sentences and words
• Pragmatics use of appropriate language in
  different contexts

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• Language develops in infants throughout the world
  along a similar path and sequence
• Infants ability to recognize native language,
  for English speakers this includes
  distinguishing r from t
• On average, a child
• Understands about 50 words at age 13 months
• Speaks first word at 1015 months of age
• Can speak about 50 words at 18 months of age

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Variation in Language Milestones
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24
21
18
15
12
Age in months
9
First words
Vocabulary spurt
Language Milestone
Figure 6.9
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• Average 2-year-old can speak about 200 words
• Vocabulary spurt begins at approximately 18
  months of age
• Two-word utterances occur at about 1824 months
• Overextension and underextension of words are
  common
• Telegraphic speech is use of short and precise
  words

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Some Language Milestones in Infancy
Language Milestones
Age
Figure 6.10
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• There is evidence that
• Language has a biological basis
• Everyone knows its rules and has ability to
  create infinite numbers of words and sentences
• Specific regions of the brain are predisposed to
  be used for language
• Brocas Area
• an area of the left frontal lobe that directs the
  muscle movements involved in speech
• Wernickes Area
• an area of the left temporal lobe involved in
  language comprehension and expression

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Brocas Area and Wernickes Area
Brocas Area
Wernickes Area
Figure 6.11
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• Chomsky humans are prewired for language
• Chomskys language acquisition device (LAD) is a
  theoretical construct only
• Behaviorists claim language is a complex learned
  skill acquired through responses and
  reinforcements
• Studies found link between size of childs
  vocabulary and mothers talkativeness
• Young childrens vocabularies are linked to
  family socioeconomic status

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Level of Maternal Speech and Infant Vocabulary
800
High
Mothers level of speech
600
400
Infants vocabulary size (words)
Medium
200
Low
0
14
16
18
20
22
24
26
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Infants age (months)
Figure 6.12
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Language Input in Professional and Welfare
Families, and Young Childrens Vocabulary
Development
800
Professional
600
400
Parent utterances to child per hour
Welfare
200
0
18
22
26
30
34
38
10
14
Age of children (months)
Figure 6.12 (a)
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Language Input in Professional and Welfare
Families, and Young Childrens Vocabulary
Development
1200
1000
Professional
800
600
400
Welfare
Childrens cumulative vocabulary (words)
200
0
18
22
26
30
34
38
10
14
Age of children (months)
Figure 6.12 (b)
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• Three strategies to enhance childs acquisition
  of language other than child-directed speech
• Recasting rephrasing something the child has
  said
• Expanding state repeating what the child has
  said but in correct structure
• Labeling identifying the names of objects
• Children vary in their ability to acquire
  language