LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT

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Children Chapter 7 Cognitive Development in
Infancy
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What Is Piagets Theory of Infant Development?

• Adaptation adjusting to new environmental
  demands
• Assimilation incorporating new information into
  existing schemes
• Accommodation adjusting schemes to fit new
  information and experiences

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Sensorimotor Stage

• 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
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Understanding Physical Reality

• 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
• Understanding of causality

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Object Permanence
(a)
(b)
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The Infants Understanding of Causality
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How infants learn Conditioning

• Consequences of behavior produce learning
• Rovee-Collier experiment, conditioning
• Classical conditioning infant can develop
  lifelong fears
• Operant conditioning rewarding stimulus
  increases probability of that behavior reoccurring

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Imitation

• Infant can imitate facial expression within a few
  days after birth biologically based
• Deferred imitation 9-month-olds can imitate
  actions they saw 24 hours earlier

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Memory

• Central feature of cognitive development
• Individual retains information over time
• First Memories
• Implicit memory lacks conscious recollection
• Explicit memory conscious ability for recall
• Infantile Amnesia
• Most remember little from first 3 years
• Immaturity of prefrontal lobe

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Nutrition

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

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What Language Is

• Language form of communication (verbal, written,
  gestures) based on system of symbols highly
  organized

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How Language Develops in Infancy

• Babbling and other vocalizations
• 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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First Words

• 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)
• Holophrases single words used to mean entire
  sentences

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Language Growth

• 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

• Brains Role in Language
• 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)

• 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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• Behaviorial view
• Language is complex skill learned and reinforced
• The more children are spoken to, the higher their
  vocabularies

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

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• 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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Interactionist View of Language Development

• Biology and sociocultural experiences contribute
  to language development
• Children acquire native language without explicit
  teaching