The Body and Beyond

1
The Body and Beyond

• Millie Smith

2
Cognitive Development

• Sensorimotor level
• 0 to 2 years
• Preoperational level
• 2 to 11 years
• Operational level (concrete/formal)
• 11 and up

3
Who

• Cognitive age 0-2 years
• Chronological age 0 and up
• Could include
• Infants with atypical responses
• Toddlers with atypical responses and mild to
  moderate delays
• Pre-school and early elementary students with
  moderate to severe delays
• Late elementary and secondary students with
  severe to profound delays

4
Agency Skills

• Cognitive
• Communicative
• Motor

5
Cognition and Intelligence

• Cognition is
• a dynamic process
• comprised of specific skills
• that develop over time
• as a result of experience

• Intelligence is
• a label for something thought to be a static
  aptitude for learning
• which does not change over time
• and is not mitigated by experience

6
Cognitive Process

• Acquisition
• Storage
• Retrieval
• Use

7
Acquisition

• Near Senses
• Tactual
• Gustatory
• Distance Senses
• Visual
• Auditory
• Olfactory
• Movement and Position Senses
• Vestibular
• Proprioceptive

8
Sensorimotor level learning media

• Own body
• Another persons body
• Objects touching the body
• Objects beyond the body
• Events beyond the body
• person-object-action-place relationships

9
Storage (Memory)

• Sensory
• Sensory channel input retained for milliseconds
• Short-term or working
• On-line holding of 5-7 items for a few minutes
• Long-term (episodic/epistemological)
• Life long retention of events and knowledge
• Procedural
• Long-term retention of motor sequences

10
Retrieval

• External or internal stimulus trigger
• Stimulates reconstruction of queried
  information
• Result is combination of original experience and
  associated information

11
Use

• Adaptive behavior

12
Cognitive Skills

• Object exploration and schemes
• Object permanence and search
• Imitation
• Causality
• Means/ends
• Spatial relationships

13
Cognition and Experience

• Quantity
• Billions of sensory experiences required for
  adequate brain development in first year of life
• Quality
• Sensory characteristics activate processing
• Context facilitates development of meaning
• Growth
• Brain doubles in weight in first year of life

14
Clarification of Terminology

• Sensorimotor learning
• First stage of cognitive development
• Sensory stimulation
• Deliberate activation of sensory channel
  receptors for the purpose of manipulating arousal
  states
• Sensory-neural processing
• Reception, transmission, and interpretation of
  sensory data obtained through interactions with
  media
• Sensory integration
• Occupational therapy intervention to remediate
  difficulties with sensory-neural processing

15
Sensorimotor learning

• Definition
• First stage of Piagets three stages of cognitive
  development
• Infant/toddler begins to construct meaning by
  actively exploring
• Mental activity more likely to occur as a result
  of active manipulation of objects

• Sub-stages
• Reflexive (baby grips adults finger)
• Primary circular reactions (pleasure- repeats
  banging, likes sound)
• Secondary CR (outcomes- drops food from
  highchair)
• Coordinated SCR (goals- picks up cup for drink)
• Tertiary CR (retrieval- searches for cup when
  drink desired)

16
Sensory stimulation

• Sensory input often chosen and provided by other
• Responses reflexive or minimally intentional
  (listen, look, etc.)
• Neurological activity primarily sub-cortical
• Calms or stimulates arousal levels
• Asleep/drowsy/quiet alert/active
  alert/fussy/agitated

17
Interventions for students with multiple
impairments

• Sensory stimulation
• Project ABLE University of Kansas
• Sensory Defensiveness in Children Ages 2-12
  Wilbarger and Wilbarger
• Sensorimotor learning
• The Sensory Learning Kit American Printing House
  for the Blind
• FIELA Curriculum Vision Associates
• Carolina Curriculum for Infants and Toddlers With
  Special Needs Paul Brookes