Chapter 6

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

IN INFANCY

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COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Jean Piaget

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• Adaptation - adjusting to new environments• Mental structures help us adapt• Children actively construct their own cognitive worlds

• Schemes: Organized patterns of information.• Assimilation: Fitting new information into existing

schemes• Accommodation: Adjusting schemes to fit new

information and experiences

COGNITIVE PROCESSES

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• First stage (Birth-2)• Infants construct understanding of the world by

coordinating sensory experiences with motor responses• Six substages focus on:• Simple reflexes• First habits and Primary circular reactions• Secondary circular reactions• Coordination of secondary circular reactions• Tertiary circular reactions (Novelty and curiosity)• Internalization of schemes (Thought)

SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

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SUBSTAGES OF THE SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

• Simple Reflexes• Birth to 1 month• Modify reflexes based on experience

• Primary Circular Reactions• 1 to 4 months• Primary = focus on infant’s own body• Circular = repeated behaviors

• Secondary Circular Reactions• 4 to 8 months• Secondary = focus on objects or environmental

events• Track moving objects until they disappear from view

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SUBSTAGES OF THE SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

• Coordination of Secondary Reactions• 8 to 12 months• Coordinate schemes to attain specific goals• Begin to imitate others

• Tertiary Circular Reactions• 12 to 18 months• Deliberate trial and error behaviors

• Internalization of Schemes/Thought• 18 to 24 months• External exploration is replaced by mental

exploration

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• Object permanence: • Understanding that objects continue to exist, even when they

cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched• Neonates show no response to objects not within their immediate

grasp• 2 month - show surprise when a screen is lifted after an object was

placed behind a screen and now is not there– Child makes no effort to search for the missing object

• 6 month - try to retrieve a preferred object partially hidden• 8- to 12-month - try to retrieve objects completely hidden• More recent research – object permanence in some form as early as

2½ - 3½ months

SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

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• New way of looking at infants• Piaget’s views need modification; his

explanations of cause are debated

• Object permanence occurs earlier• Gain many skills earlier than Piaget expected

EVALUATING PIAGET’S SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

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Nature vs. Nuture• Core knowledge approach: View that infants

are born with domain-specific innate knowledge systems (Spelke, 1991, 2000, 2011).

• Infants have “soft biases to perceive and attend to different aspects of the environment” (Johnston, 2008).

IDEAS STEMMING FROM PIAGET’S WORK

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• Consequences of behavior produce• Classical conditioning - Pairing of new stimulus to

conditioned response• Operant conditioning - Consequences of behavior affect

probability of that behavior reoccurring

CONDITIONING

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• Focusing of mental resources on select information• Habituation - Decreased responsiveness to stimulus

after repeated presentations• Dishabituation - Habituated response recovered after a

change in stimulation

• Joint attention: Occurs when individuals focus on the same object or event and are able to track each other’s behavior• One individual directs another’s attention, and

reciprocal interaction is present

ATTENTION

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• Memory: A central feature of cognitive development, involving the retention of information over time.• Implicit memory: Memory without conscious

recollection; involves skills and routine procedures that are automatically performed.

• Explicit memory: Conscious memory of facts and experiences

MEMORY

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MEMORY

• Memory

• Neonates show memory for previously exposed stimuli

• By 12 months dramatic improvement in encoding and retrieval

• Rovee-Collier (1993) studies of infant memory

• Given a reminder (priming), improves memory

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• Conditioning techniques are used to study processes like memory

• Consequences of behavior produce• Classical conditioning - Pairing of new stimulus to

conditioned response• Operant conditioning - Consequences of behavior affect

probability of that behavior reoccurring

USE OF CONDITIONING

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• Meltzoff (2007, 2011)– Infant can imitate facial expression within a few days after birth; others disagree

• Deferred imitation: • Imitation that occurs

after a delay of hours

or days• May aid in attachment• Mirror Neurons

IMITATION

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• Concepts: Ideas on what categories represent

• Conceptual categories - Perceptual variability found in 7- to 9-month-old infants

• These categories help us organize our knowledge.

CONCEPT FORMATION AND CATEGORIZATION

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

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• 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

DEFINING LANGUAGE

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• Five systems of rules• Phonology• Morphology• Syntax• Semantics• Pragmatics

LANGUAGE’S RULE SYSTEMS

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• Recognizing language sounds• Babbling and vocalizations• Crying - Present at birth, signals distress• Cooing - Begins about 1 to 2 months• Babbling - Occurs in first year, strings of consonant-

vowel combinations

• Gestures: Begins about 8 to 12 months

HOW LANGUAGE DEVELOPS

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• First words• First words • Infants understand about 50 words at 13 months

(receptive vocabulary)• Overextension and underextension of words• Telegraphic speech

HOW LANGUAGE DEVELOPS

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• Biological• Evolution of CNS and vocal apparatus• Human language about 100,000 years old• Children’s language acquisition similar all over the

world (biological basis)

BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES

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• Biological• Broca’s area: Left frontal lobe, produces words• Wernicke’s area: Left hemisphere, involved in

language comprehension• Language acquisition device (LAD): Noam Chomsky’s

term.

BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES

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FIGURE 6.15 - BROCA’S AREA AND WERNICKE’S AREA

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• Environmental Influences• Behaviorists: language is complex, learned• Behaviorists’ view cannot explain novelty, learning of a

native language syntax without reinforcements• Motherese (Child-Directed Speech)• Recasting, Expanding, Labeling

• Research• Environment influences language skills• Importance of social context: ‘Wild Boy of Aveyron’

BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES

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• Biology and sociocultural experiences contribute to language development

• Parents and teachers construct language acquisition support system

• Children acquire native language without explicit teaching

AN INTERACTIONIST VIEW