chapter four the emergence of thought and language: cognitive development in infancy and early...

Chapter Four

The Emergence of Thought and Language:

Cognitive Development in Infancy and Early Childhood

4.1 Piaget’s Account:Learning Objectives

• According to Piaget, how do schemes, assimilation, and accommodation provide the foundation for cognitive development throughout the life span?

• How does thinking become more advanced as infants progress through the sensorimotor stage?

• What are the distinguishing characteristics of thinking during the preoperational stage?

• What are the strengths and weaknesses of Piaget’s theory?

• How have contemporary researchers extended Piaget’s theory?

Basic Principles of Cognitive Development

• Children are active scientists or explorers of their world

• Children make sense of the world through schemes

– Mental categories of related events, objects, and knowledge

• Children adapt by refining their schemes and adding new ones

• Schemes change from physical to functional, conceptual, and abstract as the child develops

Piaget’s Account:Assimilation and Accommodation

• Assimilation: fitting new experiences into existing schemes

– Required to benefit from experience

• Accommodation: modifying schemes as a result of new experiences

– Allows for dealing with completely new data or experiences

Piaget’s Account:Equilibration

• Equilibrium – balance between assimilation and accommodation

• Disequilibrium – experience of conflict between new information and existing concepts

• Equilibration – inadequate schemes are reorganized or replaced with more advanced and mature schemes– Occurs three times during development, resulting in four

qualitatively different stages of cognitive development

Piaget’s Account: Periods of Cognitive Development

• Sensorimotor period (0-2 years)– Infancy

• Preoperational period (2-7 years)– Preschool and early elementary school

• Concrete operational period (7-11 years)– Middle and late elementary school

• Formal operational period (11 years & up)– Adolescence and adulthood

Piaget’s Account: Sensorimotor Thinking

• Deliberate, means-ends behavior– 8 months

• Object permanence: knowing an object still exists even if not in view– Not fully understood until 18 months

• Using symbols– Anticipate consequences of actions, instead of

needing to experience them• 18 to 24 months

Piaget’s Account: Preoperational Thinking

• Egocentrism– Difficulty seeing world from others’ perspectives

• Animism– Crediting inanimate objects with life and lifelike

properties• Centration

– Concentrating on only one facet of a problem to the neglect of other facets

Piaget’s Account: Preoperational Thinking (cont’d)

• Conservation: knowing that volume, mass, number, length, area, or liquid quantity are the same despite superficial appearance changes – Centration interferes with conservation

• Appearance is reality– Assuming that an object is really what it appears

to be (e.g., thinking that Shrek is a real ogre)

Implications of Piaget’s Theoryfor Fostering Cognitive Development

• Create environments where children can actively discover how the world works

• Provide experiences just slightly ahead of children’s current stage

• Help children actively discover inconsistencies in their thinking

Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory

• Underestimates infants’ and young children’s cognitive ability – Overestimates adolescents’ cognitive ability

• Vague about mechanisms and processes of change• Does not account for variability in children’s performance

– Cognitive development is not as stage-like as Piaget suggested

• Undervalues the sociocultural environment’s influence on cognitive development

Extending Piaget’s Account:Children’s Naïve Theories

• Children develop specialized theories about much narrower areas than Piaget suggested

• Core knowledge hypothesis– Infants are born with rudimentary

knowledge of the world– Children elaborate knowledge based on

experience

Extending Piaget’s Account:Children’s Naïve Theories (cont’d)

• Naïve physics: infants rapidly create a reasonably accurate theory of objects’ basic properties

• Infants understand these properties earlier than Piaget hypothesized– 4.5 months: understand object permanence– 5 months: understand that liquids, but not solids,

change shape when moved– 6 months: understand gravity and objects’

movements


• Naïve biology– Infants: use motion to discriminate animate

from inanimate objects– 12-15 months: know that animate objects

are self-propelled, move in irregular paths; act to achieve goals


• 4-year-olds understand specific properties of living things– Movement, growth, internal parts, inheritance, illness, healing

• Teleological explanations– Living things and their parts exist for a purpose: dogs have fur

so we can pet them

• Essentialism– Although invisible, all living things have an essence

giving them their identity


Preschoolers’ naïve biology has limits• Do not know genes are basis for inheritance• Think body parts have intentions or desires• Do not know plants are living things

• May stem from belief in goal-directed motion as key feature of living things

4.2 Information Processing:Learning Objectives

• What is the basis of the information-processing approach?

• How well do young children pay attention?• What kinds of learning take place during

infancy?• Do infants and preschool children remember?• What do infants and preschooler know about

numbers?

Information Processing: General Principles

• Human thinking is understandable via a computer model

• Mental hardware: neural and mental structures enabling the mind to operate

• Mental software: mental programs allowing for performance of specific tasks

Information Processing: Attention

• Attention: when sensory information receives additional cognitive processing

• Orienting response: emotional and physical reactions to unfamiliar stimulus

– Alerts infant to new or dangerous stimuli• Habituation: lessened reactions to a stimulus

after repeated presentations– Helps infant ignore biologically insignificant

events

Information Processing: Learning

• Classical conditioning– When an initially “neutral” stimulus (e.g., a

bell) becomes able to elicit a response (e.g., salivation) that previously was caused only by another stimulus (e.g., food)

– Infants are capable of this conditioning regarding feeding or other pleasant events

– Infants are less capable of this regarding aversive stimuli

Information Processing: Learning (cont’d)

• Operant conditioning: when a behavior’s consequence make this behavior’s future occurrence more likely (reinforcement) or less likely (punishment)

– Ex: Giving flowers to a girl results in being kissed, so you give flowers in the future (reinforcement)

– Ex: Giving flowers to a girl results in being slapped, so you stop giving flowers (punishment)

• Imitation: learning a new behavior by observing others

– Older infants imitate, but do 2- to 3-week-olds? (controversial)

VIDEO: Little Albert

Information Processing: Memory

• 2- to 3-month-olds– remember past events– forget them over time, but remember again with cues

• Autobiographical memory in preschoolers– exists for significant events in their own past– is richer when parents engage children in

conversations about the past, or ask for expanded descriptions of the past

– appears as a sense of self emerges

Information Processing: Memory (cont’d)

• Basis for age-related memory changes– Hippocampus and amygdala develop early

• 6-month-olds can store new information– Frontal cortex develops in second year

• toddlers begin retrieving information from long-term memory

Preschoolers as Eyewitnesses

• Preschoolers – are quite vulnerable to suggestion and

leading questions– may “remember” an event as actually

occurring even though someone only told them this

– have limited source-monitoring skills• ability to remember the source of recalled information

(e.g., knowing an investigator called them “cute” instead of a stranger having said this)

Preschoolers as Eyewitnesses (cont’d)

• Accuracy of recall is improved when– interviewed very soon after event– encouraged to tell the truth and that it’s

okay to say “I don’t know”– asked to describe event in their own words– made comfortable by first recounting a

neutral event (e.g., a birthday party)– asked questions allowing for alternate

explanations of the event

Information Processing:Learning Number Skills

• 5-month-olds have basic number skills

– distinguish 2 from 3 objects and 3 from 4– perform simple addition and subtraction

• 6-month-olds compare quantities by ratio

• 10-month-olds know the larger of two quantities

Information Processing:Learning Number Skills (cont’d)

• Preschoolers have mastered three principles when applied to five or fewer objects– One-to-one principle: number name for each object

counted– Stable-order principle: number names must be

counted in the same order– Cardinality principle: last number in a counting

sequence denotes how many objects there are• 5-year-olds use these principles regarding 9 or

fewer objects

4.3 Vygotsky’s Theory:Learning Objectives

• What is the zone of proximal development? How does it help explain how children accomplish more when they collaborate?

• Why is scaffolding a particularly effective way of teaching youngsters new concepts and skills?

• When and why do children talk to themselves as they solve problems?

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)

• Russian psychologist; died young (37), did not fully develop his theory beyond the period of childhood

• Intersubjectivity: all participants having a mutual, shared understanding of an activity (e.g., game rules)

• Guided participation: cognition develops via structured activities with more skilled others

• Apprenticeship: the process during which a more skilled master teaches a skill or task to a less skilled “apprentice” such as a child– Promotes cognitive development

Mind & Culture: Vygotsky’s Major Contributions

Zone of proximal development: difference between what children can do with or without assistance

• Providing learning experiences within this zone maximizes achievement

Scaffolding: giving just enough assistance to match learner’s needs

• Students do not learn as well when told everything to do, nor when left alone to discover for themselves

Mind & Culture: Vygotsky’s Major Contributions (cont’d)

• Private speech: “talking” to yourself to self-guide and self-regulate behavior

– Speech is audible, but isn’t directed at others, nor is it intended for others to hear

– Later becomes internalized as inner speech• In its most mature form, inner speech is unintelligible to all

but the thinker and it does not resemble spoken language

4.4 Language:Learning Objectives

• When do infants first hear and make speech sounds?

• When do children start to talk? How do they learn word meanings?

• How do young children learn grammar?• How well do youngsters communicate?

Language: The Road to Speech

• Perceiving speech– Phonemes: smallest, unique sounds

• 1-month-olds can distinguish between vowels and consonants

• Different languages have different sets of phonemes

– Children practice all phonemes, gradually restricting their use to only those to which they are exposed

• Eventually, they lose the ability to distinguish unused phonemes

Language: Identifying Words

– Children learn to pay more attention to often repeated and emphasized words

– Infant-directed speech: adults speak slowly and exaggerate changes in pitch and volume when talking to infants

• Sometimes called motherese because it was first observed in mothers

Language: Steps to Speech

• At 2 months, infants begin cooing

• Around 6 months, toddlers begin babbling– Babbling is a proven precursor to speech

• At 8-11 months, children incorporate intonation or changes in pitch typical of the language they hear

Language: First Words and Many More

• Around 1 year, children use their first words– Usually consonant-vowel pairs, such as “dada” or

“wawa”• By 2 years, children have a vocabulary of a

few hundred words• By age 6, children know around 10,000 words

Language and the Grand Insight: Words as Symbols

• Before 12 months: use symbols in areas other than language– Gesturing: infants will point, wave, smack lips to

convey messages

• 12 to 18 months: gain insight that words are symbols for objects, actions, and properties

Language: Fast-Mapping of Words

• 18 months: approximately when we see an explosive rate of word learning

• Fast-mapping: rapid connection of new words to their exact referents– Importance? Means that children actually know to

which object a new word refers, instead of thinking about all possible referents

Language: Factors Contributing to Rapid Learning

• Joint attention: parents labeling objects, plus children relying on adults’ behavior to interpret the label’s meaning

• Constraints on word names: children using various rules to learn new words– An unfamiliar word refers to the object not already having a name– Names refer to the whole object instead of its parts– A new name (T-rex) for an already named object (dinosaur) denotes

the object’s subcategory name

Language: Factors Contributing to Rapid Learning (cont’d)

• Sentence cues: children interpret unfamiliar words in a sentence using different cues– Rely on words they already know and the sentence’s

structure to infer a new word’s meaning or its function in a sentence

– Rely on the sentence’s context• Knowing to which object a word refers by attending to the

sentence’s adjective (e.g., the boz means the middle block with wings instead of any other blocks without wings)


• Cognitive factors: rapid cognitive growth and skill cause an explosion in new word learning– Development of goals and intentions motivates children

to learn language– Improved attentional and perceptual skills (e.g., shape

bias)


• Developmental changes in word meaning– Before 18 months: learn words relatively slowly

(one word/day)– By 24 months: learn many new words daily

• Greater use of language and social cues• Reduced use of attentional cues


• Naming errors – Underextension: defining a word too narrowly (e.g.,

using “car” to refer only to the family car)– Overextension: defining a word too broadly (e.g., using

“doggie” to refer to all four-legged animals)• Less common in word comprehension • More common in word production

– May reflect another fast-mapping rule» If you cannot remember the object’s actual name, say the

name of a related object (e.g., say “doggie” for a picture of a goat)


• Children use sentence cues to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words– Ex: “Our Pug went woof-woof” (Pug must be some kind of

dog)

• Better attentional and perceptual skills assist in learning language

• Naming errors result from underextension and overextension

Language: Individual Differences in Word Learning

Huge individual differences: vocabulary ranges from 25 to 250 words at 18 months. Why?

Size of children’s vocabulary is • greater for children with better phonological memory - the ability

to remember speech sounds briefly• greater for children exposed to a richer language environment• a bit more similar in identical than fraternal twins

Language: Bilingualism

• Learning two languages at once initially slows down vocabulary learning

• Bilingual compared to monolingual children• have somewhat smaller vocabularies for each

language• have a greater total vocabulary• better understand words’ arbitrary symbolic nature• are more skilled at switching across tasks• are better able to inhibit inappropriate responses

Language: Word Learning Styles

Two distinct styles of word learning, but most children blend them

• Expressive style: social emphasis– Vocabularies include social interaction and question

words plus naming words• Referential style: intellectual emphasis

– Vocabularies consist mainly of words naming objects, persons, or actions

– Vocabularies consist of few social interaction words or question words

Language: Encouraging Language Growth

Parents can assist in learning language by• speaking to children frequently• naming objects that grab children’s attention• using grammatically sophisticated speech• reading to children while carefully describing pictures and

asking questions• encouraging watching TV programs that emphasize new word

learning, tell stories, and ask questions (e.g., Sesame Street, Blues Clues)

Language: Encouraging Language Growth (cont’d)

Before 18 months, commercially available infant-oriented “language learning” videos are ineffective. Why?

• Many videos poorly designed and developmentally inappropriate

• Young children do not actively participate in the videos, so they cannot relate what they see in them to real-world objects, actions, or experiences

Language — Speaking in Sentences: Grammatical Development

18 months: two- and three-word sentences based on simple formulas (e.g., actor + action)•Reflect telegraphic speech — using words directly relevant to meaning and no more (“I no sleep”)•Reflect over-regularization errors — applying rules to words that are exceptions to the rule (“I goed home”)•Exclude grammatical morphemes — words or endings making a sentence grammatical

– By preschool, they show growing knowledge of grammatical rules instead of simple memory (Berko,1958)

Language: How Do Children Acquire Grammar?

Behaviorist solution: imitation and reinforcement•Flawed

– Children produce novel sentences– Children do not imitate adult grammar– Grammar is far too complex to learn by

simply hearing adult speech

Language: How Do Children Acquire Grammar? (cont’d)

Linguistic solution: innate neural mechanisms guide the learning of grammar

1. Sentences breaking grammatical rules activate specific left hemisphere regions

2. Human-specific grammar-learning neural mechanisms — chimps can master only two-word speech (after massive effort)

3. Critical period for language and grammar acquisition (birth to 12 years)

4. Vocabulary growth and mastery of grammar are intimately connected

Language: How Do Children Acquire Grammar? (cont’d)

Cognitive solution — children look for patterns, detect irregularities, and create rules

• Grammatical knowledge reflects multiple examples stored in memory instead of being innate

Social-interaction solution — eclectic integration of behavioral, linguistic, and cognitive solutions, plus the importance of accurate communication during social interaction promotes language and grammatical development

Language: Communicating with Others

Effective communication requires• making sure to speak in language the listener understands• paying attention while listening and making sure the speaker knows if

he/she is being understood• taking turns as speaker and listener– before 2 years: parents encourage conservational turn-taking and often model turn-taking

– after 2 years: spontaneous turn-taking is common– by 3 years: adjust speech to listeners, but often ignore problems in received messages

Language: Speaking Effectively

• 10 months: deliberate communication efforts through pointing and looking at another

• 12 months: communicate through speech; initiate conversations

• Preschool age: adjust messages to listener’s knowledge and the context (e.g., a word’s ambiguity)

Language: Listening Well

• Preschool age: often do not realize when a message is ambiguous

• Elementary school age: can evaluate when a message is consistent and clear

chapter four the emergence of thought and language: cognitive development in infancy and early...

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