Cognitive Development in Infancy and Early Childhood

Chapter 4

Cognitive DevelopmentBasic principles

Children as scientists creating theories about how the world works

Schemes: psychological structures organize the worldInfancy schemes involve actionsPost-infancy schemes involve relationshipsSchemes change over time

Cognitive DevelopmentAssimilation

New experiences incorporated into existing schemes Grasping scheme extended to new objects

Accomodation Schemes modified based on experience

Some objects require two hands to lift

Cognitive DevelopmentEquilibration: reogranization of schemes to

maintain balance between assimilation & accomodation Analogy of a scientist changing her theory due to

inconsistent findings Changes occur according to Piaget at 2, 7, 11

4 stages of cognitive development

Sensorimotor Thinking (0-2 years)

Exercising reflexes (0-1 months)

Learning to adapt (1-4 months)

Primary circular reaction: recreation of pleasant bodily experiences

No object permanenceMaking interesting events (4-8 months)

Secondary circular reaction: novel actions repeated with objects

Sensorimotor Thinking (0-2 years)

Behaving intentionally (8-12 months) Means & end

Experimenting (12-18 months)

Tertiary circular reasoning: old schemes with new objects

Using symbols (18-24 months)

Talk, gesture and anticipate actions mentally Full object permanence

Preoperational Thinking (2-7 years) Egocentrism

Believe everyone sees the world as they doCentration

Psychological tunnel vision Focus on one feature of problem at a time

Lack of conservation

Appearance as reality

Final 2 Piagetian StagesConcrete Operations (7-11 years)

Conservation of physicalityFormal Operations (> 11 years)

Reasoning includes abstract thinking, hypotheticals

Evaluating PiagetTeaching implications

Scheme construction key Gradual development Scheme growth enhanced by inconsistencies

Evaluating PiagetCritiques

Findings based in part on specific procedures used by PiagetLanguage sensitivity explains some findingsProcedural changes modified results

Performance not as consistent as Piaget predicts

Information ProcessingAttention

Infants have orienting responses to strong or unfamiliar stimuliStaring, eye fixation, physiological changes

Habituation also occursDiminished response to familiar/constant S

Both adaptive responses for infants

Information ProcessingLearning

Infants learn constantly via many forms Classicial conditioning

Neutral S paired with powerful S evokes a RBell + food eventually bell causes salivation

Operant conditioningBehavior produces consequences (+/-)Likelihood of future behavior depends on nature of

the consequences

Information ProcessingLearning

Imitation: learning by watching others Common form of learning Babies as young as 2 weeks old can imitate

Information ProcessingMemory

Babies can recall events for a few days/weeks & memory cue can retrieve forgotten memories

Memory improves dramatically in first two years Due to brain growth

Amygdala, hippocampus (initial storage): 6 monthsFrontal cortext (retireval): 2 years

LanguageFirst word typically spoken at year 1

Long process of learning languagePerceiving speech

Infants capable of distinguishing phonemesUnique sounds making up words (consonants)Language independent at first (bio prepared)Language specific eventuallyWord identification eventually occurs via stress &

other cues

LanguageSteps to speech

2 months: vowel sounds (oooooo ahhhhh) 6 months: babbling speech like sounds (dah) 8-11 months: stress, pitch varies and nature

depends on language 10-14 months: connect spoken words with

objects Year 1: first word and vocab increases rapidly

18 months symbolic understanding of wordsFast mapping

LanguageDevelopment facilitated by

Hearing language Reading books TV