chapter 6: cognitive development in infancy mcgraw-hill © 2006 by the mcgraw-hill companies, inc....
TRANSCRIPT
Chapter 6:
Cognitive Development in
Infancy
McGraw-Hill © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Piaget proposed that
– Physical bodies can adapt to the world
– Humans build mental structures to aid adaptation
– Humans interactive with their environment
– Children think differently at various points in their development
• Schemes are patterns of actions and
thoughts that organize knowledge.
– Actions are behavioral schemes. Their
development characterizes infancy, such as that
of simple actions and reflexes.
– Thoughts are cognitive activities or mental
schemes, which develop in childhood, such as
classifying objects by size, color, or shape.
• Assimilation incorporates new information into existing knowledge.
• Accommodation adjusts existing knowledge to fit new information.
• Organization is Piaget’s concept of grouping isolated behaviors into a higher-order system
– The child becomes skilled at using tools over time, one at a time until experiences become skills
• Equilibration:
– Piaget’s mechanism to explain how children shift from one stage of thought to another
– It is lost when children have cognitive conflicts
– Achieved when assimilation and accommodation are used together to resolve a conflict
• Piaget’s 6 substages of the sensorimotor stage of infant development last from birth to 2 years of age
Figure 6.1
Piaget’s 6 Substages of Sensorimotor Development
Substage Age DescriptionSimple reflexes birth–1
monthCoordinates sensations, reflexes
First habits, primary circular reactions
1–4 months Coordination of sensations, habits, and primary circular reactions; body is still main focus of infant
Secondary circular reactions
4–8 months Infant becomes more object-oriented, repeats interesting/pleasurable acts
Coordination of secondary circular reactions
8–12 months
Coordination of vision and touch, eye–hand coordination, intentional acts, coordination of schemes
Tertiary circular reactions, novelty, & curiosity
12–18 months
Infants intrigued by properties of, and things done with, objects; experiments with new behaviors
Internalization of schemes
18–24 months
Infant develops ability to use primitive symbols, forms lasting mental images
• At the end of sensorimotor stage:
– Object permanence is understood
– Infant understands a differentiation between self and world
• At around 5.5 and 6.5 months of age, an infant can understand simple causal factors
• Piaget’s work is criticized as
– Being too vague
– Underestimating infant ability
– Being based mostly on his children’s infancy
• Conditioning:
– Consequences following a behavior affects
whether behavior is repeated
– Rovee-Collier showed infants have memory
of conditioned experiences
• Attention:
– Infants can scan and fixate on objects
– 4-month-olds show selective attention
– Infant attention governed by novelty and
habituation, respond to changed stimuli
• Meltzoff: imitation abilities are biological
because infants can imitate facial
expressions within a few days after birth
• Piaget: deferred imitation occurs at about
18 months but Meltzoff showed that it
occurred at 9 months
• Memory: retention of information over time– Implicit memory is performed automatically
without conscious recollection
– Explicit memory is conscious memory of facts and experiences; occurs in infants after 6 months
• Infantile or childhood amnesia:– Inability to recall memories of events that
occurred before 3 years of age
– May be caused by immaturity of prefrontal lobes of the brain
• Individual differences in infant cognitive development are important:– Development testing emphasizes “norms”
– Infants assessed mostly based on assessment scales and intelligence tests
– Identifying an infant’s development as slow, normal, or advanced has advantages:
• If slow – provide more enrichment
• If advanced – provide more stimulating toys
• Types of infant cognitive assessment:
– Gesell’s developmental quotient (DQ) has 4
categories of behavior: motor, language,
adaptive, and personal–social
– Bayley Scales of Infant Development
have three components to predict later
development: mental scale, motor scale,
and infant behavior profile
– Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence focuses on infant’s ability to process information
• Estimates a baby’s intelligence by comparing amount of time spent looking at an object with amount of time spent looking at familiar object
• Infant intelligence tests are valuable in assessing effects of maternal deprivation and environmental stimulation; but not highly correlated with later childhood IQ scores
• Wild or feral children are raised in isolation and
unable to recapture normal language development
despite intensive intervention later
– For example:
• Victor, Wild Boy of Aveyron
• Genie: 13-year-old found in 1970 in Los Angeles
– Both cases raise questions about biological and
environmental determinants of language
• Language is a system of words, symbols, and
gestures that create shared communication that
transcends time (future, present, and past)
• Language’s five systems of rules:– Phonology: sound system of language, with
phoneme being smallest unit of sound with meaning
– Morphology: units of meaning in word formation, with morpheme being the smallest unit of meaning
– Syntax: how words are combined
– Semantics: the meanings of sentences and words
– Pragmatics: use of appropriate language in different contexts
• Language develops in infants throughout the
world along a similar path and sequence
– Infant’s ability to recognize native
language, for English speakers this
includes distinguishing “r” from “t”
• On average, a child
– Understands about 50 words at age 13 months
– Speaks first word at 10–15 months of age
– Can speak about 50 words at 18 months of age
9
15
21
24
27
Figure 6.9
Variation in Language Milestones
12
18
First words Vocabulary spurt
Language Milestone
Age in months
– Average 2-year-old can speak about 200 words
– Vocabulary spurt begins at approximately 18 months of age
• Two-word utterances occur at about
18–24 months
• Overextension and underextension of
words are common
• Telegraphic speech is use of short and
precise words
Birth Crying
1 to 2 months
Cooing begins
6 months Babbling begins8 to 12 months
Use of gestures (showing and pointing); comprehension of words appears
10–15 months
First word spoken
18 months Vocabulary spurts starts18 to 24 months
Use of two-word utterances; rapid expansion of understanding of words
Figure 6.10
Language MilestonesAge
Some Language Milestones in Infancy
• There is evidence that – Language has a biological basis
– Everyone “knows” its rules and has ability to create infinite numbers of words and sentences
• Specific regions of the brain are predisposed to be used for language– Broca’s Area
– Wernicke’s Area
• Chomsky: humans are prewired for language
– Chomsky’s language acquisition device (LAD) is a
theoretical construct only
• Behaviorists claim language is a complex learned skill
acquired through responses and reinforcements
• Studies found link between size of child’s vocabulary
and mother’s talkativeness
• Young children’s vocabularies are linked to family
socioeconomic status
14 16 18 20 22 24 2612
Infant’s age (months)
0
400
600
800
200
Infa
nt’
s vo
cab
ula
ry s
ize
(wor
ds)
Figure 6.12
Level of Maternal Speech and Infant Vocabulary
Mother’s level of speech
High
Medium
Low
Figure 6.12 (a)
Language Input in Professional and Welfare Families, and Young
Children’s Vocabulary Development
18 22 26 30 34 3810
Age of children (months)
800
400Parent utterances to child per hour
600
200
014
Professional
Welfare
18 22 26 30 34 3810
Age of children (months)
800
400Children’s cumulative vocabulary (words)
Figure 6.12 (b)
600
200
1200
1000
014
Welfare
Professional
Language Input in Professional and Welfare Families, and Young
Children’s Vocabulary Development
• Three strategies to enhance child’s acquisition of language other than child-directed speech
– Recasting: rephrasing something the child has said
– Expanding state: repeating what the child has said but in correct structure
– Labeling: identifying the names of objects
• Children vary in their ability to acquire language