CHAPTER 5 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN INFANCY Learning Objectives

CHAPTER 5 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN INFANCY

Learning Objectives LO 5 -1 What are the fundamental features of Piaget's theory of cognitive development? LO 5 -2 According to Piaget, how does children's understanding develop? LO 5 -3 How do infants process information? LO 5 -4 How is infant intelligence measured? LO 5 -5 By what processes do children use language? LO 5 -6 How do children influence adults’ language?

PIAGET’S APPROACH TO COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Key Elements of Piaget's Theory • Action = Knowledge • Four universal stages in fixed order • Development = physical maturation and exposure to relevant experiences • Schemes adapt and change

What principles underlie this cognitive growth? • Assimilation • Accommodation • Schemes Will you do better on the next test if you assimilate or accommodate the material?

Piaget's Six Substages of the Sensorimotor Stage

Earliest Stage of Cognitive Growth Sensorimotor Period • Invariant order of stages and six substages • Individual differences in rate • Transitions include characteristics of both stages

Cognitive Transitions

A Closer Look Substage 1: Simple Reflexes • First month of life • Various inborn reflexes • At center of a baby's physical and cognitive life • Determine nature of infant's interactions with world • At the same time, some of reflexes begin to accommodate the infant's experiences

A Closer Look Substage 2: First Habits and Primary Circular Reactions • 1 to 4 months of age • Beginning of coordination of what were separate actions into single, integrated activities. • Activities that engage baby's interests are repeated simply for sake of continuing to experience it • Circular reaction • Primary circular reaction

A Closer Look Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions • 4 to 8 months of age • Child begins to act upon outside world • Infants now seek to repeat enjoyable events in their environments that are produced through chance activities • Infant activity involves actions relating to the world outside

A Closer Look Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions • 8 months to 12 months • Beginning of goal-directed behavior • Several schemes are combined and coordinated to generate single act to solve problem • Means to attain particular ends and skill in anticipating future circumstances due in part to object permanence

Figure 5 -2 Object Permanence Before an infant has understood the idea of object permanence, he will not search for an object that has been hidden right before his eyes. But several months later, he will search for it, illustrating that he has attained object permanence. Why is the concept of object permanence important?

A Closer Look Substage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions • 12 to 18 months • Development of schemes regarding deliberate variation of actions that bring desirable consequences • Carrying out miniature experiments to observe consequences

A Closer Look Substage 6: Beginnings of Thought • 18 months to 2 years • Capacity for mental representation or symbolic thought • Mental representation • Understanding causality • Ability to pretend • Deferred imitation

Assessing Piagetian Theory PROS • Descriptions of child cognitive development accurate in many ways – Piaget was pioneering figure in field of development – Children learn by acting on environment – Broad outlines of sequence of cognitive development and increasing cognitive accomplishments are generally accurate CONS • Substantial disagreement over validity of theory and many of its specific predictions – Stage conception questioned – Connection between motor development and cognitive development exaggerated – Object permanence can occur earlier under certain conditions – Onset of age of imitation questioned – Cultural variations not considered

Review and Apply REVIEW • Jean Piaget's theory of human ____development involves a succession of stages through which children progress from ____ to ____. • As humans move from one stage to another, the way they ____ the world changes. • The ____ stage, from birth to about 2 years, involves a gradual progression through simple ____, single ____ activities, interest in the outside world, purposeful combinations of activities, manipulation of actions to produce desired outcomes, and ____ thought. The sensorimotor stage has ____ substages.

Review and Apply REVIEW • Piaget is respected as a careful ____ of children's behavior and a generally accurate interpreter of the way human ____ development proceeds, though subsequent research on his theory does suggest several limitations

Review and Apply APPLY • Think of a common young children's toy with which you are familiar. • How might its use be affected by the principles of assimilation and accommodation?

INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACHES TO COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

What is information-processing? • Identifies the way that individuals take in, store, and use information • Involves quantitative changes in ability to organize and manipulate information • Increases sophistication, speed, and capacity in information processing characterizes cognitive growth • Focuses on types of “mental programs” used when seeking to solve problems

Information Processing Encoding—storage—retrieval The process by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved.

How do you compute? Take a few minutes to write down an example of how you do each of the following: • Encoding • Storage • Retrieval

Unexpected Expertise • Infants have the ability to learn subtle statistical patterns and relationships • These results are consistent with a growing body of research showing that the mathematical skills of infants are surprisingly good • Infants as young as five months are able to calculate the outcome of simple addition and subtraction problems Figure 5 -4 Mickey Mouse Math Researcher Dr. Karen Wynn found that five-month-olds like Michelle Follet, pictured here, reacted differently according to whether the number of Mickey Mouse statuettes they saw represented correct or incorrect addition. Do you think this ability is unique to humans? How would you find out?

Automatization • Degree to which activity requires attention • Helps with initial encounters with stimuli through easy and automatic information processing

What automatic processes are being engaged as you listen to this lecture? (Remember…sleep is NOT an automatic process!)

What do you think? Infants cannot remember…anything?

Memory Capabilities in Infancy Getting a kick out of that! • Kicking research demonstrates increase with age in memory capacities • Infants who have learned the association • between a moving mobile and kicking • showed surprising recall ability when they • were exposed to a reminder (Bearce & Rovee-Collier, 2006; De. Francisco & Rovee • Collier, 2008; Moher, Tuerk & Feigenson, 2012). .

Is infant memory qualitatively different from that in older children and adults? • Information is processed similarly throughout life span • Kind of information being processed changes and different parts of brain may be used

Does your family have a special story about your early childhood?

How long do memories last? • Researchers disagree on the age from which memories can be retrieved – Early studies infantile amnesia – Myers clear evidence of early memory • Physical trace of a memory in brain appears to be relatively permanent – Memories may not be easily, or accurately, retrieved

So…do infants remember? • Theoretical possibility for interfered memories to remain intact from a very young • Most cases memories of personal experiences in infancy do not last into adulthood • Memories of personal experience seem not to become accurate before age 18 to 24 months

Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory • Advances in brain scan technology, as well as studies of adults with brain damage, suggest that there are two separate systems involved with long-term memory: explicit and implicit memory • Explicit and implicit memories emerge at different rates and involve different parts of the brain • The earliest memories seem to be implicit, and they involve the cerebellum and brain stem

Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory (continued) • The forerunner of explicit memory involves the hippocampus, but true explicit memory doesn't emerge until the second half of the first year • When explicit memory does emerge, it involves an increasing number of areas of the cortex of the brain

What Is Infant Intelligence? Developmental specialists have devised several approaches to illuminate the nature of individual differences in intelligence during infancy

Do, Re, Me…. . Intelligence! Developmental Scales • Gesell: • Developmental quotient • Performance compared at different ages for significant variation from norms of given age • Four domains: motor skills, language use, adaptive behavior, personal-social

Do, Re, Me…. . Intelligence! Developmental Scales • Bayley: • Bayley Scales of Infant Development • Developmental Quotient • 2 to 42 months • Two areas • (See Table 5 -3)

Sample Items from the Bayley Scales of Infant Development

Are developmental scales useful? YES • Provide a good snapshot of current developmental level • Provide objective assessment of behavior relative to norms NO • Do not provide good prediction for future development Maybe?

Information Processing Approaches to Individual Differences in Intelligence • Using IP approach suggests relationship between information processing efficiency and cognitive abilities • Moderately strong correlation between early information processing capabilities and later IQ measures • Predicting child may do well on IQ tests later in life is not same as predicting child will be successful • More recent information processing approaches continuous manner from infancy to the later stages of life

And so…what does IP research reveal? Relationship between information processing efficiency and cognitive abilities • Correlate moderately well with later measures of intelligence • More efficient information processing during the 6 months following birth is related to higher intelligence scores between 2 and 12 years of age and other measures of cognitive competence

What about the multimodal approach? Cross-modal transference • Ability to identify a stimulus previously experienced through only one sense by using another sense is associated with intelligence

Assessing the IP Approach PROS • Often uses more precise measures of cognitive ability • Critical in providing information about infant cognition CONS • Precision makes it more difficult to get overall sense of cognitive development

Taking the Einstein Out of Baby Einstein • Whether parents actively engaged their children with the DVD or just passively watched it, those children did not learn the words significantly better than the control group. • Only the children who were learning the words from their parent (with no DVD) learned them better than the control group • Babies learn vocabulary best when they initiate the learning and when they choose the object to be labeled.

Review and Apply REVIEW • ____ approaches consider quantitative changes in children's abilities to organize and use information. Cognitive growth is regarded as the increasing sophistication of encoding, storage, and ____. • Infants clearly have memory capabilities from a ____ age, although the ____ and ____ of such memories are unresolved questions.

Review and Apply REVIEW • Traditional measures of infant intelligence focus on ____ , which can help identify developmental delays or advances but are not strongly related to measures of adult intelligence. • Information-processing approaches to assessing intelligence rely on variations in the ____ and ____ with which infants process information.

Review and Apply APPLY • What information from this chapter could you use to refute the claims of books or educational programs that promise to help parents increase their babies’ intelligence or instill advanced intellectual skills in infants?

THE ROOTS OF LANGUAGE

The Fundamentals of Language From sounds to symbols Phonology Morphemes Semantics Comprehension and production

Comprehension Precedes Production

Early Sounds and Communication Prelinguislic communication • Babbling – Universal – Repetition of sounds – and best of all…spit bubbles!

Broca's Areas of the brain that are activated during speech, left, are similar to areas activated during the production of hand gestures, right.

See what I say… Infants with hearing impairments • Babble with hands instead of voices • Gestural and verbal babbling activate same neural centers

What comes after “ba-ba-ba-ba”? Progression from Simple to Complex • Exposure to speech sounds of particular language initially do not influence babbling – At 6 months babbling reflects of language of culture – Distinguishable from other language babbling • Combinations of sounds and gestures used to communicate

First Words Increase at rapid rate • 10 to 14 months = first word • 15 months = 10 words • 18 months = one-word stage ends • 16 to 24 months = language explosion equally 50 to 400 words

The Top 50: The First Words Children Understand

First Sentences First sentences • Created around 8 to 12 months after first words • Indicate understanding of labels and relationships between these • Often observations rather than demands • Use order similar to adult speech with missing words

Children's Imitation of Sentences Showing Decline of Telegraphic Speech

Other Early Language Characteristics • Underextensions • Overextensions

Speaking in style and stylish speaking Referential style Expressive style Can you think of an example of each?

THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Learning Theory Approaches: Language as a Learned Skill • Language acquisition follows the basic laws of reinforcement and conditioning • Through the process of shaping, language becomes more and more similar to adult speech

Counter-Arguments to Learning Theory Approach • Does not adequately explain how children readily learn rules of language • Does not account for how children move beyond specific heard utterances to produce novel phrases, sentences, and constructions • Does not explain how young children can apply linguistic rules to nonsense words

Nativist Approaches: Language as an Innate Skill • Genetically determined, innate mechanism that directs the development of language • Children are born with innate capacity to use language, which emerges, more or less automatically, due to maturation – (Chomsky's universal grammar and LAD)

Assessing Chomsky's Approach PRO • Specific gene related to speech production identified • Language processing in infant brain structures similar to those in adult speech processing CON • Uniqueness of speech countered by primate researchers • Even with genetic priming, language use still requires significant social experience to be used effectively

Interactionist Approaches: Language as a Social Device • Specific course of language development is determined by the language to which children are exposed and reinforcement they receive for using language in particular ways • Social factors are key to development

Infant-Directed Speech Style of verbal communication directed toward infants Short, simple sentences Higher pitch, increased range, varied intonation Repetition of words and restricted topics Sometimes amusing sounds that are not even words Little formal structure, similar to telegraphic speech

How does this speech change? • Infant-directed speech changes as children become older – Around the end of the first year, takes on more adultlike qualities – Sentences become longer and more complex, although individual words are still spoken slowly and deliberately – Pitch used to focus attention on important words

Does Cootsy-Coo Work? • Infant-directed speech plays an important role in infants’ acquisition of language – Occurs all over the world, though there are cultural variations – Preferred by newborns – Babies who are exposed to a infant-directed speech early in life seem to begin to use words and exhibit other forms of linguistic competence earlier

Developmental Diversity Do people everywhere say “ba-ba-boo” to their infants? • Words differ but ways spoken are similar • Basic similarities across cultures and in some facets of language specific to particular types of interactions • Quantity of speech differ by cultures

What then do these similarities in infantdirected speech mean?

Let's Pretend Turn to a classmate. One of you is a 8 -month-old infant; the other is a parent. As the parent, ask your “infant” classmate: “Would you like a cookie? ”

Boys will be boys and girls will be…sweethearts? Gender differences: Parental language varies by child gender Boys Girls • More firm, clear, and direct responses • More diminutives • More warm phrases • More diversionary responses

Do you think men and women use different sorts of language?

Infant cognitive development may be promoted by: • Providing infants the opportunity to explore the world • Being responsive to infants on both a verbal and a nonverbal level • Asking questions, listening to their responses, and providing further communication • Reading to infants • Not pushing infants and don't expect too much too soon • Keeping in mind that you don't have to be with an infant 24 hours a day

Review and Apply REVIEW • Before they speak, infants ____ many adult utterances and engage in several forms of prelinguistic communication, including the use of ____ , and ____. • Children typically produce their first words between ____ and ____ months, and rapidly increase their vocabularies from that point on, especially during a spurt at about ____ months. • Children's language development proceeds through a pattern of ____, ____ combinations, and ____ speech.

Review and Apply REVIEW • ____ theorists believe that basic learning processes account for language development, whereas ____ like Noam Chomsky and his followers argue that humans have an ____ language capacity. • The interactionists suggest that language is a consequence of both ____ and ____ factors. • When talking to infants, adults of all cultures tend to use ____- ____ speech.

Review and Apply APPLY • What are some ways in which children's linguistic development reflects their acquisition of new ways of interpreting and dealing with their world?

EPILOGUE Before we proceed to social and personality development in the next chapter, turn back to the prologue of this chapter, about Amelie Hawkins's conversations with her threemonth-old daughter, and answer the following questions. • Is Amelie correct that her daughter is learning from the baby talk that Amelie directs at her? • When can Amelie expect that “exciting day” when she hears her daughter's first word? What is that word likely to be?

EPILOGUE • If you were to advise Amelie, what would you tell her to expect in terms of her daughter's language development over time? • What milestones in cognitive development can Amelie expect her daughter to achieve in the coming year?