Infancy
Cognitive and Language Development
Cognitive Development
• Cognitive – process of knowing and sensations,
perception, imagery, retardation, memory, recall,
problem solving, reasoning, and thinking
• Learning – relatively permanent change in a
capacity or behavior that results from
experience.
– Permits us to adapt to our environment by building on
previous experience
– Must be some change on behavior
– This change must be relatively stable
– The change must result from experience
When Infants Start Learning
• By 30th week of gestation
• Studies on prenatal hearing
– Found neonate recognizes mothers voice and prefers
mothers voice
– Use a nibble apparatus attached to tape recorder,
different type of sucking triggered mothers voice or
other woman.
• Reading Study
– Mothers read The Cat In The Hat to neonate for twice
a day for last six weeks.
– After birth, infant preferred book over other books
BABIES AND MEDIA
COGNITIVE AND LANGUAGE OUTCOMES
Type of media played a
big part in learning
Shows like Dora the
Explorer, Clifford, Blue’s
Clues, encouraged
learning by participation
and increased cognitive
awareness
2:24
2:09
1:55
1:40
1:26
1:12
0:57
0:43
0:28
0:14
0:00
2:05
1:35
1:26
1:22
0:51
Others like Sesame
Street and Teletubies
did not show the growth
Hours
Piaget: Sensorimotor Period
• 3 Characteristics of Sensorimotor period
– Object permanence- objects have a reality of its own
that extends beyond their immediate perception
• Object exists even when it cannot be seen
• About 6 months
• Peek-a-boo, hide and seek
– Inability to represent the world to themselves
internally
• Only here and know
– Cannot coordinate grasping with visual cues
• Out of site, out of mind
Post-Piagetian Research
• Playing is Learning
– Provide experience infant cannot generate
– Share attention, emotional feelings, and intentions
with others
• Consequences of Material Depression
– Developmental deficits due to lack of mother-infant
interaction
– Child tends to lag behind cognitively
– Child more withdrawn, unresponsive and inattentive
– Failure to Thrive – symptoms include lack of growth,
listlessness, and problems sleeping and eating
Bruner’s Theory
• 3 Modes Cognitive Representation
– Enactive – children represent the world through their
motor acts – birth to 2
– Ikonic representation – children use mental images or
pictures that are closely linked to perception –
preschool/kindergarten years
– Symbolic representation – children use arbitrary and
socially standardized representation of things
– Know something 3 ways; doing, image, and symbol
Language
• Structured system of sound patterns with
socially standardized meanings
• Communication – process by which
people transmit information, ideas,
attitudes, and emotions to one another.
• Conceptualization – grouping perceptions
into categories on the basis of certain
similarities
Language Development
• Nonverbal or Kinesics – body language (hand,
hands, gestures)
– Sign language for young child
• Paralanguage
– Stress, pitch, volume
Sequences of Language
• Crying (birth)
• Vocalization (1-6 months
• Babbling (6 months)
– Da da da
• Receptive vocabulary (6 to 9 months)
– Understand some words
• Holophrases (10 to 13 months)
– Use of single word (could have different meanings)
• Overextension (16 to 20 months)
– Use many words to mean more that meaning (over use word)
• Two-word sentences “ Book there” (18 to 22 months)
• Telegraphic Speech (2 yrs)
– Precise 2 or 3 word combinations, more grammatically correct