Infant Cognition (plus finish perception)
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Results from Test
Results from Survey
First part of Paper due on Tuesday
Visual Cliff/depth perception/constancies
Themes of Infant cognitive development
Piaget’s 6 stages of infant cognition
René Ballargeon’s studies
Categorization
Causality
Infant Number concepts
Memory Development in Infancy
Individual differences in Infant Cognition
Test Scoring and Results
• Score = # multiple choice *2 + # fill in the
blank *2 + essay scores (10 pts. For essay) + 6
point curve
• Distribution
– A – 16
– B – 26
– C – 31
– D – 27
– F – 23
Results from Questionnaire
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N = 113
Much to fast 6
A little too fast 52
About right 46
A little too slow 9
Much too slow 0
Average is right between a little too fast and about right.
Many complaints about the room and size of class.
Many would like more interactive activities in class, videos of actual
child behavior, and group activities.
• Some appreciated the connection between lectures and the text
and others failed to see the connection
• Several would like more specificity in the study guide for the the
test.
Depth/Distance Perception
• Visual Cliff (Walk and Gibson) 6-7 months
• Campos (1978)
– Notice at 2 months (orienting response)
– Fear after they can crawl
• Looming (Yonas, et al)
– Blink at 1 month
– Defensive response at 3 months
• Pictorial depth cues between 5 to 7 months
Size and Shape constancy
• Some skill at birth
• Skill improves by 3 to 5 months
Themes of Infant Cognition
1. The orderly nature of cognitive
development.
2. Infants are active participants in their own
development.
3. Infant cognitive development is marked by
both advances and limitations.
First two years
• Advances achieved during infancy include:
• basic understanding of physical world
• ability to use basic cognitive tools such as understanding
categorization & number
• ability to combine actions into sequences
• increasingly powerful & flexible memory
• Limitations until late in infancy include:
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emphasis on perception & action
absence of language & symbolic abilities
limited flexibility in emerging cognitive abilities
limited memory capacity
Piaget’s Theory and the Nature of Infants
• Infants’ understanding of the world is limited
to what they know through sensory
awareness and motor acts.
• Infants actively construct an understanding of
the world.
• http://www.ovguide.com/jean-piaget9202a8c04000641f80000000000a4720
Processes of Developmental Change
Key Terms in Piaget’s Theory
Adaptation
The process by which children change in order to
function more effectively in their environment.
Assimilation
Applying an existing capability without modification to
various situations.
Accommodation Modifying an existing strategy or skill to meet a new
demand of the environment.
Schemes
Cognitive structures that can be applied to a variety of
situations.
Equilibration
A self-regulatory process that produces increasingly
effective adaptations.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Piaget’s 6 Stages of Sensorimotor Development
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Stage 1: Reflexes, 0-1 month
Stage 2: Primary Circular Reactions, 1-4 months
Stage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions, 4-8 months
Stage 4: Coordination of Schemes, 8-12 months
Stage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions, 12-18 months
Stage 6: Beginnings of Representational thought,
18-24 months.
The Object Concept
Stages 1 & 2: Infants respond to objects with
interest but seem not to understand object
permanence.
Stage 3: A partial view of something is now enough
to remind them of the whole object.
Stage 4: Infants search for hidden objects, making
the A, not-B error.
Stage 5: No longer make the A, not-B error, but may
get upset when object isn’t at location B.
Stage 6: At last acquire mature understanding of
object permanence.
Video of Object Permanence
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhHkJ3InQ
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• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jW668F7
HdA Research with primates
• René Ballargeon
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ovHFt5
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Categorization
Causality
Infant Number concepts
Memory Development in Infancy
Individual differences in Infant Cognition
New interesting study
Uhls and Greenfield
• 100 6th graders assessed for ability to identify
primary emotions (happy, sad, angry, afraid) in
photographs of faces.
• Children this age normally spend 4.5 hrs./day on
a computer, notebook, of smart phone.
• Half of the kids are told to do nothing different
for a week while the other half were taken to a
summer camp at which no electronic devices
were allowed.
• The second group improved in their ability to
read emotions and far exceeded the control grp.
Categorization
• Perceptual Categories
– Squares, triangles, circles
• Distinction of kinds (Mandler, 1998)
– Distinction between natural and artificial
Causality
• Michotte and the perception of causality
• Infants discriminate between some causal and
non-causal events
• http://www.yale.edu/perception/Brian/demos/ca
usality-Basics.html
– http://perception.research.yale.edu/causality/launchi
ng.mov
– http://perception.research.yale.edu/causality/spatialG
ap.mov
– http://perception.research.yale.edu/causality/tempor
alGap.mov
– Leslie (1984) brick pushing another brick
– Baillargeon and supported versus non-supported box
Number Concepts
• Starkey & Cooper (1980) 4- to 7-month olds
– Discriminating 2 and 3 but not 4 vs 6
– Disagreement about whether it is really number
or amount
Antel & Keating (1983)
Demonstrated in neonates
Canfield & Haith (1991)
3-month-olds
Sequence an location of 1 and 2
Memory
• Piaget and effecting an Mobile
• Rovee-Collier– under what conditions do
infants remember
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPJiBoGMN0&list=PL1ACFACF774EFA277&index=28
Individual differences in Infant
memory
• How complex a figure can they habituate to
• How long to habituate
• Correlation to later IQ moderate after 18
months.