Cognitive Development OF
infants & Toddlers
Cognitive Development – its talks about how infants
psychological processes involved in thinking &
knowing develop into young children .In infancy refers
to development in the way a baby thinks . This
includes his/her language, communication and
exploration skills.
Examples of cognitive activities:
• Remembering leaning to talk
• Interacting with toys
• Identifying faces
This module 13 will focus on the SENSORIMOTOR
STAGE, 1st stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive
development that covers the infant & the toddlers
cognitive development . This stage begins at birth &
continues until about age 2. During the sensorimotor
period, they respond to immediate stimuli – what they
see, hear, taste, touch, & smell – and learning takes
place through the senses & motor activities.
Sensorimotor Stage (the senses really develop)
-birth to 2 years
- initially “think” with their eyes, ears & hands
1.) SIMPLE REFLEXES(birth to 1 month)
In the first month of life, infants reflects more
reflexes – automatic responses to particular stimuli.
2.) FIRST HABITS & PRIMARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS
(1-4 months)
It involves coordinating sensation & new
schemas .In the first few months of life, infant’s
behaviors are focused almost exclusively on their own
bodies.
Ex. A child may suck his/her thumb by accident & then
later intentionally repe at the action.
• 3.) SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTION (4-8 months)
•
In this stage the infants become more object
– oriented, moving beyond self-preoccupation
repeat actions that bring interesting or pleasurable
results. This stage is associated primarily with the
development of coordination between vision &
prehension.
• Ex. 4 month old accidentally knocks a toy hanging in
front of her producing a fascinating swinging
motion & attempts to repeat this effect.
4.) COORDINATION OF REACTIONS STAGE
SECONDARY CIRCULAR(8-12 months)
Coordination of vision and touch-hand-eye
coordination; of schemes intentionally. This stage is
associated primarily with the development of logic &
the coordination between means & ends.
Ex. When an infant sees the string of a pull-toy near
her, rather than crawling over to the toy she might
instead reach out & grab the string & then purposely
pull the string in order to acquire the toy .
5.) TERTIARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS, NOVELTY, AND
CURIOSITY( 12-18 months)
Infants become intrigued y the many
properties of objects & by the many things they can
make happen to objects; they experiment with new
behavior.
6.) INTERNALIZATION OF SCHEMES(INVENTION OF
NEW MEANS THROUGH MENTAL COMBINATION
(18-24 months)
Infants develop the ability to use primitive
symbols & form enduring mental presentation.This
stage is associated primarily with the beginnings of
insight, or true creativity.
Ex. 19 month old bumps his new push toy against a
wall ,pauses for a moment as if “thinking”, then
immediately turns the toy in new direction.
ABSTRACTION
• Piaget’s substages are termed circular because the
adaptive behavior to the world involves repeated
actions. Circular reactions are attempts to repeat an
event that the baby likes.
• Primary circular reactions are oriented toward the
infant’s own body, whereas secondary circular reactions
are aimed toward the environment including others.
Here is an example of primary circular reactions:
• At first, by accident , the baby gets her thumb in her
mouth. But she doesn’t know how to do it again. She
waves her hand around & after many attempts,
eventually succeeds in doing it again. Gradually, she
learns how to do it at will.
• Secondary circular reactions are repetitive actions
that involve recreating events which 4-10 months
old babies observe outside of their own bodies, such
as making their mobile crib shake by kicking their
legs.
• Tertiary circular reactions, seen from approximately
10-18 months, is where baby does things over &
over again, just a little differently each time . When
a baby seems to enjoy dropping the spoon over &
over again in many different ways, a proof of the
creation of novel variations in events. Piaget
describe the baby at this stage as the “scientist”.
Acquiring the sense of object permanence is one of the
infants most important accomplishments, according to
Piaget’s . Object permanence is the understanding that
objects are not immediately perceptible through the
senses.
LEARNING & REMEMBERING
Do infants learn & remember?
Yes! Pavlov’s classical conditioning & skinner’s operant
conditioning have been proven to apply to infants.
All of us experience infantile amnesia, the inability to
recall events that happened when we were very young.
Generally, we can remember little or nothing that has
happened to us before the age of about 5 years, and it is
extremely rare for someone to recall many memories
before 3 years. Reports of childhood memories usually
involve memories of significant events
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
From day one, infants appear to be
programmed to tune in to their linguistic environment
with the specific goal of acquiring language. Infants
clearly have remarkably acute language learning
activities even from an early age.
Within the first years of life, we humans seem to
progress through the following stages in producing
language:
1.)Cooing, which compromise consonant as well as
vowel sounds. Infants produce soft vocalizations
around 3 months of age
2.) Babbling, which compromises consonant as well as
vowel sounds; to most people’s ears, the babbling of
infants growing up among speakers from different
language groups sounds very similar.
Ex. “bababababa” or “ nanananana”
3.) One-word utterances; these utterances are limited
in both the vowels & the consonants they utilize.
Ex. Usually they refer to important people (“mama”,
“dada”), animals (“doggie,” “kitty”), objects that
move (“ball,” “car”) , foods (“milk”, “apple”), familiar
actions (“bye-bye”, “more”), or outcomes of familiar
actions (“wet”, “hot” )
4.) Two-word utterances & Telegraphic speech
Ex. “ go car”, “mommy shoe”, “ door open” or “ where
daddy go?
5.) Basic adult sentence structure(present by about
age 4 years ) with the continuing vocabulary
acquisition.
As children become more sophisticated in their
language, overgeneralize rules in ways that are
inconsistent with common usage.
Ex. “I come home” for “ I came home” (sometimes
called creative grammar ).
Holophrase- to convey intentions, desires & demands
usually, the words are nouns describing familiar
objects that the child observes
Ex.( Book, ball & baby)
The general term for any kind of four-legged animal
may be “doggie”. In linguistic this is called
Overextension error
The two-word or three-word utterances with
rudimentary syntax but with articles & prepositions
missing are reffered to as Telegraphic speech.
Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
The Language Acquisition Device- is the innate
biological ability of humans to acquire & develop
language. The LAD was developed by linguist Noam
Chomsky who contribute to the field of cognitive
psychology through his language research. He
challenged the prevailing behaviorist theory that
language was acquired through exposure to it in our
environment. Our capacity for language is the same
all over the world in wildly different cultures and
environments.
Thank you!!!
Prepared by : GROUP 6
Engcong, Jonash B.
Estano, Jiren F.
Galang, Roxanne J.
Gantalao, Claudine O