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Chapter 6
Cognitive Development in infancy
What is Piaget’s theory of infant development?
Cognitive Processes—Piaget thought that children actively construct mental structures to
help them adapt to the world. Piaget developed several concepts to answer this question;
especially important are schemes, assimilation, accommodation, organization,
equilibrium, and equilibration.
Schemes are actions or mental representations that that organize knowledge.
Assimilation occurs when children use their existing schemes to deal with new
information or experiences.
Accommodation occurs when children adjust their schemes to take new
information and experiences into account.
Organization is the grouping of isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higherorder system.
Equilibration and stages of development—According to Piaget, children
constantly assimilate and accommodate as they seek equilibrium; equilibration
is the term Piaget used to describe the mechanism by which children shift from
one stage of thought to the next.
o Equilibrium – mechanism for shifting from one level of thought to
another
o Disequilibrium – result of cognitive conflict
o Cognition: qualitatively different in each stage of development
The Sensorimotor Stage—In this stage, which lasts from birth to about 2 years of age,
infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with
physical, motoric actions.
Piaget divided the sensorimotor period into six substages.
Substage 1: Simple reflexes (birth to 1 month)—Sensation and action are
coordinated primarily through reflexive behaviors, such as rooting and sucking.
Substage 2: First habits and primary circular reactions (1 to 4 months)—the infant
coordinates sensation and two types of schemes. Habits are schemes based on a
reflex that has become completely separated from its eliciting stimulus. Primary
circular reproduction of an event that initially occurred by chance.
Substage 3: Secondary circular reactions (4 to 8 months) — as the infant become
more object-oriented; moving beyond preoccupation with the self.
Substage 4: Coordination of secondary circular reactions (8 to 12 months)—the
infant coordinates vision and touch, hand-eye coordination; coordination of
schemes and intentionality.
Substage 5: Tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity (12 to 18 months)—
Infants become intrigued by the many properties of objects and by the many
things they can make happen to objects; they experiment with new behavior.
Substage 6: Internalization of schemes (18 to 24 months)—the infant develops the
ability to use primitive symbols and form enduring mental representations.
Object Permanence—by the end of the sensorimotor period, the infant
comprehends that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard,
or touched.
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Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage— the infant’s cognitive world not as neatly
packaged as Piaget portrayed, and some of Piaget’s explanations for the cause of change
have been debated.
The A-not-B error—researchers have found, however, that the A-not-B error does
not show up consistently. The A-not-B error might be due to a failure in memory.
Perceptual development and explanations— a number of theorists, maintain that
infants’ perceptual abilities are highly developed very early in development.
Research also suggests that infants develop the ability to understand how the
world works at very early age.
The Nature-Nurture Issue- In considering, the big issue of whether nature or
nurture plays the more important role in infant development. Core knowledge
approach, which states that infants are born with domain-specific innate
knowledge systems.
Conclusions- many researchers conclude that Piaget wasn’t specific enough about
how infants learn about their world and that infants, especially young infants, are
more competent than Piaget thought. Their theories often are local theories,
focused on specific research questions, rather than grand theories like Piaget’s.
How do infants learn, remember, and conceptualize?
In contrast to Piaget’s theory, these approaches do not describe infant development in
terms of stages. Researchers using these approaches study processes such as:
Conditioning—Infants can learn through both classical and operant
conditioning.
1. Classical conditioning: as a result of pairing, a new stimulus comes to
elicit a response previously given to another stimulus.
2. Operant conditioning: consequences of behavior affect probability of that
behavior reoccurring (Skinner’s experiment)
3. Rovee-Collier experiment on memory-A two and half month old baby in a
crib under an elaborate mobile. The child is conditioned to kick her feet
to make the mobile move.
Attention—Attention, the focusing of mental resources on select information,
improves cognitive processing on many tasks. Even newborns can detect a
contour and fix their attention on it.
Habituation and Dishabituation: Habituation decreased responsiveness to a
stimulus after repeated presentations of the stimulus. Dishabituation is the
increase in responsiveness after a change in stimulation. Infants’ attention is
strongly governed by novelty and habituation.
Joint attention – individuals focus on same object or event requires (1) an ability to
track another’s behavior, such as following someone’s gaze; (2) one person
directing another’s attention; and (3) reciprocal interaction. Early in infancy, joint
attention usually involves a care giver pointing or using words to direct and infant’s
attention.
Memory—Memory involves the retention of information over time. Attention
plays an important role in memory as part of a process called encoding, which is
the process by which information gets into memory. Researchers disagree about
whether infants can actually recall information or are merely responding to
implicit memory.
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1. Implicit memory is memory without conscious recollection that instead
involves memories of skills and routine procedures that are performed
automatically. Recall is automatic.
2. Explicit memory, the conscious recollection of facts and experiences,
emerges in the second half of the first year. Recall is a conscious effort.
3. Infantile or childhood amnesia is thought to occur because during the
early years the prefrontal lobes of the brain are immature; this area of the
brain is believed to play an important role in storing memories or events.
Imitation— Andrew Meltzoff – He sees infants’ imitative abilities as
biologically based, because infants can imitate facial expression within a few
days. He also emphasizes that the infant’s imitative abilities do not resemble a
hardwired response by rather involve flexibility and adaptability. Deferred
imitation- occurs after a time delay of hours or days. Piaget: believed deferred
imitation begins about 18 months of age
Concept formation and categorization—Attention, memory, and imitation,
concepts are key aspects of infants’ cognitive development.
Categories – grouping objects, events, characteristics on the basis of common
properties.
Concepts – ideas on what categories represent
How are individual differences in infancy assessed and do these assessments predict
intelligence?
Measures of Infant Development
Gesell: he developed a measure that helped to sort out potentially normal babies
from abnormal ones; this was especially useful to adoption agencies.
o Developmental quotient (DQ): Gesell’s developmental quotient consists of
four categories of behavior: motor, language, adaptive, and personalsocial. The DQ combines sub scores in these categories to provide an
overall developmental score.
The Bayley Scales of Infant Development- ha five scales; cognitive, language,
motor, socio-emotional, and adaptive. The first three scales are administered
directly to the infant, the latter two are questionnaires given to the caregiver.
Predicting Intelligence:
–
The infant-testing movement grew out of the tradition of IQ testing. Tests
for infants contain far more items related to perceptual-motor development
and include measures of social interaction.
–
Unlike the Gesell and Bayley scales, the Fagan test is predictive of
intelligence in older children.
–
Evidence is accumulating that measures of habituation and Dishabituation
are linked to intelligence in childhood and adolescence. Evidence suggests
that infant habituation and dishabituation are important in determining later
child intelligence, in that infants between 3 and 12 months who show greater
amounts of attention in the dishabituation situation reflect more efficient
information processing.
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What are some early environmental influences on Cognitive development?
Nutrition—although good nutrition provides optimum physical growth,
malnutrition can restrict an infant’s cognitive development. Studies of
malnourished children find lower scores on the Bayley test.
Poverty—Researchers are increasingly interested in manipulating the early
environment in children’s lives when they are living in poverty, with the hope that
the changes will have a positive effect on their cognitive development.
Intervention programs that educate parents on enriching learning practices and
improving quality of life have important positive effects on cognitive growth.
Best intervention programs are
o Long lasting
o Time-intensive
o Providing direct educational benefits
 Often in educational context
 Does not rely solely on parental training
o Comprehensive and multidimensional
What is the nature of language and how does it develop in infancy?
Defining Language—Language is a form of communication, whether spoken, written, or
signed, that is based on a system of symbols. All human languages have some common
characteristics and organizational rules. Infinite generativity, is the ability to produce an
endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules.
Language’s Rule Systems—Language is highly ordered and organized.
Phonology—the sound system of the language, including the sounds that
are used and how they may be combined. A phoneme is the basic unit of
sound in a language; it is the smallest unit of sound that affects meaning.
Morphology—refers to the units of meaning involved in word
formation. A morpheme is the minimal unit of meaning; it is a word or a
part of a word that cannot be broken into smaller meaningful parts.
Syntax—the way words are combined to form acceptable phrases and
sentences.
Semantics—the meaning of words and sentences.
Pragmatics—the appropriate use of language in different contexts.
How Language Develops
Recognizing Language Sounds—Kuhl’s research has demonstrated that
from birth up to about 6 months of age, infants are” citizens of the
world”: they recognize when sounds change most of the time no matter
what language the syllables come from.
Babbling and other vocalizations—long before infants speak
recognizable words, they produce a number of vocalizations. The
functions of these early vocalizations are to practice making sounds, to
communicate, and to attract attention.
o Babies cry even at birth. Crying can signal distress but different
cries signal different things.
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o Babies first coo at about 1 to 2 months and it usually expresses
pleasure.
o Babies babble by about the middle of the first year. They produce
strings of consonant-vowel combinations.
Gestures—Infants start using gestures, such as showing and pointing, at
about 8 to 12 months of age.
First words—First words occur at 10 to 15 months and are usually
related to the people and things in the baby’s immediate environment.
Infants understand about 50 words at 13 months but are unable to say
them until about 18 months. Receptive vocabulary considerably exceeds
spoken vocabulary in infancy. Once the first word is spoken, a
vocabulary spurt, which typically occurs at around 18 months, leads to a
rapid increase in vocabulary. Language grows to about 50 spoken words
at 18 months and 200 words at 2 years.
Overextension means the child applies words too broadly or the
tendency to apply a word to objects that are inappropriate for the word’s
meaning. Dada for all males.
Underextension is the tendency to apply a word too narrowly; it occurs
when children fail to use a word to name a relevant event or object.
Two-word utterances—Children produce two-word utterances typically
at around 18 to 24 months. To convey meaning, the child relies heavily
on gesture, tone, and context. Examples include: See doggie; My candy.
Telegraphic speech is the use of short and precise words without
grammatical markers such as articles, auxiliary verbs, and other
connectives. For example, Mommy give ice cream.
Biological and Environmental Influences
 Biological influences— Conditions under which children throughout the
world begin to talk indicates a biological influence. Two regions of the
brain that are predisposed for language include:
1. Broca’s area, an area on the left frontal lobe involved in producing
words, or speech production.
2. Wernicke’s area, a region of the left hemisphere involved in
language comprehension.
3. Damage to either area produces aphasia, a loss or impairment of
language processing. Individuals with damage to Broca’s area
have difficulty producing words correctly; individuals with
damage to Wernicke’s area have poor comprehension and often
produce incomprehensible speech.
4. Chomsky proposed that humans are equipped with a language
acquisition device (LAD) that aids the child to sequence and
process phonology, syntax, and semantics. Chomsky’s LAD is a
theoretical construct, not a physical part of the brain. Supporters
of the LAD concept cite the uniformity of language milestones
across languages and cultures, evidence that children create
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language even in the absence of well-formed input, and biological
substrates of language.
Environmental Influences—Behaviorists believe that language is a responsive
action to stimuli in the environment; however, critics argue that the orderliness of
language defies this explanation. There are several problems with the behaviorist
view of language learning.
 First, it does not explain how people create novel sentences—sentences
that people have never heard or spoken before.
 Second, children learn the syntax of their native language even if they are
not reinforced for doing so. Language is not learned in a social vacuum.
Most children are bathed in language from a very early age.
 Child-directed speech, a manner in which parents speak to their infants
with a higher pitch than normal and with simple words and phrases has
the function of capturing the infant’s attention and maintaining
communication.
 Adults also use strategies such as recasting, expanding, and labeling to
enhance the child’s acquisition of language.
Recasting: rephrasing what child says
Expanding: sophisticated restating of what the child says
Labeling: assigning, identifying objects by name
How Parents can Facilitate Infants’ Language Development
• Infants
– Be active conversational partner
– Talk as if infant understands what you are saying
– Use a comfortable language style
• Toddlers
– Continue being active conversational partner
– Remember to listen
– Use a language style with which you are comfortable, but consider ways
of expanding your child’s language abilities and horizons
– Avoid sexual stereotypes
– Resist making normative comparisons
An interactionist view of language acquisition emphasizes that both biology and
experience contribute to language development.
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Chapter 6
Cognitive Development in Infancy