Chapter Five Developmental Infant Cognitive Development
From the PowerPoint Presentation:
Sensorimotor Substages
1.Simple Reflexes: birth – 1 mo.
-info from reflexes like sucking
2. Habits & Primary Circular Reactions: 1-4 mo.
-assimilation /acccomodation/combination of motor
schemes
-repetition of interesting or  ones (own body)
3. Secondary Circular Reactions: 4-8 mo.
-interact with the environment
-repeat schemes that cause  environmental
consequences (incl. Vocalizations)
4. Coordination of 2ndary Circular Reactions: 8-12 mo
-goal directed behavior (anticipate outcomes)
-object permanence (active searching)
5. Tertiary Circular Reactions: 12-18 mo
-active experimental behavior & seek to explain
surprising events
6. Beginnings of Thought: 18mo-2 yr
-mental representation: internal depiction of
information the mind can manipulate
-deferred imitation -make believe play
Examples of Behavior:
1. Primary Circular Reaction: Action and Response both involve infant’s own body. Baby sucks
thumb, baby enjoys sucking, baby sucks thumb more.
2. Secondary Circular Reaction: Action gets a response from another person or object; infant repeats
the original action. Baby coos, baby sees smiling face, baby coos more
3. Tertiary Circular Reaction: Action gets one pleasing result, leading the child to perform other,
similar actions to observe the results. Baby steps on ducky and ducky squeaks (hooray!), leading baby
to try throwing ducky against wall to see if it squeaks again.
Sounds to Symbols~
-phonology: basic sounds of languages
-morphemes: basic units of meaning
-syntax: rules for creating meaning (syntax, grammar)
-pragmatics: social aspects of speech (turn taking etc)
-Comprehension precedes Production
Matching: Piaget
Letter
Description
Changing a scheme in order to deal with a new stimulus
SM stage in which infant repeats motor schemes that are
pleasant/interesting
SM stage in which infant begins to represent
events/objects with mental symbols
An organized way of making sense of experience
SM stage in which goal directed behavior and object
permanence emerge
SM stage involving simple reflexes
Using an old scheme on a new stimulus
SM stage in which the child starts to experiment with
Term
A. Schemes
B. Assimilation
C. Accommodation
D. Simple Reflexes
E. Habits and primary circular reactions
F. secondary circular reactions
G. coordination of 2ndary circular
reactions
H. Tertiary circular reactions
explaining surprising events
SM stage in which infant repeats actions that cause +
environmental consequences
I. Beginnings of thought/mental
representations
Matching: Language
Letter
Description
Basic units of meaning
Examples of this are burps, smiles, gestures and imitation
Speech like but meaningless sounds
Rules for organizing language
Two word combinations of words that children form
Using a word to only apply to a few specific examples of that
word
Basic units of sound
A child’s one word utterances
A type of speech adults often use when talking to children
Using a word to apply to a number of objects similar to that
word
Term
A. phonology
B. morphemes
C. prelinguistic communication
D. babbling
E. holophrases
F. telegraphic speech
G. underextension
H. overextension
I. child-directed speech/motherese
J. grammar
Concept Review
Letter
Description
Two year old Jessie's mother yells at her when she spills her milk.
Later, Jessie yells at her doll with the same way her mother yelled at the
doll.
The baby is entertained by a rattle for several minutes but then gets
bored and fussy.
A child figures out why the light comes on when he opens the
refrigerator and feels good about himself because he now understand
more about his world
A 2 month old baby makes open-mouthed vowel sounds
Jordan is left alone in the kitchen with a pile of tupperware which gives
him the opportunity to practice building a tower which he loved to do.
. Zoe throws her hands up to get her grandfather to say,
"How big is my baby girl?"
Mother asks Peter, "Did you break the lamp." Peter answers, "No, Joey
breaked it."
Term
A. affordances
Three year old Jack believes that vegetables are green and do not taste
good. His mother fixes a new vegetable for him, broccoli. Obviously,
it is green and Jack thinks it tastes bad. He now adds broccoli to his
vegetable schema.
A young child has a concept of "pet" that includes dogs and cats. The
child believes that pets have four legs and are furry. When his friend
gets a frog as a pet, the child has to change his concept of "pet."
H. assimilation
B. cognitive equilibrium
C. cooing
D. over-regularization
E. goal-directed behavior
F. habituation
G. accommodation
I. deferred imitation