COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
IN INFANCY
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Chapter 6
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Jean Piaget
COGNITIVE PROCESSES
• Adaptation - adjusting to new environments
• Mental structures help us adapt
• Children actively construct their own cognitive worlds
• Schemes: Organized patterns of information.
• Assimilation: Fitting new information into existing
schemes
• Accommodation: Adjusting schemes to fit new
information and experiences
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SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
• First stage (Birth-2)
• Infants construct understanding of the world by
coordinating sensory experiences with motor responses
• Six substages focus on:
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Simple reflexes
First habits and Primary circular reactions
Secondary circular reactions
Coordination of secondary circular reactions
Tertiary circular reactions (Novelty and curiosity)
Internalization of schemes (Thought)
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SUBSTAGES OF THE SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
• Simple Reflexes
• Birth to 1 month
• Modify reflexes based on experience
• Primary Circular Reactions
• 1 to 4 months
• Primary = focus on infant’s own body
• Circular = repeated behaviors
• Secondary Circular Reactions
• 4 to 8 months
• Secondary = focus on objects or environmental events
• Track moving objects until they disappear from view
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SUBSTAGES OF THE SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
• Coordination of Secondary Reactions
• 8 to 12 months
• Coordinate schemes to attain specific goals
• Begin to imitate others
• Tertiary Circular Reactions
• 12 to 18 months
• Deliberate trial and error behaviors
• Internalization of Schemes/Thought
• 18 to 24 months
• External exploration is replaced by mental exploration
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SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
• Object permanence:
• Understanding that objects continue to exist, even when they
cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched
• Neonates show no response to objects not within their immediate
grasp
• 2 month - show surprise when a screen is lifted after an object was
placed behind a screen and now is not there
– Child makes no effort to search for the missing object
• 6 month - try to retrieve a preferred object partially hidden
• 8- to 12-month - try to retrieve objects completely hidden
• More recent research – object permanence in some form as early as
2½ - 3½ months
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EVALUATING PIAGET’S
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
• New way of looking at infants
• Piaget’s views need modification; his
explanations of cause are debated
• Object permanence occurs earlier
• Gain many skills earlier than Piaget expected
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IDEAS STEMMING FROM
PIAGET’S WORK
Nature vs. Nuture
• Core knowledge approach: View that infants
are born with domain-specific innate knowledge
systems (Spelke, 1991, 2000, 2011).
• Infants have “soft biases to perceive and attend
to different aspects of the environment”
(Johnston, 2008).
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CONDITIONING
• Consequences of behavior produce
• Classical conditioning - Pairing of new stimulus to
conditioned response
• Operant conditioning - Consequences of behavior affect
probability of that behavior reoccurring
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ATTENTION
• Focusing of mental resources on select
information
• Habituation - Decreased responsiveness to stimulus
after repeated presentations
• Dishabituation - Habituated response recovered after a
change in stimulation
• Joint attention: Occurs when individuals focus
on the same object or event and are able to track
each other’s behavior
• One individual directs another’s attention, and
reciprocal interaction is present
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MEMORY
• Memory: A central feature of cognitive
development, involving the retention of
information over time.
• Implicit memory: Memory without conscious
recollection; involves skills and routine procedures that
are automatically performed.
• Explicit memory: Conscious memory of facts and
experiences
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MEMORY
• Memory
• Neonates show memory for previously exposed
stimuli
• By 12 months dramatic improvement in
encoding and retrieval
• Rovee-Collier (1993) studies of infant memory
• Given a reminder (priming), improves memory
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USE OF CONDITIONING
• Conditioning techniques are used to study
processes like memory
• Consequences of behavior produce
• Classical conditioning - Pairing of new stimulus to
conditioned response
• Operant conditioning - Consequences of behavior affect
probability of that behavior reoccurring
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IMITATION
• Meltzoff (2007, 2011)– Infant can imitate facial
expression within a few days after birth; others
disagree
• Deferred imitation:
• Imitation that occurs
after a delay of hours
or days
• May aid in attachment
• Mirror Neurons
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CONCEPT FORMATION AND
CATEGORIZATION
• Concepts: Ideas on what categories represent
• Conceptual categories - Perceptual variability found in
7- to 9-month-old infants
• These categories help us organize our knowledge.
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LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
DEFINING LANGUAGE
• Language
• Form of communication (verbal, written, gestures)
based on system of symbols; highly organized
• Infinite generativity
• Ability to produce endless number of meaningful
sentences using finite set of words and rules
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LANGUAGE’S RULE SYSTEMS
• Five systems of rules
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Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
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HOW LANGUAGE DEVELOPS
• Recognizing language sounds
• Babbling and vocalizations
• Crying - Present at birth, signals distress
• Cooing - Begins about 1 to 2 months
• Babbling - Occurs in first year, strings of consonantvowel combinations
• Gestures: Begins about 8 to 12 months
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HOW LANGUAGE DEVELOPS
• First words
• First words
• Infants understand about 50 words at 13 months
(receptive vocabulary)
• Overextension and underextension of words
• Telegraphic speech
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BIOLOGICAL AND
ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES
• Biological
• Evolution of CNS and vocal apparatus
• Human language about 100,000 years old
• Children’s language acquisition similar all over the
world (biological basis)
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BIOLOGICAL AND
ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES
• Biological
• Broca’s area: Left frontal lobe, produces words
• Wernicke’s area: Left hemisphere, involved in
language comprehension
• Language acquisition device (LAD): Noam
Chomsky’s term.
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FIGURE 6.15 - BROCA’S AREA AND
WERNICKE’S AREA
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BIOLOGICAL AND
ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES
• Environmental Influences
• Behaviorists: language is complex, learned
• Behaviorists’ view cannot explain novelty, learning of a
native language syntax without reinforcements
• Motherese (Child-Directed Speech)
• Recasting, Expanding, Labeling
• Research
• Environment influences language skills
• Importance of social context: ‘Wild Boy of Aveyron’
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AN INTERACTIONIST VIEW
• Biology and sociocultural experiences
contribute to language development
• Parents and teachers construct language
acquisition support system
• Children acquire native language without
explicit teaching
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