Chapter 7
Cognitive
Development
during the First
Three Years
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Studying Cognitive Development: Six
Approaches
Behavioral
Psychometric
Piagetian
Information-processing
Cognitive neuroscience
Social contextual
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Behaviorist Approach
 Approach to the study of cognitive development that is
concerned with the basic mechanics of learning.
 Classical conditioning: Learning based on associating a
stimulus that does not ordinarily elicit a particular
response with another stimulus that does elicit the
response.
 Operant conditioning: Learning based on
reinforcement or punishment.
 Focuses on the consequences of behaviors
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Behaviorist Approach
 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
 2 months – 2 days
 18 months – 13 weeks
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Psychometric Approach
 Approach to the study of cognitive development that
seeks to measure the quantity of intelligence a person
possesses.
 Intelligent behavior: Behavior that is goal oriented and
adaptive to circumstances and conditions of life.
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Psychometric Approach
 IQ (intelligent quotient) tests: Intelligent quotient (IQ)
tests: Psychometric tests that seek to measure
intelligence by comparing a test-taker’s performance
with standardized norms.
 Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development:
Standardized test of infants’ and toddlers’ mental and
motor development.
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Home Observation for Measurement
of the Environment (HOME)
 Instrument designed to measure the influence of the
home environment on children’s cognitive growth.
 Factors responsible:
 Parental responsiveness
 Number of books and playthings that encourage the
development of concepts
 Parents’ involvement in children’s play
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Factors That Support Cognitive and
Psychosocial Development
Aspects that support cognitive and
psychosocial development
• Encouraging exploration of the environment
• Mentoring in basic cognitive and social skills
• Celebrating developmental advances
• Guidance in practicing and extending skills
• Protection from inappropriate disapproval, teasing,
and punishment
• Communicating richly and responsively
• Guiding and limiting behavior
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Guidelines for Fostering Infants’
and Toddlers’ Cognitive
Development
 Provide sensory stimulation in early three months.
 Create an environment that fosters learning.
 Respond to babies’ signals.
 Give babies the power to effect changes.
 Give babies freedom to explore.
 Talk to babies.
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Guidelines for Fostering Infants’
and Toddlers’ Cognitive
Development
 Enter into whatever they are interested in, when
talking or playing with babies.
 Arrange opportunities to learn basic skills.
 Applaud new skills and help babies practice and
expand them.
 Read to babies in a warm, caring atmosphere from an
early age.
 Use punishment sparingly.
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Early Intervention
 Planning and providing therapeutic and educational
services for families that need help in meeting their
children’s developmental needs.
 Reduces gap for children with limited learning
opportunities and low parental expectations.
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Effective Early Interventions
Start early and continue throughout the
preschool years
Are highly time-intensive
Are center-based, providing direct
educational experiences
Take a comprehensive approach
Are tailored to individual differences and
needs
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Piagetian Approach
Approach to the study of cognitive
development that describes qualitative
stages in cognitive functioning.
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Sensorimotor Stage
 Infants learn through senses and motor activity.
 First stage in cognitive development
 Schemes: Organized patterns of thought and behavior
used in particular situations.
 Circular reactions: Processes by which an infant learns
to reproduce desired occurrences originally discovered
by chance.
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Substages of Piaget’s Sensorimotor
Stage of Cognitive Development
Substage 1: Use of reflexes
• Exercising of inborn reflexes and control over them
• No coordination of information from senses
• No grasping of an object they are looking at
Substage 2: Primary circular reactions
• Repetition of pleasurable behaviors that first occur
by chance
• Acquired adaptations are made
• Coordination of sensory information begins
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Substages of Piaget’s Sensorimotor
Stage of Cognitive Development
Substage 3: Secondary circular reactions
• Interest in environment develops
• Repetition of actions that bring interesting results
• Actions are intentional but not initially goal directed
Substage 4: Coordination of secondary reactions
• Behavior is more deliberate and purposeful
• Use of previously learned schemes and behavior
• Anticipation of events
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Substages of Piaget’s Sensorimotor
Stage of Cognitive Development
Substage 5: Tertiary circular reactions
• Curiosity and experimentation appear
• Purposeful variation of actions to get different results
• Trying of new activities and use of trial and error in
solving problems
Substage 6: Thought/Mental combinations
• Symbolic thought enables toddlers to begin to think
about events and anticipate their consequences
• Use of symbols, words, and gestures
• Can pretend
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Imitative Abilities
Visible imitation: Involves parts of the body that babies
cannot see.
Invisible imitation: Uses body parts such as hands or feet
that babies can see.
Deferred imitation: Reproduction of an observed behavior
after the passage of time by calling up a stored symbol of
it.
Elicited imitation: Toddlers are induced to imitate a
specific series of actions they have seen, but not done
before.
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Imitation
 Meltzoff (2007, 2011)– Infant can imitate facial
expression within a few days after birth; others
disagree. Social Cognition
 Deferred imitation:
 Imitation that occurs
after a delay of hours
or days
 May aid in attachment
 Mirror Neurons
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Development of Knowledge About
Objects and Space
 Object concept - Idea that objects have independent
existence, characteristics, and locations in space.
 Object permanence: Realization that an object or
person continues to exist when out of sight.
 A-not-B error: Tendency to search for a hidden object in
a place where they previously found it rather than in the
place where they most recently saw it being hidden.
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Information-Processing Approach:
Perceptions and Representations
 Habituation: Type of learning in which familiarity with
a stimulus reduces, slows, or stops a response.
 Dishabituation: Increase in responsiveness after
presentation of a new stimulus.
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Visual and Auditory Processing
Abilities
 Visual preference: Tendency to spend more time
looking at one sight rather than another.
 Novelty preference - Infants' preference of new sights to
familiar ones.
 Visual recognition memory: Ability that depends on
the capacity to form and refer to mental
representations.
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Visual and Auditory Processing
Abilities
 Cross-modal transfer: Ability to use information gained
from one sense to guide another.
 Joint attention - Babies follow an adults’ gaze by looking
or pointing in the same direction.
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Information Processing as a
Predictor of Intelligence
 Visual expectation paradigm - Measures
 Visual reaction time
 Visual anticipation
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Information Processing and the
Development of Piagetian Abilities
Categorization - Dividing the world into meaningful
categories.
• Foundation of language, reasoning, problem solving, and
memory
Causality - Principle that one event causes
another.
Object Permanence
• Violation-of-expectations: Dishabituation to a stimulus that
conflicts with experience is taken as evidence that an infant
recognizes the new stimulus as surprising.
Number - Research indicates that understanding of
numbers begins long before Piaget’s sixth substage.
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Evaluating Information-Processing
Research on Infants
 Proposals suggest that infants have:
 Innate learning mechanisms
 Core knowledge of basic physical principles
 Perceptual awareness or a conceptual understanding
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Cognitive Neuroscience Approach
Approach to the study of cognitive development
that links brain processes with cognitive ones.
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The Brain’s Cognitive Structures
 Long-term memory systems
 Implicit memory: Unconscious recall, habits, and skills.
 Called procedural memory
 Explicit memory: Intentional and conscious memory,
facts, names, and events.
 Called declarative memory
 Working memory: Short-term storage of information
being actively processed.
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Guided Participation
 Participation of an adult in a child’s activity in a
manner that helps to:
 Structure the activity
 Bring the child’s understanding of it closer to that of the
adult
 Affected by cultural difference
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Language Development
 Language: Communication system based on words and
grammar.
 Prelinguistic speech: Utterance of sounds that are not
words and deliberate imitation of sounds without
understanding their meaning.
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Sequence of Early Language
Development
 Early vocalization
 Crying, cooing, and babbling
 Imitation of language sounds
 Perceiving language sounds and structure
 Required to imitate languages
 Phonemes - Smallest units of sound in speech
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Sequence of Early Language
Development
 Gestures - Pointing, which helps regulate joint
interactions
 Conventional social gestures
 Representative gestures
 Symbolic gestures
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Sequence of Early Language
Development
 First words
 Linguistic speech: Verbal expression designed to
convey meaning.
 Holophrase: Single word that conveys a complete
thought.
 Receptive vocabulary - What infants understand
 Expressive vocabulary - Spoken vocabulary
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Sequence of Early Language
Development
 First sentences
 Telegraphic speech: Early form of sentence use, consists
of only a few essential words.
 Syntax: Rules for forming sentences in a particular
language.
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Characteristics of Early Speech
 Simplified language
 Understanding grammatical relationships not yet
expressed
 Underextending and overextending word meanings
 Overregularizing of rules
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Classic Theories of Language Acquisition:
The Nature-Nurture Debate
Skinner
• Language learning is based on:
• Experience
• Learned associations
• Observation, imitation, and reinforcement contribute to
language.
Chomsky’s view
• Nativism: Human beings have an inborn capacity for
language acquisition.
• Language acquisition device (LAD): Inborn mechanism
that enables children to infer linguistic rules from the
language they hear.
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Learning Theory
 Does not explain the correspondence between:
 Ages at which linguistic advances in both hearing and
nonhearing babies typically occur
 Many developmental scientists believe language
acquisition depends on:
 Intertwining of nature and nurture
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Influences on Language
Development
Brain development
• Brain growth is linked with language development.
• Brain scans confirm the sequence of vocabulary
development.
Social interaction: The role of parents and
caregivers
• Parents or caregivers provide:
• Opportunities for communicative experience
• Models of language use
Prelinguistic period
• Helps babies:
• Experience social aspect of speech
• Sense that a conversation consists of alternating or taking
turns
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Vocabulary Development
 Parents or caregivers can help by:
 Repeating their first words
 Pronouncing words correctly
 Code mixing: Use of elements of two languages,
sometimes in the same utterance.
 In houses where two languages are spoken
 Code switching: Changing one’s speech to match the
situation.
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Child-Directed Speech (CDS)
Form of speech used in talking to babies or
toddlers.
• Slow, simplified speech
• High-pitched tone
• Exaggerated vowel sounds
• Short words and sentences
• Repetition
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Preparing for Literacy: The Benefits
of Reading Aloud
 Literacy: Ability to read and write.
 Describer - Focuses on describing what is going
on in the pictures.
 Comprehender - Encourages the child to:
 Look more deeply at the meaning of a story
 Make inferences and predictions
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Preparing for Literacy: The Benefits
of Reading Aloud
 Preformance-oriented style - Reading the story straight
through.
 Introducing the main themes beforehand
 Asking questions afterward
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