Intellectual development of Infants WHAT DO INFANTS KNOW??

What is Intellectual Development?  What we learn and how we express what we know through language.  Intellectual development is slow compared to physical development.  The problem: Infants have very little language skills, making the last part more challenging.

Cognitive VS Intellectual  Cognitive Development deals with HOW we learn/process/understand concepts.  How do you learn? Watching, doing, reading?  Intellectual development focuses on WHAT we know.  What things are you very knowledgeable about?

Cognition  Involves using perception- organizing information the comes through the senses- and applying meaning and understanding.  For example: While driving the traffic light turns from green to yellow.  You must SEE the color change and then process what it means. You apply the brakes and slow down.

What is needed for perception?  The use of your 5 senses.  Seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting.  For example: That tasted sour, therefore I do not like lemons!!! I will shut my mouth when offered a lemon.  What is the stimuli? What is the reaction? What is the learning that is applied? 

Elbow Partner  Look to the person next to you.  Come up with an original example of perceptual learning.  What is the stimuli?  What is the response?  What learning is applied?

What effects cognition?  Maturity of your senses  Stimulation received / your environment  Age of the infant  Memory  Reaction of others  Imitation  Communication skills

Sensorimotor Development  Using the SENSES and MOTOR skills together to learn and gain new skills.  What are these? How do they sound? What happens when I shake them? Are they hard or soft? How are they used?

Language skills  Infants are learning language. They understand more than they can say. The child can point to a ball but may be unable to say the word “ball”.  Rather than speaking, they can express themselves through crying, cooing, laughing, hitting, etc.  Cooing  Their first form of language other than crying. Begins at 6-8 Weeks and are happy, light, sounds in response to human interaction,

Stages of infant communication  Crying  Non Verbal responses –imitating faces  Cooing  Babbling (vowel/consonant pair, DaBapa)  Reduplicated babble (Dadadada)  Sign language (if taught to the infant)  First word *typically a bable

Assessing Intellect  How might we be able to assess an infant’s Intellectual Development?  Object Permanence  Verbal communication abilities