CHAPTER FIVE COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN INFANCY

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-2 I. COGNITIVE CHANGES Changes in cognitive skills over the first 2 years are highly consistent across environments Two-year-olds are still a long way from cognitive maturity, but they have taken several important steps toward that goal

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-3 A. Piaget’s View of the First 2 Years Sensorimotor stage: –Piaget’s first stage of development, in which infants use information from their senses and motor actions to learn about the world –Primary, secondary and tertiary circular reactions: the infant progressively gains experience of himself and his surroundings –By age mo., the infant has the beginnings of mental representation –Refer to Table 5.1 (next slide) (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-4 Substages of Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-5 Piaget’s View of the First 2 Years (continued) Object permanence: the understanding that objects continue to exist when they can’t be seen –2 months – rudimentary expectations shown by surprise when an object disappears –6 – 8 months – looking for a missing object for a brief period of time –8 – 12 months – reaching for or searching for a toy that is hidden (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-6 Piaget’s View of the First 2 Years (continued) Imitation –2 months – can imitate actions they can see themselves make –8 – 12 months – can imitate other people’s facial expressions –1 year – imitation of any action that wasn’t in the child’s repertoire begins –18 months – deferred imitation (a child’s imitation of some action at a later time) begins

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-7 B. Challenges to Piaget’s View (continued) Piaget underestimated the cognitive capacity of infants He may have wrongly equated the infant’s lack of physical ability with lack of cognitive understanding Object permanence occurs much earlier, and is more complex, than he predicted

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-8 Challenges to Piaget’s View (continued) Object Permanence –Babies as young as 4 months show clear signs of object permanence (Baillargeon et al, Rosander & von Hofsten) –Some theorists (Meltzkoff et al) believe that infants can establish mental representations of objects before they develop object permanence (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-9 Challenges to Piaget’s View (continued) Imitation –Piaget’s proposed sequence of imitation skill has been supported Imitation of a hand movement starts at 1 – 2 months Imitation of 2-part actions starts around months –Imitation of facial gestures and deferred imitation occur earlier than Piaget proposed –Infants learn through modeling –Many more skills than Piaget thought may be inborn

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-10 C. Alternative Approaches Object Concept: an infant’s understanding of the nature of objects and how they behave –3 month old infants displayed a knowledge of objects and how they behave that is much more sophisticated than previously thought –This ability may be innate, or it may be that the strategies for learning are innate –Another controversy is whether infants understand the concepts being demonstrated (such as the support required to keep an object stable) or are only responding to the novelty of the situation (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-11 Spelke’s Violation of Expectancy Procedure

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-12 Baillargeon’s Learning Strategies Research

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-13 Alternative Approaches (continued) Object Individuation: the process by which an infant differentiates and recognizes distinct objects based on their mental images of objects in the environment –4 month olds can individuate based on spatio- temporal information –10 month olds can individuate based on an object’s property information –9 to 12 month olds can individuate based on the kind of object Understanding of objects seems to develop gradually over the first 3 years

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-14 II. Learning, Categorizing, Remembering and Intelligence Learning denotes the permanent changes in behaviour that result from experience Babies show evidence of learning from their first moments, and they organize their interactions with the forces in their environment

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-15 A. Conditioning and Modeling Research evidence (Gunther) supports the presence of classical conditioning –babies who felt smothered by the left breast learned to refuse the left breast Research evidence (Moon & Fifer) supports the presence of operant conditioning –sounds of mother’s voice or heartbeat, sweet liquids increased the sucking response and head turning –The mother’s voice is an effective reinforcer for all babies

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-16 B. Schematic Learning The organization of experiences into expectancies, or “known” combinations Categories –By 7 months infants actively use categories to process information –Cannot process levels of categories Superordinates (higher level categories) contain lower level categories Babies respond differently to animals and furniture but not to dogs and birds Hierarchical categories appear by 2 years but are not well developed until about age 5

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-17 C. Memory Infants appear to remember some auditory stimuli they hear while asleep Rovee-Collier showed that 3 month old infants can remember specific objects and their own actions with those objects as long as a week Young infants are more cognitively sophisticated than Piaget supposed, while supporting his view of systematic gains in memory Early infant memory is strongly tied to context

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-18 D. Measuring Intelligence in Infancy While difficult to measure, it’s useful to try to identify children who require special interventions The Bayley Scales of Infant Development measures sensory and motor skills, and some cognition Such tools are not predictive of later IQ or school performance Habituation tasks appear to have high potential as measures of infant intelligence Fagan’s Test of Infant Intelligence can be used with normal infants and those with problems such as cerebral palsy Fagan’s Test has shown mixed results in attempts to correlate its results with later measures of intelligence

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-19 III. The Beginnings of Language Many important developments precede the use of a child’s first words at about 12 months of age

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-20 A. Theoretical Perspectives B.F. Skinner, the scientist who formulated operant conditioning theory, suggested a behaviourist explanation of language development: –Infant babbles and the parents reinforce –Parents respond to grammatical use of words with reinforcement and withhold reinforcement for nongrammatical words –Correct grammar is reinforced and becomes more frequent This view has been refuted by more recent research (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-21 Theoretical Perspectives (continued) The Nativist view as described by Chomsky describes the use of grammar rules as language is developed: –Children make rule-governed grammatical errors –He proposes the existence of a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), an innate language processor which contains the basic grammatical structure of all human language –All human languages have the same grammatical forms (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-22 Theoretical Perspectives (continued) Another nativist, Slobin, assumes a basic language-making capacity in every child –Suggests that infants have “rules to listen by” such as paying attention to sound rhythm, and stressed sounds or words –Infants prefer speech in a particular pattern – motherese or infant-directed speech (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-23 Theoretical Perspectives (continued) The Constructivist view: –Language development is part of a broader process of cognitive development –Language is used to express only those meanings the child has already formulated –New words are learned when they help to communicate thoughts and ideas –Children, not mothers, initiate most verbal exchanges –Language complexity develops at the same time as increased complexity of sequencing in play activities

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-24 B. An Eclectic Approach to Explaining Language Development The Nativist and Constructivist views can be integrated Children’s experiences in the earliest years influence language –Poverty influences a substantial gap in vocabulary by age 4 and widens over the school years. Being read to often is one of the most critical experiences Children whose parents talk to them often develop richer vocabularies and more complex sentences (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-25 An Eclectic Approach to Explaining Language Development (continued) Motherese may be important in helping the child learn language: –Speech in a higher pitch –Adults repeat often, introduce minor variations, use slightly more elongated sentences –Babies prefer motherese –A baby more easily imitates a correct grammatical form “recast” from his own sentences by an adult (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-26 An Eclectic Approach to Explaining Language Development (continued) Integrating the Nativist and Constructivist Positions: –Both approaches may be true –Initially the child may use built-in operating principles –Modification occurs as she receives new information –All children share the same processing rules and are exposed to very similar input –Language development diverges into different languages as the child progresses

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-27 C. Speech Perception As discussed in chapter 4, language perception develops rapidly –Single syllables –Double syllables and syllables hidden within other sounds Up to 6 months, babies can accurately discriminate among all the sounds that appear in any language This ability begins to be lost after 6 months

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-28 D. Sounds, Gestures and Word Meanings Cooing vowel sounds appear at about one month, usually to signal pleasure Babbling, with vowel and consonant sounds, develops at about 6 months Babbling is related to the beginning of language production Intonal patterns are used (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-29 Sounds, Gestures and Word Meanings (continued) Babbling initially incorporates all sounds, but gradually only those heard in spoken language are used Gesture-sound combinations emerge at about 10 months Receptive language consists of about words by 9 or 10 months A language’s patterns and word stresses can help babies identify words

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-30 E. The First Words Expressive language –The ability to produce words –12 months — babies begin to say first words –Words are learned slowly in context with specific situations and cues (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-31 The First Words (continued) Holophrases –Combining a single word with gestures to make a complete thought –Used between 12 and 18 months Naming Explosion –Occurs between 16 and 24 months –16 months old – 50 words in vocabulary –24 months old – 320 words –Vocabulary grows in spurts –In English, most words are names for things or people (nouns)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-32 Vocabulary Growth in Infants

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-33 F. The First Sentences Sentences appear when there is a threshold of 100 to 200 words at 18 – 24 months Sentences are short, generally 2 or 3 words, and simple –Brown coined the term “telegraphic speech” Sentences follow rules Understanding this speech usually requires the listener to know the context

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-34 Meaning in Early Sentences

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-35 G. Individual Differences in Language Development Differences in Rate –There is a wide range of normal variation –More than half those who talk late eventually catch up –Those who do not catch up also have receptive language problems, and may have other cognitive problems –These children should receive professional help for diagnosis and treatment (continued)

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-36 Differences in Rate

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-37 Individual Differences in Language Development (continued) Differences in Style –Expressive style Early vocabulary linked to social relationships rather than objects –Referential style Early vocabulary made up of names of things or people Often advanced in understanding adult language

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-38 Some Differences Between Expressive and Referential Styles in Early Language

Copyright © 2009 Pearson Education Canada 5-39 H. Language Development Across Cultures Cooing, babbling, first words, holophrases, and telegraphic speech are typically found in all languages at similar ages The use of specific word order in early sentences is not the same. Particular inflections are learned in highly varying order