1. Cognitive Development During The First Three Years
Chapter 7

2. Guideposts for Study
1. How do infants learn, and how long can they remember?
2. Can infants' and toddlers' intelligence be measured, and how can it be improved?

3. Guideposts for Study
3. How did Piaget describe infants' and toddlers' cognitive development, and how have his claims stood up under later scrutiny?
4. How can we measure infants' ability to process information, and how does this ability relate to future intelligence?

4. Guideposts for Study
When do babies begin to think about characteristics of the physical world?
6 What can brain research reveal about the development of cognitive skills?
7 How does social interaction with adults advance cognitive competence?

5. Guideposts For Study 8. How do babies develop language?
9. What influences contribute to linguistic progress?

6. Cognitive Development: Classic Approaches
Behaviorist Approach: Basic Mechanics of Learning
Concerned with how behavior changes in response to experience
Classic Conditioning=A person or animal learns to make a reflex (involuntary) response to a stimulus that originally did not provoke the response
In classical conditioning, the learner is passive, absorbing and automatically reacting to stimuli.
By contrast, in operant conditioning--as when a baby learns that smiling brings loving attention--the learner acts, or operates, on the environment.

7. Cognitive Development: Classic Approaches
Behaviorist Approach: Basic Mechanics of Learning
Operant Conditioning=when a person learns that a behavior elicits a reinforcement, i.e. smiling brings loving attention
A young child can be conditioned to press a lever to make a miniature train go around a track

8. Cognitive Development: Classic Approaches
Psychometric Approach: Developmental And Intelligence Testing
Measures individual differences in quantity of intelligence by using intelligence tests
Binet developed tests to identify children who could not learn in regular school classes
Bayley Scales of Infant Development assess development from 1 month to 3½ years
The higher a child scores, the more intelligent she or he is presumed to be.
The correlation between socioeconomic status and IQ is well documented.
Parents in higher-income families spent more time with their children, talked more with them, and showed more interest in what they had to say.
. HOME gives credit to the parent of an infant or toddler for caressing or kissing the child during an examiner's visit, to the parent of a preschooler for spontaneously praising the child, and to the parent of an older child for answering the child's questions.

9. Cognitive Development: Classic Approaches
Developmental And Intelligence Testing
Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME)
High scores on factors are reliable in predicting children's IQ:
parental responsiveness
number of books in the home
presence of playthings
parents' involvement in children's play
Findings suggest that early educational intervention can boost cognitive development.

10. Cognitive Development
Piagetian Approach: The Sensorimotor Stage
Looks at changes, or stages, in the quality of cognitive functioning
Concerned with how the mind structures its activities and adapts to the environment
Infants' cognitive and behavioral schemes become more elaborate development of representational ability deferred imitation, pretending, and problem solving
Object permanence, the realization that an object or person continues to exist when out of sight.
Infants and toddlers seem to be far more cognitively competent than Piaget imagined and show earlier signs of conceptual thought.

11. What comments might Piaget have made about Darwin’s diary entries on his son’s early cognitive development?
On the basis of observations by Piaget and the research they inspired, what factors would you consider in designing or purchasing a toy or book for an infant or toddler?

12. Cognitive Development: Newer Approaches
Information-Processing Approach: Perceptions and Representations
Focuses on processes involved in perception, learning, memory, and problem solving
Discover what children do with information from learning it to using it
Researchers analyze separate parts of a complex task, to figure out what abilities are necessary
Habituation, a type of learning in which repeated or continuous exposure to a stimulus (such as the shaft of light) reduces attention to that stimulus.
Infants’ ability to compare new information with information they already have suggests that they can form mental representations at birth or very soon after, and it quickly becomes more efficient.

13. Cognitive Development: Newer Approaches
Information-Processing Approach:
Children who, from the start, were efficient at taking in and interpreting sensory information score well on intelligence tests later on
Infants seem aware of continuity of relationships in time and space--perhaps a first step toward understanding causality

14. Cognitive Development: Newer Approaches
Cognitive Neuroscience Approach: The Brain’s Cognitive Structures
Studies have recorded brain wave changes associated with information processing
Determined which brain structures affect which aspects of memory
Prefrontal cortex is believed to control many aspects of cognition

15. Cognitive Development: Newer Approaches
Social-Contextual Approach: Learning From Interactions With Caregivers
Researchers influenced by Vygotsky's sociocultural theory study how cultural context affects early social interactions cognitive competence
Cultural context influences way caregivers contribute to cognitive development

16. Language Development Sequence of Early Language Development
As physical structures maturesounds:
Neuronal connections necessary to associate sound and meaning become activated
Social interaction with adults introduces babies to the communicative nature of speech
Sequence of Lanugage:
prelinguistic speech—cooing, babbling
linguistic speech—holophrase, telegraphic speech

17. Language Development Characteristics of Early Speech
Children simplify language
Children overregularize rules: they apply them rigidly, not knowing that some rules have exceptions
Children understand grammatical relationships they cannot yet express
Children underextend word meanings

18. Can you…
Trace the typical sequence of milestones in
early language development, pointing out the
influence of the language babies hear around
them?
Describe five ways in which early speech
differs from adult speech?

19. Language Development
Classic Theories of Language Acquisition: The Nature-Nurture Debate
Skinner (1957) maintained that language learning, like other learning, is based on experience: children learn language through operant conditioning
Observation, imitation, and reinforcement contribute to language

20. Language Development
Classic Theories of Language Acquisition: The Nature-Nurture Debate
Chomsky suggested an inborn language acquisition device (LAD) programs children's brains to analyze the language they hear and to figure out its rules=nativism
Evidence that environmental influences alone cannot explain the emergence of linguistic expression

21. Language Development Influences on Language Development
Maturation of the Brain: Cortical regions associated with language do not fully mature until late preschool years or later
Between ages 13 and 20 months, a period of marked vocabulary growth, infants show increasing lateralization and localization of comprehension

22. Language Development Influences on Language Development
Babies learn by listening to what adults say--parents with lower incomes, educational and occupational levels tend to spend less time talking with their children in positive ways
Child-directed speech=speak slowly in a high-pitched voice with exaggerated ups and downs, simple speech, exaggerate vowel sounds, use short words and sentences

23. Language Development
Preparing For Literacy: The Benefits of Reading Aloud
Opportunities for emotional intimacy and parent-child communication
Children who are read to oftenbetter language skills at ages 2½, 4½, and 5 and better reading comprehension at age 7

24. Can you…
Assess the arguments for and against the
value of child-directed speech (CDS)?
Tell why reading aloud to children at an early
age is beneficial?
Describe an effective way of reading aloud to
infants and toddlers?