1. Cognitive Development, 0 to 3
Chapter 6

2. What’s to Come? Behaviorist Approach: Basic Mechanics of Learning
Psychometric Approach: Developmental and Intelligence Testing
Piagetian Approach: The Sensorimotor Stage
Information-Processing Approach: Perceptions and Representations

3. What’s to Come?
Cognitive Neuroscience Approach: The Brain’s Cognitive Structures
Social-Contextual Approach: Learning from Caregivers
Language Development

4. Behaviorist Approach: Basic Mechanics of Learning
Behaviorist approach to cognitive development
How we learn
How behavior changes in response to experience

5. Behaviorist Approach: Basic Mechanics of Learning
Classical Conditioning
Operant Conditioning

6. Classical Conditioning
Learning based on:
Associating a stimulus that does not elicit a particular response with another stimulus that does elicit the response
Becomes extinct when not reinforced by repeated association

7. Operant Conditioning Learning based on reinforcement or punishment
Positive or negative
Used in research to ask babies questions about what they know

8. Psychometric Approach: Developmental and Intelligence Testing
Measures quantitative differences in abilities that make up:
Intelligences by using tests that indicate or predict these abilities
Intelligent behavior
Behavior that is goal oriented and adaptive to circumstances and conditions of life

9. Psychometric Approach: Developmental and Intelligence Testing
Intelligence enables people to:
Acquire
Remember
Use knowledge
Understand concepts and relationships
Solve everyday problems
IQ (intelligence quotient) tests
Psychometric tests that seek to measure intelligence by comparing a test-taker’s performance with standardized norms

10. Psychometric Approach: Developmental and Intelligence Testing
Testing Infants and Toddlers
Assessing the Impact of the Home Environment
Early Intervention

11. Testing Infants and Toddlers
Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development
Indicate a child’s strengths and weaknesses in five developmental areas
Cognitive
Language
Motor
Social-emotional
Adaptive behavior

12. Assessing the Impact of the Home Environment
Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME)
Instrument designed to measure the influence of the home environment on children’s cognitive growth
HOME scores - Correlated with measures of cognitive development

14. Assessing the Impact of the Home Environment
Important factors
Parental responsiveness
Number of books in the home
Presence of playthings that encourage the development of concepts
Parents’ involvement in children’s play

15. Assessing the Impact of the Home Environment
Factors associated with kindergarten achievement scores
Language competence
Motor and social development

16. Early Intervention
Systematic process of providing services to help families meet young children’s developmental needs
The best support for the effectiveness of early intervention programs is data from:
Project CARE
The Abecedarian (ABC) Project

17. Early Intervention Most effective early interventions
Start early and continue throughout the preschool years
Are time-intensive
Are center-based, not just parental training
Take a comprehensive approach
Are tailored to individual needs

18. Piagetian Approach: The Sensorimotor Stage
Piagetian approach to cognitive development
Looks at changes, or stages, in the quality of cognitive functioning
Concerned with how the mind structures its activities and adapts to the environment

19. Piagetian Approach: The Sensorimotor Stage
Sensorimotor Substages
Object Concept
Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage

21. Sensorimotor Subsstages
During the first five substages, babies:
Learn to coordinate input from their senses
Organize their activities in relation to their environment
During the sixth substage, babies:
Progress from trial-and-error learning to the use of symbols and concepts to solve problems

22. Object Concept
Objects have independent existence, characteristics, and locations in space
Object permanence - Realization that something continues to exist when out of sight

23. Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
Recent research suggests that:
Object permanence may have reflected immature linguistic and motor skills
Piaget may have been mistaken in emphasizing:
Motor experience as the primary engine of cognitive growth
Infants’ perceptions are far ahead of their motor abilities

24. Information-Processing Approach: Perceptions and Representations
Focuses on:
Perception
Learning
Memory
Problem solving
Aims to:
Discover how children process information from the time they encounter it until they use it

25. Information-Processing Approach: Perceptions and Representations
Habituation
Visual Processing Abilities
Information Processing as a Predictor of Intelligence
Information Processing and the Development of Piagetian Abilities

26. Habituation
Type of learning in which familiarity with a stimulus reduces attention to it
Dishabituation
Increase in responsiveness after presentation of a new stimulus

27. Visual Processing Abilities
Visual preference
Tendency of infants to spend more time looking at one sight than another
Visual recognition memory
Ability to distinguish a familiar visual stimulus from an unfamiliar stimulus when shown both at the same time
Joint attention
Involves understanding that you and I have a shared focus of attention

28. Information Processing as a Predictor of Intelligence
Weak correlation between infants’ scores on developmental tasks with the exception of scores for:
Habituation
Attention-recovery
Visual recognition memory abilities

29. Information Processing and the Development of Piagetian Abilities
Categorization
Vital to thinking about objects or concepts and their relationships
Foundation of language, reasoning, problem solving, and memory
Does not appear until the sixth sensorimotor substage

30. Information Processing and the Development of Piagetian Abilities
Causality
Understanding that one event causes another
Develops slowly during the 1st year of life
Infants do not know that causes must come before effects

31. Information Processing and the Development of Piagetian Abilities
Object permanence
Violation-of-expectations
Research method in which dishabituation to a stimulus that conflicts with experience is taken as evidence that an infant recognizes the new stimulus as surprising
Understanding of numbers may begin long before Piaget’s sixth substage

32. Cognitive Neuroscience Approach: The Brain’s Cognitive Structures
Examines the hardware of the central nervous system
Implicit memory
Unconscious recall, generally of habits and skills
Sometimes called procedural memory
Explicit memory
Intentional and conscious memory, generally of facts, names, and events
Sometimes called declarative memory

33. Cognitive Neuroscience Approach: The Brain’s Cognitive Structures
Maturing of the hippocampus
A structure deep in the temporal lobes, along with the development of cortical structures coordinated by the hippocampal formation make longer-lasting memories possible

34. Cognitive Neuroscience Approach: The Brain’s Cognitive Structures
Prefrontal cortex is believed to control many aspects of cognition
Working memory - Short-term storage of information being actively processed

35. Social-Contextual Approach: Learning from Caregivers
Examines the effects of environmental aspects on the learning process
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 closer to that of the adult
Cultural context influences the way caregivers contribute to cognitive development

36. Language Development Language Nativism
Communication system based on words and grammar
Children learn language through operant conditioning
Nativism
Theory that human beings have an inborn capacity for language acquisition
Language acquisition device (LAD)
An inborn mechanism that enables children to infer linguistic rules from the language they hear

38. Language Development Sequence of Early Language Development
Characteristics of Early Speech
Influences on Language Development
Preparing for Literacy

39. Sequence of Early Language Development
Prelinguistic speech
Forerunner of linguistic speech; utterance of sounds that are not words
Early vocalization
Crying is a newborn’s first means of communication
Babbling
Imitation

40. Sequence of Early Language Development
Perceiving language sounds and structure
Infants’ brains seem to be preset to:
Discriminate basic linguistic units
Perceive linguistic patterns
Categorize them as similar or different

41. Sequence of Early Language Development
Every language has its own system of sounds that are used in the production of speech
Early experience modifies the neural structure of the brain
Babies begin to become aware of the phonological rules of their language

42. Sequence of Early Language Development
Gestures
Before babies can speak, they point
Symbolic gestures emerge around the same time as babies say their first words
Function much like words
Learning gestures help babies learn to talk
Early gestures are a good predictor of later vocabulary size

43. Sequence of Early Language Development
First words
Linguistic speech
Verbal expression designed to convey meaning
Holophrase
Single word that conveys a complete thought
Passive vocabulary continues to grow as:
Verbal comprehension gradually becomes faster and more accurate and efficient
Nouns are the easiest type of word for most children to learn

44. Sequence of Early Language Development
First sentences
Cause of speech delays - Hearing problem
Telegraphic speech
Early form of sentence use consisting of only a few essential words
Children illustrate their implicit understanding of the structure of their language with the word order they use

45. Characteristics of Early Speech
Children understand grammatical relationships they cannot yet express
Children underextend word meanings
Children overregularize rules

46. Influences on Language Development
Brain development
A newborn’s cries are controlled by the brain stem and pons
Repetitive babbling may emerge with the maturation of parts of the motor cortex
Control movements of the face and larynx
Brain scans confirm the sequence of vocabulary development

47. Influences on Language Development
Social interaction - Role of caregivers
Language is a social act
Language takes:
Biological machinery
Cognitive capacity
Interaction with a live communicative partner

48. Influences on Language Development
Caregivers play an important role by:
Providing opportunities and motivation for communicative experience
Providing models of language use

49. Influences on Language Development
Factors that affect the course of language acquisition
Age of caregivers
The way caregivers interact with and talk to an infant
Child’s birth order
Child care experience
Schooling
Peers
Television exposure

50. Influences on Language Development
Parents’ imitation of babies’ sounds:
Affects the amount of infant vocalization
Affects the pace of language learning
Helps babies experience the social aspect of speech
Caregivers help babies understand spoken words
Strong relationship exists between the:
Frequency of specific words in mothers’ speech
Order in which children learn these words

51. Influences on Language Development
Child-directed speech (CDS)
Form of speech often used in talking to babies or toddlers
Slow, simplified speech, a high-pitched tone, exaggerated vowel sounds, short words and sentences, and much repetition
Also called parentese or motherese

52. Preparing for Literacy
Frequency with which caregivers read can influence:
How well children speak
How well and how soon they develop literacy

53. Preparing for Literacy
Adults tend to have one of three styles of reading to children
Describer
Comprehender
Performance-oriented style