1. Cognitive Development in Infancy and Early Childhood
Chapter 4

2. Cognitive Development
Basic principles
Children as scientists creating theories about how the world works
Schemes: psychological structures organize the world
Infancy schemes involve actions
Post-infancy schemes involve relationships
Schemes change over time

3. Cognitive Development
Assimilation
New experiences incorporated into existing schemes
Grasping scheme extended to new objects
Accomodation
Schemes modified based on experience
Some objects require two hands to lift

4. Cognitive Development
Equilibration: reogranization of schemes to maintain balance between assimilation & accomodation
Analogy of a scientist changing her theory due to inconsistent findings
Changes occur according to Piaget at 2, 7, 11
4 stages of cognitive development

5. Sensorimotor Thinking (0-2 years)
Exercising reflexes (0-1 months)
Learning to adapt (1-4 months)
Primary circular reaction: recreation of pleasant bodily experiences
No object permanence
Making interesting events (4-8 months)
Secondary circular reaction: novel actions repeated with objects

6. Sensorimotor Thinking (0-2 years)
Behaving intentionally (8-12 months)
Means & end
Experimenting (12-18 months)
Tertiary circular reasoning: old schemes with new objects
Using symbols (18-24 months)
Talk, gesture and anticipate actions mentally
Full object permanence

7. Preoperational Thinking (2-7 years)
Egocentrism
Believe everyone sees the world as they do
Centration
Psychological tunnel vision
Focus on one feature of problem at a time
Lack of conservation
Appearance as reality

8. Final 2 Piagetian Stages
Concrete Operations (7-11 years)
Conservation of physicality
Formal Operations (> 11 years)
Reasoning includes abstract thinking, hypotheticals

9. Evaluating Piaget Teaching implications Scheme construction key
Gradual development
Scheme growth enhanced by inconsistencies

10. Evaluating Piaget Critiques
Findings based in part on specific procedures used by Piaget
Language sensitivity explains some findings
Procedural changes modified results
Performance not as consistent as Piaget predicts

11. Information Processing
Attention
Infants have orienting responses to strong or unfamiliar stimuli
Staring, eye fixation, physiological changes
Habituation also occurs
Diminished response to familiar/constant S
Both adaptive responses for infants

12. Information Processing
Learning
Infants learn constantly via many forms
Classicial conditioning
Neutral S paired with powerful S evokes a R
Bell + food eventually bell causes salivation
Operant conditioning
Behavior produces consequences (+/-)
Likelihood of future behavior depends on nature of the consequences

13. Information Processing
Learning
Imitation: learning by watching others
Common form of learning
Babies as young as 2 weeks old can imitate

14. Information Processing
Memory
Babies can recall events for a few days/weeks & memory cue can retrieve forgotten memories
Memory improves dramatically in first two years
Due to brain growth
Amygdala, hippocampus (initial storage): 6 months
Frontal cortext (retireval): 2 years

15. Language First word typically spoken at year 1 Perceiving speech
Long process of learning language
Perceiving speech
Infants capable of distinguishing phonemes
Unique sounds making up words (consonants)
Language independent at first (bio prepared)
Language specific eventually
Word identification eventually occurs via stress & other cues

16. Language Steps to speech 2 months: vowel sounds (oooooo ahhhhh)
6 months: babbling speech like sounds (dah)
8-11 months: stress, pitch varies and nature depends on language
10-14 months: connect spoken words with objects
Year 1: first word and vocab increases rapidly
18 months symbolic understanding of words
Fast mapping

17. Language
Development facilitated by
Hearing language
Reading books TV