2. Chapter 6 Key Questions
What are the fundamental features of Piaget’s theories of cognitive development?
How do infants process information?
How is infant intelligence measured?
By what processes do children learn to use language?
How do children influence adults’ language?

3. Piaget’s Approach to Cognitive Development
Piaget argued that infants do not acquire knowledge from facts communicated by others, nor through sensation and perception.
Instead, he suggested that knowledge is the product of direct motor behavior.
ACTION = KNOWLEDGE
Stage theorist
Qualifies a child’s learning, not the quantity of content

4. Key Elements of Piaget’s Theory
Piaget assumed that all children pass through a series of four universal stages in a fixed order from birth through adolescence:
Sensorimotor = Knowledge is product of direct motor behavior
Preoperational = Symbolic thinking
Concrete operational= Use of logical thought
Formal operational = Use of abstract thought

5. Key Elements of Piaget’s Theory
Movement from one stage to the next occurs with appropriate level of physical maturation and relevant experiences
Piaget believed that the basic building blocks of the way we understand the world are mental structures called
, organized patterns of functioning, that adapt and change with mental development.

6. Key Elements of Piaget’s Theory
Piaget suggested that two principles underlie the growth in children’s schemes: assimilation and accommodation.
Assimilation The process in which people understand an experience in terms of their current stage of cognitive development and way of thinking (Given a toy)
Accommodation Changes in existing ways of thinking that occur in response to encounters with new stimuli or events (Flying squirrel is a bird with a tail)

7. The Sensorimotor Period: Six Substages of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor stage (of cognitive development)
Piaget’s initial major stage of cognitive development, which can be broken down into six substages, as summarized in Table 6-1 on page 144.

8. Piaget’s Six Substages of the Sensorimotor Stage

9. Substage 1: Simple Reflexes = First Month
During this time, the various inborn reflexes are at the center of a baby’s physical and cognitive life, determining the nature of his or her interactions with the world.
At the same time, some of the reflexes begin to accommodate the infant’s experience with the nature of the world. Sucking reflex causes infant to repeatedly suck at anything
Circular Reactions = Schemes of repetitive actions

10. Substage 2: First Habits and Primary Circular Reactions = 1-4 months
In this period, infants begin to coordinate what were separate actions into single, integrated activities.
If an activity engages a baby’s interests, he or she may repeat it over and over, simply for the sake of continuing to experience it.
Considers only self in work around him/her
Looking at items and Grasping items

11. Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions = 4-8 months
During this period, infants begin to act upon the outside world.
The major difference between primary circular reactions and secondary circular reactions is whether the infant’s activity is focused on the infant and his or her own body (primary circular reactions), or involves actions relating to the world outside (secondary circular reactions).
Grasping rattle and shaking

12. Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions = 8-12 months
Infants begin to employ goal-directed behavior, in which several schemes are combined and coordinated to generate a single act to solve a problem. Push a toy to get to something.
Object permanence The realization that people and objects exist even when they cannot be seen (8-12 months)

13. Substage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions=12-18 months
During this period infants develop what Piaget labeled tertiary circular reactions, schemes regarding the deliberate variation of actions that bring desirable consequences.
Rather than just repeating enjoyable activities, as they do with secondary circular reactions, infants appear to carry out miniature experiments to observe the consequences.
Dropping a toy to see where it falls

14. Substage 6: Beginnings of Thought=18months-2 years
The major achievement of Substage 6 is the capacity for mental representation, or symbolic thought.
Mental representation An internal image of a past event or object (Ball rolls under a table and can figure out it will emerge from other side)
Deferred imitation An act in which a person who is no longer present is imitated by children (Parent driving a car)

15. Appraising Piaget: Support and Challenges
Most developmental researchers would probably agree that in many significant ways, Piaget’s descriptions of how cognitive development proceeds during infancy are quite accurate.
Yet, there is substantial disagreement over the validity of the theory and many of its specific predictions. (Pages Review!!!!!!!)

16. Information-Processing Approaches to Cognitive Development
Information-processing approach - The model that seeks to identify the way that individuals take in, use, and store information
Taking this perspective, cognitive growth is characterized by increasing sophistication, speed, and capacity in information processing.
Quantitative Change

17. Information Processing
The operate together so info can be processed
Environment and heredity influence the processing of info
= Video

18. Encoding, Storage, and Retrieval: The Foundations of Information Processing
Information processing has three basic aspects:
Encoding is the process by which information is initially recorded in a form usable to memory.
Storage refers to the placement of material into memory.
Retrieval is the process by which material in memory storage is located, brought into awareness, and used.

19. Automatization
Automatization is the degree to which an activity requires attention.
Some activities are more automatic than others. (Kicking a mobile versus reading a book cover)
Infants and children develop an understanding of concepts, categorizations of objects, events, or people that share common properties.

20. Automatization
Research suggests that infants have an innate grasp of certain basic mathematical functions and statistical patterns. (page 151)
This inborn proficiency is likely to form the basis for learning more complex mathematics and statistical relationships later in life.

21. Memory Capabilities in Infancy
Memory The process by which information is initially recorded, stored, and retrieved
Infants can distinguish new stimuli from old stimuli, and this implies that some memory of the old must be present.
Researchers generally believe that information is processed similarly throughout the life span, even though the kind of information being processed changes and different parts of the brain may be used.

22. The Duration of Memories
Infantile amnesia The lack of memory for experiences that occurred prior to 3 years of age (This is due to limited verbal language)
Although early research supported the notion of infantile amnesia, the lack of memory for experiences occurring prior to 3 years of age, more recent research shows that infants do retain memories.
The question of how well memories formed during infancy are retained in adulthood remains not fully answered.

23. The Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory
Advances in brain-scan technology, as well as studies of adults with brain damage, suggest that there are two separate systems involved with long-term memory.
Explicit memory is conscious memory that can be recalled intentionally.
Implicit memory is memory that is recalled unconsciously-motor skills (Earliest memories occur here)
Explicit and implicit memory emerge at different rates and involve different parts of the brain.

24. Individual Differences in Intelligence: Is One Infant Smarter Than Another?
Although it is clear that different infants show significant variations in their behavior, the issue of just what types of behavior may be related to cognitive ability is complicated.
How is Infant Intelligence Measured?
What is the basis of infant intellectual growth?
Speed with which a task is learned? Age at which child crawls, or walks?

25. What Is Infant Intelligence?
Educators, psychologists, and other experts on development have yet to agree upon a general definition of intelligent behavior, even among adults.
However, developmental specialists have devised several approaches (summarized in Table 6-2, page 153) to illuminate the nature of individual differences in intelligence during infancy.

26. Approaches Used to Detect Differences in Intelligence (page 153)

27. Developmental Scales
Developmental quotient (Formulated by Arnold Gesell) An overall developmental score that relates to performance in four domains: motor skills, language use, adaptive behavior (alertness), and personal–social behavior (feeding and dressing)

28. Bayley Scale
Bayley Scales of Infant Development A measure that evaluates an infant’s development from 2 to 42 months (Table 6-3, page 154)
Mental Scale *Motor Abilities Scale
Senses, perception, memory,
learning, problem solving
and language

29. Sample Items from the Bayley Scales - page 154

30. How are these scales helpful?
*Provide a good snapshot of infant’s current developmental level
*Can objectively measure if an infant is ahead of his/her same-age peers.
*Useful in identifying infants who may be developmentally behind and need immediate attention.

31. Caution! When using these Scales!
*These scales are not predictors for future
course of development.
*If a child shows developmental delays at 1
year of age-this does not necessarily mean slow
development at age 5

32. Information-Processing Approaches to Individual Differences in Intelligence
Contemporary approaches to infant intelligence suggest that the speed with which infants process information may correlate most strongly with later intelligence.
However, even though there is an association between early information processing capabilities and later measures of IQ, the correlation is only moderate in strength.

33. Information-Processing Approaches to Individual Differences in Intelligence
Other factors, such as the degree of environmental stimulation, also play a crucial role in helping to determine adult intelligence.
Consequently, we should not assume that intelligence is somehow permanently fixed in infancy.
Both tools provide snapshot of current development
Not useful as future predictors

34. Assessing Information- Processing Approaches
Both Piagetian and information-processing approaches are critical in providing an account of cognitive development in infancy.
Coupled with advances in the biochemistry of the brain and theories that consider the effects of social factors on learning and cognition, the two help us paint a full picture of cognitive development.

35. The Fundamentals of Language: From Sounds to Symbols
Language The systematic, meaningful arrangement of symbols, which provides the basis for communication
Language has several formal characteristics that must be mastered as linguistic competence is developed. They include:
Phonology (Phonemes are letters)
Morphemes (words)
Semantics (Rules - the study of how meaning in language is created by the use and interrelationships of words, phrases, and sentences

36. Development of Language
Linguistic Comprehension = understanding
of speech
Linguistic Production = use of language to
Communicate
Comprehension precedes Production
(22 words per month) (9 words per month)

37. Early Sounds and Communication
Prelinguistic communication is communication through sounds, facial expressions, gestures, imitation, and other nonlinguistic means.
Cooing
Babbling Making speech-like but meaningless sounds
Babbling typically follows a progression from simple to more complex sounds and differentiated language.

38. First Words
First words generally are spoken somewhere around the age of 10 to 14 months, but may occur as early as 9 months of age.
Holophrases One-word utterances that stand for a whole phrase, whose meaning depends on the particular context in which they are used (Ma = Pick me up! or I want something to eat)
Culture has an effect on the type of first words spoken.

39. First Words - page 160

40. First Sentences
The explosive increase in vocabulary that comes at around 18 months is accompanied by another accomplishment: the linking together of individual words into sentences that convey a single thought.
Telegraphic Speech = Speech in which words not critical to the message are left out (Table 6-5)

41. Children’s Imitation of Sentences

42. Use of Words and Language
Underextension The overly restrictive use of words, common among children just mastering spoken language
Overextension The overly broad use of words, overgeneralizing their meaning (CAR = anything with 4 wheels)
Referential style A style of language use in which language is used primarily to label objects
Expressive style A style of language use in which language is used primarily to express feelings and needs about oneself and others

43. Learning Theory Approaches: Language as a Learned Skill
Learning theory approach The theory that language acquisition follows the basic laws of reinforcement and conditioning
The learning theory approach doesn’t seem to adequately explain how children acquire the rules of language as readily as they do.

44. Nativist Approaches: Language as an Innate Skill
Difficulties with the learning theory approach have led to the development of an alternative, championed by the linguist Noam Chomsky and known as the nativist approach.
Nativist approach The theory that a genetically determined, innate mechanism directs language
= Chomsky describes

45. Nativist Approaches: Language as an Innate Skill
Universal grammar Chomsky’s theory that all the world’s languages share a similar underlying structure
Language-acquisition device (LAD) A neural system of the brain hypothesized to permit understanding of language
The view that language is an innate ability unique to humans also has its critics.

46. The Interactionist Approaches
The interactionist perspective suggests that language development is produced through a combination of genetically determined predispositions and environmental circumstances that help teach language.
More likely, different factors play different roles at different times during childhood.
The full explanation for language acquisition, then, remains to be found.
= Ella

47. Infant-Directed Speech
Infant-directed speech A type of speech directed toward infants, characterized by short, simple sentences
Characterized by short, simple sentences, infant-directed speech plays an important role in infants’ acquisition of language.
(Review page 163 and 164)

48. Features of Infant-Directed Speech