CHAPTER 5 CONITIVE DEVELOPMENT INFANT MEMORY

DURING THE FIRST THREE YEARS

 How do we determine what babies know?
 Infants cannot talk, and they have limited
Six Approaches to Studying Cognitive motor control; thus, researchers must be
Development creative if they are to determine what babies
know and understand. Fortunately,
 Behaviorist approach – concerned with the
conditioning paradigms in research allow
basic mechanics of learning. investigators to ask questions of babies in ways
 Psychometric – seeks to measure intelligence they can answer.
quantitatively.
 Piagetian – describes qualitative
 Information processing – analyzes processes
involved in perceiving and handling
information.
 Cognitive neuroscience – links brain
processes with cognitive ones.
 Social-contextual – focuses on environmental
influences, particularly parents and other
caregivers.
 Research has determined that the length of time
BEHAVIORIST APPROACH a conditioned response lasts increases with age.
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING OPERANT  2 months of age – can remember a conditioned
CONDITIONING response for 2 days; 18 months can remember
 Anna and her father’s camera it for 13 weeks.
o Camera – flash – blink  1-, 6- and 9-month old infants – cannot
o Camera □ blink recognize a picture in a different room but
12- and
 Classical conditioning – learning based on
 18-month old CAN.
associating a stimulus that does not ordinarily
elicit a response with another stimulus that PSYCHOMETRIC APPROACH
does elicit the response.
 Operant conditioning – learning based on  Intelligent behavior – behavior that is goal
association of behavior with its consequences. oriented and adaptive to circumstances and
 Baby babbles = parents smile □ increase conditions of life.
babbling  Psychometric tests measure factors
 Baby throws food = parents frown □ not throw presumed to make up intelligence.
food Intelligence quotient (IQ) tests –
psychometric tests that seek to measure
intelligence by comparing a test-taker’s
performance with standardized norms.
 Binet Simon Scale – first IQ test.
Testing Infants and Toddlers to be imprisoned, and report higher lifetime
earnings
 If a child is unable to perform a task that the
 Thus, from an economic standpoint, despite
―average babyǁ can do by a particular age,
their high cost, early intervention programs are
that child may be delayed in that area. By
worth the benefits accrued.
contrast, a baby can also be ahead of the curve
 The most effective early interventions are
by performing better than her same-age peers.
those that:
1. Start early and continue throughout the
 Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler
preschool years;
Development – standardized test of infants’
2. Are highly time-intensive;
and toddler’s mental and motor development. It
3. Center-based
was designed to assess children from 1 month
4. Take a comprehensive approach including
to 3 ½ years. Scores on the Bayley-III indicate
health,family counseling, and social
a child’s competencies in each of five
services.
developmental areas: cognitive, language,
5. Are tailored to individual differences and
motor, social-emotional, and adaptive
needs.
behavior.
PIAGETIAN APPROACH

SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
Assessing the Impact of the Early Home
Environment  Sensorimotor stage - Piaget’s first stage in
cognitive development, in which infants learn
 Home Observation for Measurement of the
through senses and motor activity.
Environment (HOME) – instrument to
 Schemes
measure the influence of the home environment
on children’s cognitive growth. -Piaget’s term for organized patterns of thought
 Home Observation for Measurement of the and behavior used in particular situations.
Environment (HOME) – instrument to
Primary circular reaction
measure the influence of the home environment
on children’s cognitive growth. Baby’s Action

Secondary Circular Reactions

Early Intervention Intentionally repeat actions to trigger a response
 Early intervention – Systematic process of Tertiary Circular Reactions
providing services to help families meet young
children’s developmental needs. Will deliberately change/alter an action to discover
 There are lasting effects of early intervention consequences.
programs.
 Children who participate in early intervention
programs are less likely to require special
education services in grade school and high
school, more likely to graduate from high
school, more likely to be employed, less likely
  The sixth substage (about 18 months to 2
years) is a transition to the preoperational
stage of early childhood.
 Representational ability – Piaget’s term
for capacity to store mental images or
symbols of objects and events.

 They can pretend, and their representational

ability affects the sophistication of their
pretending. They can think about actions
before taking them. They no longer have to go
 through laborious trial and error to solve
problems—they can try solutions in their mind.
Symbolic Development, Pictorial Competence
and Understanding of Scale
 During these six substages, infants develop the
abilities to think and remember. They also  Symbols – intentional representations of
develop knowledge about aspects of the
reality.
physical world, such as objects and spatial
relationships.  Pictorial competence – ability to understand
the nature of pictures.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS OF THE
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE  Until 15 months – infants use their hands to
explore pictures as if they were objects—
(Piagetian Approach)
rubbing, patting, or attempting to lift a depicted
 IMITATION
object off the page.
 Invisible imitation – imitation that involves
parts of the body that babies cannot see – at 9  19 months - children are able to point at a
months. picture of an object while saying its name.
 Visible imitation – imitation that uses body
 2 years – children understand that a picture is
parts such as hands or feet that babies can see.
 Deferred imitation - Piaget’s term for both an object and a symbol.
reproduction of an observed behavior after the  12- to 18-month old – able to imitate an
passage of time by calling up a stored symbol
adult’s actions (helping a puppet ring a bell)
of it.
when they saw an adult performing the action
 6-month old – can imitate how an adult in front of them than when they saw a video of
interacted with a doll after 10-minute delay. the same thing.
 9 months – can reproduce 2 steps after a delay
 2½-year-olds – able to locate an object hidden
of 1 month (e.g. dropping a toy car down a
vertical chute). in an adjoining room after watching a video of
 14 months – toddlers show preferences whom an adult hiding it, but 2-year-olds could not.
they imitate for.
 Yet the younger children were able to find the
 15 months – imitates a peer.
 4 years of age – imitates those who are the object if they watched through a window as it
same gender as they are. was hidden.
OBJECT CONCEPT  Scale error – a momentary misperception of
the relative sizes of objects.
 Object permanence – Piaget’s term for
understanding that a person or object still exists  Researchers suggested that these actions
when out of sight. might in part be based on a lack of impulse
control—the children wanted to play with the
objects so badly that they ignored perceptual
information about size.
 Dual representation hypothesis –proposal  Information processing researchers measure
that children under age 3 have difficulty mental processes through habituation and other
signs of visual and perceptual abilities.
grasping spatial relationships because of the
 Contrary to Piaget’s ideas, such research
need to keep more than one mental suggests that representational ability is present
representation in mind at the same time. virtually from birth.
 Indicators of the efficiency of infant’s
Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage information processing, such as speed of
habituation, show promise as predictors of
 In terms of describing what children do under intelligence.
certain circumstances, and the basic
progression of skills, Piaget was correct. Tools of Infant Research
However, infants and toddlers are more
 Visual preference – tendency of infants to
cognitively competent than Piaget imagined.
spend more time looking at one sight than
This does not mean that infants come into the
another.
world with minds fully formed.
 < 2 days old – prefers curved lines than
 As Piaget observed, immature forms of
straight; complex patterns than simple patterns,
cognition precede more mature forms.
3D than 2D objects, pictures of faces than
However, Piaget may have been mistaken in
things, and moving objects than stationary
his emphasis on motor experience as the
objects.
primary engine of cognitive growth. Infants’
 Visual recognition memory – Ability to
perceptions are far ahead of their motor
distinguish a familiar visual stimulus from an
abilities.
unfamiliar one when shown both at the same
time.

INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACH
Perceptual Process
 HABITUATION
 Cross-modal transfer - Ability to use
-type of learning in which familiarity with a information gained by one sense to guide
stimulus reduces, slows or stops a response. another.
Familiarity breeds loss of interest.  Joint attention - A shared attentional focus,
 DISHABITUATION – increase in typically initiated with eye gaze or pointing.
responsiveness after presentation of a new
stimulus.
 The capacity for joint attention—which is of
fundamental importance to social interaction,
language acquisition, and the understanding of
others’ intentions and mental states— develops
Information Processing Approach: Perceptions between 10 and 12 months, when babies follow
and Representations an adults’ gaze by looking or pointing in the
same direction.

Information Processing and Piagetian Abilities

 Categorization - Dividing the worldinto
meaningful categories is vital to thinking about
objects or concepts and their relationships. It is
the foundation of language, reasoning, problem
solving, and memory; without it, the world
would seem chaotic and meaningless.
 Perceptual features – shape, color, and
pattern.
 Conceptual – based on real-world knowledge
such as function.
 Causality - the principle that one event
(squeezing) causes another (quacking).

Number
 Piaget believed that at about 4 to 6 months, as  In one classic study, infants watched as Mickey
infants become able to grasp objects, they Mouse dolls were placed behind a screen, and a
begin to recognize they can act on their doll was either added or taken away. The
environment. However, he believed they did screen then was lifted to reveal either the
not yet know that causes must come before number of dolls that should have been there or
effects and that forces outside of themselves a different number of dolls.
can make things happen. He maintained that  Babies looked longer at surprising―wrongǁ
this understanding develops slowly during answers than at expected―rightǁ ones,
infants’ 1st year. suggesting that they had mentally computed the
right answers.

Object Permanence  5 objects, +5 more objects:

□Infants looked longer when the screen
 When Piaget investigated object permanence,
dropped to show 5 than 10.
he used infants’ motor responses to gauge
 Moreover, in preschool, the ability to
whether or not infants understood that a hidden
estimate approximate numbers is related to
object still existed. Their failure to reach for
later mathematical achievement, suggesting
the hidden object was interpreted to mean they
continuity in this process.
did not.
 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.

Evaluating Information Processing Research

 Some theorists argue we must be wary of

overestimating infants’ cognitive abilities from
data that may have simpler explanations.
 They argue that an infant’s visual interest in an ideas in order to exert more control over their
impossible condition may reveal a perceptual lives.
awareness that something unusual has
happened rather than a conceptual
understanding of the way things work. For
instance, if an infant looks longer at one scene
than another, it may just be because the two
scenes look different from each other rather
than because of any conceptual processes.

Cognitive Neuroscience Approach

 Neurological developments help explain the

emergence of Piagetian skills and memory
abilities.
 Implicit memory – unconscious recall;
generally of habits and skills; called
procedural memory.
 Explicit memory – intentional and conscious
memory; generally of facts, names and events.
 Working memory – short term storage of
information being actively processed; emerges
between 6 and 12 months of age.

Social Contextual Approach

 Social interactions with adults contribute to

cognitive competence through shared activities
that help children learn skills, knowledge, and
values important in their culture.
 Guided participation – adult’sparticipation in a
child’s activity that helps to structure it and
bring the child’s understanding of it closer to
the adults.

Language Development

 Language – a communication system based on

words and grammar.
 Once children know words, they can use them
to represent objects and actions. They can
reflect on people, places, and things; and they
can communicate their needs, feelings, and
Sequence of Early Language Development interested in listening to speakers in the
languages he or she was previously exposed to.
 Before babies can use words, they make their
needs and feelings known through sounds that Gestures
progress from crying to cooing and babbling,
 Before babies speak, they point. Pointing is
then to accidental imitation, and then deliberate
important to language acquisition and serves
imitation.
several functions.
 Prelinguistic speech – forerunner of linguistic
 Conventional social gestures – waving bye-
speech; utterance of sounds that area not
bye, nodding head to mean ―yesǁ and
words.Includes crying, cooing, babbling, and
shaking her head to signify―noǁ.
imitating language sounds.
 Representational social gestures – hold an
empty cup to mouth to show wanting to drink
or holding up arms to show wanting to be
Early Vocalization
picked up.
 Crying – a newborn’s first means of  Symbolic gestures – blowing to mean ―hotǁ
communication. Adults find crying aversive for or sniffing to mean―flowerǁ often emerge
a reason – it motivates them to find the source around the same time that babies say their first
of the problem and fix it. Thus, crying has words, and they
great adaptive value.
 Cooing – typically a vowel sound,like ahhh,
but can also sound like gurgling noises or First Words
squealing. It signifies that baby is starting to
work on language development.  Linguistic speech – verbal expression
 Babbling – repeating consonant-vowel strings, designed to convey meaning.
such as―ma- ma-ma-maǁ – occurs between  Holophrase – single word that conveys a
ages 6 and 10 months and is often mistaken for complete thought.
a baby’s first word. It is initially nonsensical  Receptive vocabulary – what infants
and becomes more word-like over time. understand.
 Expressive vocabulary – spoken vocabulary.
 Generally, infants have a far greater receptive
vocabulary than an expressive—or spoken—
Perceiving Language Sounds and Structure
vocabulary
 Imitation of language sounds requires the  Nouns seem to be the easiest type of word to
ability to perceive subtle differences between learn.
sounds. Infants’ brains seem to be preset to
discriminate basic linguistic patterns, and
categorize them as similar or different. First Sentences

 Phonemes – smallest units of sound in speech.  Telegraphic speech - Early form of sentence
use consisting of only a few essential words.
 If a mother regularly speaks two languages  Syntax – Rules for forming sentences in a
during pregnancy, her newborn baby will particular language.
recognize both languages and be more  Syntax is why a sentence like―man bites dogǁ
differs from ―dog bites man,ǁ and it allows us
 to understand and produce an infinite number which may be activated or constrained by
of utterances. experience.

Characteristics of Early Speech

 Underextend word meanings – they use Influences on Early Language Development

words in too narrow of a category.
 Influences on language development include
 Overextend word meanings – using words in
neural maturation and social interaction.
too broad of a category.
 Overregularize rules – occurs when children
 In many ways, the brains of young children,
inappropriately apply a syntactical rule.
even before they begin to speak, process
(“I drawed that.”
language similarly to adult brains. Frontal brain
regions are involved in the processing of
speech in infants as they are in adults, although
Variations in Language Development
in infants, this process is slower. Last, the
 Code mixing – use of elements of two processing of linguistic information is localized
languages, sometimes in the same utterance, by in the left hemisphere in infants as it is in
young children in households where both almost all adults.
languages are spoken.
 Code switching – changing one’s speech to
match the situation, as in people who are  Family characteristics, such as socioeconomic
bilingual. status, adult language use, and maternal
responsiveness, affect a child’s vocabulary
The Nature-Nurture Debate
development.
 Is linguistic ability learned or inborn? In the
1950s, a debate raged between two schools of
thought: one led by B. F. Skinner, the Child-Directed Speech
foremost proponent of learning theory, the
 CDS – sometimes called parentese, motherese
other by the linguist Noam Chomsky.
or baby talk; form of speech used in talking to
 Skinner: language learning, like other
babies or toddlers, includes slow, simplified
learning, is based on experience and learned
speech, a high- pitched tone, exaggerated
associations.
vowel sounds, short words and sentences, and
 Nativism – view by Chomsky; theory that
much repetition.
human
 Child-directed speech (CDS) seems to have
 Language acquisition device – in Chomsky’s
cognitive, emotional and social benefits, and
terminology, an inborn mechanism that enables
infants show a preference for it. However,
children to infer linguistic rules from the
some researchers dispute its value.
language they hear.
 Most developmental scientists today maintain
that language acquisition, like most other
aspects of development, depends on an
intertwining of nature and nurture. Children
have an inborn capacity to acquire language,
Preparing for Literacy: The Benefits of
Reading Aloud

Three adult reading styles:

 Describer – describes what is going on in the

pictures and invited the child to do so.
 Comprehender – encourages the child to look
more deeply at the meaning of a story and to
make inferences and predictions.
 Performance-oriented reader – reads the
story straight through, introducing the main
themes beforehand and asking questions
afterward.