Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

• This lecture describes cognitive development in infants and toddlers, drawing on Piaget's, Vygotsky's and information-processing perspectives. Research findings supporting these perspectives will also be discussed.

Major Periods of Human Development

• Infancy and Toddlerhood (0-2 years): Body, motor, and cognitive changes occur along with the development of perceptual, mental, and first intimate ties with others.
• Early Childhood (2-6 years): Preschool years, where motor skills are refined, and a sense of morality develops alongside the beginning of peer relationships.
• Middle Childhood (6-11 years): School years marked by expanding motor skills, language, and thought processes. Understanding, morality, friendships, and peer-group membership all emerge.
• Adolescence (11-18 years): Puberty brings physical changes, sexual maturity, and more abstract thinking. Personal values, personal goals, & independence from family become increasingly important.
• Early Adulthood (18-40 years): Leaving home, developing a career, and potentially starting a family represent major concerns for this age group.
• Middle Adulthood (40-65 years): Most adults are at the peak of their careers and often have leadership positions. They support their children, and help their parents adjust to aging.
• Late Adulthood (65+ years): Adjustments to life changes, including the death of loved ones, become a key focus along with reflecting on life's meaning.

Content of the Lecture

• Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Perspective
• Information Processing Model
• Social Context of Early Cognitive Development (Vygotsky)
• Individual Differences in Early Mental Development
• Language Development

Piaget's Motor Stage (First 2 Years)

• Infants and toddlers think using their senses.
• Cognitive change occurs through schemes.
• A scheme is a psychological structure that organizes experiences.
• Adaptation involves building schemes through direct interaction with the environment.

Assimilation and Accommodation

• Assimilation: Using current schemes to interpret the external world.
• Accommodation: Creating new schemes or adjusting existing ones to account for new information or experiences.
• Organization: An internal process of linking schemes together.

The Sensorimotor Stage

• Circular reaction: Repeating actions. (e.g., sucking, grasping)
• Gaining control: Sitting up, reaching.
• Intentional behavior: goal-directed actions
• Coordination of schemes for problem-solving
• Imitation
• Deferred imitation: Copying the behavior of absent others
• Make-believe play: Acting and using imagination

Research on Infant Cognitive Development

• Violation of expectation method: Habituation research, recovery time. (Surprising an infant with an impossible event to understand physical laws awareness).

Research indicates that infants have a variety of abilities

• Object Permanence: Understanding objects continue to exist when out of sight. (Present in 1 month old infants, Aguilar & Baillargeon 1999)
• Mental Representation: Sensory
• Deferred Imitation: Imitating others' past actions/behaviors. (in the context of laboratory research)
• Problem-solving: Present by 10-12 months.

Cognitive Perspectives

• Core Knowledge Perspective: Infants start with core knowledge, and cognitive changes are continuous rather than stage-like. Aspects of cognition develop unevenly.
• Information Processing Model: This model challenges Piaget's theory. It suggests that speed and accuracy of cognitive processing is central to cognitive development.

Information Processing (cont.)

• Sensory Register
• Short-term Memory
• Long-term Memory
• Focus on strategies
• Baddely view
• Working memory
• Central Executive

Atkinson & Shiffrin Model

• Sensory Memory
• Short Term Memory
• Long Term Memory

Attention, Memory, and Categorization

• Attention: Shift from attending to a single high-contrast feature, as shown between 1 and 2 months.
• Memory: Habituation research provides information, infants show recall at 3-4 months.
• Recognition: Noticing a similar stimulus to a previously seen one,
• Recall: Recalling something not present physically.
• Categorization: Grouping items,

Autobiographical Memories

• Remembering events with personal meaning, typically developing by the end of toddlerhood.

Vygotsky Sociocultural Perspective

• Children develop in social contexts.
• Attention, memory, problem-solving.
• Social interaction plays a role.
• Proximal Development- Child performs tasks with guidance of a skilled person (zone of proximal development).
• Culture affects mental strategies.

Individual Differences in Early Mental Development

• Measures intellectual development (IQ tests).
• Comparing a person's performance to a larger sample of the same age.
• Perceptual and motor responses, used to predict later development.
• Developmental Quotients (DQs) rather than IQs, are used for infant tests.

Home Environment

• Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME): Gathering information about child's life using observation, and interviews.
• Organized stimulation, encouragement, parental involvement, affection, etc. predict early mental development.
• Child care factors play a role in developing cognitive development.

Language Development

• Three perspectives:
  • Behaviorist: Language learned through imitation & operant conditioning.
  • Chomsky: Innate language acquisition device (LAD)
  • Interactionist: Innate abilities & rich linguistic environment.

Specific Language Stages and Processes

• Cooing (2 months) and Babbling (4 months)
• First words (12 months)
• Mistakes in using words (Under-extension)
• Over-extension: applying a word to a wider range of things than it refers to.
• Development of language (18-24 months) with spurts in vocabulary growth.
• Two-word utterances (telegraphic speech).
• Language comprehension surpasses production, even in special needs children.

Individual Differences in Language

• Girls learning language faster
• Names learned first (referential style)
• Expressive style (pronouns and social expressions)
• Adults use child-directed speech (CDS).
• Predicting language & academic competence through child-adult interaction/conversations.

Home work

• Prepare for cooperative learning discussion.
• Focus on theory of mind development in preschoolers.

Learning Outcomes

• Cognitive development in preschoolers.
• Piaget and Vygotsky in different perspectives.
• Role of discovery in cognitive development (Piaget).
• Role of guidance in cognitive development (Vygotsky)
• Importance of cognitive processing in information processing model.

References

• Key researchers and their work related to cognitive development and language development outlined in the provided References section.

Explore the foundational stages of cognitive development in infants and toddlers, focusing on key theories from Piaget and Vygotsky. This quiz examines major developmental milestones and the research that supports these perspectives during the early years of life.