Infant Cognition: Psychology Chapter 6

• Chapter 6 discusses cognition in infants and toddlers.

Piaget's Theory

• Piaget believed children are naturally curious.
• Children construct an understanding of their surroundings through experiences.
• Schemas, which are psychological structures, help organize experiences.

Assimilation and Accommodation

• Assimilation incorporates new experiences into existing schemas.
• Accommodation changes schemas based on new experiences.
• Assimilation and accommodation are usually balanced.
• Equilibration reorganizes schemas to incorporate new information.

Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage

• The sensorimotor stage occurs during the first 2 years, characterized by rapid skill development.
• Substage 1 involves exercising reflexes from birth to 1 month.
• Substage 2 involves learning to adapt between 1-4 months.
• Substage 3 involves creating interesting events between 4-8 months.
• Substage 4 includes achieving ends between 8-12 months.
• Substage 5 includes experimenting between 12-18 months.
• Substage 6 involves mental representation between 18-24 months.
• Object permanence involves understanding that objects exist independently.

The Child as Theorist

• Children's theories are called "naive theories" because they aren't scientific.
• Children create comprehensive theories to explain phenomena.
• Children develop specialized theories about narrower areas.

Information Processing

• A theory that equates human cognition to computer software.
• This approach rose in the 60s and is used to cognitive development.
• Sensory memory briefly holds raw information.
• Working memory includes active cognitive processes and necessary information.
• Long-term memory is a permanent store of knowledge.
• Procedural memory involves how to do things.
• Semantic memory involves specific facts.
• Episodic Memory involves specific events that have occurred in person.
• A computer model of information-processing theory allows kids to "run" mental software.
• The Neo-piagetian approach combines information-processing theory with Piagetian theory.

Habituation

• An orienting response occurs when babies, kids, and adults encounter strong or unfamiliar stimuli .
• Habituation diminishes this response as the stimulus becomes familiar.
• Dishabituation occurs when someone becomes aware of the stimulus again.
• Habituation prevents wasting energy on unimportant events.
• Orienting makes infants aware of potentially dangerous or important events.

Classical Conditioning

• Discovered by Ivan Pavlov with his dog experiments.
• If something occurs before feeding, the dogs salivated when they heard the bell because it was linked to food.
• Classical conditioning starts a neutral thing that triggers a response.
• Babies suck when given sugar water and start sucking when hearing a sound.
• Classical conditioning helps babies understand their world:
  • Babies might smile when they hear the dog bark, knowing he is coming to play
  • Toddlers get happy when hearing water because they know it is bath time

Operant Conditioning

• It's the idea that behavior is shaped by what happens afterward.
• When babies smile and get hugged, they smile more.
• When babies grab fragile objects and hear "No!", they are less likely to do it.
• People will repeat behaviors with good outcomes and avoid those with bad ones.

Imitation

• Learning occurs by watching others.
• Kids might learn snowboarding tricks by watching friends.
• Kids pick up ideas about relationships or new words from chatting.
• Babies copy adults waving or babies knocking over towers.

Memory

• Rovee-Collier discovered that babies a few months old remember things for weeks.
• Rovee-Collier used a creative experiment to discover this.
• Babies kicking mobiles attached with a ribbon showed memory capabilities.
• Babies remembered specific details about the mobile.
• The experiment revealed three things about baby memory
  • Babies remember past events
  • Over time, memories fade.
  • Cues bring a "forgotten" memory back.

Why Don't We Remember Being Babies? (Infantile Amnesia)

• Infantile amnesia is the inability to recall early childhood memories:
  • Language development stores memories in words after pre-language memories.
  • Sense of self develops, scattered memories that are harder to recall later.
  • Brain development is still developing areas responsible for storing memories.

Culture and Early Memories

• The way childhood is remembered relies on culture.
• Cultures that emphasize collective identity tends to have a longer period of infantile amnesia.
• Cultures that focus on individual identity tend to have earlier childhood memories.
• Cultures that use storytelling have more people who remember their childhood better.

Individual Difference in Ability

• Development in general, some babies pick up skills quickly.
• Psychologists use tests designed for infants and toddlers measure individual differences.
• The Bayley Scales of Infant Development assesses babies between 2 and 42 months old looking at two main areas:
  • Mental skills: responding to sights and sounds
  • Motor skills: moving, controling bodies, and interacting with objects
• Infants tests have limitations as the Bayley Scales only work for babies of one cultural background creating cultural differences

Do Infant Intelligence Tests Predict Future IQ?

• A baby's intelligence test scores do not necessarily predict the babies intelligence.
• High habituation and dishabituation equals higher IQs.
• Hormone cortisol affects learning and memory.
• Infants with cortisol levels have better memory.

Language

• Infants recognize speech sounds (phonemes) to learn language.
• Phonemes are the smallest units of sound, like "p" in "pat"
• Infants as young as one month know the difference between phonemes.
• Scientist use pacifiers connected to tape recorders to test infant responses to sound for new sounds and distinguish between different phonemes.
• Newborns can hear phonemes from languages, then become "tuned" to their native language.
• At 7-8 months, infants recognize repeated words and linguistic stress
• Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) is slow and helps babies pick up language sounds due to the changes in pitch

Building Blocks for Later Language Skills

• Recognizing speech patterns starts the base for vocabulary, grammar, and literacy.
• Over time then integrates speech stress and phonemes to process language efficiently.

First Steps to Speaking

• Newborns signal distress with crying.
• By 2 months, they coo vowel-like sounds
• From 5-6 months, babies start babbling with speech like sounds and consonant-vowel repetitions.
• By 7 months, babbling includes the rise/fall of speech, showing babies raised with different languages reflect their native intonation patterns.
• Deaf babies, babble with sign sequences, showing language processing is based on rythem and structure.

Challenges in Speech Development

• Cerebral palsy: breathing control problems delay babbling
• Neurodevelopmental disorders: babbling is lessened.
• Culture & social environment: interaction affects speech sounds.

First Words

• On their birthday, infants say consonant-vowel repetitions like “mama” or “dada”
• Around their first birthday, infants say their first real words
• Nouns usually come before verbs

Understanding Words as Symbols

• Babies realize words stand for objects, actions, and ideas that changes the way they communicate, so they can express more in precise detail.
• Infants listen to real speech longer than similar nonsense to help them learn quickly..

Concept Formation & Gestures

• By 12 months, infants form concepts and gestures.
• Gestures act as symbols for early symbolic thinking.

Fast Mapping Meaning to Words

• At 15 months old, they learn 2–3 words each week,
• Around 18 months old, there is a naming explosion.
• Toddlers use strategies to connect words and objects instantly to get the meanings right.
• Toddlers learn when adults label the object while naming it.
• Word learning is parent's and toddler's work together: parents namings with the kids social cues.

Constraints on Word Names

• Rules Toddlers use strategies to guess the word meaning:
  • New known in a set with unfamiliar.
  • Words are parts or features of the known
  • It object has a name that gets a second label,
  • It is a name for one item proper noun is used.

Sentence Cues Help

• Help kids use what they know to figure out new ones.
• Toddlers misuse words while learning:
  • Underextension: Use a word too narrow.
  • Overextension: Using a word far too broadly.
  • Refine their word meanings to make less mistakes.
  • Develop language styles of what they are interested in.
    • How some toddlers name everything versus social phrases

Styles of Learning Language

• Referential Style is the "Little Scientist" Approach
  • Children are more intellectual to language
• Kids with a referential style mostly learn the names of things.
• Point at items and names to build your own dictionary.
• Like to ask lots of "what's that?" questions.
• Expressive Style or "Social Butterfly" Approach
  • The style to interact.
  • Like to use social words Of course kids like both to intellectual learn about the world and social building relationships. This all helps parents to pick which style to teach their kids that helps them enjoy learning!