CS-101 Cognitive Development in infants

What is the central executive?

The conscious, reflective part of our mental system that manages activities and enables complex thinking.

What are means-end action sequences?

The foundation for all problem solving.

What does Vygotsky's sociocultural theory emphasize?

The influence of social and cultural context on children's cognitive development.

What is working memory?

The number of items a person can hold in mind while actively manipulating them.

What is short-term memory?

The number of pieces of information a person can hold in mind briefly.

What is the zone of proximal development?

The range of tasks a child can do with the help of more skilled partners.

What is object permanence?

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible.

What is object permanence?

The understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight.

What does infants' capacity to recall events and categorize stimuli attest to?

Their experiences.

What does it mean if infants recover to the out-of-category item?

They distinguish it from the within-category items.

Why are infant test scores labeled as developmental quotients (DQs)?

They measure different dimensions of intelligence than older age tests

How do infants react to impossible events related to object permanence?

They show surprise and spend more time looking at the impossible event.

What is an A-not-B search error?

Continuing to search for an object in its first hiding place even after seeing it moved.

How does memory develop in infants?

Develops by end of the first year, improves steadily with age.

How does caregiver-child conversation promote language development?

Dialogues about picture books promote language development.

What are the limitations of the nativist perspective?

Difficulty in specifying Chomsky's universal grammar and the involvement of experimentation and learning in language development.

Give an example of an automatic process.

Driving somewhere and not remembering how you arrived.

What is invisible displacement?

Finding a toy moved while out of sight.

What are the assumptions of the Information-Processing Perspective?

Long-term memory store has massive capacity, strategies aid retrieval, information is categorized by its contents, several aspects improve in childhood and adolescence

What are images?

Mental pictures of objects, people, and spaces.

How do children learn to think and act in Vygotsky's theory?

Through joint activities with more skilled partners.

How do caregivers contribute to early language development?

Through labeling

How do toddlers use deferred imitation?

To enrich their range of schemes

What is the main purpose of infant tests today?

To screen for developmental problems in babies

What happens as the prefrontal cortex improves in its executive role?

Toddlers become increasingly capable of intentional behavior

What is telegraphic speech?

Toddlers' use of high-content words while omitting smaller ones

What is deferred imitation?

Requires representation of a model's past behavior

What is the short-term memory store responsible for?

Retaining information briefly for active processing.

When does cooing occur?

2 months

What is a normal distribution in intelligence testing?

A bell-shaped distribution of scores around the mean

What is an intelligence quotient (IQ)?

A measure of how a child's performance deviates from the average

What is Early Head Start?

A program that shows promise in providing effective interventions

What is autobiographical memory?

Ability to recall personally meaningful one-time events from both the recent and distant past.

What is deferred imitation?

Ability to remember and copy the behavior of models who are not present.

What is make-believe play?

Acting out everyday and imaginary activities.

When does autobiographical memory develop?

After age 3.

What is the social-interactionist view?

An active child striving to communicate, cueing caregivers for language experiences.

What is the Language Acquisition Device (LAD)?

An innate system containing a universal grammar common to all languages.

When do infants say their first word typically?

Around 1 year

How does sustained attention improve?

As infants grow

What is the violation-of-expectation method?

Assessing infants' knowledge of physical reality based on their attention to expect vs. unexpected events.

What is the difference between assimilation and accommodation?

Assimilation is using current schemes to interpret the external world, while accommodation is creating new schemes or adjusting old ones to better capture the environment.

What is scaffolding?

Assisted learning to help children progress

What are reflexive schemes?

Automatic, instinctual behaviors present at birth.

What is the core knowledge perspective?

Babies are born with core domains of thought.

What is Skinner's Theory?

Behavioral View of Language development

What are some factors that influence language learning?

Brain structures, social interaction, and cognitive strategies.

What are Broca's area and Wernicke's area responsible for?

Broca's area supports grammatical processing and language production, while Wernicke's area is involved in comprehending word meaning.

What is adaptation?

Building schemes through direct interaction with the environment.

How can adults foster sustained attention in babies?

By encouraging their current interest and prompting them to stay focused

How can habituation be used to study infant categorization?

By habituating infants to one category and testing their response to novel items.

What are concepts?

Categories in which similar objects or events are grouped together.

What are the types of interventions for at-risk infants and toddlers?

Center-based and home-based

What does motor activity promote in learning and memory?

Certain aspects of learning and memory

What is HOME?

Checklist for gathering information about home quality

What is joint attention?

Child attends to the same object or event as a caregiver

What is the evaluation of the sensorimotor stage?

Cognitive attainments do not develop in a neat, stepwise fashion.

What is executive function?

Cognitive operations and strategies that enable us to achieve our goals in cognitively challenging situations

What are the main subtests of the Bayley Scales of Infants and Toddler Development?

Cognitive, language, and motor scales

What does Wernicke's area support?

Comprehending word meaning.

Which develops first, comprehension or production?

Comprehension

What are the first speech sounds?

Cooing and babbling

What does the central executive do?

Coordinates incoming information, decides what to attend to, and oversees the use of strategies

What is intentional, or goal-directed, behavior?

Coordinating schemes deliberately to solve simple problems.

What has information-processing research had difficulty with?

Creating a comprehensive theory of cognition.

What is accommodation?

Creating new schemes or adjusting old ones to better capture the environment.

What is the impact of poverty on IQ scores?

Decline in IQ scores during childhood and adolescence.

What is the study on thiamine deficiency in Israeli infants?

Defective formula lacking thiamine during the first year leads to delays in language comprehension and production at age 2 to 3, and deficits in grammar mastery and/or vocabulary recall at age 5 to 7.

What can 18-month-olds do in tool use?

Engage in tool use even when an unfamiliar object they want are spatially separated

What did Renee Baillargeon's studies find about object permanence?

Evidence that it is present in the first few months of life.

What are the key contributing factors to categorization?

Exploration of objects and adult labeling.

What are tertiary circular reactions?

Exploring objects by acting on them in novel ways, occurring from 12-18 months.

What is infant-directed speech?

Form of communication consisting of short sentences with high-pitched, exaggerated expression, clear pronunciation, distinct pauses between speech segments, clear gestures, and repetition of new words.

What do infants inherit according to the core knowledge perspective?

Foundations of physical, linguistic, psychological, and numeric knowledge.

How does memory move from infancy to toddlerhood?

From highly context-dependent to increasingly context-free

What factors influence language development?

Gender, temperament, caregiver-child conversation, socioeconomic status, language style, culture

What must be considered when interpreting correlational findings?

Gene-environment correlation

What are preverbal gestures?

Gestures used by infants to direct adults' attention

What happens to intelligence scores in children living in poverty?

Gradual declines

How does tool use in problem solving emerge?

Gradually

How do infants improve in attentional control?

Gradually and by taking in information at a faster rate

What does Broca's area support?

Grammatical processing and language production.

What were the outcomes of the study on high-quality child care?

Higher language, cognitive, literacy, and math scores

What does the dynamic systems view of early cognition analyze?

How each cognitive attainment results from a complex system of accomplishments and goals.

What does Figure 6.11 show?

IQ scores of treatment and control children in the Carolina Abecedarian Project

What are secondary circular reactions?

Imitation of familiar behaviors and interesting effects, occurring from 4-8 months.

What does the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend regarding screen media exposure before age 5?

Limiting it

When does symbolic understanding emerge?

In the first year and strengthens in the second year

Where are Broca's and Wernicke's areas located?

In the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex.

What is infantile amnesia?

Inability to recall events that happened before age 2 ½ to 3.

What factors affect the quality of US child care?

Individualistic values, weak government regulation and funding

What is the sensitive period for acquiring grammar?

Infancy.

What is a factor in the advent of a clear self-image?

Infantile amnesia.

What is inferred imitation?

Infants and toddlers infer others' intentions and may imitate actions they try to produce

What does the pattern of responding in infant categorization studies indicate?

Infants can distinguish between different categories.

What do most researchers believe about infants' cognitive development?

Infants have built-in cognitive equipment for making sense of experience.

What does habituation research show about infants and learning?

Infants need not be physically active to acquire and retain new information

What is the cornerstone of social understanding and communication?

Inferred imitation

What is coordination of secondary circular reactions?

Intentional, or goal-directed, behavior, occurring from 8-12 months.

What does the interactionist perspective emphasize?

Interactions between inner capacities and environmental influences in language development.

What are mental representations?

Internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate.

What is mental representation?

Internal depictions of objects or events, occurring from 18 months to 2 years.

What is recall?

Involves remembering something not present (ex. short answer questions)

What are some characteristics of infant-directed speech?

It builds on joint attention, turn-taking, and preverbal gestures.

What happens to attraction to novelty as toddlers grow?

It declines

What happens to retention in operant conditioning tasks from 2 to 18 months?

It increases

What does operant conditioning research show about retention during infancy and toddlerhood?

It increases dramatically

How does one-on-one interaction with an adult benefit language development?

It increases opportunities for sensitive, responsive interaction.

How does cultural variation affect mental stages?

It influences social experiences and learning

Why do infants prefer infant-directed speech?

It is preferred by infants over other kinds of adult talk.

What does the evidence indicate about infants' memory processing?

It is remarkably similar to that of older children and adults.

What were the tasks used to study memory in infants?

Kicking response to turn a mobile and pressing a lever to make a toy train move around a track.

What is the relationship between language impairment and intelligence?

Language impairment can occur even in children with typical intelligence scores.

What is Chomsky's nativist theory?

Language is etched into the structure of the human brain.

How does the quality of child care affect mental development?

Language, cognitive, literacy, and math scores

What do children increasingly use to retrieve autobiographical memories?

Language-based cues.

Give another example of accommodation.

Learning that a cow says 'moo' and a horse says 'neigh'.

What is organization?

Linking schemes with others to create a strongly interconnected cognitive system.

What factors operate in different balances with respect to each aspect of language?

Native endowment, cognitive-processing strategies, and social experience.

What contributes to infantile amnesia?

Neurological changes and social experience.

Is there consistent evidence for the core knowledge perspective?

No, it is controversial and inconsistent.

Are Broca's and Wernicke's areas solely responsible for their respective functions?

No, neither area is solely or even mainly responsible for these functions.

Do the restrictions on screen media exposure before age 5 apply to video chat?

No, they do not apply

What is recognition?

Noticing when a stimulus is identical or similar to one previously experienced. (ex. multiple choice tests)

What are mental strategies used for in information processing?

Operating on and transforming information between stores.

What are schemes?

Organized ways of making sense of experience.

What are the earliest categories based on?

Perceptual features.

What do 12-month-olds generally require in tool use?

Physical link between tool and object

What are the core domains of thought?

Physical, linguistic, psychological, and numeric knowledge.

What is the Sensorimotor Stage?

Piaget's first stage of cognitive development, lasting from birth to age 2.

What is the video deficit effect?

Poorer performance on a task after watching a video than after a live demonstration

What does the Carolina Abecedarian Project illustrate?

Positive outcomes of early interventions and child-care experience

What do the Bayley-4 Cognitive and Language Scales predict?

Preschool mental test performance

What are automatic processes?

Processes that are well-learned and do not require working memory.

What is symbolic understanding?

Realization that words can cue mental images of things not physically present

Give an example of accommodation.

Realizing that a 'doggie' is actually a four-legged animal on a farm.

What is categorization?

Reducing new information by grouping similar items.

What are the stages of the Sensorimotor Stage?

Reflexive schemes, primary circular reactions, secondary circular reactions, coordination of secondary circular reactions, tertiary circular reactions, and mental representation.

What is a tertiary circular reaction?

Repeating behaviors with variation.

What is the sensory store responsible for?

Representing sights and sounds directly and storing them momentarily.

Give an example of assimilation.

Seeing a cow and labeling it as a 'doggie'.

Give another example of assimilation.

Seeing a horse and labeling it as a 'cow'.

What are the three parts of the mental system?

Sensory store, short-term memory store, long-term memory store

What are the three parts of the cognitive system in the information-processing perspective?

Sensory store, short-term memory store, long-term memory store.

What are primary circular reactions?

Simple motor habits centered around the infant's own body, occurring from 1-4 months.

How is information processed in the information-processing perspective?

Simultaneously in all three stores.

What age group was trained to press a lever?

Six- to 18-month-olds.

Which scales in the Bayley Scales depend on parental report?

Social-emotional and adaptive behavior scales

What format of video chat do toddlers readily learn from?

Socially contingent format

What is the blend of the information-processing view with Chomsky's nativist perspective?

Specific brain structures supporting higher-level language learning.

What should child care meet?

Standards for developmentally appropriate practice

What is the long-term memory store responsible for?

Storing our permanent knowledge base.

What age group was trained to make a kicking response?

Two- to 6-month-olds.

What are some errors in word usage made by toddlers?

Underextension and overextension

What is standardization in intelligence testing?

Using a representative sample to interpret scores

What is assimilation?

Using current schemes to interpret the external world.

Why do toddlers require more time to process two-dimensional images?

Video lacks social cues that support everyday learning

Is mastery of object permanence gradual?

Yes, understanding becomes increasingly complex with experience.

Did six-month-olds learn both responses?

Yes.

Did six-month-olds retain the responses for the same length of time?

Yes.

What is a bell curve?

a graph depicting normal distribution

home-based interventions

a skilled adult visits the home and works with parents

In the second year, children improve in ability to.....

categorize experience, recall words, and grasp others' social cues to meaning

center-based interventions

children attend an organized program and their parents receive support

How well do most infant tests predict later intelligence?

poorly

babbling

repeated consonant-vowel combinations (around 6 months)

What are infants first spoken word built upon?

sensorimotor foundations and on categories children have formed

what is displaced reference?

the realization that words can be used to cue mental images of things not physically present- a symbolic capacity

Cooing

vowel-like noises