Chapter 4 Section 2 Cognitive Development
Research by Renée Baillargeon
using the "violation of expectations method." This method does not require an infant to engage in any fine or gross motor movement. Instead, it relies on technology that measures an infant's viewing patterns. The assumption is that infants will look longer at an event that violates their expectations. If they look longer at an event violating the rule of object permanence, this indicates some understanding of object permanence. For example, at age 5-6 months, infants will look longer when a toy they have seen hidden at one spot in a sandbox emerges from a different spot. This seems to indicate an expectation that it should have emerged from the same spot, as a permanent object would. Even at 2-3 months infants look longer at events that are physically impossible
Why do people often use ID speech with infants?
One reason is that infants seem to like it. Even when ID speech is in a language they do not understand, infants show a preference for it by the time they are 4 months old, as indicated by paying greater attention to ID speech in an unfamiliar language than to non-ID speech in the same language
Evaluate the claim that educational media enhance infants' cognitive development.
Do they work? The answer is no. Many studies investigating this question have concluded that educational media products have no effect on infants' cognitive development. In fact, one study of 8- to 16-month-olds found that for every hour of "educational" DVDs viewed per day, the DVD viewers understood 8 to 16 fewer words than babies who watched no DVDs. DVD watching did not compensate for the deficit in social interaction. These findings suggest that Piaget was right that children's cognitive maturity has its own innate timetable and that it is fruitless
Describe the course of language development over the first year of life
First is cooing, the "oo-ing" and "ah-ing" and gurgling sounds babies make beginning at about 2 months old. Often cooing takes place in interactions with others, but sometimes it takes place without interactions, as if babies are discovering their vocal apparatus and trying out the sounds they can make. By about 4-6 months old, cooing develops into babbling, repetitive consonant-vowel combinations such as "ba-ba-ba" or "do-do-do-do - cooing and babbling is universal By around 8-10 months, infants begin to use gestures to communicate. They may lift their arms up to indicate they wish to be picked up, or point to an object they would like to have brought to them, or hold out an object to offer it to someone else, or wave bye-bye. Infants' first words usually are spoken a month or two before or after their first birthday Most infants can speak only a few words, at most, by the end of their first year, but they understand many more words than they can speak. In fact, at all ages, language comprehension (the words we understand) exceeds language production (the words we speak), but the difference is especially striking and notable during infancy. Even as early as 4 months old, infants can recognize their own name. By their first birthday, although infants can speak only a word or two, they understand about 50 words
Explain how attention and habituation change during infancy
In infants the study of attention has focused on habituation, which is the gradual decrease in attention to a stimulus after repeated presentations. For example, infants will look longer at a toy the first time it is presented than the fourth or fifth time. A complementary concept, dishabituation, is the revival of attention when a new stimulus is presented following several presentations of a previous stimulus. For example, if you show infants a picture of the same face several times in a row, then show a new face, they will dishabituate to the new face; that is, they will direct their attention to it for longer than they did to the "old" face. two other methods have been frequently used: heart rate and sucking rate. Heart rate declines when a new stimulus is presented and gradually rises as habituation takes place. Infants suck on a pacifier more frequently when a new stimulus is presented and gradually decline in their sucking rate with habituation. During the course of the first year of life, it takes less and less time for habituation to occur. When presented with a visual stimulus, neonates may take several minutes before they show signs of habituating (by changing their looking time, heart rate, or sucking rate).This developmental change appears to occur because infants become more efficient at perceiving and processing a stimulus. In the second half of the first year, infants' patterns of attention become increasingly social. They direct their attention not just to whatever sensations are most stimulating but to what the people around them are attending to, engaging in joint attention.
Compare how cultures vary in their stimulation of language development
In many cultures, people speak in a special way to infants, called infant-directed (ID) speech. In ID speech, the pitch of the voice becomes higher than in normal speech, and the intonation is exaggerated. Grammar is simplified, and words and phrases are more likely to be repeated than in normal speech. Topics of ID speech often pertain to objects ("Look at the birdie! See the birdie?") or emotional communication ("What a good girl! You ate your applesauce!").
Short lookers vs long lookers
Longitudinal studies have found that short-lookers in infancy tend to have higher IQ scores later in development than long-lookers do. In one study, short-lookers in infancy had higher IQs and higher educational achievement when they were followed up 20 years later, in emerging adulthood.
Explain the meaning of maturation, schemes, assimilation, and accommodation
Maturation- According to Piaget, the driving force behind development from one stage to the next is maturation, a biologically driven program of developmental change, where children are active agents Schemes- Piaget proposed that the child's construction of reality takes place through the use of schemes, which are cognitive structures for processing, organizing, and interpreting information. Mental representations of the world. For example, words such as chair and dog evoke cognitive structures that allow you to process, organize, and interpret information. That creature in the distance running full speed toward you on the sidewalk: Is it a dog? What kind of dog is it? Is it the friendly kind, or not? These questions may well form part of your scheme for dogs, and your answers to the questions will provide you with information to respond. The two processes involved in the use of schemes are assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation occurs when new information used to fit existing beliefs or schemes. is In contrast, Accommodation entails changing the scheme to adapt to the new information.
Outline the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID-III) and explain how habituation assessments are used to predict later intelligence.
Nancy Bayley produced the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID-III). The BSID-III can assess development from age 3 months to age 3½ years. There are three main scales: Cognitive Scale. This scale measures mental abilities such as attention and exploration. For example, at 6 months it assesses whether the baby looks at pictures in a book; at 23-25 months it assesses whether a child can match similar pictures. Language Scale. This scale measures use and understanding of language. For example, at 17-19 months it assesses whether the child can identify objects in a picture, and at 38-42 months it assesses whether the child can name four colors. Motor Scale. This scale measures fine and gross motor abilities, such as sitting alone for 30 seconds at 6 months, or hopping twice on one foot at 38-42 months. The Bayley scales produce a developmental quotient (DQ) as an overall measure of infants' developmental progress.
why do infants like ID speech?
One theory is that infants prefer it because it is more emotionally charged than other speech. Also, at a time when language is still new to them, ID speech helps infants unravel language's mysteries. The exaggeration and repetition of words gives infants cues to their meaning. By exaggerating the sounds used in making words, ID speech provides infants with information about the building blocks of speech they will use in the language of their culture. The exaggerations of ID speech also separate speech into specific words and phrases more clearly than normal speech does
Explain how short-term and long-term memory expand during infancy.
Short-term memory refers to the capacity to retain information for a brief time. One reflection of the development of short-term memory is infants' improvement in the object permanence task. Recall that object permanence is a test of short-term memory as well as a test of knowledge of the properties of objects Long-term memory, knowledge that is accumulated and retained over time, also improves notably over the course of the first year. From infancy onward, recognition memory comes easier to us than recall memory
Describe the sensorimotor stage and explain how object permanence develops over the course of the first year
The first 2 years of life Piaget termed the sensorimotor stage. Cognitive development in this stage involves learning how to coordinate the activities of the senses (such as watching an object as it moves across your field of vision) with motor activities (such as reaching out to grasp the object). During infancy, one major cognitive achievement is the advance in sensorimotor development from reflex behavior to intentional action. A second important cognitive advance in infancy is the initial understanding of object permanence. This is the awareness that objects (including people) continue to exist even when we are not in direct sensory or motor contact with them. Development begins in 4-8 months but It is only at 8-12 months that infants begin to show a developing awareness of object permanence. Now, when shown an interesting object that then disappears under a blanket, they will pick up the blanket to find it. According to Piaget, however, their grasp of object permanence at this age is still rudimentary. - Current research show that object permanence is learned from 4-7 months not 8-12 as Piaget had proposed.
The idea of cognitive stages
The idea of cognitive stages means that each person's cognitive abilities are organized into coherent mental structures; a person who thinks within a particular stage in one aspect of life should think within that stage in all other aspects of life as well, because all thinking is part of the same mental structure
information processing
a continuum including attention, processing , memory, and cognition. - information from our senses comes into our attentional awareness and it has to be processed and will either be filtered out if not important to our daily life and survival but will become a long term memory if important. at 2 months babies long term memory allows them to hold information for up to 1 week at 6 months babies long term memory allows them to hold information for up to 3 weeks
cognitive developmental approach
focuses on how cognitive abilities change with age in stage sequence of development, pioneered by Piaget and since taken up by other researchers Along with maturation, Piaget emphasized that cognitive development is driven by the child's efforts to understand and influence the surrounding environment. Children actively construct their understanding of the world, rather than being merely the passive recipients of environmental influences
A not B error
in Piaget's framework, a classic mistake made by infants in the sensorimotor stage, whereby babies approaching age 1 go back to the original hiding place to look for an object even though they have seen it get hidden in a second place. Piaget called this the A-not-B error. The infants were used to finding the object under blanket A, so they continued to look under blanket A, not blanket B, even after they had seen the object hidden under blanket B. To Piaget, this error indicated that the infants believed that their own action of looking under blanket A was what had caused the object to reappear. They did not understand that the object continued to exist irrespective of their actions, so they did not yet fully grasp object permanence.
Describe the underlying ideas of the information-processing approaches to cognitive functioning
information processing approaches view cognitive change as continuous, meaning gradual and steady. The focus is on how mental capabilities and processes gradually change with age; for example, how memory becomes swifter, more accurate, and more capacious over the course of childhood. The original model for information-processing approaches was the computer. Researchers tried to break human thinking into components in the same way the functions of a computer are separated into capacities for attention, processing, and memory. executive function—an ability to integrate attention and memory that rises steeply in early childhood
