Chapter 6:

Cognitive Development in

Infancy

McGraw-Hill © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Piaget’s Theoryof Infant

Development

• Piaget proposed that

– Physical bodies can adapt to the world

– Humans build mental structures to aid adaptation

– Humans interactive with their environment

– Children think differently at various points in their development

• Schemes are patterns of actions and

thoughts that organize knowledge.

– Actions are behavioral schemes. Their

development characterizes infancy, such as that

of simple actions and reflexes.

– Thoughts are cognitive activities or mental

schemes, which develop in childhood, such as

classifying objects by size, color, or shape.

• Assimilation incorporates new information into existing knowledge.

• Accommodation adjusts existing knowledge to fit new information.

• Organization is Piaget’s concept of grouping isolated behaviors into a higher-order system

– The child becomes skilled at using tools over time, one at a time until experiences become skills

• Equilibration:

– Piaget’s mechanism to explain how children shift from one stage of thought to another

– It is lost when children have cognitive conflicts

– Achieved when assimilation and accommodation are used together to resolve a conflict

• Piaget’s 6 substages of the sensorimotor stage of infant development last from birth to 2 years of age

Figure 6.1

Piaget’s 6 Substages of Sensorimotor Development

Substage Age DescriptionSimple reflexes birth–1

monthCoordinates sensations, reflexes

First habits, primary circular reactions

1–4 months Coordination of sensations, habits, and primary circular reactions; body is still main focus of infant

Secondary circular reactions

4–8 months Infant becomes more object-oriented, repeats interesting/pleasurable acts

Coordination of secondary circular reactions

8–12 months

Coordination of vision and touch, eye–hand coordination, intentional acts, coordination of schemes

Tertiary circular reactions, novelty, & curiosity

12–18 months

Infants intrigued by properties of, and things done with, objects; experiments with new behaviors

Internalization of schemes

18–24 months

Infant develops ability to use primitive symbols, forms lasting mental images

• At the end of sensorimotor stage:

– Object permanence is understood

– Infant understands a differentiation between self and world

• At around 5.5 and 6.5 months of age, an infant can understand simple causal factors

• Piaget’s work is criticized as

– Being too vague

– Underestimating infant ability

– Being based mostly on his children’s infancy

Learning

and Remembering

• Conditioning:

– Consequences following a behavior affects

whether behavior is repeated

– Rovee-Collier showed infants have memory

of conditioned experiences

• Attention:

– Infants can scan and fixate on objects

– 4-month-olds show selective attention

– Infant attention governed by novelty and

habituation, respond to changed stimuli

• Meltzoff: imitation abilities are biological

because infants can imitate facial

expressions within a few days after birth

• Piaget: deferred imitation occurs at about

18 months but Meltzoff showed that it

occurred at 9 months

• Memory: retention of information over time– Implicit memory is performed automatically

without conscious recollection

– Explicit memory is conscious memory of facts and experiences; occurs in infants after 6 months

• Infantile or childhood amnesia:– Inability to recall memories of events that

occurred before 3 years of age

– May be caused by immaturity of prefrontal lobes of the brain

Individual Differences in Intelligence

• Individual differences in infant cognitive development are important:– Development testing emphasizes “norms”

– Infants assessed mostly based on assessment scales and intelligence tests

– Identifying an infant’s development as slow, normal, or advanced has advantages:

• If slow – provide more enrichment

• If advanced – provide more stimulating toys

• Types of infant cognitive assessment:

– Gesell’s developmental quotient (DQ) has 4

categories of behavior: motor, language,

adaptive, and personal–social

– Bayley Scales of Infant Development

have three components to predict later

development: mental scale, motor scale,

and infant behavior profile

– Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence focuses on infant’s ability to process information

• Estimates a baby’s intelligence by comparing amount of time spent looking at an object with amount of time spent looking at familiar object

• Infant intelligence tests are valuable in assessing effects of maternal deprivation and environmental stimulation; but not highly correlated with later childhood IQ scores

LanguageDevelopment

• Wild or feral children are raised in isolation and

unable to recapture normal language development

despite intensive intervention later

– For example:

• Victor, Wild Boy of Aveyron

• Genie: 13-year-old found in 1970 in Los Angeles

– Both cases raise questions about biological and

environmental determinants of language

• Language is a system of words, symbols, and

gestures that create shared communication that

transcends time (future, present, and past)

• Language’s five systems of rules:– Phonology: sound system of language, with

phoneme being smallest unit of sound with meaning

– Morphology: units of meaning in word formation, with morpheme being the smallest unit of meaning

– Syntax: how words are combined

– Semantics: the meanings of sentences and words

– Pragmatics: use of appropriate language in different contexts

• Language develops in infants throughout the

world along a similar path and sequence

– Infant’s ability to recognize native

language, for English speakers this

includes distinguishing “r” from “t”

• On average, a child

– Understands about 50 words at age 13 months

– Speaks first word at 10–15 months of age

– Can speak about 50 words at 18 months of age

9

15

21

24

27

Figure 6.9

Variation in Language Milestones

12

18

First words Vocabulary spurt

Language Milestone

Age in months

– Average 2-year-old can speak about 200 words

– Vocabulary spurt begins at approximately 18 months of age

• Two-word utterances occur at about

18–24 months

• Overextension and underextension of

words are common

• Telegraphic speech is use of short and

precise words

Birth Crying

1 to 2 months

Cooing begins

6 months Babbling begins8 to 12 months

Use of gestures (showing and pointing); comprehension of words appears

10–15 months

First word spoken

18 months Vocabulary spurts starts18 to 24 months

Use of two-word utterances; rapid expansion of understanding of words

Figure 6.10

Language MilestonesAge

Some Language Milestones in Infancy

• There is evidence that – Language has a biological basis

– Everyone “knows” its rules and has ability to create infinite numbers of words and sentences

• Specific regions of the brain are predisposed to be used for language– Broca’s Area

– Wernicke’s Area

Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area

Figure 6.11

Broca’s Area

Wernicke’s Area

• Chomsky: humans are prewired for language

– Chomsky’s language acquisition device (LAD) is a

theoretical construct only

• Behaviorists claim language is a complex learned skill

acquired through responses and reinforcements

• Studies found link between size of child’s vocabulary

and mother’s talkativeness

• Young children’s vocabularies are linked to family

socioeconomic status

14 16 18 20 22 24 2612

Infant’s age (months)

0

400

600

800

200

Infa

nt’

s vo

cab

ula

ry s

ize

(wor

ds)

Figure 6.12

Level of Maternal Speech and Infant Vocabulary

Mother’s level of speech

High

Medium

Low

Figure 6.12 (a)

Language Input in Professional and Welfare Families, and Young

Children’s Vocabulary Development

18 22 26 30 34 3810

Age of children (months)

800

400Parent utterances to child per hour

600

200

014

Professional

Welfare

18 22 26 30 34 3810

Age of children (months)

800

400Children’s cumulative vocabulary (words)

Figure 6.12 (b)

600

200

1200

1000

014

Welfare

Professional

Language Input in Professional and Welfare Families, and Young

Children’s Vocabulary Development

• Three strategies to enhance child’s acquisition of language other than child-directed speech

– Recasting: rephrasing something the child has said

– Expanding state: repeating what the child has said but in correct structure

– Labeling: identifying the names of objects

• Children vary in their ability to acquire language

The End