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Kathleen Stassen Berger
Prepared by Madeleine Lacefield
Tattoon, M.A.
1
Part II
The First Two Years: Cognitive Development
Chapter Six
Sensorimotor Intelligence
Information Processing
Language: What Develops in the
First Two Years?
2
The First Two Years: Cognitive Development
• Infant cognition
– cognition = “thinking”
• “thinking” in a very broad sense includes…
– language
– learning
– memory
– intelligence
3
The First Two Years: Cognitive Development
• Infants organize by the end of the first year…– sensations and perceptions
– sequence and direction
– the familiar and the strange
– objects and people
– events and experiences
– permanence and transiency
– cause and effect
4
Sensorimotor Intelligence
• Remember…
–Piaget’s first stage (chapter 2)
• infants learn through senses and
motor actions
5
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Piaget and Research Methods
• Piaget’s sensorimotor intelligence actually occurs earlier for most infants than Piaget predicted.– Habituation, the process of getting used to (i.e., bored with)
a stimulus after repeated exposure. An infant can show this by looking away.
– If a new object appears and the infant reacts (change in heart rate, sucking), it is assumed they recognize the object as something different.
• Summing up…– In six stages of sensorimotor, Piaget discovered, described,
and then celebrated active infant learning.
7
Information Processing Theory
• “a perspective that compares human
thinking processes, by analogy, to
computer analysis of data, including
sensory input, connections, stored
memories, and output”
8
Information Processing Theory
• With the aid of technology this theory has found some impressive intellectual capacities in the infant
• Intellectual capacities, concepts, and categories seem to develop in the infant brain by 6 months
• Perspective helps tie together various aspects of infant cognition: affordance and memory.
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Information Processing Theory
• affordance
– “…an opportunity for perception and interaction that is offered by a person, place, or object in the environment”
• afford = offer
• perception is the mental processing of information that arrives at the brain from the sensory organs
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Information Processing Theory
• affordance– One puzzle of development is that two
people can have discrepant perceptions of the same situation, not only interpreting it differently but actually observing it differently• depending on:
– past experiences
– current developmental level
– sensory awareness of opportunities
– immediate needs and motivation
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Information Processing Theory
• Research on Early Affordance
– Information processing improves over the
first year as infants become quicker to
remember
– Experiences affect which affordances are
perceived…
12
Information Processing Theory
• Sudden Drops
– …the visual cliff, an apparatus to
measure depth perception
– infants become interested in “crossing”
the cliff about 8 months (having had
experience falling)
– the cliff “affords” danger for older infants
13
Information Processing Theory
• Movement and People
– infants have:
• dynamic perception
– primed to focus on movement and change
• a people preference
– a universal principle of infant perception,
consisting of an innate attraction to other
humans, which is evident in visual, auditory,
tactile, and other preferences
14
Information Processing Theory
• Memory
– Developmentalists now agree that even very young infants can remember under the following circumstances:
• experimental conditions are similar to “real life”
• motivation is high
• special measures are taken to aid memory retrieval
15
Information Processing Theory
• Reminders and Repetition
– reminder sessions
• a perceptual experience that is
intended to help a person recollect an
idea, a thing, or an experience, without
testing whether the person remembers
it at the moment
16
Information Processing Theory
• A Little Older, a Little More Memory
– after about 6 months infants can retain
information for longer periods of time…
with less training or reminding
– by the middle of the 2nd year toddlers
can remember and reenact more
complex sequences
17
Information Processing Theory
• Aspects of Memory
– Memory is not one “thing”
• brain-imaging techniques reveal many
distinct brain regions devoted to
particular aspects of memory
– implicit memory is memory for routines
and memories that remain hidden until
particular stimulus bring them to mind
– explicit memory is memory that can be
recalled on demand
18
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• “The acquisition of language,… its
idiomatic phases, grammar rules,
and exceptions, is the most
impressive intellectual achievement
of the young child.”
19
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• The Universal Sequence
– Around the world children follow the
same sequence of early language
development
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21
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Listening and Responding
• infants begin learning language before
birth…
• infants prefer speech over other sounds
– child-directed speech
• the high-pitched, simplified, and
repetitive way adults speak to infants
22
• Babbling
– repeating certain syllables (e.g., da-da-
da).
• all babies babble, even deaf babies
(although later and less frequently).
• babbling is a way to communicate.
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
23
• First Words
– usually around 1 year the average baby speaks, or signs a few words
• they are often familiar nouns
– by 13 months spoken language increases very gradually
– 6 to 15 month-olds learn meaning rapidly and comprehend about 10 times as many words as they speak
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
24
• The Naming Explosion
– a sudden increase in an infant’s vocabulary, especially in the number of nouns begins at about 18 months
– vocabulary reaches about 50 expressed words at a rate of 50 to 100 per month, 21 month-olds saying twice as many as 18 month-olds
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
25
• Cultural Differences
– the ratio of nouns to verbs and adjectives show cultural influences.
– one explanation is the language itself (i.e. English, Chinese differ)
– another explanation is social context (toys and objects)
– every language has some concepts encoded in adult speech
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
26
• Sentences
– “The first words soon take on nuances
of tone, loudness, and cadence that are
precursors of the first grammar,
because a single word can convey
many messages by the way it is
spoken.”
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
27
• Sentences“Dada!” “Dada?” and “Dada.”
– each is a holophrase, a single word that expresses a complete, meaningful thought.
– intonations varying in tone and pitch is extensive in babbling and again in holophrases at about 18 months
– grammar--all the methods that languages use to communicate meaning. Word order, prefixes, intonation, verb forms,… are all aspects of grammar.
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
28
• Theories of Language Learning
• 2 year olds worldwide use language well
• bilingual children keep two languages
separate and speak whatever language a
listen understands
– each theory of language acquisition has
implications for parents and educators…all
want children to speak fluently…without
instruction
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
29
• Theories of Language Learning
–There are 3 theories of how infants
learn language:
• they are taught (view of B. F. Skinner)
• they teach themselves (view of Noam
Chomsky)
• social impulses foster learning
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
30
• Theory One: Infants Need to Be Taught
– 50 years ago the dominant learning theory in North America was behaviorism
– B. F. Skinner (1957) noticed that spontaneous babbling is usually reinforced… a grinning mother appears, repeating, praising, giving attention to the infant
– Parents are expert teachers, other caregivers help
– Frequent repetitions instructive when linked to daily life
– Well-taught infants become well-spoken children
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
31
• Theory Two: Infants Teach Themselves
– a contrary theory is that language learning is
innate--adults need not teach it
– Norm Chomsky (1968,1980) felt that
language is too complex to be mastered
merely through step-by-step conditioning
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
32
• Theory Two: Infants Teach Themselves
– universal grammar--all young children
master basic language at about the same
age
– Language acquisition device (LAD)
• a term used for a hypothesized mental structure
that enables humans to learn language, including
the basic aspects of grammar, vocabulary and
intonation
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
33
• Theory Three: Social Impulses Foster Infant
Language
– a third theory called social-pragmatic perceives the
crucial starting point to be neither vocabulary
reinforcement (behaviorism) nor innate connection
(epigenetic), but rather the social reason for
language; communication
– Infants communicate in every way they can because
humans are social beings and depend on one
another for survival and joy
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
34
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
35
• A Hybrid Theory
– the integration of all three perspectives…
notably in a monograph based on 12
experiments designed by 8 researchers
– their model an emergentist coalition…
combing valid aspects of several theories
about the emergence of language during
infancy
Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?