Lecture 5 - Cognitive Development in Infancy

Cognitive changes

Consistent across environments — Babies require caretakers who respond to all their needs and who don’t focus on a specific developmental outcome, in order to reach their intellectual potential

Sensorimotor Stage

(Piaget)

Development and refinement of sensorimotor intelligence

Sensorimotor intelligence = use information from their senses and motor actions to learn about the world

• First stage of cognitive development (birth – 2 years)

• Six substages, each a significant advancement (see table)

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Object permanence

Understanding that objects exist even when you are unable to see them. Children acquire this understanding gradually during the sensorimotor period

• Begins around substage 3 (6-8 months)

• Substage 3: will look over edge for dropped things & search for partially-hidden objects

• Substage 4: will look completely covered objects

Imitation

Within first few months, infants can imitate actions they see themselves make.

• Cannot imitate other people’s facial expressions until 8-12 months – must combine visual and kinesthetic cues

• Cannot imitate actions not already in repertoire until 1 year

• Cannot imitate action at later time until 18-24 months

Object concept

infant’s understanding of the nature of objects and how they behave

• Research on object permanence within this context

• Postulate that babies are born with built-in assumptions that guide their interactions with objects

  • Connected surface principle: when two surfaced are connected, they belong to the same object

Violation-of-expectancy

Researchers move an object in one way after habituating an infant to it moving another way. In response, infants show renewed interest suggesting greater development than Piaget thought

Object individuation

Process through which an infant differentiates and recognizes distinct objects based on their mental images of objects in the environment

Object individuation AND violation-of-expectancy

Object individuation investigated using violation-of-expectancy

• Infants use three categories to individuate objects:

  • Spatiotemporal information – location and motion of objects (4 months)

  • Property information – perceptual qualities (10 months)

  • Kinds of objects – distinct types of objects (9-12 months)

Learning → Categorization

1. Begins from birth

2. Environmental forces change their behaviours

3. _______: organization of interactions with these forces

Conditioning and modelling

Learning emotional responses through classical conditioning may begin as early as first week of life

Newborns can also learn through operant conditioning.

• Presence in preterm newborns indicates the wiring exists before birth

Infants can learn by watching models, although this skill is stronger among older infants

• Research shows infants are more interested in observing adults engage with objects the infants have previously engaged with

Schematic learning

_________________- organization of experiences into expectations (“schemas”), enabling infants to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar stimuli

• Categories:

  • Infants use categories to process information by 7 months old

  • 12-month-olds can understand superordinate and basic-level categories

  • Understanding of nesting begins around 2 years; not fully developed until 5 years

  • Related to language development and using words as category labels

Memory

Infant memory has unique characteristics

• Newborns can remember auditory stimuli they were exposed to while sleeping

Kicking/mobile study evidences infant ability to remember specific objects and their actions in relation to the objects for as long as two week

• Supports Piaget’s view that infants make systematic improvements in their ability to remember over their first months

  • 3-month-olds can also form associations between objects that appear together in their physical environment – however, memories are tied to the specific context of the original experience

    • Infants are more cognitively advanced than Piaget had postulated

Intelligence

(Measuring intelligence)

Ability to take in information and use it to adapt to the environment

• Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development-3

• Habituation

Overall limitation: intelligence is somewhat malleable so early testing may not be accurate

Bayley Scales

(Measuring intelligence)

___________ of Infant and Toddler Development-3: Measures cognitive, language, and motor development; behaviour; and socialemotional skills

• Strength: good predictor of intelligence test scores in preschool

• Limitation: underestimates severity of impairment in children

Habituation

(Measuring intelligence)

______________ - How quickly infant habituates could inform underlying cognitive and perceptual efficiency

• _______ in infancy predicts later intelligence test scores

• Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence

  • May be alternative for children who cannot complete conventional tests like the Bayley Scale

Language acquisition

Does not begin with first words — cross-cultural pattern of language development identified… early vocalizations contribute to language development and are part of the process

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Behaviourist

(Language acquisition → theoretical perspectives)

(Skinner): parental reinforcement of word-like sounds and correct grammar

Nativist

(Language acquisition → theoretical perspectives)

(Chomsky): Innate language acquisition device guides language comprehension and production

Interactionist

(Language acquisition → theoretical perspectives)

(Bowerman, Tomasello, Vygotsky, Werker): Language development is a subprocess of neurocognitive development and that social interactions are critical

Infant-directed speech (IDS)

(Language acquisition)

A pattern of speech characterized by high pitch, repetition, and recasting/expansion, used when speaking to infants

• Recasting/expansion

• Influences language development, even when in a different language

  • Infants prefer IDS and can distinguish between it and adult-directed speech

• Importance for grammar development: attraction to tone captures attention and then simplicity and repetitiveness helps identify repeating grammatical forms

Recasting/expansion

(Language acquisition → IDS)

Repetition of child’s sentence in slightly longer and more grammatically correct forms

Other environmental influences

(Language acquisition)

Children whose parents engage them in a variety of language experiences talk sooner, develop larger vocabularies, learn to read more easily, and use more complex sentences

• Activities: talking to them, reading to them, and using a wide range of words in speech

  • Early language experiences associated with better school-aged developmental outcomes – regardless of socioeconomic status

Cultural considerations

(Language acquisition)

Distinction between language differences and language delays

• Indigenous children in Canada score lower on assessments of language skills development

  • These assessments do not factor in non-verbal communication and place less emphasis on comprehension

    • These factors are emphasized more in Indigenous cultures

Sounds + gestures

(Language acquisition)

• 1-2 months: start to make laughing and cooing (i.e., repetitive) vowel sounds

• 4 months: voice pitch predictive of later-childhood pitch

• 6-7 months: Babbling (repetitive vocalizing of consonant-vowel combinations)

  • Favours right side of mouth

  • “Learning the tune before the words”

  • Restricts to set of sounds they are listening to over time

• 9-10months: Gestural language

  • Use gestures to ask for things • Gestural games (e.g., patty cake)

Word recognition

(Language acquisition)

• 6 months: store individual words in memory

• 9-10 months: receptive language develops; understand 20-30 words

• 13 months: understand almost 100 words

  • Use syllable stress as a cue to identify single words

Expressive language

(Language acquisition → word recognition → first words)

___________ - ability to produce meaningful words, including in response to something understood

• 12-13 months: Easy to miss first word – defined as any sound or set of sounds used consistently to refer to a thing, action or quality

• Early word learning is very slow and requires numerous repetitions for each word

  • May learn as few as 30 words in first six months of expressive language

  • Learning restricted to set of specific contexts – children do not yet grasp that words are symbolic (i.e., refer to objects or events)

• Holophrases (12-18mo)

• Naming explosion (16-24mo)

Holophrases

(Language acquisition → word recognition → first words)

_______________ - Single words often combined with a gesture to create two-word meanings. Meaning conveyed through word + gesture

• Frequent among children aged 12-to-18-months

Naming explosion

(Language acquisition → word recognition → first words)

_____________ - Rapid addition of new words. Few repetitions needed to learn — generalize new words to many situations

• 16-24 months

• ~50 words at 16 months vs. ~320 at 24 months

• Most words are names for things or people; action words learned later

First sentences

(Language acquisition → word recognition)

Appear when children have learned 100-200 words (~18-24 months)

• Short (2-3 words) & simple

• Nouns and verbs included; inflections (i.e., grammatical markers) missing

• Follow rules, but not adult ones – focus on certain types of words and put them together in specific orders

  • Convey multiple meanings with same simple sentences – context is important for understanding

Individual differences

(Language acquisition → word recognition)

Most children who talk late eventually catch up

• Often biological basis for delayed speech:

  • More common among males

  • More common when there is a family history

Cross-cultural language development

(Language acquisition → word recognition)

General pattern the same — specific word order in early sentences differs based on common patterns in the language

• With some languages, there is no two-word sentence stage or inflections