EDU Chapter 5

cognitive development in infancy and toddlerhood

Piaget’s cognitive-development theory

infants and children are active in their own development by engaging with people and the world, adapting their thinking based on experiences, organizing what they learn to construct and refine their cognitive schemas.

cognitive schema

mental framework of concepts, ideas, and ways of interacting with the world, which help individuals categorize and interpret information. evolve through assimilation and accommodation.

assimilation

process by which new experiences are interpreted and integrated into preexisting schemas, individuals make sense of new information by fitting it within their current understanding.

accommodation

process by which schemas are modified or new schemas created in light of experience, individuals adjust their understanding when new information does not fit into existing schemas.

cognitive equilibrium

fleeting balance between assimilation and accommodation so that individuals are neither incorporating new information nor changing existing schemas: understanding represents the world and reality.

cognitive disequilibrium

mismatch between an individual’s schema and reality, sparking cognitive growth as the mismatch leads to confusion and discomfort, motivating children to modify their schemas so that their view of the world matches reality.

circular reaction

repetition of an accident action that produced a pleasurable response. infants ages one-four months repeat newly discovered events caused by their own motor activity, part of Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory.

secondary circular reaction

repetition of an action that produced an event that triggers a response in the external environment. infants ages 4-8 months orient patterns of repetition toward making interesting events occur in the infant’s environment.

tertiary circular reactions

repetition of an action to explore and experiment to see the results and learn about the world. infants ages 12-18 months engage in active and purposeful trial and error exploration to search for new discoveries, exploring concepts such as gravity.

object permanence

understanding that objects continue to exist outside of sight, signifying a capacity for mental representation and internal thought.

substages of sensorimotor reasoning

1. reflexive activity (0-1m)

2. primary circular reactions (1-4m)

3. secondary circular reactions (4-8m)

4. coordination of secondary schemas/intentional behavior (8-12m)

5. tertiary circular reactions (12-18m)

6. mental representation (18-24m)

violation-of-expectation task

task in which a stimulus appears to violate physical laws. assesses infants' understanding of object permanence. shown two events: the expected follows physical laws and the unexpected which does not. if the infant looks longer at the unexpected it suggests understanding of object principles.

A-not-B error

object permanence error in which an infant uncovers an object several times in one place (place A), and continues to search for the object in place A even after seeing the object moved to a new location, place B.

deferred imitation

repeating an act performed some time ago, imitating the behavior of an absent model, illustrating infant capacity for mental representation and memory.

core knowledge theory

framework that infants are born with several innate knowledge systems or core domains of thought that enable early rapid learning and adaptation.

information processing theory

framework of cognition as a set of interrelated components that permit people to process, notice, take in, manipulate, store, and retrieve information. the mind is composed of three mental stores: sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory.

sensory memory

first step in the information processing system in which stimuli are stored for a brief time in its original form to enable it to be processed, information fades quickly if not processed.

working memory

component of the information processing responsible for manipulating (comprehending), encoding (creating a memory), and retrieving (recalling) information. all conscious thoughts occur within working memory.

central executive

control mechanism of working memory that directs the flow of information and regulates cognitive activity such as attention, action, and problem-solving.

executive function

set of cognitive operations through the central executive that determines planning and goal setting, combines new and existing information in the working memory, manipulates information in order to understand it, make decisions, and solve problems.

long-term memory

component of the information processing system, an unlimited store that hold information indefinitely, until it is retrieved to be processed and manipulated in working memory.

recognition memory

ability to recognize a previously encountered stimulus. by three months of age infants can remember a visual stimulus for 24 hours and for several days or even weeks by the end of the first year of life.

categorization

adaptive mental process in which objects are grouped into conceptual categories, allowing for organized storage of information in memory, efficient retrieval of that information, and the capacity to respond with familiarity to new stimuli from a common class.

infant categorization

by four months infants form categories based on perceptual properties, similarities, and object appearance. seven to twelve months infants additionally form categories based on perceived function and behavior, such as food, animals, vehicles etc.

toddler categorization

twelve to thirty month old toddlers organize objects first at a global and more inclusive level (animals or vehicles) before less inclusive levels (dog or truck).

transfer deficit

video deficit: infants are less able to transfer or generalize what they see on a screen to their own behavior than what they learn through active interactions with adults, including imitation, language learning, and object retrieval.

BSID-III (Bayley Scales of Infant Development III)

standardized test for infants (1-42m) across three infant responses: motor, cognitive, and language, and two parent reports: emotional and adaptative behavior. used to assess neurological health/disorders and developmental trends.

information processing testing

assessed through infant visual reaction time, preference for novelty, and habituation tasks. indicates attention, memory, and processing speed and has been shown to better predict intelligence in childhood and adolescence.

cooing

repetition of deliberate vowel sounds, such as “ahhh,” and “ohhh,” that begins between 2 to 3 months of age.

babbling

repetition of syllables such as “ba-ba-ba-ba” that begins at about 6 months of age.

holophrase

one-word expression used to convey a complete thought, an infant’s first word, typically spoken at about 1 year of age.

fast mapping

strategy children use to learn the meaning of new words after hearing them used once or twice, linking the word to contextual cues and their own mental categories or previous knowledge. speech lags behind word comprehension.

vocabulary spurt

period of rapid vocabulary learning that occurs from about 16 to 24 months of age also known as naming explosion.

underextension

vocabulary error, infant applies a word too narrowly to a single object rather than the more appropriate, wider class of objects ("dog" only for their pet dog and not for other dogs).

overextension

vocabulary error, infant applies a word too broadly to a wider class of objects than appropriate (“cow” for all farm animals).

telegraphic speech

two-word utterances produced by toddlers that communicate only the essential words, beginning around 21 months of age.

syntax

between 20 to 30 months of age children begin to follow the rules for forming sentence, using plurals, past tense, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions.

language acquisition device (LAD)

aspect of nativist theory proposing an innate facilitator of language that allows infants to efficiently analyze everyday speech and determine its rules, regardless of their native language, upholding universal grammar.

nativist theory of language acquisition

proposes that language use comprises behavior that is too complex to be learned so early and quickly via conditioning alone. infants are biologically equipped with language acquisition devices.

broca’s area

region in the brain that controls the ability to use language for expression, damage to the area inhibits fluent speech.

wernicke’s area

region in the brain that is responsible for language compression, damage to the area impairs the ability to understand other’s speech and the ability to speak coherently.

expansion

adult responses to children’s speech that elaborate on and enrich its complexity, including recasting/repeating a child’s sentence in a new grammatical form, help the child acquire grammatical rules.

language interactionist approach

infants possess biological dispositions and information processing capacities enabling them analyze speech. lang acquisition occurs in a social context, influenced by parents, context, and drive to communicate. language is learned through both nature and nurture.