Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

Piaget's Schemes

• Psychological structures that are organized ways of making sense of experience.
• Schemes change with age:
  • First schemes are sensorimotor action patterns.
  • Later schemes are deliberate and creative, showing thinking before acting.
• Schemes change through adaptation and organization.

Building Schemes

• Adaptation: Building schemes through direct interaction with the environment.
  • Assimilation: Using current schemes to interpret the world.
  • Accommodation: Creating new schemes and adjusting old ones to better fit the environment.

Using Assimilation and Accommodation

• Cognitive equilibrium: A steady, comfortable state where children assimilate more than they accommodate.
• Cognitive disequilibrium: A state of discomfort and rapid cognitive change where children shift from assimilation to accommodation.

Changing Schemes Through Organization

• Organization: An internal process of linking schemes into an interconnected cognitive system.
• Schemes reach equilibrium when they become part of a broad network of structures that can be jointly applied to the surrounding world.

Sensorimotor Stage

• Occurs from birth to age 2.
• Involves building schemes through sensory and motor exploration.
• Circular reaction:
  • Stumbling onto a new experience.
  • Repetition of chance behaviors forms them into schemes.
  • Intentional behavior combines schemes into more complex actions.

Sensorimotor Substages

• Reflexive schemes (birth-1 month): Newborn reflexes.
• Primary circular reactions (1-4 months): Simple motor habits centered around own body.
• Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months): Repetition of interesting effects, imitation of familiar behaviors.
• Coordination of secondary circular reactions (8-12 months): Intentional, goal-directed behavior; beginning of object permanence.
• Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months): Exploration of object properties through novel actions.
• Mental representation (18 months-2 years): Internal depictions of objects and events; advanced object permanence (invisible displacement).

Object Permanence

• Understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight, as revealed by retrieval of hidden objects.
• Present within first few months of life, as evidenced by violation-of-expectation tasks.
• Mastery is gradual and becomes more complex with age.
  • Awareness not yet complete: A-not-B search error.
  • Full understanding revealed by problems involving invisible displacement.

Mental Representation

• Internal depictions that the mind can manipulate.
  • Images: Mental pictures of objects, people, spaces.
  • Concepts: Categories of similar objects or events.
• Permits:
  • Advanced object permanence.
  • Deferred/inferred imitation.
  • Make-believe play.
  • Problem-solving.
  • Symbolic understanding.

Deferred and Inferred Imitation

• Deferred imitation:
  • Ability to remember and copy past behavior of a model who is no longer present.
  • Enriches toddlers' range of sensorimotor schemes.
• Inferred imitation:
  • Requires inferring others' intentions.
  • More likely to imitate purposeful rather than accidental behaviors.

Problem Solving

• Infants employ:
  • Intentional means-end action sequences (7-8 months).
  • Tools to manipulate objects (7-8 months).
  • Analogy (10-12 months).
• By the end of the first year, infants have some ability to:
  • Move beyond trial-and-error experimentation.
  • Represent a solution mentally and use it in new contexts.

Symbolic Understanding

• Displaced reference: Realization that words can cue mental images of things not present.
  • Emerges around the first birthday.
  • Expands as memory and vocabulary improve.
  • Facilitates learning and communication.

Evaluation of Sensorimotor Stage

• Capacities that develop when Piaget suggested:
  • Anticipation of events
  • Hidden object search
  • A-not-B object search
  • Varying of sensorimotor schemes
  • Make-believe play
• Capacities that develop earlier than Piaget suggested:
  • Symbolic understanding of pictures
  • Secondary circular reaction
  • Understanding of object properties
  • First signs of object permanence
  • Deferred imitation
  • Problem-solving by analogy
  • Displaced reference of words

Social Issues: Education

Baby Learning from TV and Video: The Video Deficit Effect

• Video deficit effect: Poorer performance after viewing a video than a live demonstration.
  • Information perceived as less relevant.
  • Lack of eye contact, direct conversation, and shared focus.
• More effective videos are interactive, with verbal cues, familiar characters, and close-ups.
• The effect declines around age 2½.
• Avoid heavy viewing early on

Core Knowledge Perspective

• Infants are born with innate knowledge systems, or core domains of thought.
  • Permit a quick grasp of new information.
  • Support rapid early development.
• Experience is essential to extend core knowledge.
• Suggested domains of core knowledge: physical, linguistic, psychological, numerical.

Broad Disagreement with Piaget

• Many cognitive changes of infancy are gradual and continuous rather than abrupt and stagelike.
• Various aspects of infant cognition change unevenly due to varying experiences with different tasks.
• Findings serve as basis for information processing.

Information Processing

• Information is held for processing in three areas:
  • Sensory register: Briefly stores sights and sounds.
  • Short-term memory store:
    • Attended-to information is retained briefly and "worked" on.
    • Working memory: Number of items that can be briefly held in mind while also monitoring or manipulating them.
  • Long-term memory: Permanent knowledge base.

Managing the Cognitive System's Activities

• Central executive:
  • Directs flow of information.
  • Conscious part of mind.
  • Coordinates incoming information with existing information.
  • Selects, applies, and monitors strategies that aid memory storage, comprehension, reasoning, and problem-solving.
• Automatic processes:
  • Well-learned, require no space in working memory.
  • Can be done while focusing on other information.

Cognitive System Improvements During Childhood and Adolescence

• Greater working-memory capacity.
• Increased speed for working on information.
• Gains in executive function: Mental operations and strategies for cognitively challenging situations.
  • Controlling attention.
  • Coordinating information in working memory.
  • Planning.

Cognitive Gains in Infancy and Toddlerhood

• Attention:
  • Improved efficiency, ability to shift focus.
  • Early attraction to novelty gives way to sustained attention.
• Memory:
  • Longer retention intervals.
  • Recognition and recall improve steadily with age.
  • Long-term recall advances as the brain's neural circuits develop.

Biology and Environment

Infantile Amnesia

• Inability to recall events that happened prior to age 2 or 3.
• Possible causes:
  • The brain's hippocampus integrating new neurons.
  • Nonverbal nature of early memory processing.
  • Lack of clear self-image.

Categorization

• Grouping similar objects and events reduces the large amount of new information encountered.
• Infants:
  • Young infants sort based on physical properties.
  • Older infants expand in variety of features.
• Toddlers:
  • Categorize flexibly, considering multiple groupings.
  • Shift from perceptual to conceptual categorization.
• Language variations lead to cultural differences.

Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory

• Social and cultural contexts affect how a child's cognitive world is structured.
• Complex mental activities develop through joint activities with more mature individuals of their society.
• Zone of proximal development: Tasks too difficult for a child to do alone but possible with the help of a skilled partner.
• Scaffolding: Promotes learning at all ages.

Cultural Influences

Social Origins of Make-Believe Play

• Greatly extends toddlers' cognitive and social skills.
• Taught and scaffolded under the guidance of experts:
  • Adults or older siblings; cultures vary.
  • Toddlers must be encouraged to participate.
  • Rich cues help distinguish pretend from real acts.
• When adults participate, toddlers' make-believe play is more complex and teaches cultural values.

Summary of Cognitive Development Influences

• Piaget: Infants and toddlers create new schemes by acting on the physical world.
• Information processing: Certain skills become better developed as children represent their experiences more efficiently and meaningfully.
• Vygotsky: Many aspects of cognitive development are socially mediated.

Infant and Toddler Intelligence Tests

• Measure individual variations in development.
• Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development:
  • Current edition: Bayley-III.
  • Subtests: Cognitive, Language, and Motor Scales.
  • Parental report: Social-Emotional and Adaptive Behavior Scales.
• Largely used for screening.

Computing Intelligence Test Scores

• Intelligence quotient (IQ): Comparison with typical performance for age.
  • Standardization: Based on results from a large sample.
  • Normal distribution: Bell-shaped curve.
• Infant tests do not assess the same aspects of intelligence.
  • Often test perceptual and motor responses.
  • Largely used to screen for developmental problems.
  • Labeled developmental quotient (DQ) instead of IQ.

Home Life Assessment

• Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) assesses:
  • Organization and safety of the physical environment.
  • Provision of appropriate play materials.
  • Parental emotional and verbal responsiveness.
  • Parental acceptance of the child.
  • Parental involvement with the child.
  • Opportunities for variety in daily stimulation.
• Linked to toddlers' mental test performance.

Developmentally Appropriate Infant and Toddler Child Care

• Characteristics include:
  • Physical setting.
  • Toys and equipment.
  • Caregiver-child ratio.
  • Daily activities.
  • Interactions among adults and children.
  • Caregiver qualifications.
  • Relationships with parents.
  • Licensing and accreditation.

Early Intervention for At-Risk Infants and Toddlers

• Persistent poverty causes declines in test scores.
  • Stressful home environments increase the likelihood children will remain poor as adults.
• Interventions to break the cycle of poverty:
  • Center-based child care and social services.
  • Home-based training for parents by skilled adults.
  • Participating children score higher on mental tests and maintain benefits.
• Early Head Start: federal program with 1,000 sites.

Language Development Milestones

• Second half of the first year: Distinguishes language sounds, segments speech into word and phrase units.
• 12 months: Says first word.
• 1½-2 years: Combines two words.
• 3½ years: Forms more complex sentences.
• Age 6: Understands meaning of about 14,000 words.

Theories of Language Development

• Nativist (Chomsky):
  • Language Acquisition Device: Innate system containing universal grammar.
  • Infants biologically prepared to learn language.
• Interactionist:
  • Interactions between inner capacities and environmental influences.
  • Information-processing view.
  • Social-interactionist view.

Getting Ready to Talk

• First speech sounds:
  • Cooing (2 months).
  • Babbling (6 months).
• Becoming a communicator:
  • Joint attention of child and caregiver (3-4 months).
  • Give-and-take: mutual imitation of sounds (3 months).
  • Preverbal gestures (end of first year).

Starting to Talk

• Around age 1, acquire one to three new words per week, which gradually accelerates
• First words:
  • Underextension: Applying newly learned word too narrowly.
  • Overextension: Applying word too broadly.
• Two-word utterances:
  • Telegraphic speech.
  • High-content word pairings.
  • Copying adult gradually shifts to using grammatical rules.

Individual and Cultural Differences

• First word: from 8 to 18 months.
• Influential factors:
  • Gender: girls are slightly ahead of boys.
  • Temperament.
  • Caregiver-child conversation, reading.
• Vocabulary growth
• Language style:
  • Referential.
  • Expressive.

Infant-Directed Speech (IDS)

• Consists of:
  • Short sentences.
  • High-pitched, exaggerated expression.
  • Clear pronunciation.
  • Distinct pauses between speech segments.
  • Clear gestures to support verbal meaning.
  • Repetition of new words in many contexts.
• IDS and parent-child conversation create a zone of proximal development for language acquisition.

Supporting Early Language Learning

• With infants:
  • Respond to coos and babbles
  • Establish joint attention
  • Use infant-directed speech
  • Play social games
• With toddlers:
  • Engage in joint make-believe
  • Engage in frequent conversations
  • Read often and talk about books