3. Cognitive Development – Jean Piaget
• Piaget hypothesized that cognitive processes develop in an orderly
sequence of stages (4).
• Stage 1: Sensorimotor
• Stage 2: Preoperational
• Stage 3: Concrete operational
• Stage 4: Formal operational
4.
5. Piaget Basics
• Schemes
-Children’s concepts of the world
• Cognitive development
-Way of perceiving and mentally representing the world
• Assimilation
-Absorbing new events into existing schemes
• Accommodation
-Modifying existing schemes when assimilation does not allow
the child to make sense of novel events
6. Sensorimotor Stage
• Refers to 0-2 years of cognitive development
• First substage (1st month after birth)
-Dominated by assimilation of sources of stimulation
into inborn reflexes such as grasping, visual tracking.
• Second substage (1 to 4 months)
P
10. Sensorimotor Stage (cont’d)
• Sixth substage (18 to 24 months)
-Transition between sensorimotor development and the
development of symbolic thought
-External exploration replaced by mental exploration
-Use imitation to symbolize or stand for a plan of action
• Object permanence
-Recognition that an object or person continues to exist when
out of sight
-Advances in the development of the object concept by about
the sixth month
12. Evaluation of Piaget
Confirmation
• Remains a comprehensive model of infant cognition
• Many of his own observations of his own infants have
been confirmed by others.
• Pattern and sequence of events he described have
been observed among American, European, African,
and Asian infants
14. Piaget Criticisms
– Cognitive development not as tied to discrete stages
– Emphasis on maturation with exclusion of adult and
peer influences on cognitive development
– Underestimation of infants’ competence
• Infants display object permanence earlier than Piaget
believed.
• Infants display deferred imitation as early as 9 months and
not 18 months as Piaget believed.
17. Information Processing
Memory
• Memory improves between 2 and 6 months of age.
• Older infants more capable of encoding than younger
ones
• Infant memory can be improved if infants receive a
reminder.
Deferred Imitation
-Imitation of actions after a time delay occurs as early as 6
months
-Imitation of neonates likely reflexive
22. Mirror Neurons
• Activated when the individual performs a motor act or
observes another individual engaging in the same act
• Also connected with emotions in humans
– The frontal lobe is active when people experience
emotions such as disgust, happiness, pain, and also
when they observe another person experiencing an
emotion
• Has been suggested that mirror neurons are connected
with the built-in human capacity to acquire language
24. Individual Differences in Intelligence Among
Infants
• Understanding of infants’ intelligence based on scales of
infant development
• Bayley Scales of Infant Development
-Consists of 178 mental-scale items and 111 motor-scale
items
-Mental scale assesses verbal communication, perceptual
skills, learning and memory, and problem-solving skills
-Motor scale assesses gross and fine motor skills
-Behavior rating scale based on examiner
observation of the child during the test also used
• Testing used to identify handicaps
25.
26. Instability of Intelligence Scores Attained in
Infancy
• Scores obtained during first year of life correlated
moderately with scores obtained a year later.
• Bayley scales and socioeconomic status were able to
predict cognitive development among LBW children
from 18 months to 4 years.
• Bayley and other scales do not predict school grades or
IQ scores very well.
• Bayley scales are best at identifying gross lags in
development and relative strengths and weaknesses.
28. Use of Visual Recognition Memory
• Visual recognition memory
- Ability to discriminate previously seen objects from novel objects; procedure
based on habituation
• Children with greater visual recognition memory attained higher IQ
scores.
• Individual differences in capacity for visual recognition memory are
stable.
• Capacity for visual recognition memory increases over first year
after birth.
• Studies on visual recognition memory and later IQ scores show
good predictive validity for broad cognitive abilities throughout
childhood.
30. Early Vocalizations
• Children develop language according to an invariant
sequence of steps or stages.
• Language begins with prelinguistic vocalizations.
-
32. Development of Vocabulary
• First word
-
• General nominals
-Similar to nouns
-Includes names of
classes of objects
• Specific nominals
-Proper nouns
33. Overextension
• Overextension
– Children extend the meaning of one word to refer to
things and actions for which they do not have words.
– Overextensions gradually pulled back to proper
references
34. Development of Sentences
• Telegraphic speech
-Brief expressions that have meanings of sentences
• Mean length of utterance (MLU)
-Average number of morphemes that communicators use in
their sentences
• Morphemes
-Smallest units of meaning in a language
-e.g. Walked is two morphemes:
walk = verb, -ed = past-tense suffix
• MLU increases rapidly once speech begins
36. Development of Sentences (cont’d)
• Holophrases
-Single words that are used to express complex meanings
-e.g., “Mama” means… “There goes Mama”
• Telegraphic speech
-Two-word sentences
-e.g., “That ball”; words is and a are implied
-Shows understanding of syntax
-Rules in a language for placing words in order to form
sentences
39. Theories of Language Development
• Nurture view
-Holds that a child learns the language that the family speaks
1
-Children learn language, at least in part, by observation and
imitation.
2
40. Theories of Language Development (cont’d)
• Nature
-Holds that children have inborn tendency in the form of
neurological “pre-wiring” to language learning
• Psycholinguistic theory
-Language acquisition involves interaction between
environmental influences.
-Innate tendency labeled language acquisition device (LAD)
-Inborn tendency supported by studies of deaf children and in
the language development among all languages
42. Theories of Language Development (cont’d)
• Surface and deep structure
-On the surface, languages differ in vocabulary and grammar.
-However, languages share “universal grammar” allowing for
transforming ideas into sentences.
• Chomsky maintains children are genetically pre-wired to
attend to language and deduce the rules for constructing
sentences from ideas.
44. Brain Structures Involved in Language
• Biological structures of LAD based in left hemisphere of
the cerebral cortex for nearly all right-handed people
and for 2 out of 3 left-handed
• Damage to Broca’s or Wernicke’s area called aphasia
-Disruption in the ability to understand or produce language
-Located left hemisphere
• Broca’s aphasia
-Can understand but not reproduce speech well
• Wernicke’s aphasia
-Can speak freely with proper syntax
-Have trouble understanding speech and finding the words to
express themselves
46. The Sensitive Period
• Language learning most efficient beginning at 18 to 24
months (sensitive period)
• During this period, neural development provides
plasticity of the brain.
• Damage to the brain easier to heal the younger the child
• Social contacts important in the development of
language
• Malnutrition and abuse can contribute to poor language
learning and ability.
Some children may advance more quickly than others, but the sequence remains constant.
Some children may advance more quickly than others, but the sequence remains constant.
Figure 5.1: Development of Object Permanence.
To the infant who is in the early part of the sensorimotor stage, “out of sight” is truly “out of mind.” Once a sheet of paper is placed between the infant and the toy monkey (top two photos), the infant loses all interest in the toy. From evidence of this sort, Piaget concluded that the toy is not mentally represented. The bottom series of photos shows a child in a later part of the sensorimotor stage. This child does mentally represent objects and pushes through a towel to reach an object that has been screened from sight.
The interpersonal influences have been shown to play important roles in cognitive development.
Some children may advance more quickly than others, but the sequence remains constant.
Figure 5.2: Investigating Infant Memory.
In this technique, developed by Carolyn Rovee-Collier, the infant’s ankle is connected a mobile by a ribbon. Infants quickly learn to kick to make the mobile move. Two- and three-month-olds remember how to perform this feat after a delay of a few days. If they are given a reminder, such as simply viewing the mobile, their memory lasts for 2 to 4 weeks.
Figure 5.3: Imitation in Infants.
These 2- to 3-week-old infants are imitating the facial gestures of an adult experimenter. How are we to interpret these findings? Can we say that the infants “knew” what the experimenter was doing and “chose” to imitate the behavior, or is there another explanation?
Some children may advance more quickly than others, but the sequence remains constant.
Some children may advance more quickly than others, but the sequence remains constant.
MLU = Mean length of Utterance
-patterns of growth are similar for each child with swift upward movement, broken by intermittent and brief regressions
Figure 5.5: Mean Length of Utterance for Three Children.
The mean length of utterance (MLU) increases rapidly once speech begins.
Figure 5.4: Broca’s and Wernicke’s Areas of the Cerebral Cortex.
