In the first two years, infants undergo remarkable cognitive development in thinking, memory, and language abilities. They progress from relying primarily on reflexes and senses in the first months, to demonstrating object permanence and intentionality by around 8 months. Between 9-18 months, memory strengthens, language comprehension and production blossoms from babbling to first words to combining words. By 24 months, toddlers have mastered many of the basic building blocks of thinking, memory, and language.

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1. Introduction
2. Fact or Fiction?
3. Sensorimotor Intelligence
4. Information Processing
5. Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?
6. Closing Thoughts

3. Fact or Fiction? Fiction Fact
1. If a 5-month-old drops a rattle out of a crib, the
baby probably will not look down to search for it.
2. A baby is given keys to grasp, and if the
baby is teething, it will be motivated to see if
these keys afford an opportunity to chew.
3. Children the world over follow the same
sequence in early language development.
4. When they first begin combining words,
infants tend to put them in the correct order,
as in “more juice.”
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4. What happens during the
sensorimotor stage of cognitive
development?
sensorimotor intelligence: Piaget’s term
for the way infants think—by using their
senses and motor skills.
Primary circular reactions Secondary circular reactions Tertiary circular reactions
Stage 1 (birth – 1 month) Stage 3 (4 - 8 months) Stage 5 (12 – 18 months)
Stage 2 (1 – 4 months) Stage 4 (8 – 12 months)
What happens in each stage of
Sensorimotor Development?
Stage 6 (18 – 24 months) 4
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Bottomleft:Giuseppe_R/Shutterstock;Bottommiddle:iStockpoto/Thinkstock;Bottomright:Hemera/Thinkstock

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Video:
Sensorimotor Intelligence in Infancy and
Toddlerhood

6. Primary Circular Reactions
primary circular reactions:
When the infant senses motion,
sucking, noise, and other
stimuli, and tries to understand
them.
How do infants adapt as
they learn to suck a thumb?
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7. Secondary Circular Reactions
secondary circular reactions: Infants respond to other people, to toys, and any
other object they can touch or move.
object permanence: The realization that objects (including people) still exist
when they can no longer be seen, touched, or heard.
Where are you? Where is it?
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Secondary Circular Reactions
Video:
Cognitive Development in Infancy: The A-not-B
Error: Clip A

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Secondary Circular Reactions
Video:
Cognitive Development in Infancy: The A-not-B
Error: Clip B

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Stages Five and Six
What is Doll Play?
tertiary circular
reactions:
Infants explore a
range of new
activities, varying
their responses as a
way of learning
about the world.

11. 1111
Piaget and Research Methods
Can babies think before they talk?
EEG (electroencephalogram):
Technique that measures electrical
activity in the top layers of the brain,
where the cortex is.

12. Piaget and Research Methods
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Video:
Event-Related Potential (ERP) Research

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Affordances
When can you catch a ball?
affordance:
An opportunity for
perception and interaction
that is offered by a person,
place, or object in the
environment.
dynamic perception:
Perception that is primed
to focus on movement and
change.

14. reminder session: A perception
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.
1 week later when
ribbon is attached
2 weeks later when
ribbon is attached
More than 2 weeks
later when ribbon
is attached
After reminder
session and ribbon
is attached
Memory
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A baby learns that when it kicks, a mobile moves… then, as time passes, what happens?
Most babies kick to
move the mobile
Not all babies
remember to kick
Most if not all
babies do not
remember to kick
A day after the
reminder session,
babies remember
to kick

15. Memory
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Video:
Contingency Learning in Young Infants

16. Environment
Spoken language
heard
Genes
Brain Mechanisms for
understanding and
producing language
Behavior Mastery
of native language
design
provides
input to
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How do we learn our native language?

17. What Develops in the First Two Years?
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Video:
Development of Language in Infancy: Research of
Janet Weker on Infant Speech Perception

18. child-directed speech:
The high-pitched,
simplified, and repetitive
way adults speak to infants.
babbling: The extended
repetition of certain
syllables, such as ba-ba-ba.
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The Universal Sequence: From Birth through 24 Months
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2 months oldNewborn
3 months old 6 months old

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The Universal Sequence: From Birth through 24 Months
Video:
Language Development in Infancy and
Toddlerhood

20. The Universal Sequence: From 9 Months through 24 Months
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holophrase: A single word
that is used to express a
complete, meaningful
thought. (For example:
“Dada!”)
naming explosion: A
sudden increase in an
infant’s vocabulary,
especially in the number
of nouns, which begins at
about 18 months of age.
Photo credits: Top left: NI QIN/E+/Getty Images; Top right: Cecilia Varas; Bottom left: valeria mameli/Moment Open/Getty Images; Bottom right: Cecilia Varas
9 months old 12 months old
18 months old 24 months old

21. Four Theories About Language Learning
Theories of Language Learning
Infants need to be taught
 Based on behaviorism (for example: baby says
“ma-ma-ma”; mother reinforces by smiling,
repeating the sound, praising/rewarding the baby)
 Parents are expert teachers
 Frequent repetition of words is instructive
 Well-taught infants become well-spoken children
 Infants communicate in every way they can
because humans are social beings
 Early communication focuses on emotional
messages of speech and not the words
Infants teach themselves
Language Acquisition Device (LAD):
A hypothesized mental structure that
enables humans to learn language,
including basic aspects of grammar,
vocabulary, and intonation.
Hybrid theory
 Some aspects of language may be
explained by one theory at one age
and another theory at another age.
 How language is learned depends on
the age of the child as well as on
the particular circumstances.
Theories of Language Learning
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Social-pragmatic

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Theories of Language Learning
Video:
Chomsky’s View of Language Development

23. In a few sentences, how would you summarize the
leap in cognitive development that infants make in
their first two years? (Include thinking, memory, and
language in your response).
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Closing Thoughts
Hemera/Thinkstock