Cognitive Development

in Infancy and
Toddlerhood
Developmental Psychology | Ms. Shaine C. Hayag, RPm
objectives
Summarize and evaluate
Piaget's theory of infant
development Describe the nature of
language and how it
develops in infancy.
Describe how infants learn,
focus attention, remember,
and conceptualize

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Table of contents
Piaget's Theory of Infant
Development
Language Development

Learning, Attention,
Remembering, and
Conceptualizing

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1 Piaget's Theory of
Development
Cognitive Processes | The Sensorimotor Stage |
Evaluating Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage
 Hello!
I am Jean Piaget. I am a Swiss Psychologist and a
meticulous observer of my three children -- Laurent,
Lucienne, and Jacqueline.

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We are born capable of learning.
- - Jean Piaget

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Cognitive Processes
✗ Schemes
✗ Assimilation and Accommodation
✗ Organization
✗ Equilibrium, Disequilibrium, and
Equilibration

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Schemes
actions or mental
representations that
organize knowledge

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Assimilation
incorporate new
information or experience
into existing knowledge
schemes

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Accommodation
adjust existing schemes
to take in new
information and
experiences

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Organization
✗ grouping isolated
behaviors into a higher-
order cognitive system
✗ undergoes continual
refinement
✗ cognitive organization of
experiences

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Equilibration
explanation of cognitive
shift (qualitative) from
one stage of thought to
next

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Disequilibrium
cognitive conflict
motivation for change

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Equilibrium
resolve conflict through
assimilation and
accommodation, to reach
a new balance of thought

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Piaget's Theory of cognitive development
Unifies Motivation is Four stages of
experiences and internal search of development
biological equilibrium (sensorimotor,
maturation to preoperational,
explain cognitive concrete
development oparational, formal
operational)
progressively
advanced and
qualitatively
different

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Piaget's Theory of cognitive development
STAGE AGE DEVELOPMENT

Experiences and biology combine;

Sensorimotor 0-2 yrs
concepts of object permanence, habits

Symbolic thinking reflective of use of

Preoperational 2-7 yrs
words and images

Logical reasoning about concrete events;

Concrete operational 7-11 yrs concepts of conservation, classification,
serial ordering

Abstract thinking, logical, hypothetical

Formal operational 11-15 yrs
reasoning, idealistic

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Sensorimotor Stage
✗ age: birth to 2 years
✗ Infants construct
understanding of world
by coordinating sensory
experiences with motor
actions
✗ contains six substages

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Substages of Sensorimotor Stage
Simple Reflexes
(sensation & actions
coordinated through reflexes;
0-1 mo.)
Secondary circular reactions
(object-oriented, repetition of
actions due to consequences; Black is the color of ebony and
4-8 mos) of outer space

1 3 5

2 4 6

First habits; Primary circular Coordination of secondary Internalization of schemes

reactions reactions (ability to use primitive
(behavior without stimulus, (coordinates vision and touch, symbols, shift to mental
repetitive actions; 1-4 mos.) hand and eye; goal-oriented; 8- manipulation; 18-24 mos.)
12 mos)

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Sensorimotor Stage
✗ Object permanence
✗ Understanding that
objects still exist when
not seen, heard, or
touched
✗ One of infant's most
important
accomplishments
✗ Acquired in stages
✗ Causality and violation
of expectations testing

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Evaluating Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage
✗ New research: theory needs to be modified
✗ Some abilities develop earlier
■ Intermodal perception; substantiality and permanence
of object
✗ Transitions not as clear-cut; AB error
✗ No general theory on how development changes in
cognition and nature-nurture issue

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Preoperational Stage
✗ Age: 2-7 years
✗ Children begin to
represent the world
with words, images, and
drawings
✗ Not ready to perform
operations
✗ Internalized actions that
allow children to do
mentally what they only
did physically before
✗ Reversible mental
actions

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Substages of Preoperational Stage
Symbolic Function (ages 2-4)
✗ Gains ability to mentally
represent an object that is not
present
✗ Egocentrism - inability to
distinguish own view from
another's view
✗ Animism - lifelike qualifies
given to inanimate objects
Intuitive Thought (ages 4-7)
✗ Use of primitive reasoning,
seeks answers top all sorts of
questions
✗ Why questions exhaust adults
✗ Certainty of knowledge in
absence of rational thinking
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Preoperational Stage
✗ Centration
✗ focusing attention on
one characteristic to
exclusion of all others
■ evidenced in lack of
conservation

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Preoperational Stage
✗ Conservation
✗ object or substance
amount stays same
regardless of changing
appearance; lacking in
preoperational stage

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Concrete operational Stage
✗ Age: 7-11 years
✗ Children can perform
concrete operations
✗ Logical reasoning
replaces intuitive
reasoning if applied to
specific, concrete
examples
✗ Consider several
characteristics of object
at once
✗ Cross-cultural
variations exist
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Concrete operational Stage
✗ Concrete operations
✗ Child understands one
person; can be father,
brother, and grandson

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Concrete operational Stage
✗ Seriation
✗ involves stimuli along
quantitative dimensions
(e.g. length)

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Concrete operational Stage
✗ Transitivity
✗ Relationships between
objects:
■ If a equals b; and
b equals c,
then a equals c

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Formal operational Stage
✗ Age: 11-15 years
✗ Moves beyond concrete
operations; thinks more
abstract and logical ways
✗ abstract , idealistic, and
logical thinking
✗ Verbal problem-solving
ability increases
✗ Increased ability to think
about thought itself
✗ Thought is full of idealism
and possibilities

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Formal operational Stage
✗ Children: problems solved
by trial-and-error
✗ Adolescents: think more
like scientists
✗ Assimilation dominates
initial development
✗ Adolescent egocentrism

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Formal operational Stage
✗ Hypothetical-deductive
reasoning
✗ cognitive ability to develop
hypotheses, and
systematically find best
way to solve problems

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Formal operational Stage
✗ Imaginary audience
✗ belief that others are as
interested in them as they
are
✗ involves attention-getting
behavior motivated by
desire to be noticed,
visible, and "on stage"

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Formal operational Stage
✗ Personal fable
✗ adolescent's sense of
uniqueness and
invincibility

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Evaluating Piaget's Formal Operational Stage
✗ Piaget and Education
✗ Take a constructivist approach
✗ Facilitate rather than direct learning
✗ Consider child's knowledge, level of thinking
✗ Use ongoing assessment
✗ Promote the student's intellectual health
✗ Turn classroom into exploration, discovery setting

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Applying and Evaluating Piaget's Theory
✗ Piaget contributions
✗ Vision of children as active, constructive thinkers

✗ Criticisms of theory
✗ Some estimates of children's competence is inaccurate
✗ Development not uniformly stage-like
✗ Effects of training underestimated
✗ Culture and education influence development

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2 Learning, Attention,
Remembering, &
Conceptualizing
Conditioning | Attention | Memory | Imitation |
Concept Formation & Categorization
Conditioning
✗ Skinner's Operant
Conditioning
✗ the consequence of a
behavior produce changes
in the probability of the
behavior's occurrence

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Attention
✗ focusing of mental
resources on select
information, improves
cognitive processing on
many tasks

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Attention
✗ orienting/ investigating
process
✗ first year of life
✗ Involves directing attention
to potentially important
locations in the
environment (that is,
where) and recognizing
objects and their features
(that is, what)
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Attention
✗ 3 to 9 months
✗ Infants can deploy their
attention more flexibility
and quickly

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Attention
✗ sustained attention
(focused attention)
✗ New stimuli elicit an
orienting response
followed by sustained
attention
✗ Allows infants to learn
about and remember
characteristics of a
stimulus as is becomes
familiar 46
Attention
✗ Habituation
✗ decreased responsiveness
to a stimulus after
repeated presentations

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Attention
✗ Dishabituation
✗ increase in responsiveness
to a stimulus after a
change in stimulation

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Attention
✗ Joint Attention
✗ process that occurs when
individuals focus on the
same object and are able
to track another's behavior,
one individual directs
another's attention, and
reciprocal interaction takes
place

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Memory
✗ involves the retention of
information over time
✗ encoding
✗ a process in which
information is transferred
to memory

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Memory
✗ Implicit Memory
✗ refers to memory without
conscious recollection-
memories of skills and
routine procedures that are
performed automatically

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Memory
✗ Explicit Memory
✗ refers to conscious
remembering of facts and
experiences

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Age-related Changes
in the Length of
Time over which
Memory Occurs
Memory
✗ infantile/ childhood
amnesia
✗ Most adults can remember
little if anything from their
first three years of life

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Imitation
✗ Infant development
researcher Meltzoff sees
infant's imitative abilities
as biologically based
because they can imitate
facial expressions within
the first few days after
birth
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Imitation
✗ deferred imitation
✗ occurs after a time delay of
hours or days
✗ Piaget: doesn't occur until
about 18 months of age
✗ Meltzoff: suggested it
occurs much earlier

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Concept
Formation &
Categorization
✗ Concepts
✗ cognitive groupings of
similar objects, event as
unique

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Concept
Formation &
Categorization
✗ Perceptual Categorization
✗ 3 to 4 months
✗ the categorizations are
based on similar
perceptual features of
objects, such as size, color,
and movement, as well as
parts of objects, such as
legs for animals

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Concept
Formation &
Categorization
✗ 7-9 months of age
✗ Infants form conceptual
categories rather than just
making perceptual
discriminations between
different categories

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3
Language Development
Defining Language | Language's Rule Systems |
How Language Develops | Biological & Environmental
Influences | An Interactionist View
Defining
Language
✗ Language
✗ a form of communication -
whether spoken, written,
or signed (system of
symbols)

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Defining
Language
✗ Infinite Generativity
✗ the ability to produce and
comprehend an endless
number of meaningful
sentences using a finite set
of words and rules

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Language
Rule Systems
✗ Phonology
✗ the sound system of the
language, including the
sounds that are used and
how they may be
combined

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Language
Rule Systems
✗ Morphology
✗ refers to the units of
meaning involved in word
formation

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Language
Rule Systems
✗ Syntax
✗ involves that way words
are combined to form
acceptable phrases and
sentences

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Language
Rule Systems
✗ Semantics
✗ refers to the meaning of
words and sentences

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Language
Rule Systems
✗ Pragmatics
✗ the appropriate use of
language

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How Language
Develops
✗ Recognizing Language
Sounds
✗ infants can make fine
distinctions among the
sounds of the language

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How Language
Develops
✗ Babbling and Other
Vocalizations
✗ Crying
✗ Cooing
✗ Babbling

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How Language
Develops
✗ Gestures
✗ Infants start using
gestures, such as showing
and pointing, at about 7-15
months of age with a mean
age of approximately 11-
12 months

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How Language
Develops
✗ First Words
✗ Infants understand their
first words earlier than
they speak them

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How Language
Develops
✗ First Words
✗ Overextension - tendency
to apply a word or objects
that are inappropriate for
the word'’ meaning by
going beyond the set of
referents an adult would
use

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How Language
Develops
✗ First Words
✗ Underextension - tendency
to apply a word too
narrowly; it occurs when
children fail to use a word
to name a relevant event
or object

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How Language
Develops
✗ Two-Word Utterances
✗ By 18-24 months, infants
usually speak in two-
words utterances
✗ They convey meaning with
just two words and relies
heavily on gesture, tone,
and context

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How Language
Develops
✗ Two-Word Utterances
✗ Telegraphic speech - the
use of short and precise
words without
grammatical markers such
as articles, auxiliary verbs,
and other connectives

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Biological &
Environmental
Influences
✗ Biological Influences
✗ The ability to speak and
understand language
requires a certain vocal
apparatus as well as a
nervous system with
certain capabilities

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Some Language
Milestones in
Infancy
Biological &
Environmental
Influences
✗ Broca's area
✗ An area in the brain's left
frontal lobe that is
involved in speech
production
✗ Wernicke's area
✗ An area in the brain's left
hemisphere that is
involved in language
comprehension
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Biological &
Environmental
Influences
✗ aphasia
✗ A loss or impairment of
language ability caused by
brain damage
✗ language acquisition
device (LAD)
✗ Chomsky's term that
describes a biological
endowment enabling the
child to detect the features
& rules of language 81
Biological &
Environmental
Influences
✗ Environmental Influences
✗ The role of social
interaction
■ The support &
involvement of
caregivers & teachers
greatly facilitate a
child's language
learning

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Biological &
Environmental
Influences
✗ Environmental Influences
✗ Child-Directed speech &
other Caregiver strategies
■ Child-directed speech -
which is language
spoken with a higher-
than-normal pitch,
slower tempo, and
exaggerated intonation
with simple words &
sentences
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Biological &
Environmental
Influences
✗ Environmental Influences
✗ Child-Directed speech &
other Caregiver strategies
■ recasting - rephrasing
something the child has
said that might lack the
appropriate morphology
or contain some other
error

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Biological &
Environmental
Influences
✗ Environmental Influences
✗ Child-Directed speech &
other Caregiver strategies
■ expanding - adding
information to a child's
incomplete utterance
■ labeling - naming objects
that children seem
interested in

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Interactionist
View
✗ emphasizes that biology
and experience contribute
to language development

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Thanks!
Any questions?

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