A topical approach to life span development, 6e chapter 5

Cognitive Development • Piaget's Theory • How biology and experience sculpts cognitive development • Children construct their own cognitive worlds and have systematic changes in their th

Chapter 5

Cognitive Development

• Piaget's Theory

• How biology and experience sculpts

cognitive development

• Children construct their own cognitive

worlds and have systematic changes in their thinking

Piaget's Cognitive

Processes

• Schemes- the brain creates actions (infants) or mental representations (child) that organize

knowledge

• Baby schemes are simple actions that can be performed like sucking, looking, and grasping (sucking a bottle)

• Older Child schemes are strategies and plans for solving problems (opening a door to get a toy)

• Adult schemes (driving a car)

Piaget's Cognitive

Processes

• Assimilation-the child uses existing schemes to deal with new information or experiences

• Child sucks bottle and fingers to eat

• Accommodation -the child adjust their schemes to take new information and experiences into account

• Child sucks bottle to eat but learns to grab finger to

play

• Organization- the child groups isolated behaviors and

thoughts into a higher order, smoothly functional system

• Refining behaviors and organizing knowledge

Piaget's Cognitive

Processes

• Equilibration- children shift from one stage of

thought to the next

• As they constantly assimilate and

accommodate to seek equilibrium from

disequilibrium

• Piaget's Theory- (first stage) Sensorimotor Stage

• 6 substages

• Object Permanence

• By the end of the sensorimotor stage

• Objects and events continue to exist even when they cannot directly be seen heard,or touched by the child

• Piaget calls a 'landmark cognitive accomplishment

How infants learn,

remember and conceptualize

reduce changes in the probability of the behavior's occurrence

after repeated presentations of the stimulus

a change in stimulation

habituation

How infants learn,

remember and conceptualize

• Attention- the focusing of mental resources

on select information and improves cognitive processing

• Important role in memory as part of the a

process called encoding

• The process by which information is

transferred to memory

How infants learn,

remember and conceptualize

• Memory-the retention of information over

time

• Implicit memory- memory refers to memory

without conscious recollection

• Memories of skills and routine procedures

that are performed automatically

• Explicit memory-referees to conscious

remembering of facts and experiences

How infants learn,

remember and conceptualize

• Imitation (Meltzoff)

• Infants don't blindly imitate everything they

see

• Beginning at birth there is an interplay

between learning by observing and learning

by doing

How infants learn,

remember and conceptualize

• Concepts -key aspects of infants' cognitive

development

• Cognitive groupings of similar objects,

people, or ideals

• Mandler - 7-9 months of age-infants form

conceptual categories

Measures of Development

• Gesell's scale-distinguishes normal and

abnormal infants

• Provides a developmental quotient

• Developmental quotient (DQ) -an overall

score that combines sub scores in motor, language, adaptive, and personal-social

domains in the Gesellschaft assessment of infants

Measures of Development

• Bayley Scale - assess infant behavior and

predict later development

• Mental Scale, Motor Scale, Behavior Profile

• Baylee-III - 5 Scales

• Cognitive, Language, Motor (infant related)

• Socioemotional and Adaptive (Caregiver)

Language Development

• Rule Systems (figure 5.9)

• Phonology - a Phoneme is the smallest sound unit in a

language

• Morphology - a morphemes, meaningful units involved in word formation

• Syntax - the way words are combined and/or ordered to form acceptable phrases and sentences

• Semantics- meaningful words and sentences

• Pragmatic so- the system of using appropriate

conversation and knowledge of how to effectively use

language in content

Language Development

• Language Milestones (figure 5.12)

• Crying (birth)

• Cooing begins (1-2 months)

• Understanding first word (5 months)

• Babbling begins (6 months)

• Language specific-listener (7-11 months)

• Uses gesters, such as pointing, comprehension of words (8-12 months)

• First word spoken(13 MONTHS)

• Vocabulary spurt starts (18 MONTHS)

• Two word utterances (18-24 months)

Language Influences

• Biological view- Children are born with ability to detect basic features and rules of language

• Behaviorist view- children acquire language as a result of reinforcements (still not proven)

• Environmental view-children development of langurs is a consequence of being exposed to different language environments in the home

• Parents should talk extensively with an infant, especially about what

the baby is attending to.

• Interactionist View- Social and linguistics capacities make language

acquisition inevitable

• All agree that both biological capacity and relevant experience are

necessary.

Parental Influences

(page 161)

• Be an active conversational partner.

• Talk in a slowed-down pace and don't worry about how you sound to other adults when you talk to your baby.

• Use parent-look and parent-gesters, and name what you are looking at.

• When you talk with infants and toddlers, be simple, concrete, and

repetitive.

• Play games

• Remember to listen.

• Expand and elaborate language abilities and horizons with infants and toddlers.

• Adjust to your child's idiosyncrasies instead of working against them