Chapter 5: Cognitive Development During The First Three Years Flashcards
What are the Approaches used to study Cognitive Development?
Behaviorist Approach Psychometric Approach Piagetian Approach Information Processing Approach Cognitive Neuroscience Approach Social-Contextual Approach
What is the Behaviorist Approach to studying Cognitive Development?
Studies the mechanics of learning
Concerned with behavioral changes in response to experience
What is the Psychometric Approach to studying Cognitive Development?
They measure quantitative differences in abilities that make up intelligence by using tests that indicate or predict these abilities
What is the Piagetian Approach to studying Cognitive Development?
It looks at changes or stages in the quality of cognitive functioning, It studies how the mind structures its activities and adapts to the environment
What is the Information-Processing Approach to studying Cognitive Development?
It focuses on perception, learning, memory, and problem-solving.
It aims to discover how children process information from the time they encounter it until they use it.
What is the Cognitive Neuroscience Approach to studying Cognitive Development?
It examines the hardware of the central nervous system
It seeks to identify what brain structures are involved in specific aspects of cognition
What is the Social-Contextual Approach to studying Cognitive Development?
It focuses on environmental influences of parents and other caregivers
What are the basic Mechanics of Learning from a Behaviorist’s perspective?
Classical Conditioning
Operant Conditioning
What is Classical Condition?
Learning based on associating a stimulus that does not ordinarily elicit a response with another stimulus that does elicit the response
Learning fades if not reinforced by repeated association
What is Operant Conditioning?
Learning based on reinforcement of punishment
Infant learns to make a certain response to an environmental stimulus in order to produce a particular effect
What is Infantile Amnesia?
It is the inability to remember early events
What do Piaget, Freud, and others say about Infantile Amnesia?
Piaget - The brain is not yet developed enough to store memories
Freud - Early memories are stored but are repressed because they are emotionally troubling
Others - Children can’t store events until they can talk about them
What is the Evolutionary Developmental Perspective?
Abilities develop as they can fulfill useful functions in adapting to the environment
Infancy is seen as a time of great change and retention of specific experiences is unlikely to be useful for long
What is the Psychometric Approach to Developmental and Intelligence Testing?
The goal of psychometric testing is to measure quantitatively the factors that are thought to make up intelligence (comprehension and reasoning) from the results of that measurement, to predict a child’s future performance
What are the characteristics of Intelligent Behavior?
It is goal-oriented and adaptive
It is directed at adjusting to the circumstances and conditions of life
What is intelligence?
It enables people to acquire, remember, and use knowledge, to understand concepts and relationships and to solve everyday problems
What is an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Test?
It is a test which consists of questions and tasks that are supposed to show how much of the measured abilities a person has, by comparing that person’s performance with norms established by a large group of test takers who were in the standardization sample
What are Developmental Tests?
These are psychometric tests that compare a baby’s performance on a series of tasks with standardized norms for particular ages
What is the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development?
It is a standardized test of infants’ and toddlers’ mental and motor development.
The scores indicate a child’s strengths, weaknesses, and competencies in Cognitive, Language, Motor, Social-Emotional Skills, and Adaptive behavior.
What are Developmental Quotients (DQ)?
These are calculated for each scale and are most useful for early detection of emotional disturbances and sensory, neurological, and environmental deficits, and can help parents and professionals plan a child’s needs
What is Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (Home)?
This is an instrument used to measure the influence of the home environment on children’s cognitive growth
What are conditions that enable Cognitive and Psychosocial Development of a Child?
Encourage exploration of the environment
Monitor basic cognitive and social skills
Celebrate developmental advances
Guide in practicing and extending skills
Protect the child from inappropriate disapproval, testing, and punishment
Communicate richly and responsively
Guide and limit behavior
What are ways in which parents can foster competence in children?
Provide sensory stimulation
Create an environment that fosters learning
Respond to the babies’ signals
Give babies power to effect changes
Give babies freedom to explore
Talk to the babies
Enter into whatever they are interested in
Arrange opportunities to learn basic skills
Applaud new skills and help babies practice and explore them
Read to babies in a warm, caring atmosphere from an early age
Use punishment sparingly
What is Early Intervention?
The systematic process of planning and providing therapeutic and educational services for families that need help in meeting infants’, toddlers’, and preschool children’s developmental needs
How can Early Interventions become more effective?
Start early and continue throughout preschool years
Be aware that it is highly time-sensitive
Provide direct educational experiences, not just parental training
Include health, family counseling, and social services
Tailor the intervention to individual differences and needs
What is the Piagetian Approach to Cognitive Development in a child’s first three years?
Piaget says that children from birth to the age of 2 are in the Sensorimotor Stage
What happens to Cognitive Development during the Sensorimotor Stage?
Infants learn about themselves and their world through their developing sensory and motor activity
What are the substages of Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage of Cognitive Development an when do they occur?
Use of Reflexes (Birth to 1 Month)
Primary Circular Reactions (1 to 4 Months)
Secondary Circular Reactions (4 to 8 Months)
Coordination of Secondary Schemes (8 to 12 Months)
Tertiary Circular Reactions (12 to 18 Months)
Mental Combinations (18-24 Months)
What happens to Cognitive Development during the first five substages?
Babies learn to coordinate input from their senses and organize their activities in relation to their environment
What happens during the last substage of the Sensorimotor stage?
Infants progress from trial-and-error learning to using symbols and concepts to solve problems
What happens during the Use of Reflex Substage of the Sensorimotor Stage?
Infants exercise their inborn reflexes and gain some control over them.
They do not coordinate information from their senses
They do not grasp an object they are looking at
What happens during the Primary Circular Reaction Substage of Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage?
Infants repeat pleasurable behaviors that first occur by chance.
Activities focus on the infant’s body rather than the effects of the behavior on the environment
Infants make first acquired adaptations
They begin to coordinate sensory information and grasp objects
What happens during the Secondaary Circular Reaction Substage of Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage?
Infants become more interested in the environment and repeat actions that bring interesting results and prolong interesting experiences.
Actions are intentional but not initially goal directed
What happens during the Coordination of Secondary Schemes Substage of Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage?
Behavior is more deliberate and purposeful as infants coordinate previously learned schemes and use previously learned behaviors to attain their goals.
They can anticipate events
What happens during the Tertiary Circular Reaction Substage of Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage?
Toddlers show curiosity and experimentation, they purposefully vary their actions to see results.
They actively explore their world to determine what is novel about an object, event, or situation
They try out new activities and use trial and error in solving problems
What happens during the Mental Combination Substage of Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage?
Toddlers are no longer confined to trial and error to solve problems.
Symbolic thought enables toddlers to begin to think about events and anticipate their consequences without always resorting to action.
Toddlers begin to demonstrate insight.
They can use symbols and can pretend.
What are Schemes?
Piaget’s term for organized patterns of thought and behavior used in particular situations
What are Circular Reactions?
Piaget’s term for processes by which an infant learns to reproduce desired occurrences originally discovered by chance