Chapter 6 - First Two Years Cognitive Flashcards
Cognition
Refers to thinking including: language learning memory intelligence
Jean Piaget was a pioneer in studying:
Cognitive development in humans.
More recent research has both ___ and ___ Piagets ideas about infants cognitive abilities.
validated and extended
Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development?
Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete operational
Formal operations
Stages of Sensorimotor Intelligence
PRIMARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS
Stage One
(birth to 1 month) -> Reflexes – sucking, grasping, stepping
Stage Two (1-4 months) -> The first acquired adaptation – (assimilation and co-ordination of reflexes) – suckling a pacifier differently than a nipple
SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS
Stage Three (4-8 months) -> Awareness of Things– responding to people and objects
Stage Four (8-12 months) -> New adaptation and anticipation – becoming more deliberate and purposeful in responding to others
TERTIARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS
Stage Five (12-18 months) -> New means of active experimentation– little scientist
Stage Six (18-24 months) -> New means through mental combinations – considering before doing – less trial and error
Assimilation
Taking new information in by incorporating it into previous schemas (categories)
– Example: A red ball bounces like a blue ball.
Accommodation
Requires an adjustment of
previous schemas upon new information
– Example: A red tomato does NOT bounce like a red ball
Why shouldn’t you give a baby a bottle in the first 6-8 months?
It might not go back to the nipple, referred to as nipple confusion
Two reflexes ensure sucking:
- Rooting reflex (turning head and opening mouth)
- Sucking reflex
Tertiary Circular Reactions
Involves active exploration and experimentation in which the infant takes in experiences and tries to make sense of them
Deferred imitation
infants can copy the behavior of others, even days later
– Less trial and error
– Thinking of consequences of behaviours
primary circular reactions
First two stages involve the infant’s response to it’s own body
secondary circular reactions
Third and fourth stages involve the infant’s response to objects and people
Advanced research tools (i.e., habituation and fMRI), have shown that aspects of Piagets sensorimotor intelligence…
actually occur earlier for most infants than Piaget predicted.
Habituation
The process of getting used to an object or event through repeated exposure to it.
– If a new object appears and the infant reacts (change in heart rate, sucking), it is assumed he recognizes the object as something different. Infants are generally drawn to novelty
fMRI
Functional magnetic resonance imaging – a technique in which the brains’ magnetic properties are measured to detect changes in activity levels anywhere in the brain
Information processing theory
A perspective that compares human thinking processes, by analogy to computer analysis data – from sensory input through brain reactions, connections and stored memories to output (equating it to a computer)
What stems from information processing theory?
Research on memory and affordances
Affordances
Opportunities for perception and interaction that environment offers (by people, places, and objects). Perception is the mental processing of information. The first step in information processing.
Why do we see the same thing and perceive them differently?
– Past experiences
– Current developmental level
– Sensory awareness of opportunities
– Immediate needs and motivation e.g. food
Graspability
The perception of whether or not an object is of the proper , size, texture, and distance to afford grasping is an early affordance.
realize cant pick up big ball with only one hand, so use two hands
trial and error
eventually can do it by logic
Research shows infants have the concept long before their manual dexterity allows them to successfully grasp.
visualcliff
an apparatus to measure depth perception. Infants are interested in crossing the cliff until about 8 months. After they have had experience falling, the cliff affords danger for older infants.
Depth perception
The visual ability to perceive the world in 3 dimensions and the distance of objects.
dynamic perception
perception that is focused on movement and change.
– Infants love things that change and move
– Their first sources of pleasure
people preference
toddlers prefer people from the first days of life
Infantile Amnesia
The inability, hypothesized by Freud, to remember anything that happened before the age of 2 or anything except very important events before the age of 5.
Research has confirmed that infants have great difficulty storing new memories in their ___ year of life
first
After about _ months of age, infants become capable of retaining information for longer periods of time, with less training and reminding. ____ imitation is apparent.
6, Deferred.
Deferred imitation becomes more ____ with age.
complex
By year _ they can generalize
2
Is memory unitary? (forming a single entry)
no
Different types of memory develop at ___ rates
different
Implicit Memory
Memory of events, objects, and
experiences that can be recognized when cues are
present, but cannot be recalled without reminders.
When do you become aware of implicit memory?
You become aware of implicit memory as an adult when you learn something really fast that you must have known some aspect of it earlier or when something is familiar (déjà vu – already seen) – breast feeding e.g.
Explicit Memory
Memory that is available for instant recall. Often involves material that was deliberately studied and memorized.
What are the two types of explicit memory?
Semantic - Memory for facts
Episodic - Memory for events
Parents, educators and policy makers pay much ___ attention to cognitive development in infancy then they did a decade ago
more
____, ____ and ____ – all these elements of cognition make it clear that infants under the age of 2 are not only aware of their surroundings but are actively learning and thinking about them
Affordances, categories, and memory
Phonology? Example?
The sound system of the language
Being able to distinguish between /vat/ and /bat/; recognizing that /narg/ could be an English word but /ngar/ could not
Lexicon? Example?
Vocabulary, and process of derivational morphology
Knowing the meanings of words and how to form new ones. For example, if narg is a verb, then a narger is someone who nargs
Morphology and Syntax? Example?
Morphology looks at how the smallest linguistic unit (called morphemes) are formed into complete words, syntax looks at how those words are formed into complete sentences
Knowing the difference in meaning between Man bites dog and Dog bites man; knowing that Man bite dog and Bite man dog are both ungrammatical
Pragmatics? Example?
The transmittal of information to
others in communicatively appropriate ways
Being able to make requests, to comment, to be coherent in conversation and narrative
Sociolinguistics? Example?
The transmittal of information to others in socially appropriate ways
Being able to use different register styles (polite speech, Infant directed speech); being able to express your identity through speech (regional dialect)
Literacy? Example?
The knowledge of how to read and write a language
Knowing that the sound at the beginning of cat is spelled with the letter “c”
How can we tell what part of language development comes directly from the child (nature) and what part depends on their experiences with language (nurture)? What is the traditional answer for this?
One traditional answer is to look for children who have received no exposure to language and see what kind of linguistic skills they could develop all on their own.
Wild Children
Children raised in social and linguistic isolation
What is one way to study childrens early language?
eep a close diary, or biography, of a single young child – often ones own child.
Who maintains their own baby biographies?
Such baby biographies were maintained by Charles Darwin, Clara & Wilhelm Stern, and Werner Leopold.
Normative Studies
Try to identify what is typical for most children. That is, what are the typical – or normal – milestones and pathways in language development.
These studies are largely descriptive in nature and do not attempt to explain how children achieve these normal benchmarks.
Model for Studying Language Development
Information from the environment → Language learning mechanisms → Language acquisition
What are the Contributions of Nature and Nurture to Language Acquisition?
The Nativist position argues that development is driven primarily by childrens innate nature. (wild children will tell us that isn’t true)
The extreme opposite view (Empiricism) argues that the mind is a blank slate and all knowledge comes from experience.
Interactionist views argue that development is driven primarily by children’s experiences.
Why is it important to compare language development across cultures and across languages?
To understand how these differences in experience and input affect the acquisition process.
By _ months an infant’s noises are deliberate
4
Infants prefer ___-___ speech (baby talk)
child-directed
Babbling
Repeating certain syllables (e.g., da-da-da, ma-ma-ma, ta-ta-ta). This is a way to communicate.
All babies babble, even ___ babies (although later and less frequently).
deaf
First words usually appear around _ year(s)
1
First words are usually ___ ____
familiar nouns
Naming explosion
A language spurt once an infant begins talking. Especially in the number of nouns.
Infants learn about __-__ words a month.
50–100
____ shapes which words appear first.
Culture
Under-extension
Too narrow application of a word, as when a toddler uses cat to refer only to the family car and no other cat
Resistance of learning alternatives. (cat and kitten).
Over-extension
The application of a word beyond its true meaning as when a child calls two or more people Nana.
Grammar
All the methods, word order, verb forms, that a language uses to communicate meaning, apart from the words themselves.
holophrase
a single word that expresses an entire thought (e.g., juice, Dada!! Dada?)
Two-word sentences appear around __ months, and remarkably, follow proper grammar.
21
Example: more juice, not juice more, “no juice”, not “juice no”
There are 3 theories of how infants learn language:
– They are taught (view of B. F. Skinner)
– They teach themselves (view of Noam Chomsky)
– Social impulses foster learning
B. F. Skinner argued that infants learn language by:
– Associating objects with words heard often
– Reinforcement and praise for correct words
• Swear words
– how you react
– Correction of incorrect words
Support for Theory One (they are taught)
Careful research by Hart and Risley (1995) has demonstrated that infants of parents who spoke more words had superior language development.
Noam Chomsky argued that:
Language is far too complex to be learned through step-by-step conditioning.
– Infants make up words they have never heard before (e.g., runned).
Noam Chomsky believed that ____ ____ ____ exists in only humans.
Language acquisition device (LAD)
Hypothesized brain structure responsible for innate human ability to learn language.
Theory Three: Social Impulses Foster Infant Language argues?
Example?
The social desire to communicate drives infants to learn language.
– Example: Upon hearing a new word, an infant looks to where the adult is looking before assuming an association between the word and object.
What is emergentist coalition referred to as? What does it do?
A Hybrid Theory. Combines aspects of several theories.
Different theories may apply at different ages. Culture plays a role in language learning.
___ half of brain dominated for first three years.
Right
If a mother talks to her infant more, the infant will have a…
Larger vocabulary size
What low SES and high SES family racial/ethnic background reads to their child at least three times a week? Least?
European American, Hispanic American
In Stage Five (12-18 months), how do infants experiment?
Without anticipating results, through trial and error
Rovee-Colliers mobile experiment
Babies are placed in crib with a mobile, and start to kick and move around. When they kick, the mobile moves, so the babies kick more because self-activated things are rewarding to them. 1 week later the 3 month olds were placed in a crib with a similar mobile and right away began to kick. 2 weeks later they forgot.
Victor Aveyron (wild child)
Lived in the woods until he was 12, couldn’t speak and was accustomed to cold weather conditions. Jean-Marc Itard tried to teach him french but turned out he was mute.
Genie
Was kept in her room tied up until 13 years old, exposed to no love, affection or language. Then was found but already passed the critical period for language.
