Cognitive Development in Infancy Flashcards
What are Piaget’s 6 substages of sensorimotor development?
Reflexes- Infants rely on their senses to learn about the world
Primary Circular Reactions- Endless practice for coordination
Secondary Circular Reactions- Growing awareness about the world around them, exploring
Coordination of Secondary Schemes- Clear, intentional means to end behaviour
Tertiary Circular reactions- Experimentation begins, active trial and error
Beginning of Mental Representation- Use of symbols to represent object or events, start of deferred imitation (18-24 months)
What are the effects of watching TV on children?
By 10 months children can imitate what is on TV, and tv with antisocial themes has been connected with aggression. TV viewing under 3 years may be harmful to cognitive and language development
What is the main critique of Piaget’s View?
He underestimated the cognitive capacity of infants, possibly linking it to their lack of physical capabilities. Babies as young as 4 months show signs of understanding object permanence
What is object concept?
An infant’s understanding of the nature of objects and how they behave
What is Spelke’s Violation of Expectancy?
Although researchers still disagree on just how
much newborns will imitate, everyone agrees that they will
imitate the gesture of tongue protrusion
What evidence supports babies learning through Classical conditioning in the first weeks of life?
Babies who feel smothered by one breast will avoid sucking it
What evidence supports babies learning through operant conditioning in the first weeks of life?
Sounds of the mother’s heartbeat increase sucking response and head turning. The mother’s voice is an effective reinforcer
How does the schemas of a 7 month old differ from that of an older child?
While they actively use categories to process information, but cannot use superordinates (higher levels of categories)
How do researchers measure infant intelligence?
Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development- Many aspects of cognitive, language and motor development. Help identify infants and toddlers with serious developmental delays
Habituation-Speed of habituation/recognitions may reveal efficiency of baby’s cognitive system(Fagan’s Test of Infant Intelligence
Whats the evidence that human neonates possess a predisposition for
language acquisition?
Newborns can distinguish between human speech and non speech sounds and come prepared with grammatical and lexical categories
What are 2 transitional stages of language aquisition?
Reorganization of communication sounds and Reorganization in infant’s use of phonetic detail
What is Expressive Language, Holophrases, and Naming Explosion?
Expressive Language: Ability to produce words
Holophrases- Combining a single word with gestures to make a complete thought
Naming Explosion- when 16-24 month old children learn new words with very few repetitions, and they generalize these words in many more situations
When do sentences appear?
Threshold of 100-200 words, typically short and simple (telegraphic speech)
When is the critical period of language aquisition?
Early in life, continuing though late adolescence where it begins to decline
What are the positives and negatives of bilingualism?
Positive- Understanding there can be more one word for the same object, Enhanced metalinguistic ability, improved working memory, and greater ability to focus attention on language tasks
Negative- Uncertain language patterns, and decreased functional competence
Language Development in the same and different across the world in what ways?
Same- Cooing, babbling, first words, holophrases, and telegraphic speech
Differs- Use of specific order in early sentences and the way particular inflections are learned
