Cognitive Development in Infancy/Early Childhood

Question 1

Piaget’s View on Child Development

Answer 1

• Children are active explorers of their world
• Children make sense of the world through schemas
  - Schemas : mental categories of related events, objects, and knowledge
  
  • Children adapt by refining their schemas and adding new ones

Question 2

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
(SP. PP. COP. FOP.)

Answer 2

• Sensorimotor period (0-2 years, Infancy)
• Preoperational period (2-7 years, Preschool/Early Elementary)
• Concrete operational period (7-11 years, Middle/Late Elementary)
• Formal operational period (11 years & up, Adolescence and adulthooh)

Question 3

Sensorimotor

(DB, OP, US, & AC)

Answer 3

• Deliberate, means-ends behavior
• Object permanence: knowing an object still exists even if not in view
• Using symbols
• Anticipate consequences of actions, instead of needing to experience them

Question 4

Preoperational Thinking
(Egocentrism. Animism. Centration.)

Answer 4

• Egocentrism : Difficulty seeing world from others’ perspectives
• Animism : Giving inanimate objects “life” and lifelike properties
• Centration : Concentrating on only one side of a problem and neglecting other sides
  
  • Interferes with conservation

Question 5

Attention

Answer 5

When sensory information receives additional cognitive processing

Question 6

Orienting response

Answer 6

Emotional and physical reactions to unfamiliar stimulus
- Alerts infant to new or dangerous stimuli

Question 7

Habituation

Answer 7

Lessened reactions to a stimulus after repeated presentations
- Helps infant ignore biologically insignificant events

Question 8

Learning → Classical Conditioning

Answer 8

When an initially “neutral” stimulus is able to elicit a response that previously was caused only by another stimulus
- Infants are capable of this conditioning regarding feeding or other pleasant events

Question 9

Learning → Operant Conditioning

Answer 9

When a behavior’s consequence make it so that it will more likely (reinforcement) or less likely (punishment) occur

Question 10

Learning → Imitation

Answer 10

Learning a new behavior by observing others

Question 11

Autobiographical Memory in Preschoolers

Answer 11

• Exists to remember significant events from their past
• Hippocampus and amygdala develop
• Learns to store new information

Question 12

Preschoolers as Eyewitnesses

Answer 12

Quite vulnerable to suggestion and leading questions

Question 13

Learning Number Skills → 3 Principles of Counting
(OtOP. SOP. CP)

Answer 13

1. One-to-one principle
2. Stable-order principle
3. Cardinality principle

Question 14

Vygotsky’s Cultural Theory
(Intersubjectivity, Guided participation & Apprenticeship)

Answer 14

• Intersubjectivity: all participants have a mutual, shared understanding of an activity (e.g., game rules)
• Guided participation: cognition develops via structured activities with more skilled others
• Apprenticeship: a more skilled master teaches a skill to a less skilled “apprentice” such as a child

Question 15

The Zone of Proximal Development

Answer 15

The difference between what children can do with or without assistance

Question 16

Scaffolding

Answer 16

Giving just enough assistance to match learner’s needs but not take over their learning

Question 17

Private Speech

Answer 17

“Talking” to yourself to self-guide and self-regulate behavior
- Speech is audible, but isn’t directed at others

Question 18

Language Development → Phonemes

Answer 18

Phonemes : smallest, unique sounds

• At 1 month, can distinguish between vowels and consonants
• Different languages have different sets of phonemes

Question 19

Language Development → Identifying Words
(Infant Directed Speech)

Answer 19

Children learn to pay more attention to repeated and emphasized words
- Infant-directed speech (“Motherese”) : adults speak slowly and exaggerate changes in speecg when talking to infants

Question 20

Steps to Speech
(2M, 6M & 8-12M)

Answer 20

• 2 months – infants begin cooing
• 6 months – toddlers begin babbling (a precursor to speech)
• 8-11 months – children incorporate intonation or changes in pitch typical of the language they hear

Question 21

First Words & More
(1Y, 2Y & 6Y)

Answer 21

• 1 year – children use their first words
  
  • Usually consonant-vowel pairs, such as “dada” or “wawa”
• 2 years – children have a vocabulary of a few hundred words
• 6 years – children know around 10,000 words

Question 22

Words as Symbols
(Before 12M & During 12-18M)

Answer 22

• Before 12 months: use symbols in areas other than language
  
  • Gesturing: infants will point, wave, smack lips to convey messages
• 12 to 18 months: understands that words are symbols for objects, actions, and properties

Question 23

Fast Mapping of Words
(18M)

Answer 23

• 18 months: an explosive rate of word learning
• Fast-mapping: rapid connection of new words to their exact referents

Question 24

Language → Bilingualism

Answer 24

Bilingual compared to monolingual children :
- Smaller vocabularies for each language
- Greater total vocabulary

Question 25

Language → Word Learning Styles
(Expressive & Referential)

Answer 25

Expressive style: Vocabularies include social interaction and question words plus naming words

Referential style: Vocabularies consist mainly of words related to objects, persons, or actions

Question 26

Methods to Encourage Language Growth

Answer 26

• Speaking to children frequently
• Naming objects
• Using sophisticated speech
• Reading to children while describing pictures and asking questions
• Providing TV programs that emphasize word learning

Question 27

Speaking in Sentences
(18M)

Answer 27

18 months – children construct 2 and 3 word sentences based on simple formulas (e.g., actor + action)