The First Two Years: Cognitive Development Flashcards
What is Sensorimotor intelligence?
Piagets term for the way infants think by using their senses and motor skills during the first period of cognitive development
What are the four stages of development?
Sensorimotor birth
Pre-operational
Concrete operational
Formal operational
Sensorimotor Stage
Age: Birth to 2 years
building schemes through sensory and motor exploration
Learn through Circular Reactions
Circular Reactions
Learning a new experience accidentally due to motor activity and repeating it over and over again
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Substages
- Reflexive schemes
- Primary circular reactions
- Secondary circular reactions
- Coordination of secondary circular reactions
- Tertiary circular reactions
- Mental representation
Reflexive schemes
(birth to 1 month)→ newborn responds to external stimulation with innate reflex actions: sucking, grasping, looking, listening. For example, if you brush a baby’s mouth or cheek with your finger it will suck reflexively.
Primary circular reactions
(1-4 months)→ the first adaptations achieved: accommodation and coordination of reflexes. Examples; sucks on a pacifier differently from a nipple; grab a bottle and drink from it.
Secondary circular reactions
(4-8 months) → pay attention longer to interesting things: respond to people and objects. For example; clap when mum sings a song
Coordination of secondary circular reactions
(8-12 months) → new adaptations and anticipations: these become more voluntary and deliberate in responding to people and objects. Example: take the mother’s hand to clap her hands and induce her to sing a song
Tertiary circular reactions
(12-18 months)→ experimentation and creativity direct the actions of the “little scientist“. Example: throwing a teddy bear into the toilet and flush it.
Mental representation
(18-24 months)→ New means thanks to mental combinations: think before acting, which allows the child to achieve a goal without relying on trial and error. For example; before flushing the toilet, the kid remembers that the previous time she overflowed it her mother had been very angry, and she thinks twice before doing it.
What is object permanence?
Realizing the object continues to exist when it is no longer in sight
Violation of expectation method
The violation of expectation technique is based on the idea that infants will show surprise when witnessing an impossible event.
Information processing theory
The information processing theory is based on the idea that humans actively process the information they receive from their senses, like a computer does
Visual Cliff
Experimental apparatus that gives the illusion of a sudden drop-off between one horizontal surface and another
Memories
First week
Recognition of caregivers by face, voice, and smell
Memories
at what month does a baby develop motor memories?
3 months
at what month does a baby develop more complex memories like copying others?
9 months
Implicit memory
Information that you remember unconsciously and effortlessly
begins at 3 months
stable by 9 months
Explicit memory
Explicit memory requires you to consciously recall information.
takes longer to emerge
when can a baby start to transfer learning from objects and experiences and remember patterns?
one years old
Instrumental learning
a type of learning in which behaviors are strengthened or weakened by their consequences
How does language develop in the first two years?
- language learning
- Preference for speech sounds
- able to distinguish sounds and gestures in own language
when do babies Language learn via organization and hearing; may be innate
before birth
when do babies have a preference for speech sounds and mother’s language; gradual selective listening
Newborn
when are babies able to distinguish sounds and gestures in own language?
Around 6 months
Early stages of language involve communication through…
noises, gestures, and facial expressions
Who is Piaget
Piaget is a biologist who tested his own children using the scientific method. He developed The developmental theory of knowledge
what is a schema?
Schemas are the basic building blocks of knowledge that enable us to form a mental representation of the world.
a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning.
Cognitive equilibrium
a state in which the person is NOT confused because he can use his existing mental processes to understand his current experiences and ideas
Assimilation
New experiences are reinterpreted so that they make sense, fit with, or are assimilated (adapted or integrated) with respect to previous ideas. Existing schemas are used to understand a new situation
Accommodation
Old ideas or previous ideas are restructured so that they are included or accommodated to new experiences.
language acquisition device (LAD)
Chomsky hypothesized that children are born with a brain structure he called a language acquisition device (LAD), which allows children, as their brains develop, to derive the rules of grammar quickly and effectively from the speech they hear every day.
Naming Explosion
A sudden increase in an infant’s vocabulary, especially in the number of nouns, that begins at about 18 months of age.
