Kathleen Stassen Berger

Part II

Chapter Six

The First Two Years: Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor Intelligence Information Processing

Language: What Develops in the

First Two Years?
Prepared by Madeleine Lacefield Tattoon, M.A.
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The First Two Years: Cognitive Development

Infant cognition
cognition = thinking
thinking in a very broad sense includes
language learning memory intelligence

The First Two Years: Cognitive Development

Infants organize by the end of the first year

sensations and perceptions sequence and direction the familiar and the strange objects and people events and experiences permanence and transiency cause and effect

Sensorimotor Intelligence
Remember
Piagets first stage (chapter 2)
infants learn through senses and motor actions

Piaget and Research Methods

Piagets sensorimotor intelligence actually occurs earlier for most infants than Piaget predicted.
Habituation, the process of getting used to (i.e., bored with) a stimulus after repeated exposure. An infant can show this by looking away. If a new object appears and the infant reacts (change in heart rate, sucking), it is assumed they recognize the object as something different.

Summing up
In six stages of sensorimotor, Piaget discovered, described, and then celebrated active infant learning.
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Information Processing Theory

a perspective that compares human thinking processes, by analogy, to computer analysis of data, including sensory input, connections, stored memories, and output

Information Processing Theory

With the aid of technology this theory has found some impressive intellectual capacities in the infant Intellectual capacities, concepts, and categories seem to develop in the infant brain by 6 months
Perspective helps tie together various aspects of infant cognition: affordance and memory.

Information Processing Theory

affordance
an opportunity for perception and interaction that is offered by a person, place, or object in the environment afford = offer perception is the mental processing of information that arrives at the brain from the sensory organs

Information Processing Theory

affordance
One puzzle of development is that two people can have discrepant perceptions of the same situation, not only interpreting it differently but actually observing it differently
depending on: past experiences current developmental level sensory awareness of opportunities immediate needs and motivation
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Information Processing Theory

Research on Early Affordance
Information processing improves over the first year as infants become quicker to remember Experiences affect which affordances are perceived

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Information Processing Theory

Sudden Drops
the visual cliff, an apparatus to measure depth perception infants become interested in crossing the cliff about 8 months (having had experience falling) the cliff affords danger for older infants
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Information Processing Theory

Movement and People
infants have:
dynamic perception
primed to focus on movement and change

a people preference
a universal principle of infant perception, consisting of an innate attraction to other humans, which is evident in visual, auditory, tactile, and other preferences
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Information Processing Theory

Memory
Developmentalists now agree that even very young infants can remember under the following circumstances: experimental conditions are similar to real life motivation is high special measures are taken to aid memory retrieval
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Information Processing Theory

Reminders and Repetition
reminder sessions
a perceptual experience that is intended to help a person recollect an idea, a thing, or an experience, without testing whether the person remembers it at the moment

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Information Processing Theory

A Little Older, a Little More Memory
after about 6 months infants can retain information for longer periods of time with less training or reminding by the middle of the 2nd year toddlers can remember and reenact more complex sequences

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Information Processing Theory

Aspects of Memory
Memory is not one thing
brain-imaging techniques reveal many distinct brain regions devoted to particular aspects of memory
implicit memory is memory for routines and memories that remain hidden until particular stimulus bring them to mind explicit memory is memory that can be recalled on demand
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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

The acquisition of language, its idiomatic phases, grammar rules, and exceptions, is the most impressive intellectual achievement of the young child.

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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

The Universal Sequence Around the world children follow the same sequence of early language development

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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

Listening and Responding
infants begin learning language before birth infants prefer speech over other sounds

child-directed speech
the high-pitched, simplified, and repetitive way adults speak to infants
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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

Babbling
repeating certain syllables (e.g., da-dada).
all babies babble, even deaf babies (although later and less frequently). babbling is a way to communicate.

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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

First Words
usually around 1 year the average baby speaks, or signs a few words
they are often familiar nouns

by 13 months spoken language increases very gradually 6 to 15 month-olds learn meaning rapidly and comprehend about 10 times as many words as they speak
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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

The Naming Explosion
a sudden increase in an infants vocabulary, especially in the number of nouns begins at about 18 months vocabulary reaches about 50 expressed words at a rate of 50 to 100 per month, 21 month-olds saying twice as many as 18 month-olds
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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

Cultural Differences
the ratio of nouns to verbs and adjectives show cultural influences. one explanation is the language itself (i.e. English, Chinese differ) another explanation is social context (toys and objects) every language has some concepts encoded in adult speech
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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

Sentences
The first words soon take on nuances of tone, loudness, and cadence that are precursors of the first grammar, because a single word can convey many messages by the way it is spoken.

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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

Sentences
Dada! Dada? and Dada.
each is a holophrase, a single word that expresses a complete, meaningful thought. intonations varying in tone and pitch is extensive in babbling and again in holophrases at about 18 months grammar--all the methods that languages use to communicate meaning. Word order, prefixes, intonation, verb forms, are all aspects of grammar.
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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

Theories of Language Learning
2 year olds worldwide use language well bilingual children keep two languages separate and speak whatever language a listen understands

each theory of language acquisition has implications for parents and educatorsall want children to speak fluentlywithout instruction
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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

Theories of Language Learning 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
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 Theory One: Infants Need to Be Taught

50 years ago the dominant learning theory in North America was behaviorism

Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

B. F. Skinner (1957) noticed that spontaneous babbling is usually reinforced a grinning mother appears, repeating, praising, giving attention to the infant
Parents are expert teachers, other caregivers help Frequent repetitions instructive when linked to daily life Well-taught infants become well-spoken children
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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

Theory Two: Infants Teach Themselves
a contrary theory is that language learning is innate--adults need not teach it Norm Chomsky (1968,1980) felt that language is too complex to be mastered merely through step-by-step conditioning

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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

Theory Two: Infants Teach Themselves
universal grammar--all young children master basic language at about the same age Language acquisition device (LAD)
a term used for a hypothesized mental structure that enables humans to learn language, including the basic aspects of grammar, vocabulary and intonation
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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

Theory Three: Social Impulses Foster Infant Language
a third theory called social-pragmatic perceives the crucial starting point to be neither vocabulary reinforcement (behaviorism) nor innate connection (epigenetic), but rather the social reason for language; communication Infants communicate in every way they can because humans are social beings and depend on one another for survival and joy
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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

A Hybrid Theory
the integration of all three perspectives notably in a monograph based on 12 experiments designed by 8 researchers their model an emergentist coalition combing valid aspects of several theories about the emergence of language during infancy
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