Intellectual Development During the First Year

Section 9-2

Learning in the First YearPerception: the ability to learn from

sensory information.

This improves with repetition

4 New Intellectual Abilities in First Year

1. Remembering Experiences: Babies can begin to remember during

the first few months. New information can be interpreted based on past experiences.

2. Making Associations:The baby learns to make

connections between events.

3. Understanding Cause and Effect:

Babies learn that one action results in another action or condition.

In time, babies learn that they

can make things happen.

4. Paying Attention:

A baby’s attention span gets longer.

They can focus on something

for longer periods of time.

Intellectual Milestones• Just as there are Physical, Emotional,

and Social Milestones, there are Intellectual Milestones.

These are intellectual tasks that babies usually develop at a certain age.

1 - 2 Months

• Gains Information through senses

• Makes eye contact

• Prefers faces to objects

• Can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar voices

3 - 4 Months• Can distinguish between familiar and

unfamiliar faces

• Makes vowel-consonant combinations such as “ah-goo”

• Can tell a smile from a frown

5 - 6 Months• Is alert for longer periods of time –

up to 2 hours• Studies objects carefully• Recognizes own name• Distinguishes between

friendly and angry voices• Recognizes basic sounds of

native language

7 - 8 Months• Imitates actions of others

• Begins to understand cause and effect

• Remembers things that have happened

• Sorts objects by size

• Solves simple problems

• Forms sounds such as

da, ga, ma, ba

• Recognizes some words

• Babbling imitates speech inflections

Twins Talking to Each Other

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lih0Z2IbIUQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JmA2ClUvUY

9 - 10 Months

• Looks for dropped objects

• Responds to some words and phrases, such as “no” and “all gone”

• Takes objects out of containers

and puts them back in

• May say a few words.

11 - 12 months

• Can point to and identify

objects in books• Fits blocks or boxes inside

one another• Says “mama” and “dada” for parents• Understands simple words and phrases like

“Come to Mommy.”• Speaks some words regularly

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive (Intellectual) DevelopmentJean Piaget was a famous psychologist

who observed many children to learn about their intellectual development.

His theory identified four major learning stages that take place during childhood.

He believed that everyone goes through the stages in the same order. In order to move on to the next stage, you must master the previous one.

Stage 1: The sensorimotor Period (Birth - Age 2)

During this stage, babies learn through their senses and their own actions. At this time, neurons in the brain are establishing pathways and connections that allow learning.

Babies learn object permanence, the fact that objects continue to exist, even when they are out of sight.

Six sub-stages of the Sensorimotor Period

• During each sub-stage, more new learning becomes possible.

• By the end of the Sensorimotor Period, children have a consistent view of their world. Several key concepts are now possible.

- Ability to hold an image in their mindThey can understand concepts such as “soon” and “later”.

- Imaginative PlayChildren can “pretend”.

- Symbolic ThinkingChildren understand that letters, words and numbers stand for ideas. This is critical for later learning such as reading and math.

Stimulating Infants’ Senses

Just as stimulating the senses is crucial to physical, social, and emotional development, it is critical for proper intellectual development.

Stimulation forms and strengthens brain connections and pathways that are critical to learning.

Concept DevelopmentConcepts: general categories of objects

and information.

Infants & young children learn by these three principles:

1.Children begin by

thinking labels are for

whole objects - not parts.

“Dog”

2. Young children believe that labels apply to entire groups - not just individual objects“Dogs”

3. Young children believe that an object can have only one label.

“Buddy” not “Dog”

As children mature, their system of labeling becomes more complex and accurate.