Kathleen Stassen Berger

Prepared by Madeleine Lacefield Tattoon, M.A.

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Part IIThe First Two Years: Cognitive Development

Chapter Six

Sensorimotor Intelligence

Information Processing

Language: What Develops in the

First Two Years?

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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

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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

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Sensorimotor Intelligence• Remember…

–Piaget’s first stage (chapter 2)

• infants learn through senses and motor actions

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Piaget and Research Methods• Piaget’s 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”

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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.

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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

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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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• Babbling– repeating certain syllables (e.g., da-da-

da).• all babies babble, even deaf babies

(although later and less frequently).• babbling is a way to communicate.

Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

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• 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

Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

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• The Naming Explosion – a sudden increase in an infant’s

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

Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

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• 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

Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

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• 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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• 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.

Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

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• 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 educators…all want children to speak fluently…without instruction

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• 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

– 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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

Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?