Transcript Overview of Chapter 11

Chapter 6: Cognition in
Infants and Toddlers
6.1 Piaget’s Theory
6.2 Information Processing
6.3 Language
6.1 Piaget’s Theory
Basic Principles of Piaget’s
Theory
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
Evaluating Piaget’s Account of
Sensorimotor Thought
The Child as Theorist
Basic Principles of
Piaget’s Theory
Schemes: organize experience
Assimilation: incorporate new
experiences into existing schemes
Accommodation: change schemes
based on experience
Equilibration: reorganize schemes to
return to state of equilibrium
6.1 Piaget’s Theory
Piaget’s Sensorimotor
Stage
From birth to 2 years
Begins with reflex action and ends with
use of symbols
Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary
Circular Reactions are repetitive acts
that help the infant learn about the
world
6.1 Piaget’s Theory
Evaluating Piaget’s Account
of Sensorimotor Thought
Other researchers have found
alternative explanations for
performance on Piagetian tasks
Object permanence may occur at a
younger age than Piaget thought
6.1 Piaget’s Theory
“Impossible” Event
The Child as Theorist
Young children develop theories that
organize knowledge about properties of
objects and living things
By 6 months, know that 1st object striking
2nd object will cause 2nd to move
Toddlers understand different properties of
animate and inanimate objects
6.1 Piaget’s Theory
Colliding Cylinders
Familiarization:
Medium cylinder collides with
bug
Test with Large Cylinder:
Large cylinder collides with bug
Test with Small Cylinder:
Small cylinder collides with bug
Results of Colliding Cylinder
Experiment
6.2 Information
Processing
Basic Features of the InformationProcessing Approach
Learning
Memory
Understanding the World
Individual Differences in Ability
Basic Features of the
Information-Processing….
People and computers are both
symbol processors
Hardware: sensory, working, and
long-term memory
Software is task specific
6.2 Information Processing
Components of Mental
Hardware
Learning
Habituation: diminished responding to a
stimulus as it becomes familiar
Classical conditioning: neutral stimulus
elicits a response that was originally
produced by another stimulus
Operant conditioning: focus on
consequences and reoccurrence of
behavior
6.2 Information Processing
Memory
Babies remember, forget, and can be
prompted to recall forgotten material
Infantile amnesia: inability to
remember events from early in life (can
be explained by development of
language and sense of self)
6.2 Memory
Understanding the World
Infants distinguish quantities
because small quantities may be
perceptually obvious
Infants have an egocentric frame
of reference but will develop and
objective frame of reference later
6.2 Information Processing
Test of Quantity
Individual Differences in
Ability
Individual differences are measured in
mental tests for infants and toddlers
Scores from infant intelligence tests
are not related to later IQ scores
Habituation in infants is a better
predictor of later IQ
6.2 Information Processing
6.3 Language
Perceiving Speech
First Steps to Speaking
First Words
Fast Mapping Meanings to
Words
Styles of Learning Language
Perceiving Speech
Phonemes are sounds that are the
building blocks of language.
Young babies can hear phonemes,
even those not in their language.
Infant directed speech may help
children learn language.
6.3 Language
Infant Listening to Phonemes
First Steps to Speaking
2 months--cooing
5 or 6 months--babbling
7 or 8 months--babbling includes
intonation
Deaf children “babble” in sign
language
6.3 Language
First Words
Infants understand that words are
symbols
First words include people, animals,
food, and toys
Gestures are symbols that children
start to use around the time they begin
to talk
6.3 Language
Fast Mapping Meaning to
Words
Children learn words too rapidly to be
starting from scratch on each one
Joint attention, simple rules, and
sentence cues help children learn word
meanings
Underextensions and overextensions
are 2 common errors
6.3 Language
Boz Blocks
Styles of Learning
Language
Referential style: vocabularies consist
mainly of words that name objects,
persons, or actions
Expressive style: vocabularies include
many social phrases that are used as a
single word (e.g., “go-away,” “I-wantit”)
6.3 Language