Transcript PSYC 2314 Chapter 6

PSYC 2314
Lifespan Development
Chapter 6
The First Two Years:
Cognitive Development
Perception and Cognition
• Gibson’s Affordances
– Perception is an active cognitive process in
which each individual interacts selectively with
a vast array of perceptual possibilities
– “the environment affords opportunities”
Perception and Cognition
• Which particular affordance an individual
perceives and acts on depends on that
person’s:
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Past experiences
Current developmental or maturational level
Sensory awareness of the opportunities
Immediate needs and motivation
Perception and Cognition
• Dynamic Perception
– Perception primed to focus on movement and
change
• Object Permanence
– The ability to understand that objects exist
independently of one’s perception of them
Cognitive Growth
• Infants younger than 6 months can
categorize objects according to their shape,
color, angularity, density, number (up to 3
objects) and relative size.
Cognitive Growth
• Conditions in which infant memory can be
more developed:
– Using situations that are similar to real life
– Ensuring that the infant’s motivation is high
– Providing memory-priming retrieval cues
Cognitive Growth
• Deferred Imitation
– Ability to remember and imitate behaviors that
have been witnessed but never personally
performed.
Cognitive Growth
• Launching event
– Research using the habituation technique to
determine that 6 month-olds notice whether an
object is moving along or not, but they do not
seem to understand cause and effect; by 10
months, they can properly interpret the causeand-effect nature of simple launching events.
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Intelligence
• Stage One: Reflexes (birth-1 month)
– Newborn’s reflexes represent its only ways of
gaining knowledge about the world.
• Stage Two: First Acquired Adaptations (1-4
months)
– When the infant starts to adapt its reflexes to
the environment and to coordinate two actions.
– Adaptation occurs through assimilation or
accommodation
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Intelligence
• Stage Three: Making Interesting Sights Last (4-8
months)
– Infants become more responsive to people and objects
in the environment as they learn to repeat specific
actions that have elicited pleasing responses.
• Stage Four: New Adaptation and Anticipation (812 months)
– Infants become more purposeful in responding to
people and objects, anticipating events, and engaging in
goal-directed behavior.
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Intelligence
• Stage Five: New Means Through Active
Experimentation (12-18 months)
– The little scientists become more active and creative in
their exploration of, and trial-and-error experimentation
with, the environment.
• Stage Six: New Means Through Mental
Combinations (18-24 months)
– By using mental combinations, toddlers begin to
anticipate and solve simple problems without resorting
to trail-and-error experimentation.
– Enables the toddler to remember much better, to
anticipate future events, and to pretend.
Language Development
• Babbling: repeating certain syllables
• Underextension: words are applied more
narrowly than they should be
• Overextension: overgeneralization
• Holophrases: one word sentences
Language Development
• BF Skinner
– Language is acquired through conditioning and
differential reinforcement of appropriate usage.
• Noam Chomsky
– Children have an innate predisposition to learn
language, language acquisition device (LAD).
• Sociocultural
– The actual language-learning process occurs in social
context, framed by the adult’s teaching sensitivity and
the child’s learning ability.
Language Development
• Baby Talk (motherese)
– Distinct in pitch, intonation, vocabulary and
sentence length.
– Employs more questions, commands, and
repetitions and fewer past tenses, pronouns and
complex sentences