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U-M PSYCH 250 - Cognitive Development in the First Two Years
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Lecture 6 PSYCH 250 1st EditionOutline of Last Lecture I. Infant Body ChangesII. Influences in Early GrowthIII. Brain Development in InfancyA. Influences on Brain DevelopmentIV. Sensations and PerceptionsV. Reflexes and Motor Development Outline of Current Lecture II. The Sensorimotor StageA. Piaget RevisedIII. Information Processing TheoryIV. The Visual ClifV. MemoryVI. Theories of Language DevelopmentVII.Universal LanguageCurrent LectureThe first two years of a child’s life are crucial for cognitive development. Jean Piaget was a child psychologist who focused mainly on early childhood. He developed a series of four stages. The first stage, the Sensorimotor Stage, encompasses the goals and milestones of the first two years of a child’s life.The Sensorimotor stage describes how infants and toddlers think, so to speak, with their senses and various motor skills. At this age, children are actively developing schemes (psychological pictures that allow them to organize their experiences) and adding to them, or changing them to fit new information.It is during these organizations that children begin to adapt to their surrounds as new information is added. These organizations and adaptations leads to Cognitive Change.Cognition: everything that goes into thinking and anything that goes into intelligenceAdaptation: process of constructing schemes through direct interaction with the surrounding environment.Organization: Rearranging and connecting schemes (internal process of the mind)Two types of adaptations are:- Assimilation – children take an existing scheme and add new information to further enhance that scheme (does not change scheme)- Accommodation children either develop a new scheme or change an existing scheme to fit new information.The Sensorimotor StageThis stage is from birth to two years of age and includes six sub-stagesReflexive Schemes Birth –1 month Newborn reflexes (moro, palmar, babinski)Primary Circular Reactions1 – 4 monthsSimple motor skills are centered around the infants body(continuously shaking rattle)Secondary Circular Reactions4–8 months Infants repeat behaviors and actions that have an interesting outcome Secondary Circular Reactions8–12 monthsBabies develop intentional behavior that is directed towards a purpose or goal, and develop a sense of object permanence.Tertiary Circular Reactions12 – 18 months Children explore the characteristics of diferent objects through their own actions (tip things over to see what things do)Mental Representations12 months – 2 yearsChildren form internal pictures of what things are and can solve simple problems. Children begin make-believe play and deferred imitation (imitate what they see)Stage 2 Primary Circular Reactions: infants have their first adaptations to their environments and build schemes by repeating events that they created on accident, like continuously shaking a rattle.Stage 3 Secondary Circular Reactions: a build on from primary circular reactions, children like to take the interesting things that they see and make them last.Stage 4 Tertiary Circular Reactions: during this stage new adaptations occur and the infant begins to have anticipation. They begin to engage in goal-directed behavior like crawling to a ball. They anticipate that it will be there and their goal is to reach it. This is why they cry when an adult or another child takes the ball away. Piaget believes that this is also the stage that children develop a sense of Object Permanence.Object Permanence: the realization that objects will continue to exist even if they are out of sight. However, researchers began to question if infants developed this sense of permanence prior to 9 months.Renee Baillargeon conducted the “short carrot, tall carrot” experiment to test whether or not infants younger than three months had a sense of object permanence. Baillargeon noted that when babies tended to look at the unexpected event longer (absence of the tall carrot passing by a window cut-out of a board). From her conclusions, Baillargeon suggested that the sense of object permanence develops well before 8 months of age, and maybe even as early as 3 months.Stage 5 Tertiary Circular Reactions: Toddlers develop new ideas and schema through active experimentation. Piaget described these toddlers as “little scientists.” Children are actively learning through trial – and – error. This learning is the reason for repeated actions, (like dumping food, knocking things over, and banging on objects) toddlers like to see what happens.Stage 6 Mental Representations: at this stage children can begin to solve simple problems and actively engage in pretend and make-believe play. Children also begin learning by Deferred Imitation. They watch what other children and adults are doing, and mimic the behavior.Difered Imitation: Piaget believed that children develop learning by deferred imitation at around 18 months of age. However, newer research has concluded that children begin imitating their parents at an age as early as 6 weeks. Age Imitation Action6 weeks Infants imitate simple facial expressions6-9monthsInfants can copy actions using objects 12-14monthsBabies can rationally imitate others by Inferring Intentions (i.e. a child is able to imitate behavior of parent rationally because they know what the parent’s intentions were).18monthsToddlers can imitate the intended, but failed actions of others. (A toddler watches an adult pour water, but the adult spills it. The toddler knows this wasn’t the adult’sintention and is able to later pour the water without spilling it).Many advanced research tools and methods have indicated that many cognitive abilities of infants and toddlers emerge much earlier than Piaget had suggested. Currently, new research is suggesting that cognitive development is:- Gradual – not all at one- Continuous – across the entire span of childhood- Uneven – not universal or symmetricalThese new findings do not negate or make Piaget’s work irrelevant. They only update it.Information Processing TheoryAn information processing viewpoint uses a computer model of human cognition. In this theory,the focus is on the step-by-step description of the mechanisms that are fundamental to human thinking and cognition. Two of these mechanisms are: Affordances and MemoryAffordances: these are opportunities that arise within the environment for perception and interaction to occur. These opportunities


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U-M PSYCH 250 - Cognitive Development in the First Two Years

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