Chapter 5 Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood o Stage 5 Tertiary Circular reactions 10 18 months Intrigued by the many properties of objects and by the many things they can make happen to objects little scientists Now what can I do with this Able to search in several places for hidden object Purposefully explores new possibilities with objects Ex using a teething ring as a bracelet o 6th stage Internalization of schemes 18 24 months Primitive symbols Mental representations of images and concepts Deferred imitation the ability to remember and copy behavior or models who Experimenting with actions inside head aren t present Ex picking up a pen and pretending to write Imitates behavior long after it s been observed o Ex make believe play Mental Representations o Internal mental depictions of objects people events information Can manipulate with mind Allow deferred imitation and make believe play Object Permanence o Understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight o According to Piaget develops in Substage 4 o Incomplete at first A not B search error an infant sees an object placed under a specific location multiple times then the object is placed in a new location to see if the infant will find it there Piaget and Research Methods o Advanced research tools i e habituation and fMRI have shown that aspects of Piaget s sensorimotor intelligence actually occur earlier for most infants than Piaget predicted o These findings do not negate Piaget s work only update it Evaluation of Sensorimotor Stage o Some developments happen at time Piaget described Object search A not B make believe play o Many appear to happen sooner than Piaget thought Object permanence secondary circular reactions deferred imitation problem solving by analogy o Deferred Imitation Piaget Develops at about 18 months Newer research Present at 6 weeks facial imitation 6 9 months copy actions o Research like Many cog changes in infancy are gradual and continuous not abrupt stage These ideas form the basis for another major approach to cog dev Information Processing o In class example with wasabi peas Information Processing Approach Looks at intelligence by breaking it down into its component processes Paying attention to a stimulus Encoding Info Retrieving Info from memory Comparing Different Pieces of Info o Changes in Info Processing During 1st 2 years of life Attend through Senses Information first enters the sensory register where sights and sounds are stored briefly before they decay or are transferred to short term memory As attention abilities increase baby becomes more efficient attenders Attention During the first year infants pay attention to novel new events o Infants gradually become more efficient at managing their attention taking information in more quickly with age o By 4 months infants attention becomes more flexible and they are better able to disengage or shift attention from one stimulus to another Sustained attention improves with the transition to toddlerhood and increasing capacity for intentional behavior Encoding information Encoding Information convert information into code Mental Representations o Internal mental depictions of objects people events Memory information Encoding advances allow information to be stored into memory more efficiently But memory improves too Operant conditioning research shows that infants memories increase dramatically during infancy and toddlerhood o 2 6 month old kick to activate mobile Even very young infants 3 months can remember IF o Experimental conditions are real life life like o Motivation is high o Special measures aid memory retrieval repetition and reminders Example Rovee Collier s mobile experiment o The Research of Carolyn Rovee Collier Infant and toddler memory processing is largely nonverbal They rely heavily on nonverbal memory techniques such as visual images and motor actions and senses Recognition noticing whether a stimulus is identical or similar to one previously experienced is the simplest form of memory Recall more complex involves remembering a stimulus without perceptual support by generating a mental image of the past experience recalling the code or representation of the stimulus Infants can engage in recall by the end of the first year Long term recall requires brain growth Depends on connections among multiple regions of the cerebral cortex neural circuits that develop rapidly in the second year Despite infants surprising memory skills infantile amnesia Most people don t remember anything before age 3 Students in our class seemed to have earliest memories between 2 and 6 years old Organization Categorization Even young infants organize their physical emotional and social worlds by categorizing similar objects and events into a single representation By 6 months infants can categorize based on two features ex shape color Earliest categories are perceptual based on shape size other physical properties but by the second half of the first year more categories are conceptual based on common function behavior In the second year children actively categorize items during their play o Exploration of objects and expanding knowledge of the world contribute to older infants capacity to move beyond physical features and group objects by their functions and behaviors Ex inside and outside toys Categorization aids in o Encoding o Memory storage o Recall retrieval from long term memory Language builds on and facilitates categorization Also Increase in Speed of Information Processing As children grow they process information faster Due to myelinization of axons Pruning leading to more efficient and stronger pathways o use it or lose it Language Development o Lang dev clip Language is receptive and expressive We use higher pitched speak to attracts and keep attention this is universal Babbling peaks between 9 and 12 months Learn naming turn taking etc First words with gestures Telegraphic speech at end of first year
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