MODULE 13

Cognitive Development of infants & Toddlers

Cognitive Development –
It talks about how infants psychological processes involved in thinking
& knowing develop into young children. In infancy refers to
development in the way a baby thinks . This includes his/her language,
communication and exploration skills.
Examples of cognitive activities:
• Remembering leaning to talk
• Interacting with toys
• Identifying faces
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
1.) SIMPLE REFLEXES (birth to 1 month)
2.) FIRST HABITS & PRIMARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS (1-4 months)
3.) SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTION (4-8 months)
4.) COORDINATION OF REACTIONS STAGE SECONDARY CIRCULAR(8-12
months)
5.) TERTIARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS, NOVELTY, AND CURIOSITY( 12-18
months)
6.) INTERNALIZATION OF SCHEMES(INVENTION OF NEW MEANS
THROUGH MENTAL COMBINATION (18-24 months)
 SENSORI MOTOR STAGE
SIMPLE REFLEXES
birth to 1 month
FIRST HABITS & PRIMARY
CIRCULAR REACTIONS
1-4 months
AGE DECRIPTION
In the first month of life, infants reflects more
reflexes – automatic responses to particular stimuli.
Coordination of sensation and action through
reflexive behaviors. Three primary reflexes are
described by Piaget. These are:
*Sucking of objects in the mouth
*Moving or interesting objects with the eyes
*Closing of the hand when an object makes contact
with the palm
It involves coordinating sensation & new schemas
.In the first few months of life, infant’s behaviors are
focused almost exclusively on their own bodies (in
Piaget‘s terminology, the behaviors are primary)
and are repeated over and over again (i.e., they are
circular). Infants also begin to refine their reflexes
and combine them into more complex actions.
Ex. A child may suck his/her thumb by accident &
then later intentionally repeat the action.
These actions are repeated because the infant finds
them pleasurable.
 SENSORI MOTOR STAGE AGE DECRIPTION
SECONDARY CIRCULAR In this stage the infants become more object – oriented,
REACTION moving beyond self-preoccupation repeat actions that
bring interesting or pleasurable results. This stage is
associated primarily with the development of
coordination between vision & prehension. Three new
abilities occur at this stage: intentional grasping for a
desired object, secondary circular reactions , and
differentiations between ends and means.
Ex. 4 month old accidentally knocks a toy hanging in
front of her producing a fascinating swinging motion &
4-8 months attempts to repeat this effect.
At this stage, infants will intentionally grasp the air in the
direction of a desired object, often to the amusement of
friends and family. Secondary circular reactions, or the
repetition of an action involving an external object
begin: for example , moving a switch to turn on a light
repeatedly. This means that a secondary action is
focused on an object outside the body of an infant. The
differentiation between means and ends also occurs.
This is perhaps one of the most important stages of a
child’s growth as it signifies the drawn of logic.
 SENSORI MOTOR STAGE AGE DECRIPTION
COORDINATION OF Coordination of vision and touch-hand-eye coordination; of
REACTIONS STAGE schemes intentionally. This stage is associated primarily with
SECONDARY CIRCULAR the development of logic and the coordination between means
and ends. This is an extremely important stage of development
8-12 MONTHS
, holding what Piaget calls the “first proper intelligence”. Also,
this stage marks the beginning of goal orientation ,the
deliberate planning of steps to meet an objective. The action is
directed towards a goal.
TERTIARY CIRCULAR Infants become intrigued by the many properties of objects and
REACTIONS ,NOVELTY, by the many things they can make happen to objects; they
AND CURIOSITY experiment with new behavior. This stage is associated
12-18 MONTHS primarily with the discovery of new means to meet goals.
Piaget describes the child at this juncture as the “ young
scientist., “ conducting pseudo- experiments to discover new
methods of meeting challenges.
INTERNALIZATION OF Infants develop the ability to use primitive symbols and form
SCHEMES ( INVENTION OF enduring mental representations .This stage is associated
NEW MEANS THROUGH primarily with the beginnings of insight , or true creativity. This
18-24 MONTHS
MENTAL COMBINATION marks the passage into the preoperational stage. Evidence of an
internal representational system. Symbolizing the problem-
solving sequence before actually responding.
• Piaget’s substages are termed circular because the adaptive behavior to the world
involves repeated actions. Circular reactions are attempts to repeat an event that the baby
likes.
• Primary circular reactions are oriented toward the infant’s own body, whereas secondary
circular reactions are aimed toward the environment including others. Here is an example
of primary circular reactions: At first, by accident , the baby gets her thumb in her mouth.
But she doesn’t know how to do it again. She waves her hand around & after many
attempts, eventually succeeds in doing it again. Gradually, she learns how to do it at will.
• Secondary circular reactions are repetitive actions that involve recreating events which 4-
10 months old babies observe outside of their own bodies, such as making their mobile
crib shake by kicking their legs.
• Tertiary circular reactions, seen from approximately 10-18 months, is where baby does
things over & over again, just a little differently each time . When a baby seems to enjoy
dropping the spoon over & over again in many different ways, a proof of the creation of
novel variations in events. Piaget describe the baby at this stage as the “scientist”.
• Acquiring the sense of object permanence is one of the infants most important
accomplishments, according to Piaget’s . Object permanence is the understanding that
objects are not immediately perceptible through the senses.
. LEARNING & REMEMBERING
Do infants learn & remember?
Yes!
Pavlov’s classical conditioning & skinner’s operant conditioning
have been proven to apply to infants. All of us experience infantile
amnesia, the inability to recall events that happened when we were
very young. Generally, we can remember little or nothing that has
happened to us before the age of about 5 years, and it is extremely rare
for someone to recall many memories before 3 years. Reports of
childhood memories usually involve memories of significant events
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
From day one, infants appear to be programmed to tune in to their linguistic
environment with the specific goal of acquiring language. Infants clearly have
remarkably acute language learning activities even from an early age. Within
the first years of life, we humans seem to progress through the following
stages in producing language:
1.)Cooing, which compromise consonant as well as vowel sounds. Infants
produce soft vocalizations around 3 months of age.
2.) Babbling, which compromises consonant as well as vowel sounds; to
most people’s ears, the babbling of infants growing up among speakers from
different language groups sounds very similar.
Ex. “bababababa” or “ nanananana”
3.) One-word utterances; these utterances are limited in both the vowels &
the consonants they utilize.
Ex. Usually they refer to important people (“mama”, “dada”), animals
(“doggie,” “kitty”), objects that move (“ball,” “car”) , foods (“milk”, “apple”),
familiar actions (“bye-bye”, “more”), or outcomes of familiar actions (“wet”,
“hot” )
4.) Two-word utterances & Telegraphic speech
Ex. “ go car”, “mommy shoe”, “ door open” or “ where daddy go?
5.) Basic adult sentence structure(present by about age 4 years ) with the
continuing vocabulary acquisition. As children become more sophisticated
in their language, overgeneralize rules in ways that are inconsistent with
common usage.
Ex. “I come home” for “ I came home” (sometimes called creative grammar ).
Holophrase- to convey intentions, desires & demands usually, the
words are nouns describing familiar objects that the child observes
Ex.( Book, ball & baby)
The general term for any kind of four-legged animal may be “doggie” in
linguistic this is called Overextension error.
The two-word or three-word utterances with rudimentary syntax but
with articles & prepositions missing are reffered to as Telegraphic
speech.
Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
The Language Acquisition Device- is the innate biological ability of
humans to acquire & develop language. The LAD was developed by
linguist Noam Chomsky who contribute to the field of cognitive
psychology through his language research. He challenged the prevailing
behaviorist theory that language was acquired through exposure to it in
our environment. Our capacity for language is the same all over the
world in wildly different cultures and environments.