A toddler in stage five of sensorimotor development is a “little scientist.”

Kathleen Stassen Berger

Part II

The First Two Years: Cognitive Development

Chapter Six

Sensorimotor Intelligence

Information Processing

Language: What Develops in the

First Two Years?

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Sensorimotor Intelligence

sensorimotor intelligence: Piaget’s term for the way infants think by using their senses and motor skills during the first period of cognitive development.

Jean Piaget described four distinct periods of cognitive development.

First stage begins at birth and ends at about 24 months.

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Stages One and Two: Primary Circular Reactions

primary circular reactions: first of three types of feedback loops in sensorimotor intelligence

The infant senses and tries to understand:

motion

sucking

noise

other stimuli

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stage one: stage of reflexes lasts only a month.

As reflexes adjust, the baby enters stage two, first acquired adaptations.

first habits

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Stages Three and Four: Secondary Circular Reaction

secondary circular reactions: Babies respond to:

other people

toys

any other object they can touch or move

stage three: (age 4 to 8 months)

Infants attempt to produce exciting experiences, making interesting events last.

Rattles make noise

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stage four: (age 8 months to 1 year) called new adaptation and anticipation, babies think about a goal and how to reach it

goal-directed behavior: purposeful action

enhanced awareness of cause and effect

memory for actions already completed

understanding of other people’s intentions

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Object Permanence

Object permanence: realization that objects (including people) still exist when they can no longer be seen, touched, or heard.

8 months of age

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Stages Five and Six: Tertiary Circular Reactions

tertiary circular reaction–third type of feedback loops in sensorimotor intelligence

active exploration

Experimentation

Stage five: new means through active experimentation

“little scientist”: Piaget’s term for the stage-five toddler who experiments using trial and error in active and creative exploration.

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Stages Five and Six: Tertiary Circular Reactions

stage six:18 to 24 months toddlers begin to anticipate and solve simple problems by using mental combinations

deferred imitation: stage six accomplishment in which an infant first perceives something that someone else does and then performs the same action a few hours or even days later

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Piaget and Modern Research

Infants reach the various stages of sensorimotor intelligence earlier than Piaget predicted.

when studying infants, always problems with fidelity and credibility

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habituation: process of getting used to (aka bored with) object or event through repeated exposure

Using habituation as a research strategy involves repeating one stimulus until babies lose interest, and then presenting another, slightly different stimulus.

Boredom as a Research Method

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Techniques to measure brain activity have proven that babies are thinking long before they talk.

fMRI: functional magnetic resonance imaging, a measuring technique in which the brain’s electrical excitement indicates activation anywhere in the brain

Measuring the Brain

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Information Processing

Piaget was a “grand” theorist

overview contrasts with the information-processing theory

information-processing theory: perspective that compares human thinking processes to computer analysis of data, including:

sensory input

connections

stored memories

output

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perception: mental processing of information that arrives at the brain from the sensory organs

affordance: opportunity for perception and interaction offered by a person, place, or object in the environment

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Affordances

selective perception: a person’s age affects what affordance he or she sees.

research on early affordances: As information processing improves over the first year, infants become quicker to recognize affordances.

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visual cliff: experimental apparatus that gives an illusion of a sudden dropoff between one horizontal surface and another

depth perception: once thought that a visual deficit prevented young babies from seeing the drop

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Movement & People

Babies pay more attention to things that move and to people.

Dynamic perception: perception that is primed to focus on movement and change

people preference: universal principle of infant perception, consisting of an innate attraction to other humans

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Memory

Processing and remembering events requires a certain amount of experience and brain maturation.

Memories are particularly evident when:

experimental conditions similar to real life.

motivation is high.

retrieval strengthened by reminders and repetition.

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Rovee-Collier experiment demonstrated that 3-month-old infants could remember after two-weeks if they had a brief reminder session before being retested.

Reminder session: perceptual experience intended to help a person recollect an idea, a thing, or an experience, without testing

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Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?

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The Universal Sequence

Timing of language acquisition varies.

Most advanced 10% of 2-year-olds speak more than 550 words.

Least advanced 10% speak fewer than 100 words.

Although timing varies, sequence is the same worldwide.

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Listening and Responding

Infants begin learning language before birth.

Newborns look closely at facial expressions and prefer to hear speech over other sounds.

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adults talk to babies with:

higher pitches

simpler words

repetition

exaggerated tone

varied speed

called:

baby talk

motherese

Scientific term: child-directed speech

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At between 6 and 9 months, babies begin to repeat certain syllables.

babbling: extended repetition of certain syllables

ba-ba-ba, da-da-da

Babbling

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holophrase: single word that expresses a complete, meaningful thought

naming explosion: sudden increase in an infant’s vocabulary

First Words

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Culture and families vary a great deal in how much child-directed speech children hear.

The idea that children should be “seen and not heard” is contrary to the emphasis on communication in many U.S. families.

Cultural Differences

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Children can master two languages, but the crucial variable is how much speech in both languages the child hears.

Sometimes hearing two languages slows down grammar.

takes longer to understand how words should be combined

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Worldwide, people younger than 2 already use language well.

Three schools of thought:

behaviorism

epigenetic theory

sociocultural theory

Theories of Language Learning

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Behaviorism or Learning Theory.

Skinner saw that spontaneous babbling usually reinforced by mother:

repeating.

praising.

giving attention to the infant.

parents are expert teachers

other caregivers help

Well-taught infants become well-spoken children.

Theory One: Language Needs to Be Taught

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Epigenetic Theory-Noam Chomsky

language too complex to be mastered merely through step-by-step conditioning.

universal grammar:

all young children master basic language at about the same age

language acquisition device (LAD): term used for a hypothesized mental structure that enables humans to learn language.

includes basic aspects of grammar, vocabulary, and intonation

Theory Two: Infants Teach Themselves

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Sociocultural theory

social-pragmatic:

neither vocabulary reinforcement (behaviorism)

nor innate connection (epigenetic)

social reason for language: communication

Infants communicate in every way they can because humans are social beings, dependent on one another for survival and joy.

Theory Three: Social Impulses Foster Infant Language

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