CHAPTER 6 OUTLINE

I. Perception and Cognition

A. Perception - the mental processing of information that arrives from sensory organs (Berger, 160).

7 Eleanor and James Gibson - "the environment affords opportunities" and these "opportunities" are referred to as affordances

7 Individuals perceive different affordances depending on:

1) Past experiences

2) Current developmental or maturational level

3) Sensory awareness of the opportunities

4) Immediate needs and motivation

Example:

B. Graspable? Suckable?

7 All senses are active processors from birth

7 Grasping and sucking - first reflexes to afford information

1) Graspability - whether an object is the right size, shape,

texture, and reachable is one of the early affordances

a) Babies can perceive graspability prior to actually reaching and

grasping object; perception precedes actions

b) Babies will not reach for ungraspable objects for example eyes and

mouths, however they will reach for noses, earrings, glasses, etc.

2) Suckability, noisemaking and movability - develop early on and

begin to afford opportunities for perception

C. Depth Perception

7 3-months old - able to differentiate between solid surface and a

cliff - visual cliff

7 sloping ramp - perceived affordances depend on previous

experiences

1) 14-month olds with walking experience - able to perceive slope and

could respond more cautiously

2) 8-month olds with crawling experience - tried crawling down even

after perceiving steepness

D. Dynamic Perception - perception designed to concentrate on

movement and change

7 babies prefer looking at objects in motion, perceiving the objects

rigidity, wholeness, shape, and size

7 object permanence - the ability to comprehend that objects and

individuals exist independently of one's perception of them even when they

are out of sight

1) early awareness of objects is restricted to what babies can see

2) 8-months old babies begin to search for hidden objects

3) process of understanding object permanence develops over first 2

years of life

II. Cognitive Growth

A. Categories - infants (less than 6-months old) are capable of

organizing perceptions into sets based on shape, color, angularity,

density, and relative size

7 Categorization becomes more complex and sophisticated as infants

age and become more experienced

B. Memory

7 Infantile amnesia - (Freud) hypothesis that stated children under

2 remembered nothing and children under 5 only remembered the most

significant experiences

7 Memory span - very limited and most infants will forget what they

have learned

7 Reminder session - a perceptual experience (a sight, smell, sound)

that may help trigger an infants memory - does not test actual memory

1) Rovee-Collier - believes natural reminder sessions are part of

daily experience - baby experiences same things day to day ex - mom

shakes rattle & then puts in baby's hand

Eventually baby will just reach out and grab it

7 Under 6 months - recall for very short time

7 Deferred imitation - ability to observe, remember and later on

replicate a specific behavior (evident towards end of 1st year)

1) Eventually, imitation becomes more elaborate and specific

C. Cause and Effect

7 Infants begin to distinguish causes and effects of events

Ex: an infant may turn the handle on a jack-in-the-box causing the clown

to pop out, and eliciting some laughter, therefore the infant will

continue to repeat their previous actions, thus displaying their

understanding of cause and effect.

7 Launching event - one action feeds off another

7 Experiments have demonstrated that infants under six months can

distinguish an object moving along, however cannot fully understand the

concept behind the cause and effect

III. Piaget's Sensorimotor Intelligence

A. Sensorimotor Intelligence- term originated by Piaget to describe

the intelligence of infants during the initial stages of cognitive

development

7 Sensorimotor intelligence develops through six consecutive stages

1) Stage One(Birth- 1 month)-categorized by reflexes such as looking,

listening, sucking, and grasping.

2) Stage Two(1-4 months)- Adaptation begins through

7 Assimilation- taking new information into the mind by integrating

it into prior developed mental categories(Piaget referred to these as

"schemas")

7 Accommodation- retrieving new information which leads the infant

to readjusting, refining, or expanding, their previous schemas

3) Stage Three(4-8 months)-

7 Extensive interaction with people and objects

7 Increase vocalization and desire to communicate and elicit

responses with others

7 Increased awareness of their surroundings

4) Stage Four (8-12 months)

7 Goal-directed behavior- purposeful action brought on by infants to

produce desired responses; more alert of cause and effect

1) Once the baby has a specific goal/desire they no longer accept

substitutes

5) Stage Five (12-18 months)

7 Little scientist - toddlers increased need to experiment and

explore

6) Stage Six (18-24 months)

7 Mental combinations - toddlers experiment various actions

cognitively prior to acting on them; begin to test out consequences

1) Toddlers begin to pretend

2) Piaget suggested that deferred imitation begins during this stage,

although it can begin much earlier

IV. Language Development

Age Means of Communication

Newborn Reflexive communication - cries, movements, facial expressions.

2 months A range of meaningful noises - cooing, fussing, crying,

laughing.

3-6 months New sounds including squeals, growls, croons, trills, and

vowel sounds

6-10 months Babbling, including both consonant and vowel sounds

repeated in syllables

10-12 months Comprehension of simple words; simple intonations;

specific vocalizations that have meaning to those who know the infant

well. Deaf babies express their first signs; hearing babies use specific

gestures to communicate

13 months First spoken words that are recognizably part of the

native language

13-18 months Slow growth of vocabulary, up to about 50 words

18 months Vocabulary spurt - 3 or more words learned per day

21 months First 2 word sentence

24 months Multi-word sentences. Half the infants utterances are 2 or

more words long.

(Berger, 175)

7 Babbling - repetition of certain syllables (da-da, ma-ma)

7 Underextension - applying a word to very specific things

Ex - Bird only refers to family bird

7 Overextension - applying a newly learned word to a variety of

objects

Ex - anything furry is called rabbit

7 Holophrase - one word used to convey an entire thought

Ex - "Up!" - "pick me up."

A. Nature vs. Nurture

1. Nurture

7 Verbal behavior can be explained through the learning theory( B.F.

Skinner) Ex. A baby's squealing may be reinforced with adult's attention

or with food

7 Some theorists believe that parent's reactions to children's early

words are critical for the child's rate of language developmental

2. Nature

7 Noam Chomsky- " The human brain is uniquely equipped with some

sort of structure or organization that facilitates language development."

1)Language acquisition device- specific brain structure believed to be

responsible for a human's innate ability to obtain a certain language

3. Critiques of Theories

7 Both theories fail to recognize social impacts on the language

learning process

7 The integration of learner, teacher and social context is the

actual spark of children's rapid language development

7 Language development proves to be both a social and cognitive

process