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