PSYC 2314 Lifespan Development

1. PSYC 2314Lifespan Development Chapter 6 The First Two Years: Cognitive Development

2. Perception and Cognition • Gibson’s Affordances • Perception is an active cognitive process in which each individual interacts selectively with a vast array of perceptual possibilities • “the environment affords opportunities”

3. Perception and Cognition • Which particular affordance an individual perceives and acts on depends on that person’s: • Past experiences • Current developmental or maturational level • Sensory awareness of the opportunities • Immediate needs and motivation

4. Perception and Cognition • Dynamic Perception • Perception primed to focus on movement and change • Object Permanence • The ability to understand that objects exist independently of one’s perception of them

5. Cognitive Growth • Infants younger than 6 months can categorize objects according to their shape, color, angularity, density, number (up to 3 objects) and relative size.

6. Cognitive Growth • Conditions in which infant memory can be more developed: • Using situations that are similar to real life • Ensuring that the infant’s motivation is high • Providing memory-priming retrieval cues

7. Cognitive Growth • Deferred Imitation • Ability to remember and imitate behaviors that have been witnessed but never personally performed.

8. Cognitive Growth • Launching event • Research using the habituation technique to determine that 6 month-olds notice whether an object is moving along or not, but they do not seem to understand cause and effect; by 10 months, they can properly interpret the cause-and-effect nature of simple launching events.

9. Piaget’s Sensorimotor Intelligence • Stage One: Reflexes (birth-1 month) • Newborn’s reflexes represent its only ways of gaining knowledge about the world. • Stage Two: First Acquired Adaptations (1-4 months) • When the infant starts to adapt its reflexes to the environment and to coordinate two actions. • Adaptation occurs through assimilation or accommodation

10. Piaget’s Sensorimotor Intelligence • Stage Three: Making Interesting Sights Last (4-8 months) • Infants become more responsive to people and objects in the environment as they learn to repeat specific actions that have elicited pleasing responses. • Stage Four: New Adaptation and Anticipation (8-12 months) • Infants become more purposeful in responding to people and objects, anticipating events, and engaging in goal-directed behavior.

11. Piaget’s Sensorimotor Intelligence • Stage Five: New Means Through Active Experimentation (12-18 months) • The little scientists become more active and creative in their exploration of, and trial-and-error experimentation with, the environment. • Stage Six: New Means Through Mental Combinations (18-24 months) • By using mental combinations, toddlers begin to anticipate and solve simple problems without resorting to trail-and-error experimentation. • Enables the toddler to remember much better, to anticipate future events, and to pretend.

12. Language Development • Babbling: repeating certain syllables • Underextension: words are applied more narrowly than they should be • Overextension: overgeneralization • Holophrases: one word sentences

13. Language Development • BF Skinner • Language is acquired through conditioning and differential reinforcement of appropriate usage. • Noam Chomsky • Children have an innate predisposition to learn language, language acquisition device (LAD). • Sociocultural • The actual language-learning process occurs in social context, framed by the adult’s teaching sensitivity and the child’s learning ability.

14. Language Development • Baby Talk (motherese) • Distinct in pitch, intonation, vocabulary and sentence length. • Employs more questions, commands, and repetitions and fewer past tenses, pronouns and complex sentences