Jaime Gonzalez

ECE 252

Jennifer Montgomery

14 March 2021

Cognitive Observation

Part A

(4 – 12 months.)

1.   a.  Using objective observation, state at least 2 examples of behaviors that might help you to
determine the child’s cognitive development.

 Throughout the video, the infant continued to kick it’s legs and shook/swung its arms
around

 The infant had a toy in their hand, when the child swings its arms around the toy would
make a rattling sound.

b.  Which of Piaget’s sensorimotor substages do you think this child is in?

 The infant seems to be showing characteristics of two stages. It’s seems as though the
baby intentionally shakes the toy to hear the noises that it produced, which is a quality of
stage three: Secondary Circular Reactions. However, the child also seems to be
intentionally moving and kicking its legs around. In this case, the infant is using their
body for the sake of pleasurable stimulation which is stage two: Primary Circular
Reactions. While the child displays characteristics of both stages, I would ultimately
place them into “early stage three”.

2.  What toys or materials do you see that would assist the child in moving to the next
sensorimotor substage and why?

 As the next stage includes infants performing activities to achieve a goal, perhaps
providing the child with a mallet that they can use on a toy xylophone could help them
move onto the next stage. As they are now using an object to achieve a goal, creating
music by hitting the mallet on the xylophone bars.

3.  How is the teacher fostering cognitive growth in this child?  (Give examples of available
toys/personal interactions, etc.)

 In this case, The caregiver or teacher helps grab the attention of the infant, so that it can
focus on the object in its hand. She does this by calling to the child and shaking the toy to
 make noise. You can see that her doing this does grab the infants attention and he then
begins to play with the toy. The caregiver also shows the child how to spin a part of the
toy around and help the child with the motion necessary to do so.

Part B

(13 – 19 months)

1.   a.  Using objective observation, state at least 2 examples of behaviors that might help you to
determine the child’s cognitive development.

 The caregiver asks the infant to jump like a frog. The child gets up from the caregivers
lap and does as requested, jump.

 The child is able to mimic the sound of a monkey after the caregiver asks him to do so.

b.  Which of Piaget’s sensorimotor substages do you think this child is in?

 I would consider the child presented in the video to be in the symbolic thought sub stage.
This is due to the fact that in this stage, children are able to visualize things that aren’t
physically present. The fact the the child is able to imitate both a monkey and a frog
without them being right in front of him shows that he does in fact belong to this stage.

2.  What toys or materials do you see that would assist the child in moving to the next
sensorimotor substage and how would they help?

 I believe providing students with more opportunities to visualize objects could move
them into further stages of development. Perhaps giving the opportunity to do pretend
play could help. Having them pretend to drive a car or pretend to cook may help them
create a further foundation.

3.  How is the teacher fostering cognitive growth in this child? (Examples of available
toys/personal interactions, etc.)

 The teacher helps the child image and act what he thinks each animal does. In this video,
we only saw two animals which was a monkey and a frog. The teacher helps the child
development further by not just doing this once but she also provides opportunities when
he can do these actions more than once. For an example, when the child got up from her
lap, seemingly disinterested, the teacher said “are you going to show me what a frog does
again?”

Part C
(20  – 27 months)

(Exact Age: 25 Months)

1.Scale VI: Development of Imitation (of words)

 Step 5: Imitation of Familiar Words. While the child and his mother are playing with the
food toys, the child is continuously stating the name of the food. For an example, when
he held a watermelon, he states, “do you want a watermelon?” The mother always
reinforces what her child says by replying with the food name in her response, “Water
melon is my favorite!”

 Step 6: Imitation of new words. In the video we see that the young child is playing with
his caregiver. He is playing with an assortment of food toys. His caregiver gabs the
basket of toys and sets it on the floor for them to play and she grabs a cutting board and
the child doesn’t know what the item is called. His caregiver says it’s a cutting board.
Without her asking him to, he repeated the word to himself.

 Step 7: Extensive Imitation of Words. The child did learn a new word in this short video.
It is not known if there were other words that he did not previously know, however the
word cutting board was the only word in the video in which we know for a fact is new.
While the toddler initially stated the word after his mother, he did not repeat the word
again in the video. As this step states that the child repeats the new words several times
and he only said it once, means that he did not complete this step.

2.  What toys might you offer to the child to facilitate her/him to the next level and why?  (Next
step on a scale or next cognitive level)

 Offering the child toys in which he or she is unfamiliar with can most definitely help
them not only learn new words but also learn what things look like as well. Perhaps
introducing new shapes, new animal toys or toys that are in different colors.

 Also having flash cards or reading a book can help them with remembering and
identifying new objects and things.

 It is also important to create opportunities for children to use the items that they are
learning about. For an example, if the child doesn’t know what a horse is, playing with
the horse and having the child repeat the word server also times while playing can help
them remember. Using this new toy in a back and forth pretend play can help the child
build their language and thinking skills.