Because learning changes everything.

LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENT 17e

John W. Santrock

© 2020 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Authorized only for instructor use in the classroom.
No reproduction or further distribution permitted without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
 Because learning changes everything. ®

Chapter 5

Cognitive Development in Infancy

© 2020 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Authorized only for instructor use in the classroom.
No reproduction or further distribution permitted without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
 Chapter Outline
Piaget’s Theory of Infant Development
Learning, Attention, Remembering, and Conceptualizing
Language Development

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 Piaget’s Theory of Infant Development
Cognitive processes
The sensorimotor stage
Evaluating Piaget’s sensorimotor stage

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 Cognitive Processes 1

Schemes: actions or mental

representations that organize knowledge
• Behavioral scheme.
• Mental scheme.

Assimilation: using existing

schemes to deal with new
information or experiences
Accommodation: adjusting
schemes to fit new information
and experiences

© McGraw-Hill Education ©Maya Kovacheva Photography/Getty Images 5

 Cognitive Processes 2

Organization: grouping of isolated behaviors and

thoughts into a higher-order system
Equilibration and stages of development
Equilibration: mechanism by which children shift from one stage of
thought to the next.
Disequilibrium is cognitive conflict.
Individuals go through four stages of development.
• Cognition is qualitatively different from one stage to another.

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 The Sensorimotor Stage 1

Lasts from birth to about 2 years of age

Construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory
experiences.
Substages.

• Simple reflexes.
• First habits and primary circular reactions.
• Secondary circular reactions.
• Coordination of secondary circular reactions.
• Tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity.
• Internalization of schemes.

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 The Sensorimotor Stage 2

Object permanence: understanding that objects and

events continue to exist
• When they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched.
• One of most important of child's accomplishments.

© McGraw-Hill Education ©Doug Goodman/Science Source 8

 Piaget’s Six Substages of
Sensorimotor Development 1

Substage Age Description Example

1. Simple Birth to 1 month Coordination of Rooting, sucking, and
reflexes sensation and action grasping reflexes;
through reflexive newborns suck
behaviors. reflexively when their
lips are touched.
1 to 4 months Coordination of Repeating a body
2. First habits sensation and two sensation first
and primary types of schemes: experienced by chance
circular habits (reflex) and (sucking thumb, for
reactions primary circular example); then infants
reaction (reproduction might accommodate
of an event that initially actions by sucking their
occurred by chance). thumb differently from
Main focus is still on how they suck on a
the infant's body. nipple.

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 Piaget’s Six Substages of
Sensorimotor Development 2

Substage Age Description Example

3. Secondary 4 to 8 months Infants become more An infant coos to
circular object-oriented, moving make a person stay
reactions beyond self- near; as the person
preoccupation: repeat starts to leave, the
actions that bring infant coos again.
interesting or
pleasurable results.
4. Coordination of 8 to 12 months Coordination of vision Infant manipulates a
secondary and touch—hand-eye stick in order to
circular coordination; bring an attractive
reactions coordination of schemes toy within reach.
and intentionality.

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 Piaget’s Six Substages of
Sensorimotor Development 3

Substage Age Description Example

5. Tertiary circular 12 to 18 Infants become A block can be made to
reactions, months intrigued by the many fall, spin, hit another
novelty, and properties of objects object, and slide across
curiosity and by the many the ground.
things they can make
happen to objects;
they experiment with
new behavior.
6. Internalization 18 to 24 Infants develop the An infant who has never
of schemes months ability to use primitive thrown a temper tantrum
symbols and form before sees a playmate
enduring mental throw a tantrum; the
representations. infant retains a memory of
the event, then throws
one himself or herself the
next day.

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 Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor
Stage 1

A-not-B error: occurs when infants make the mistake of

selecting the familiar hiding place (A) rather than the
new hiding place (B)
• As they progress into substage 4 in Piaget’s sensorimotor stage.
• Coordination of secondary circular reactions.
• A-not-B performance may be linked to attention.

Perceptual development and expectations

The nature-nurture issue
• Core knowledge approach: infants are born with domain-specific
innate knowledge systems.
• Morality may emerge through infants’ early interaction with others and
later transform through language and reflective thought.
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 Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor
Stage 2

Conclusions
• Piaget thought not to be specific enough about how infants learn about
their world.
• Infant cognition has become extremely specialized.
• Currently trying to understand how developmental changes in
cognition take place, examine the big issue for nature and nurture, and
to study the brain’s role in cognitive development.
• Focus on emerging field of developmental cognitive neuroscience.

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 Learning, Remembering, and
Conceptualizing
Conditioning
Attention
Memory
Imitation
Concept formation and categorization

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 Conditioning 1

Operant conditioning
• Behavior followed by rewarding stimulus is likely to recur.

Information retention
• Baby recalls relationship between behavior and stimulus.

Attention: focusing of mental resources on select

information
• Orienting/investigative process.
• Sustained attention.

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 Conditioning 2

Habituation: decreased responsiveness to a stimulus

after repeated presentations of the stimulus
Dishabituation: increase in responsiveness after a
change in stimulation
Joint attention requires
• Ability to track another’s behavior.
• One person’s directing another’s attention.
• Reciprocal interaction.

Eye-tracking equipment connecting gaze and manual action

predicts joint attention in infants.

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 Gaze Following in Infancy

© McGraw-Hill Education ©2005 University of Washington, Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences 17
 Memory
Retention of information over
time Age Group Length of Delay

6-month-olds 24 hours
Implicit memory: without
conscious recollection. 9-month-olds 1 month

• Memories of skills and routine 10- to 11-month-olds 3 months

procedures that are performed
13- to 14-month-olds 4 to 6 months
automatically.
20-month-olds 12 months
Explicit memory: conscious
remembering of facts and
experiences.
Childhood amnesia.

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 Imitation
Involves flexibility and
adaptability

Deferred imitation: occurs

after a delay of hours or days

© McGraw-Hill Education ©Dr. Andrew Meltzoff 19

 Concept Formation and
Categorization
Concepts: cognitive groupings
of similar objects, events,
people, or ideas

Perceptual categorization

Conceptual categorization

Occurs between 18 and 24

months

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 Individual Differences and
Assessment
Measures of infant development

Predicting intelligence

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 Measures of Infant Development 1

Developmental quotient (DQ): score that combines

subscores in
• motor,
• language,
• adaptive, and.
• personal–social domains in the Gesell assessment of infants.

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 Measures of Infant Development 2

Bayley Scales of Infant Development: used to assess

infant behavior and predict later development
Current version has three components.

• Mental scale.
• Motor scale.
• Infant behavior profile.

Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence evaluates an infant’s

ability to process information.

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 Predicting Intelligence
Tests for infants contain items related to perceptual-
motor development
• Include measures of social interaction.

Four domains assessed in infants linked to Wechsler Intelligence

Scale for Children-III at age 11
• Attention.
• Processing speed.
• Memory.
• Representational competence.

Early language skills are the best predictor of IQ compared to

other developmental milestones such as gross motor skills, fine
motor skills, and socialization.
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 Language Development
Defining language
Language’s rule systems
How language develops
Biological and environmental influences
An interactionist view

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 Defining Language
Language: form of communication
• Spoken, written, or signed.
• Based on a system of symbols.
• Lets us pass down information.
• Consists of the words used by a community and the rules for varying
and combining them.

Infinite generativity: ability to produce an endless

number of meaningful sentences using
• Finite set of words and rules.

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 The Rule Systems of Language
Rule System Description
The sound system of a language. A
Phonology phoneme Is the smallest sound unit
In a language.
The system that involves the way
Morphology words are combined to form
acceptable phrases and sentences.
The system that involves the way
Syntax words are combined to form
acceptable phrases and sentences.
The system that involves the
Semantics
meaning of words and sentences.
The system of using appropriate
conversation and knowledge of how
Pragmatics
to effectively use language in
context.
© McGraw-Hill Education
Examples
The word chat has three phonemes or sounds: /ch/ /ã/ /t/. An
example of phonological rule in the English language is while
the phoneme /r/ can follow the phonemes /t/ or /d/ in an
English consonant cluster (such as track or drab), the
phoneme /l/ cannot follow these letters.
The smallest sound units that have a meaning are called
morphemes, or meaning units. The word girl is one
morpheme, or meaning unit; it cannot be broken down any
further and still have meaning. When the suffix s is added, the
word becomes girls and has two morphemes because the s
changed the meaning of the word, indicating that there is more
than one girl.
Word order is very important in determining meaning in the
English language. For example, the sentence “pushed the
bike” has a different meaning than “The bike pushed
Sebastian.”
Knowing the meaning of individual words—that is, vocabulary.
For example, semantics includes knowing the meaning of
such words as orange, transportation, and intelligent.
An example is using polite language in appropriate situations,
such as being mannerly when talking with one's teacher.
Taking turns In a conversation involves pragmatics.
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 How Language Develops 1

Recognizing language sounds

Babbling and other vocalizations
• Crying, cooing, and babbling.

Gestures
• Showing and pointing.

First words
• Receptive vocabulary considerably exceeds spoken vocabulary.
• Vocabulary spurt.

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 How Language Develops 2

• Overextension: applying a word to objects that are inappropriate for the

word’s meaning.
• Under extension: applying a word too narrowly.
• Vocalizations: crying, cooing, babbling, gestures, first words.

Two-word utterances
• To convey meaning child relies on gesture, tone, and context.
• Telegraphic speech: use of short and precise words without
grammatical markers such as articles, auxiliary verbs, and other
connectives.

Statistical learning
• Infants soak up statistical regularities in the world through exposure to
them; for example, “monkey” is said around monkeys and not other
animals.
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 Language Milestones
Typical Age Language Milestones
Birth Crying
2 to 4 months Cooing begins
5 months Understands first word
6 months Babbling begins
6 to 12 months Change from universal linguist to language-specific listener
8 to 12 months Uses gestures, such as showing and pointing
Comprehension of words appears
13 months First word spoken
18 months Vocabulary spurt starts
18 to 24 months Uses two-word utterances
Rapid expansion of understanding of words

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 Variation in Language Milestones

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 Biological Influences 1

Regions involved in language

Broca’s area: region in the brain’s left frontal lobe that is involved in
speech production.
Wernicke’s area: region in the brain’s left hemisphere that is involved in
language comprehension.
Damage to either of these areas produces types of aphasia (a loss or
impairment of language processing).
• Damage to Broca’s area results in difficulty producing words correctly.
• Damage to Wernicke’s area results in poor comprehension, can produce fluent
but incomprehensible speech.

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 Biological Influences 2

Language acquisition device (LAD): Chomsky’s term

that describes a biological endowment enabling the child
to
• Detect the features and rules of language, including phonology, syntax,
and semantics.

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 Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area

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 Environmental Influences 1

Focus on behavioral approach, social interaction, child-

directed speech
Behaviorist view of language learning has several
problems (for example, doesn’t explain novel sentence
formation).
Social interaction view: children learn language in
specific contexts, social cues have a role (for example,
babbling)
Vocabulary development is linked to
• Family’s socioeconomic status.
• Type of talk that parents direct to their children.

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 Environmental Influences 2

Child-directed speech differs from adult interactions:

higher pitch than normal, simple words and sentences
Infants learn about their native language and interaction
Caregiver strategies to enhance child’s acquisition of language
Recasting.
• Rephrasing something child has said.

Expanding.
• Restating something child has said.

Labeling.
• Identifying names of objects.

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 Interactionist View
Biology and experience contribute to language
development. Can language develop without them?
Examples
• Wild boy of Aveyron: An 11-year-old French boy found in 1799 did not attempt
to and never communicated effectively.
• Genie: A child found in California in 1970 never acquired more than a primitive
form of language.

© McGraw-Hill Education 37
Because learning changes everything. ®

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© 2020 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Authorized only for instructor use in the classroom.
No reproduction or further distribution permitted without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.