Cognitive Development

of
Infant sand Toddlers
Brenda B Corpuz, Ph.D. Duran Joan D.
BSE 1VED
(Student)
Cognitive Development

 refers to the development in

theway a baby thinks. This
includeshis language,
communicationand exploration
skills.

2
 1.Sensorimotor
There are 4 stages
of 2.Preoperational
Cognitive Development
3.Concrete Operational

4.Formal Operational

3
Sensorimotor Stage
“In this stage, infants construct anunderstanding of
the world bycoordinating sensory experienceswith
physical motoric actions”

Piaget divided it into six sub-stages:

4
Simple Reflexesbirth – 6 weeks

 Coordination of sensation and actionthrough reflexive behaviours.

THREE PRIMARY REFLEXES DESCRIBEDBY PIAGET

-Sucking of objects in the mouth

-Following moving or interesting objects

-Closing of the hand when an object makescontact with the palm

5
First habits and primary circularreactions phase6 weeks - 4 months

Coordination of sensation and twoschemas:

Primary reaction because the actionis focused on the infants body.
Circular reaction because it is arepetition of an action that initiallyoccurred by
chance.

6
Secondary Circular ReactionPhase 4 – 8 months

Development of Habits.
This stage is associated primarily withthe development of
coordination betweenvision and prehension.

THREE NEW ABILITIES

Intentional Grasping of desired objects
Secondary Circular Reaction
Differentiations between ends and means

7
Coordination of reactions stagesecondary circular8 – 12 months

o Coordination of vision and touchhand-eye coordination; of schemesand

intentionally
o Piaget’s calls the “First properintelligence”
o This action is directed towards agoal

8
Tertiary Circular reactions,novelty and curiosity
12-18 months

 Piaget describes the child at this juncture as the “young

scientist”,conducting pseudo experiments todiscover new
methods of meetingchallenges.

9
Internalization of Schemes18 – 24 months

Infants develop the ability to useprimitive symbols and

formenduring mental representations.
This stage is associated with thebeginnings of insight or
truecreativity.

10
OBJECT PERMANENCE

is the understanding that objectscontinue to exist even

when theycannot be seen, heard or touched.

11
ABSTRACTION

Piaget’s cognitive development shows that thedevelopment begins

fromreflexive behaviours tomorerefined and morecoordinated activities.

Cognitive Development of infants evolves inorientationfrom becoming

focused onthemselves to becoming object or world-oriented, from one
that is action-based to onethat is mentally-based, from one that does
notinvolve much of coordination of schemes to oneinvolving
intentionally, novelty and curiosity andfrom a thinking that is purely
sensorimotor to asymbolic one.

12
 Piaget’s sub-stages are termed circularbecause the adaptive behaviour to theworld
involves repeated actions.

 Primary Circular Reactions- are orientedtoward the infant’s own body.

 Secondary Circular Reactions-arerepetitive actions that involve recreatingevents babies

observe outside of theirbodies.

 Tertiary Circular Reactions-is when ababy does things over and over again.

13
Learning and Remembering

Yes! Pavlov’s classical conditioning andSkinner’s operant conditioning

have beenproven to apply to infants.

All of us experience infantile amnesia, theinability to recall events that

happenedwhen we were very young. Generally, wecan remember little or
nothing that hashappened to us before the age of 5 years.

14
Language Development

Infants appear to be programmed to tunein to their linguistic environment

with thespecific goal of acquiring language.Infants clearly have remarkably
acutelanguage learning activities even from anearly age.

Within the first years of life, we humansseem to progress through the

followingstages:

15
1. Cooing- which compromises largelyvowel sounds.

2. Babbling- which compromisesconsonant as well as vowel sounds.

3. One word utterances- are limited inboth the vowels and consonants.

4. Two word utterances

5. Basic adult sentence structure

16
 Halophrases-to convey intensions, desires anddemands.

Example: baby, ball, mama, dada

 Overextension error-the child overextends themeaning of the words in

his existing lexicon tocover things and ideas for which a new word
islacking.

Example: four- legged animal may be “doggie”

17
Telegraphic Speech- two or three word utterances with rudimentary syntax but with
articles and prepositions missing.

Example: "Daddy is here“ by saying "Daddy here“

Language Acquisition Device(LAD)

 “ Metaphorical organ that is responsible for language learning. Just as a heart is

designed to ump blood this language acquisition device is pre-programmed to learn
language, whatever the language community children find themselves in”

Chomsky, (1965-1972)

18
Domain: Language, Pre-reading and Pre-math

 LANGUAGE (Receptive Language)

0-6 months

 Watches primary caregiver

7-12 months

 Understands “No”
13-18 months

 Points to 5 body parts when asked to do so

19-24 months

 Points to 5 named pictured objects when asked to do so

19
 LANGUAGE (Expressive Language)
0-6 months

 Makes cooing, babbling and other vocal sounds

7-12 months

 Repeats sounds produced by others

13-18 months

 Speaks in single words

 Says “yes” or “no” appropriately

19-24 months

 Uses pronouns

20
 PRE-READING AND PRE-MATH Domain: CognitiveDevelopment
(Matching)  ATTENTION AND ACTIVITY LEVEL
7-12 months 0-6 months
 Looks steadily at novel stimuli
 Able to match 2 identical objects 7-12 months
19-24 months  Looks with interest at picture books
13-18 months
 Matches identical objects-Matches  Resists interruption while engaged in play
identical pictures

 PRE-READING AND PRE-MATH

(Rote Sequencing)
19-24 months

 Counts from 1 to 5 errors, gaps or promps

21
HIGHER-ORDERED MENTAL HIGHER-ORDERED MENTAL ABILITIES
ABILITIES (Concept Formation) (Cause-Effect Relationship)
0-6 months
0-6 months
 Acts on an object to achieve an objective
 Experiments with new toys and objects
7-12 months
7-12 months
 Uses an object to get something he wants
 Looks for partially hidden objects 19-24 months
13-18 months
 Asks “Why?”
 Can tell whether something is hot or
cold  Understands reasons behind daily practices
19-24 months
 Knows where to return most of his things
 Can tell which is shorter of 2 items

 Can tell which is nearer of 2 items

22
MEMORY (Memory for experiences: MEMORY (Memory for concept- based
Episodic Memory) knowledge: Semantic Memory)
0-6 months 19-24 months

 Child reacts in recognition of someone  Hums a recognizable tune

he has met several times.
13-18 months  Memorizes some gestures of action songs

 Child reacts in recognition of familiar HIGHER-ORDERED MENTAL ABILITIES

(Logical Reasoning)
places besides his home
19-24 months
HIGHER
 Child is brought somewhere and
ORDERED MENTAL ABILITIES (Planning
correctly recalls having been there and Organizing)
before
HIGHER-ORDERED MENTAL ABILITIES
(Creative Thought)
23