Lesson 5: First Three Years (Cognitive Devt)

• Behaviorist approach


  Studies the basic mechanics of learning; concerned with how behavior changes in response to experience
• Psychometric approach


  Measures quantitative differences in abilities that make up intelligence by using tests that indicate or predict these abilities
• Piagetian approach


  Looks at changes, or stages, in the quality of cognitive functioning; concerned with how the mind structures its activities and adapts to the environment
• Information-processing approach


  Focuses on perception, learning, memory, and problem solving; how children process information from the time they encounter it until they use it
• Cognitive neuroscience approach


  Seeks to identify what brain structures are involved in specific aspects of cognition
• Social-contextual approach

  Examines the effects of environmental aspects of the learning process, particularly the role of parents and other caregivers
• Classical Conditioning


  A person learns to make a reflex, or involuntary, response to a stimulus that originally did not bring about the response
• Operant Conditioning


  Focuses on the consequences of behaviors and how they affect the likelihood of that behavior occurring again
• Reinforcement


  Increasing a behavior
• Punishment


  Decreasing a behavior
• Early procedural knowledge and perceptual knowledge are not the same as the later explicit, language-based memories used by adults
• At 2 months, baby can remember conditioned response for 2 days; at 18 months, they remember for 13 weeks
• Marilu Henner can recall past events in almost photographic detail thanks to a highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), a rare condition that has been identified in only about 100 people in the world
• Intelligent Behavior


  Presumed to be goal oriented and adaptive to circumstances and conditions of life, meaning it exists for the purposes of attaining a goal
• Psychometric tests


  Score intelligence by numbers
• Goals of psychometric testing


  • To measure quantitatively the factors that are thought to make up intelligence
  • To predict future performance (e.g., school achievement)
• IQ (intelligence quotient) tests


  Consist of questions or tasks that are supposed to show how much of the measured abilities a person has by comparing that person's performance with norms established by a large group of test-takers who were in the standardization sample
• Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development


  Developmental test designed to assess children from 1 month to 3½ years
• Scores on the Bayley-III indicate a child's competencies in each of five developmental areas


  • Cognitive
  • Language
  • Motor
  • Social-emotional
  • Adaptive behavior
• Behavior Rating Scale


  Optional; done by the examiner, in part on the basis of information from the child's caregiver
• Developmental Quotients (DQs)


  Most commonly used for early detection of emotional disturbances and sensory, neurological, and environmental deficits and can help parents and professionals plan for a child's needs
• Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME)


  Trained observers interview the primary caregiver and rate on a yes-or-no checklist the intellectual stimulation and support observed in a child's home
• HOME assesses the quality of the home environment with six subscales


  • Number of books and appropriate play materials
  • Parent's involvement with the child
  • Parental emotional and verbal responsiveness
  • Acceptance of the child's behavior
  • Organization of the environment
  • Opportunities for daily and varied stimulation
• HOME inventory gives credit to the parent of an infant or toddler for caressing or kissing the child during an examiner's visit
• Early Intervention


  A systematic process of planning and providing therapeutic and educational services for families that need help in meeting infants', toddlers', and preschool children's developmental needs
• Characteristics of the most effective early interventions

  • Start early and continue throughout the preschool years
  • Highly time-intensive
  • Center-based, providing direct educational experiences, not just parental training
  • Comprehensive approach, including health, family counseling, and social services
  • Tailored to individual differences and needs
• Schemes


  Organized patterns of thought and behavior
• Circular Reactions


  Process when an infant learns to reproduce events originally discovered by chance
• Representational Ability


  The ability to mentally represent objects and actions in memory, largely through symbols such as words, numbers, and mental pictures
• Substages of Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage


  • Use of Reflexes
  • Primary Circular Reactions
  • Secondary Circular Reactions
  • Coordination of Secondary Schemes
  • Tertiary Circular Reactions
  • Mental Combinations
• Imitation


  Invisible imitation develops around 9 months; deferred imitation begins after development of mental representations in the sixth substage (18–24 months)
• Types of Imitation

  • Visible Imitation
  • Invisible Imitation
  • Deferred Imitation
• By 9 months, more than 40 percent of infants can reproduce two steps, such as dropping a toy car down a vertical chute and then pushing a car with a rod to make it roll to the end of a ramp and turn on a light
• By 14 months, infants show preferences about whom they imitate from (more likely to imitate from people who speak the same language they do)
• By 15 months, infants show a bias toward imitating a peer; however, this switches to a bias toward imitating an adult at 24 months
• By 4 years, children are more likely to imitate those who are the same gender they are
• Object Permanence


  The realization that something continues to exist when out of sight
• Symbolic Development


  The growth of pictorial competence [the ability to understand the nature of pictures]
• 12- to 18-month old children were better able to imitate an adult's actions when they saw an adult performing the action in front of them than when they saw a video of the same thing
• Scale Error


  A momentary misperception of the relative sizes of objects; caused by lack of impulse control