Infancy and Childhood

1. Infancy and Childhood Neurological, Physical/Motor Development, and Cognitive Development

2. Neurological Development • On the day you were born, you had most of the brain cells you would ever have (100 billion) • Rapid growth neural connections occurs from ages 3-6 • Most is in your frontal lobes • Myelination also increases in the first few years of life • Pathways supporting language and agility proliferate into puberty • Then a pruning process shuts down excess connections and strengthens others

3. Neural Development

4. Maturation • Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience • Unfolding of genetic blueprint • Sets the basic course of development; experience adjusts it • Very few things can adjust maturation

5. Physical and Motor Development • As an infant’s nervous system and muscles mature, more complicated skills emerge • Often takes place in “fits and starts” • Cephalocaudal Development: Develop from the head to the foot • Proximodistal Development: Develop from the center outward • Motor development is almost universal • Not imitation – blind babies also progress in the same manner • Differences in individual timing do exist but average ages are called developmental norms • Genes play a role in motor development (twins begin sitting up and walking on nearly the same day) • Maturation creates a readiness to walk by age 1 • Experience before that time has a limited effect (also true for bowel and bladder control!)

6. Motor Development

8. Jean Piaget • Cognitive development in children has been greatly influenced by the work of Jean Piaget • Began studying development after he had worked on developing questions for intelligence tests • Was interested in the wrong answers children got – they were all very similar! • Studied his own children • Said that children’s minds develop through a series of stages

9. Basic Piagetian Concepts • Core principle: Driving force behind our intellectual progression is an unceasing struggle to make sense of our experiences • Schema: A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information • Assimilation: Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas (no changes to the existing schema) • Schema for mammals: fur, nurse with milk, live birth • cows, dogs, cats, mice, humans • Accommodation: Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information • ADJUSTING our schemas to fit new information • What the heck is a platypus? Apparently it’s a mammal despite laying eggs and being weird!

10. Assimilation/Accommodation

11. Assimilation/Accommodation

12. Assimilation/Accommodation

13. Stages • Sensorimotor Stage (Sensory – Motor) • Preoperational • Concrete Operational • Formal Operational

14. Sensorimotor Stage • From birth to age 2 • Babies take in their world through their senses and actions • Looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, grasping • Sensations evoke motor responses • Live in the present • Lack object permanence until about 8 months: the awareness that objects continue to exist when not perceived • Out of sight, out of mind • Cannot form memories for objects once they are removed from the immediate present • Language abilities are rapidly developing

15. Preoperational Stage • 2-6/7 • Too young to perform mental operations • But can understand language • Very egocentric • Child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view • Example: When asked to show her picture to mommy, 2-year-old Gabriella holds the picture facing her own eyes, believing that her mother can see it through her eyes • Believe that appearances are real

16. Concrete-Operational Stage • Age 7-11 • Beginning to understand logic • Master conservation • An understanding that certain properties remain constant despite changes in their form • The properties can include mass, volume, and numbers • Can transform mathematical functions • 4+8=12, 12-4=8 is easily understood! • Often take things literally • Children reason best when allowed to engage in “hands-on” learning

17. Conservation

18. Conservation

19. Conservation

20. Types of Conservation Tasks

21. Formal-Operational Stage • 12 and up • Can think logically and think about abstract principles • Can use symbols and imagined realities • Can solve hypothetical problems

22. Criticisms of Piaget • Does a child always have to pass from one stage to the next? • Development is much more gradual • Wasn’t very concerned with individual differences • Cognitive development can vary greatly between individuals • Some adults never learn how to reason abstractly • Confused the physical ability and the ability to understand • Didn’t identify any mechanisms responsible for moving from one stage to the next • Underestimated the abilities of children and overestimated the abilities of adolescents • Viewed the developing child in relative isolation from family, community, and culture

23. Other Approaches to Cognitive Development • Lev Vygotsky: Stressed the role of culture and cultural differences in cognitive development • Piaget said we develop by exploring our world • Vygotsky said we develop though our social interactions with parents, teachers, and community • Theory of Mind: elaboration of egocentricism • Occurs when a person understands that other have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different form his or her own • Emerges around age 3 or 4 (earlier than in Piaget) • Failure to develop this has been linked to autism

24. Sally and Anne Test