1. Chapter 5 INFANCY Cognitive and Language Development

2. Cognitive Development

3. Learning: A Definition • Change in behavior • Change must be relatively stable. • Change must result from experience.

4. How Soon Do Infants Start Learning? • Learning in the Womb • De Casper • Cat in the Hat • Newborn Learning • Sameroff’s experiments

5. Piaget: The Sensorimotor Period • Refers to the coordination of motor activities with sensory inputs. • Capacity to look at what they’re listening to • Object permanence: Capacity to view the external world as permanent • Inability to represent world internally

7. Neo-and Post-Piagetian Research • Playing is Learning • Playing gives babies clues as to what they should do and when they should do it. • Consequences of Maternal Depression • Youngster lags behind in emotional, language and social development

8. Bruner on Modes of Cognitive Representation • We “know” something in three ways: • Enactive: doing it • Ikonic: picture or image of it • Symbolic: language

9. Continuity in Cognitive Development from Infancy • Decrement and Recovery in Attentiveness • Two components of attention indicative of intelligence in youngsters: • Decrement of attention • Recovery of attention

10. Language and Thought

11. Language • Language: a structured system of sound patterns that have socially standardized meanings.

12. The Functional Importance of Language • Two contributions: • Communication: The process by which people transmit information, ideas, attitudes and emotions • Facilitation of thought and other processes.

13. Language as Container of Thought • Thought takes place independently of language • Words are only necessary to convey thought to others.

14. Language as a Determinant of Thought • Language develops parallel with, or prior to, thought. • Conceptualization: Grouping perceptions into classes or categories based on similarities.

16. Theories of Language Acquisition

17. Nativist Theories • Noam Chomsky et.al. • Human beings begin life with the underpinnings of later speech perception and comprehension. • “Pre-wired” by their brain circuitry for language use

18. Chomsky’s Theory of Language Development • Language Acquisition Device • All languages possess: • Surface Structure • Deep Structure • Transformational grammar biologically built in.

19. Other Nativist Studies • The Twins’ Early Development Study (TEDS) • The Cambridge Language and Speech Project • Genetics of Developmental Dyslexia • International Molecular Genetics Study of Autism

20. Arguments for Nativist Theories • Children Acquire Language with Little Difficulty • Adult Speech is Inconsistent, Garbled and Sloppy • Children’s Speech is not a Mechanical Playback of Adult Speech.

21. Learning and Interactionist Theories • Caretaker Speech • Interactional Nature of Caretaker Speech • Motherese

22. Language Development

23. Communication Processes • Nonverbal Communication or Body Language • Physical movements • Gaze • Pointing • Paralanguage

24. The Sequence of Language Development • From Vocalization to Babbling • Babbling • Receptive Vocabulary • Holophrases • Overextension • Two-Word Sentences • Telegraphic Speech

25. Bilingualism • Critical period of language acquisition: prior to onset of puberty • Best time to learn a new language is early in life.