Educational Resources in Infancy
Dia 
DEP2004-Chapter3.2Powerpoint.pptx2
Piaget's Approach to Cognitive Development
Information Processing Approaches to Cognitive
Development
The Roots of Language
Key Elements of Piaget's Theory
Action = Knowledge
Four universal stages in fixed order
Development = physical maturation and exposure to relevant experiences
Schemes adapt and change
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget
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All children pass through a series of four universal stages in a fixed order from birth through adolescence: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.
Movement from one stage to the next occurs when a child reaches an appropriate level of physical maturation and is exposed to relevant experiences. Without such experience, children are assumed to be incapable of reaching their cognitive potential.
Basic building blocks of the way we understand the world are mental structures called schemes, organized patterns of functioning, that adapt and change with mental development.
Earliest schemes are primarily limited to the reflexes with which we are all born, such as sucking and rooting. Infants start to modify these simple early schemes almost immediately, through the processes of assimilation and accommodation, in response to their exploration of the environment. Schemes quickly become more sophisticated as infants become more advanced in their motor capabilities.
What principles underlie this cognitive growth?
Accommodation
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Define:
Assimilation is the process by which people understand an experience in terms of their current stage of cognitive development and way of thinking.
Accommodation takes place when child changes existing ways of thinking, understanding, or behaving in response to encounters with new stimuli or events.
Assimilation
Earliest Stage of Cognitive Growth
Sensorimotor Period
Invariant order of stages
Individual differences in rate
Transitions include characteristics of both stages
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Define:
Sensorimotor stage, the initial major stage of cognitive development, can be broken down into six substages. See next slide.
Although the specific substages of the sensorimotor period may at first appear to unfold with great regularity, as though infants reach a particular age and smoothly proceed into the next substage, the reality of cognitive development is somewhat different.
Ages at which infants actually reach a particular stage vary.
Exact timing of a stage reflects an interaction between the infant's level of physical maturation and the nature of the social environment in which the child is being raised, but order remains invariant for all children.
Infants also pass through periods of transition, in which some aspects of their behavior reflect the next higher stage, while other aspects indicate their current stage.
A Closer Look
Substage 1: Simple Reflexes
First month of life
Various various inborn reflexes
At center of a baby's physical and cognitive life
Determine nature of infant's interactions with world
At the same time, some reflexes begin to accommodate the infant's experiences
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Example: Infant who is being breast-fed, but who also receives supplemental bottles, may start to change the way he or she sucks, depending on whether a nipple is on a breast or a bottle.
A Closer Look
Substage 2: First Habits and Primary Circular Reactions
1 to 4 months of age
Beginning of coordination of what were separate actions into single, integrated activities.
Activities that engage baby's interests are repeated simply for sake of continuing to experience it
Circular reaction
Primary circular reaction
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Example: For instance, an infant might combine grasping an object with sucking on it, or staring at something while touching it.
This repetition of a chance motor event helps the baby start building cognitive schemes through a process known as a circular reaction. Primary circular reactions are schemes reflecting an infant's repetition of interesting or enjoyable actions, just for the enjoyment of doing them, which focus on the infant's own body. Thus, when an infant first puts his thumb in his mouth and begins to suck, it is a mere chance event. However, when he repeatedly sucks his thumb in the future, it represents a primary circular reaction, which he is repeating because the sensation of sucking is pleasurable.
TRANSITIONS
Infants do not suddenly shift from one stage of cognitive development to the
next. Instead, Piaget argues that there is a period of transition in which some behaviorreflects one stage, while other behavior reflects the more advanced stage Does this gradualism argue against Piaget's interpretation of stages?
A Closer Look
Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions
4 to 8 months of age
Child begins to act upon outside world
Infants now seek to repeat enjoyable events in their environments that are produced through chance activities
Secondary circular reactions
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Example: Infants now seek to repeat enjoyable events in their environments if they happen to produce them through chance activities. A child who repeatedly picks up a rattle in her crib and shakes it in different ways to see how the sound changes is demonstrating her ability to modify her cognitive scheme about shaking rattles.
Child is engaging in what Piaget calls secondary circular reactions, which are schemes regarding repeated actions that bring about a desirable consequence.
A Closer Look
Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions
8 months to 12 months
Beginning of goal-directed behavior
Several schemes are combined and coordinated to generate single act to solve problem
Means to attain particular ends and skill in anticipating future circumstances due in part to object permanence
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Define:
Object permanence is the realization that people and objects exist even when they cannot be seen. It is a simple principle, but its mastery has profound consequences.
Example: Child clearly has learned that the object continues to exist even when it cannot be seen. For the infant who achieves an understanding of object permanence, then, out of sight is decidedly not out of mind.
Object Permanence
Why is the concept of object permanence important?
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Before an infant has understood the idea of object permanence, he will not search for an object that has been hidden right before his eyes. But several months later, he will search for it, illustrating that he has attained object permanence.
A Closer Look
Substage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions
12 to 18 months
Development of schemes regarding deliberate variation of actions that bring desirable consequences
Carrying out miniature experiments to observe consequences
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Example: Piaget observed his son Laurent dropping a toy swan repeatedly, varying the position from which he dropped it, carefully observing each time to see where it fell. Instead of just repeating the action each time (as in a secondary circular reaction), Laurent made modifications in the situation to learn about their consequences.
A Closer Look
Substage 6: Beginnings of Thought
18 months to 2 years
Capacity for mental representation or symbolic thought
Mental representation
Understanding causality
Ability to pretend
Deferred imitation
With the attainment of the cognitive skill of deferred imitation, children are able to imitate people and scenes they have witnessed in the past.
Please add updated image from page 116.
Thanks.
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Define:
A mental representation is an internal image of a past event or object.
Piaget argued that by this stage infants can imagine where objects might be that they cannot see. They can even plot in their heads unseen trajectories of objects, so if a ball rolls under a piece of furniture, they can figure out where it is likely to emerge on the other side.
Deferred imitation, in which a person who is no longer present is imitated later: To Piaget, deferred imitation provided clear evidence that children form internal mental representations.
Assessing Piagetian Theory
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Developmental improvement comes in more gradual increments, growing step-by-step in skill-by-skill manner.
Apparent inability of young infants to comprehend object permanence may reflect more about their memory deficits than their lack of understanding of the concept: The memories of young infants may be poor enough that they simply do not recall the earlier concealment of the toy. In fact, when more age-appropriate tasks were employed, some researchers found indications of object permanence in children as young as 3 1/2 months.
Facial imitation suggests that humans are born with a basic, innate capability for imitating others' actions, a capability that depends on certain kinds of environmental experiences, but one that Piaget believed develops later in infancy.
STRENGTHS: Descriptions of child cognitive development accurate in many ways
Piaget was pioneering figure in field of development
Children learn by acting on environment
Broad outlines of sequence of cognitive development and increasing cognitive accomplishments are generally accurate
WEAKNESSES: Substantial disagreement over validity of theory and many of its specific predictions
Stage conception questioned
Connection between motor development and cognitive development exaggerated
Object permanence can occur earlier under certain conditions
Onset of age of imitation questioned
Cultural variations not considered
Piaget's theory of human cognitive development involves a succession of stages through which children progress from birth to adolescence.
As infants move from one stage to another, the way they understand the world changes.
The sensorimotor stage, from birth to about 2 years, involves a gradual progression through simple reflexes, single coordinated activities, interest in the outside world, purposeful combinations of activities, manipulation of actions to produce desired outcomes, and symbolic thought. The sensorimotor stage has six substages.
According to Piaget, children can move from
one cognitive stage to another only when a child
______________ and is exposed to relative
experiences.
a. is adequately nourished
b. is born with an adequate genetic predisposition for learning
c. has remembered his or her goal of learning
d. reaches an appropriate level of physical
maturation
Infants' schemes for understanding the world usually involve their physical or sensorimotor activities.
True
False
In general, when it comes to infant cognitive
development, it appears that Piaget_________.
a. overestimated infants and what they could do
b. underestimated infants and what they could do
c. was more accurate about adolescent cognitive
development
d. overestimated the role of culture
Think of a common young children's toy with which you are familiar. How might its use be affected by the principles of assimilation and accommodation?
Information-Processing Approaches to Child Development
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What is information-processing?
Identifies the way that individuals take in, store, and use information
Involves quantitative changes in ability to organize and manipulate information
Increases sophistication, speed, and capacity in information processing characterizes cognitive growth
Focuses on types of “mental programs” used when seeking to solve problems
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According to this approach, the quantitative changes in infants' abilities to organize and manipulate information represent the hallmarks of cognitive development.
Infants learn from adults, not videos.
Infants learn vocabulary best in an interactive setting where adults are responding to the sounds the infant is making and when babies choose the object to be labeled.
Parents who liked educational DVDs best believed that it improved their child's vocabulary significantly, even though that is not supported by research findings.
Why might parents acquire this false belief?
What are the foundations of the IP approach?
Encoding—storage—retrieval
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How does cognition compute?
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Define:
Encoding is the process by which information is initially recorded in a form usable to memory. Infants and children—indeed, all people—are exposed to a massive amount of information; if they tried to process it all, they would be overwhelmed. Consequently, they encode selectively, picking and choosing the information to which they will pay attention.
Even if someone has been exposed to the information initially and has encoded it in an appropriate way, there is still no guarantee that he or she will be able to use it in the future. Information must also have been stored in memory adequately.
Storage refers to the placement of material into memory.
Success in using the material in the future depends on retrieval processes. Retrieval is the process by which material in memory storage is located, brought into awareness, and used.
Only when all three processes are operating—encoding, storage, and retrieval—can information be processed.
Encoding
Storage
Retrieval
What automatic processes are being engaged as you listen to this lecture?
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Students will often list basic biological functions: breathing, blinking, hearing, etc.
Ask them what class would be like if they had to “learn” everything about the class each time they entered the room. What is a door, chair, pencil/pen, desk? How do you know which way to face? Why is there silence when the instructor speaks (ok…relative silence!). Which things have they learned and have subsequently become automatic? Which things does an infant need to learn?
Automatization
Degree to which activity requires attention
Helps with initial encounters with stimuli through easy and automatic information processing
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Define:
Automatization is the degree to which an activity requires attention.
Processes that require relatively little attention are automatic; processes that require relatively large amounts of attention are controlled. For example, some activities such as walking, eating with a fork, or reading may be automatic for you, but at first they required your full attention.
Frequency becomes important.
Frequency of encounters differentiates familiar from unfamiliar; frequency of stimuli pairing permits understanding of concepts
Concepts, categorizations of objects, events, or people that share common properties.
What do you think?
Infants cannot remember.
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Ask students: Yes or no?
Ask for personal examples. Did anyone talk about this memory? Is it a “family story”?
What are the specific processes by which individual babies acquire and use the information to which they are exposed to support their memory?
Show video: What ever happened to the Romanian Orphans?/ABC News.
Ask: Did all the adopted Romanian orphans in the video experience the same outcome as Simona? Why do you think this occurred? What might have contributed to varying outcomes?
Memory Capabilities in Infancy
Getting a kick out of that!
Kicking research demonstrates increase with age in memory capacities
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Infants were taught that they could move a mobile hanging over the crib by kicking their legs. It took only a few days for 2-month-old infants to forget their training, but 6-month-old infants still remembered for as long as 3 weeks.
Infants who were later prompted to recall the association between kicking and moving the mobile showed evidence that the memory continued to exist even longer. Infants who had received just two training sessions lasting 9 minutes each still recalled about a week later.
When the babies saw a reminder—a moving mobile—their memories were apparently reactivated. In fact, the infants could remember the association, following prompting, for as long as an additional month.
Does your family have a special story about your early childhood?
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Encourage students to share their stories.
Explain: Carolyn Rovee-Collier posits that people, regardless of their age, gradually lose memories, although, just like babies, they may regain them if reminders are provided. Moreover, the more times a memory is retrieved, the more enduring the memory becomes.
Ask: How many times have you heard your story?
How long do memories last?
Researchers disagree on the age from which memories can be retrieved
Early studies infantile amnesia
Myers clear evidence of early memory
Physical trace of a memory in brain appears to be relatively permanent
Memories may not be easily, or accurately, retrieved
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Although the processes that underlie memory retention and recall seem similar throughout the lifespan, the quantity of information stored and recalled does differ markedly as infants develop.
Older infants can retrieve information more rapidly and they can remember it longer.
Although early research supported the notion of infantile amnesia, the lack of memory for experiences occurring prior to 3 years of age, more recent research shows that infants do retain memories.
6-month-old children exposed to an unusual series of events in a laboratory, such as intermittent periods of light and dark and unusual sounds.
When the children were later tested at the age of 1 1/2 years or 2 1/2 years, they demonstrated clear evidence that they had some memory of their participation in the earlier experience.
Other research shows that infants show memory for behavior and situations that they have seen only once.
Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory
Advances in brain scan technology and studies of adults with brain damage suggest two separate long-term memory systems.
Explicit memory
Implicit memory
Explicit and implicit memories emerge at different rates and involve different parts of the brain.
Explicit memory is memory that is conscious and that can be recalled intentionally.
implicit
memory consists of memories of which we are not consciously aware, but that affect performance
and behavior. Implicit memory consists of motor skills, habits, and activities that can be
remembered without conscious cognitive effort
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So…do infants remember?
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In sum, the data suggest that although it is at least theoretically possible for memories to remain intact from a very young age—if subsequent experiences do not interfere with their recollection—in most cases memories of personal experiences in infancy do not last into adulthood.
Current findings suggest that memories of personal experience seem not to become accurate before age 18 to 24 months.
Theoretical possibility for interfered memories to remain intact from a very young
Most cases memories of personal experiences in infancy do not last into adulthood
Memories of personal experience seem not to become accurate before age 18 to 24 months
Individual Differences in Intelligence
Information-Processing Approaches
Infant information-processing speed may correlate most strongly with later intelligence
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Infant information-processing speed may correlate most strongly with later intelligence, as measured by IQ tests administered during adulthood.
What is infant intelligence?
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It is even more difficult to define and measure intelligence in infants than it is in adults.
Do we base it on the speed with which a new task is learned through classical or operant conditioning?
How fast does a baby become habituated to a new stimulus? The age at which an infant learns to crawl or walk? Even if we are able to identify particular behaviors that seem to differentiate one infant from another in terms of intelligence during infancy, we need to address a further, and probably more important, issue: How well do measures of infant intelligence relate to eventual adult intelligence?
Clearly, such questions are not simple, and no simple answers have been found. However, developmental specialists have devised several approaches.
Do, Re, Me…..Intelligence!
Developmental Scales
Gesell:
Developmental quotient
Performance compared at different ages for significant variation from norms of given age
Four domains: motor skills, language use, adaptive behavior, personal-social
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Arnold Gesell formulated the earliest measure of infant development, which was designed to distinguish between normally-developing and atypically-developing babies.
He compared their performance at different ages to learn what behaviors were most common at a particular age. If an infant varied significantly from the norms of a given age, he or she was considered to be developmentally delayed or advanced.
Gesell developed a developmental quotient, or DQ.
Developmental quotient is an overall developmental score that relates to performance in four domains: motor skills (for example, balance and sitting), language use, adaptive behavior (such as alertness and exploration), and personal-social (for example, adequately feeding and dressing oneself).
Do, Re, Me…..Intelligence!
Developmental Scales
Bayley:
Bayley Scales of Infant Development
Developmental Quotient
2 to 42 months
Two areas
(See Table 3-7)
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The Bayley Scales focus on two areas: mental and motor abilities.
The mental scale focuses on the senses, perception, memory, learning, problem solving, and language, while the motor scale evaluates fine and gross motor skills.
Like Gesell's approach, the Bayley yields a developmental quotient (DQ). A child who scores at an average level—meaning average performance for other children at the same age—receives a score of 100.
Do, Re, Me…..Intelligence!
Visual-recognition memory measurement
This approach measures of visual-recognition memory, the memory of and recognition of a stimulus that has been previously seen, also relate to intelligence.
The more quickly an infant can retrieve a representation of a stimulus from memory, themore efficient, presumably, is that infant's information processing.
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Are developmental scales useful?
YES
Provide a good snapshot of current developmental level
Provide objective assessment of behavior relative to norms
NO
Do not provide good prediction for future development
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Because of the difficulties in using developmental scales to obtain measures of infant intelligence that are related to later intelligence, investigators have turned in the last decade to other techniques that may help assess intelligence in a meaningful way. Some have proven to be quite useful.
What characterizes a “fast” baby?
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Most researchers use habituation tests.
Infants who process information efficiently ought to be able to learn about stimuli more quickly. Consequently, we would expect that they would turn their attention away from a given stimulus more rapidly than those who are less efficient at information processing, leading to the phenomenon of habituation.
Measures of visual-recognition memory, the memory and recognition of a stimulus that has been previously seen, also relate to IQ.
The more quickly an infant can retrieve a representation of a stimulus from memory, the more efficient, presumably, is that infant's information processing.
And so…what does IP research reveal?
Relationship between information processing efficiency and cognitive abilities
Correlate moderately well with later measures of intelligence
More efficient information processing during the 6 months following birth is related to higher intelligence scores between 2 and 12 years of age and other measures of cognitive competence
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Relationship between information processing efficiency and cognitive abilities: Measures of how quickly infants lose interest in stimuli that they have previously seen, as well as their responsiveness to new stimuli, Correlates moderately well with later measures of intelligence. Infants who are more efficient information processors during the 6 months following birth tend to have higher intelligence scores between 2 and 12 years of age, as well as higher scores on other measures of cognitive competence.
Assessing the IP Approach
PROS
Often uses more precise measures of cognitive ability
Critical in providing information about infant cognition
CONS
Precision makes it more difficult to get overall sense of cognitive development
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Piagetian and information-processing approaches are critical in providing an account of cognitive development in infancy.
Coupled with advances in the biochemistry of the brain and theories that consider the effects of social factors on learning and cognition, the two help to paint a full picture of cognitive development.
Information processing approaches consider quantitative changes in children's abilities to organize and use information. Cognitive growth is regarded as the increasing sophistication of encoding, storage, and retrieval.
Infants clearly have memory capabilities from a very early age, although the duration and accuracy of such memories are unresolved questions.
Traditional measures of infant intelligence focus on behavioral attainments, which can help identify developmental delays or advances.
The information processing approach to cognitive development emphasizes the increased sophistication, speed, and ______________ associated with cognitive growth.
a. capacity
b. circular reactions
c. categorization
d. analysis
What information from this module could you use to refute the claims of books or educational programs that promise to help parents increase their babies' intelligence or instill advanced intellectual skills in infants?
Based on valid research, what approaches would you use for intellectual development of infants?
The Roots of Language
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From Sounds to Symbols
Fundamentals of Language
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Define:
Language, the systematic, meaningful arrangement of symbols, provides the basis for communication.
Phonology. refers to the basic sounds of language, called phonemes, that can be combined to produce words and sentences. For instance, the “a” in “mat” and the “a” in “mate” represent two different phonemes in English. Although English employs just 40 phonemes to create every word in the language, other languages have as many as 85 phonemes—and some as few as 15 (Akmajian, Demers, & Harnish, 1984).
Morphemes. is the smallest language unit that has meaning. Some morphemes are complete words, while others add information necessary for interpreting a word, such as the endings “-s” for plural and “-ed” for past tense.
Semantics are the rules that govern the meaning of words and sentences. As their knowledge of semantics develops, children are able to understand the subtle distinction between “Ellie was hit by a ball” (an answer to the question of why Ellie doesn't want to play catch) and “A ball hit Ellie” (used to announce the current situation).
Distinguish between linguistic comprehension, the understanding of speech, linguistic production, and the use of language to communicate. One principle underlies the relationship between the two: Comprehension precedes production.
Phonology
Morphemes
Semantics
Comprehension and production
Another Look – Comprehension Precedes Production
Throughout infancy, the comprehension of speech precedes the production of speech.
Source: Adapted from Bornstein & Lamb, 1992a.
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Early Sounds and Communication Prelinguistic Communication
Babbling
Universal
Repetition of sounds
Although we tend to think of language in terms of the production
of words and then groups of words, infants can begin to communicate linguistically well before they sayeir first word.
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Define:
Prelinguistic communication is communication through sounds, facial expressions, gestures, imitation, and other nonlinguistic means.
Babbling, making speechlike but meaningless sounds, starts at the age of 2 or 3 months and continues until around the age of 1 year.
When they babble, infants repeat the same vowel sound over and over, changing the pitch from high to low (as in “ee-ee-ee,” repeated at different pitches). After the age of 5 months, the sounds of babbling begin to expand, reflecting the addition of consonants (such as “bee-bee-bee-bee”).
See what I say…
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Deaf children display their own form of babbling: Infants who cannot hear and who are exposed to sign language babble with their hands instead of their voices. Their gestural babbling thus is analogous to the verbal babbling of children who can hear.
Areas of the brain activated during the production of hand gestures are similar to the areas activated during speech production, suggesting that spoken language may have evolved from gestural language.
Infants with hearing impairments babble with hands instead of voices
Gestural and verbal babbling activate same neural centers
What comes after “ba-ba-ba-ba”?
Progression from simple to complex
Exposure to speech sounds of particular language initially do not influence babbling
At 6 months babbling reflects of language of culture
Distinguishable from other language babbling
Combinations of sounds and gestures used to communicate
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Consider 5-month-old Marta, who spies her red ball just beyond her reach. After reaching for it and finding that she is unable to get to it, she makes a cry of anger that alerts her parents that something is amiss, and her mother hands it to her. Communication has occurred.
First Words
Increase at rapid rate
10 to 14 months = first word
15 months = 10 words
18 months = one-word stage ends
16 to 24 months = language explosion from 50 to 400 words
By the age of 2, most children use two-word phrases, such as “ball play.”
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Some say it is when an infant clearly understands words and can produce a sound that is close to a word spoken by adults, such as a child who uses “mama” for any request she may have.
Other linguists use a stricter criterion for the first word; they restrict “first word” to cases in which children give a clear, consistent name to a person, event, or object.
First Sentences
First sentences created around 8 to 12 months after first words
Indicate understanding of labels and relationships between these
Often observations rather than demands
Use order similar to adult speech with missing words
Telegraphic speech (See table 3-8)
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The linguistic advance represented by two-word combinations is important because the linkage not only provides labels for things in the world but also indicates the relations between them.
Most early sentences don't represent demands or even necessarily require a response. Instead, they are often merely comments and observations about events occurring in the child's world.
Other Early Language Characteristics
Underextensions
Overextensions
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Define:
Underextension: using words too restrictively, which is common among children just mastering spoken language. Underextension occurs when language novices think that a word refers to a specific instance of a concept, instead of to all examples of the concept.
Overextension: words are used too broadly, overgeneralizing their meaning. For example, when Sarah refers to buses, trucks, and tractors as “cars,” she is guilty of overextension, making the assumption that any object with wheels must be a car. Although overextension reflects speech errors, it also shows that advances are occurring in the child's thought processes: The child is beginning to develop general mental categories and concepts.
Speaking in style and stylish speaking
Referential style
Expressive style
Can you think of an example of each?
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Referential style: language is used primarily to label objects.
Expressive style: language is used primarily to express feelings and needs about oneself and others.
Ask: What about cultural and subcultural differences? Language styles reflect, in part, cultural factors. For example, mothers in the United States label objects more frequently than do Japanese mothers, encouraging a more referential style of speech. In contrast, mothers in Japan are more apt to speak about social interactions, encouraging a more expressive style of speech.
How does proficiency in language occur?
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Origins of Language Development
Learning Theory Approaches: Language as a Learned Skill
Language acquisition follows the basic laws of reinforcement and conditioning
Through the process of shaping, language becomes more and more similar to adult speech
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Children learn to speak by being rewarded for making sounds that approximate speech.
Through the process of shaping, language becomes more and more similar to adult speech.
Counter-Arguments to Learning Theory Approach
Does not adequately explain how children readily learn rules of language
Does not account for how children move beyond specific heard utterances to produce novel phrases, sentences and constructions
Does not explain how young children can apply linguistic rules to nonsense words
Origins of Language Development
Nativist Approaches: Language as an Innate Skill
Genetically determined, innate mechanism that directs the development of language
Children are born with innate capacity to use language, which emerges, more or less automatically, due to maturation.
Chomsky's universal grammar and LAD
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Nativist approach argues that there is a genetically determined, innate mechanism that directs the development of language.
Chomsky's analysis of different languages suggests that all the world's languages share a similar underlying structure, which he calls universal grammar.
In this view, the human brain is wired with a neural system called the language-acquisition device, or LAD, that both permits the understanding of language structure and provides a set of strategies and techniques for learning the particular characteristics of the language to which a child is exposed.
In this view, language is uniquely human, made possible by a genetic predisposition to both comprehend and produce words and sentences.
Assessing Chomsky's Approach
STRENGTHS
Specific gene related to speech production identified
Language processing in infant brain structures similar to those in adult speech processing
WEAKNESSES
Uniqueness of speech countered by primate researchers
Even with genetic priming, language use still requires significant social experience to be used effectively
PRO
Specific gene related to speech production identified
Language processing in infant brain structures similar to those in adult speech processing
CON
Uniqueness of speech countered by primate researchers
Even with genetic priming, language use still requires significant social experience to be used effectively
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Origins of Language Development
Interactionist Approaches: Language as Social Device
Specific course of language development is determined by the language to which children are exposed and reinforcement they receive for using language in particular ways
Social factors are key to development
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Define:
Interactionist perspective suggests that language development is produced through a combination of genetically-determined predispositions and environmental circumstances that help teach language.
Interactionist approaches suggest language development is produced through a combination of genetically-determined predispositions and environmental circumstances.
Social factors are considered to be key to development, since the motivation provided by one's membership in a society and culture and one's interactions with others leads to the use of language and the growth of language skills.
Infant-Directed Speech
Style of verbal communication directed toward infants
Short, simple sentences
Higher pitch, increased range, varied intonation
Repetition of words and restricted topics
Sometimes amusing sounds that are not even words,
Little formal structure, similar to telegraphic speech
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Infant-directed speech: a style of speech that characterizes much of the verbal communication directed toward infants.
Infant-directed speech, which is common across cultures, includes the use of short, simple sentences and is spoken in a pitch that is higher
than that used with older children and adults.
Let's Pretend
Turn to a classmate. One of you is a 8-month-old infant; the other is a parent. As the parent, ask your “infant” classmate: “Would you like a cookie?”
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Encourage students to role play as they would in real life.
Ask them to describe how they asked the question. Was it the same way they would ask the question to a peer? How did the question differ?
How does this speech change?
Infant-directed speech changes as children become older
Around the end of the first year, takes on more adult-like qualities
Sentences become longer and more complex, although individual words are still spoken slowly and deliberately
Pitch used to focus attention on important words
Does Cootsy-Coo Work?
Infant-directed speech plays an important role in infants' acquisition of language
Occurs all over the world, though there are cultural variations
Preferred by newborns
Babies who are exposed to a infant-directed speech early in life seem to begin to use words and exhibit other forms of linguistic competence earlier
Do people everywhere say “ba-ba-boo” to their infants?
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For example, six of the ten most frequent major characteristics of speech directed at infants used by native speakers of English and Spanish are common to both languages: exaggerated intonation, high pitch, lengthened vowels, repetition, lower volume, and heavy stress on certain key words (such as emphasizing the word “ball” in the sentence, “No, that's a ball”) (Blount, 1982).
Similarly, mothers in the United States, Sweden, and Russia all exaggerate and elongate the pronunciation of the three vowel sounds of “ee,” “ah,” and “oh” when speaking to infants in similar ways, despite differences in the languages in which the sounds are used (Kuhl et al., 1997).
Even deaf mothers use a form of infant-directed speech: When communicating with their infants, deaf mothers use sign language at a significantly slower tempo than when communicating with adults, and they frequently repeat the signs.
Words differ but ways spoken are similar
Basic similarities across cultures and in some facets of language specific to particular types of interactions
Quantity of speech differ by cultures
What, then, do these similarities in infant-directed speech mean?
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Characteristics of infant-directed speech activate innate responses in infants.
Infants seem to prefer infant-directed speech over adult-directed speech, suggesting that their perceptual systems may be more responsive to such characteristics.
Another explanation is that infant-directed speech facilitates language development, providing cues as to the meaning of speech before infants have developed the capacity to understand the meaning of words.
Based upon findings of developmental researchers, infant cognitive development may be promoted by:
Providing infants the opportunity to explore the world
Being responsive to infants on both a verbal and a nonverbal level
Asking questions, listening to their responses, and providing further communication
Reading to infants
Keeping in mind that you don't have to be with an infant 24 hours a day
Not pushing infants and not expecting too much too soon
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Provide infants the opportunity to explore the world. As Piaget suggests, children learn by doing, and they need the opportunity to explore and probe their environment. Make sure the environment contains a variety of toys, books, and other sources of stimulation. (Also see the Careers in Lifespan Development box.)
Be responsive to infants on both a verbal and a nonverbal level. Try to speak with babies, as opposed to at them.
Ask questions, listen to their responses, and provide further communication.
Read to your infants. Although they may not understand the meaning of your words, they will respond to your tone of voice and the intimacy provided by the activity. Reading together also is associated with later literacy skills and begins to create a lifelong reading habit. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends daily reading to children starting at the age of six months (American Academy of Pediatrics, 1997; Reutzel, Fawson, & Smith, 2006; Weigel, Martin, & Bennett, 2006).
Keep in mind that you don't have to be with an infant 24 hours a day. Just as infants need time to explore their world on their own, parents and other caregivers need time off from childcare activities.
Don't push infants and don't expect too much too soon. Your goal should not be to create a genius; it should be to provide a warm, nurturing environment that will allow an infant to reach his or her potential.
Before they speak, infants understand many adult utterances and engage in several forms of prelinguistic communication.
Children typically produce their first words between 10 and 14 months, and rapidly increase their vocabularies from that point on, especially during a spurt at about 18 months.
Learning theorists believe that basic learning processes account for language development, whereas nativists like Noam Chomsky and his followers argue that humans have an innate language capacity.
The interactionists suggest that language is a consequence of both environmental and innate factors.
Like other 2-year-olds, Mason can say “Doggie bye, bye” and “Milk gone.” These two-word phrases are examples of ______________ speech.
a. holophrastic
b. telegraphic
c. interpretive
d. active
One theory, the ______________ approach,
suggests that a genetically determined, innate
mechanism directs language development.
a. nativist
b. universal
c. learning theory
d. evolutionary
Whenever 9-month-old Ana's mother talks to
her, she uses short, simple sentences, repetitive
words, and higher pitches. This shift in language
is consistent with the use of ______________
speech.
a. infant-directed
b. telegraphic
c. nativist
d. interactionist
What are some ways in which children's linguistic development reflects their acquisition of new ways of interpreting and dealing with their world?
