Infants and Children in Context. Tara L. Kuther

pattern of a 2-month-old infant’s scan starts above the head, moves to the right eye repeatedly after darting to the other eye, the mouth, and hair several times. The finishing point is marked at the left eye.

      A caption below reads: The externality effect refers to a particular pattern of infant visual processing. When presented with a complex stimulus, such as a face, infants under 2 months of age tend to scan along the outer contours, such as along the hairline. Older infants scan the internal features of complex images and faces, thereby processing the entire stimulus.

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      The illustration shows a glass cube covered with a checked pattern on the left half. On the right half, the checked pattern is placed on the floor of the cube.

      An infant is shown sitting on top of the cube on the half covered with the checked pattern while its father is shown standing beyond the right edge of the cube and trying to make the infant crawl over to him.

      A caption below reads: Three-month-old infants show a change in heart rate when placed face down on the glass surface of the deep side of the visual cliff, suggesting that they perceive depth, but do not fear it. Crawling babies, however, move to the shallow side of the visual cliff and refuse to cross the deep side of the visual cliff.

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      The horizontal axis of the graph shows the years 1979 to 2010, and the vertical axis shows the percent of male newborn infants, from 0 to 85 in increments of 10.

      The details are as follows with all values approximated from the graph.

       Midwest: The line starts at 75 in 1979, rises close to 84 around 1997 and drops down to 68 in 2008, finishing at 70 in 2010.

       Northeast: The line starts at 65 in 1979, and ends at 65 in 2010 with fluctuations of 5 percent on either side.

       South: The line starts around 55 in 1979, starts rising after 1989 to reach 65 by 1995 before again dropping to 55 by 2005. The line ends at around 60 in 2010.

       West: The line starts at 65 in 1979 and shows a steady declining trend, reaching 35 by 1994. The line ends at 40 in 2010, with fluctuations of around 5 percent on both sides.

      Notes: Rates represent circumcisions performed during the birth hospitalization. Circumcision is identified by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) procedure code 64.0.

      5 Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

      Dominic eagerly crawled toward the open cupboard. Just as he began to peer inside, his father bent down and swooped Dominic into his arms. His father said, “That’s not for you, Dominic. Let’s find something for you to play with.” Soon Dominic sat amidst several toys: a set of stacking rings, cups and bowls, and a giant telephone with wheels and a string. “Overdoing it?” asked Dominic’s mother. “Just giving Dominic options,” his father explained. “Everyone wants a choice, right?” Soon Dominic placed several stacking rings in a bowl and then tried to balance the bowl on the giant telephone. His father said, “See? Dominic’s figuring it all out in his own, unorthodox, way.” Dominic’s father grasps an important principle: individuals actively contribute to their own development, as noted in Chapter 1. We learn by acting on the world and making sense of our observations. In this chapter, we examine how infants interact with the world around them to influence their cognitive development.

      ©iStockphoto.com/romrodinka

      Learning Objectives

       5.1 Discuss the cognitive-developmental perspective on infant reasoning.Video Activity 5.1: Object Permanence

       5.2 Describe the information processing system in infants.Video Activity 5.2: Infants, Young Children, and Technology

       5.3 Discuss individual differences in infant intelligence.

       5.4 Summarize the patterns of language development during infancy and toddlerhood.

      Chapter Contents

       Piaget’s Cognitive-Developmental TheoryProcesses of DevelopmentSensorimotor SubstagesSubstage 1: Reflexes (Birth to 1 Month)Substage 2: Primary Circular Reactions (1 to 4 Months)Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions (4 to 8 Months)Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions (8 to 12 Months)Substage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions (12 to 18 Months)Substage 6: Mental Representation (18 to 24 Months)Evaluating Sensorimotor ReasoningViolation-of-Expectation TasksA-Not-B TasksDeferred Imitation TasksCore Knowledge Theory

       Information ProcessingInformation Processing SystemAttentionMemoryWorking MemoryLong-Term MemoryInfants’ ThinkingCulture and Cognitive Development

       Individual Differences in Cognitive AbilitiesTesting Infant IntelligenceInformation Processing as IntelligenceChild Care and Mental Development

       Language Development in Infancy and ToddlerhoodEarly Preferences for Speech SoundsPrelinguistic CommunicationFirst WordsLearning Words: Semantic GrowthTwo-Word UtterancesNature, Nurture, and LanguageLearning ApproachesNativist ApproachesInteractionist Approach to Language DevelopmentBiological Contributions to Language DevelopmentContextual Contributions to Language Development

      Piaget’s Cognitive-Developmental Theory

      Swiss scholar Jean Piaget (1896–1980) was the first scientist to systematically examine children’s thinking. Piaget viewed infants and children as active explorers who learn by interacting with the world, building their own understanding of everyday phenomena, and applying it to adapt to the world around them.

      Processes of Development

      According to Piaget (1952), infants and children are active in their own development not simply because they engage other people and the world, adapting their ways of thinking in response to their experiences. Through these interactions, individuals organize what they learn to construct and refine their own cognitive schemas, or concepts, ideas, and ways of interacting with the world. The earliest schemas are inborn motor responses, such as the reflex response that causes infants to close their fingers around an object when it touches their palm. As infants grow and develop, these early motor schemas are transformed into cognitive schemas, or thoughts and ideas. At every age, we rely on our schemas to make sense of the world, and our schemas are constantly adapting and developing in response to our experiences. Piaget also emphasized the importance of two developmental processes that enable us to cognitively adapt to our world: assimilation and accommodation.

      Assimilation involves integrating a new experience into a preexisting schema. For example, suppose that 1-year-old Makayla uses the schema of “grab and shove into the mouth” to learn. She grabs and shoves a rattle into her mouth, learning about the rattle by using her preexisting schema. When Makayla comes across another object, such as Mommy’s keys, she transfers the schema to it—and assimilates the keys by grabbing and shoving them into her mouth. Makayla develops an understanding of the new objects through assimilation, by fitting them into her preexisting schema.

      Sometimes we encounter experiences or information that do not fit within an existing schema, so we must change the schema, adapting and modifying it in light of the new information. This process is called accommodation. For example, suppose Makayla encounters another object, a beach ball. She tries her schema of grab and shove, but the beach ball won’t fit into her mouth; perhaps she cannot even grab it. She must adapt her schema or create a new one in order to incorporate the new information—to