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A. Key Piagetian Concepts
         1. Piaget believed children move through four stages of development between infancy
and adolescence.
         2. During the sensorimotor stage, infants and toddlers "think" with their eyes, ears, hands,
and other sensorimotor equipment.
         3. What Changes With Development: a. Piaget believed a child's schemes change with
age. b. Schemes are action-based at first and later will move to a mental level.
         4. How Cognitive Change Takes Place: a. Adaptation 1) Adaptation is the process of
building schemes through direct interaction with the environment, 2) Assimilation is a part of
adaptation in which the external world is interpreted through existing schemes. 3)
Accommodation is the part of adaptation in which new schemes are created or old ones adjusted
to produce a better fit with the environment. 4) Equilibrium exists when children are not
changing very much and they are in a steady, comfortable cognitive state; assimilation is used
more than accommodation. 5) Disequilibrium is the state of cognitive discomfort which occurs
during times of rapid change; accommodation is used more than assimilation. 6) Back-and-forth
movement between equilibrium and disequilibrium leads to the development of more effective
schemes. b. Organization 1) Organization is an internal process of rearranging and linking
together schemes to form an interconnected cognitive system. 2) Schemes reach a true state of
equilibrium when they become part of a broad network of structures that can be jointly applied to
the surrounding world.
B. The Sensorimotor Stage
         1. Piaget based the sensorimotor stage on his observations of his own children.
         2. The Circular Reaction: a. Circular reactions are the means by which infants explore the
activity. b. These reactions are first centered on the infant's own body. Subsequently, they
         3. Substage 1: Reflexive Schemes - a. Piaget regarded newborn reflexes as the building
way, no matter what the circumstances.
         4. Substage 2: Primary Circular Reactions-The First Learned Adaptations - a. Infants
b. The first circular reactions are primary in that they are oriented towards the infants' own
bodies and motivated by basic needs.
         5. Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions-Making Interesting Sights Last - a. Circular
         6. Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Circular Reaction - a. Intentional, or goal-
directed, behavior is the combination of schemes to solve problems. b. Piaget regarded means-
end action sequences as the first sign that babies appreciate physical causality.
moved from A to hiding place B.
         7. Substage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions-Discovering New Means Through Active
Experimentation - a. Circular reactions in this substage are tertiary in that the infant repeats
longer make the AB search error.
         8. Substage 6: Mental Representation-Inventing New Means Through Mental
Combinations - a. Mental representations are internal images of absent objects and past events.
c. Representation allows deferred imitation-the ability to copy the behavior of models who are
C. Recent Research on Sensorimotor Development
         1 . New studies show that infants display many cognitive capacities earlier than Piaget
         2. Reasoning About the Physical World: a. Object Permanence 1) Research indicates that
babies as young as 3 1/2 months of age understand object permanence. 2) Infants understand
object permanence before they are capable of demonstrating their knowledge through action.
b. Searching for Objects Hidden in More than One Location 1) Recent findings reveal that poor
memory cannot account for infants' unsuccessful performance on the AB task. 2) Before 12
months, infants seem to have trouble translating knowledge about an object's movement from
one place to another into a successful search strategy. c. Other Aspects of Physical Reasoning 1)
Habituation-dishabituation research reveals that young infants are aware of object substance,
physical limits on object motion, and the effects of gravity. 2) A beginning grasp of physical
causality is also present very early.
         3. Deferred Imitation: a. Research indicates that 6-week-old infants demonstrate deferred
imitation of facial expressions. b. Deferred imitation becomes more flexible and complex by the
end of toddlerhood enabling children to better understand and predict others' behavior.
D. Evaluation of the Sensorimotor Stage
         1. Some capacities, such as object permanence and deferred imitation, emerge much
earlier than Piaget believed.
         2. In contrast to Piaget's ideas, infants appear to develop in a gradual and continuous
manner and not in step-like stages.
         3. Consistent with Piaget's views, research indicates that motor activity does facilitate the
early construction of knowledge.
         4. A Perceptual View: a. Some researchers believe that schemes develop through looking
and listening rather than just through acting on the world. b. Renee Baillargeon argues that
infants understand their physical world by first making all-or- none distinctions and adding to
these as they encounter relevant information.
         5. A Nativist View: a. Researchers who take a nativist view of development believe that
infants' cognitive skills are based on innate, or inborn, knowledge. b. The modular view of the
mind assumes that each type of knowledge has its own module, or genetically prewired neural
system in the brain, and maturational timetable.
         6. A Compromise Position: a. Built-in mental equipment that infants possess might best
be viewed as a set of biases, or learning procedures. b. Infant cognitive skills emerge gradually,
depending on biological makeup and experience. c. Piaget's work inspired a wealth of research
on infant cognition. d. Piaget's observations have been of great practical value, particularly for
teachers and caregivers.

A. Information processing focuses on many different aspects of thinking such as attention,
memory, categorization skills, and problem solving.
B. The Structure of the Information-Processing System
        1. Mental strategies operate on and transform information, increasing the efficiency of
thinking as well as the chances that information will be retained.
        2. Information first enters the sensory register where sights and sounds are briefly held
before they decay or are transferred to short-term memory.
        3. Working, or short-term, memory is the conscious part of the mental system where
information is actively "worked" on to ensure that it will be retained.
        4. Long-term memory is the limitless permanent knowledge base.
        5. Categorization of information increases the likelihood that information will be easily
retrieved from long-term memory.
        6. The capacity of the mental system, the amount of information that can be retained and
processed at once, expands with age.
C. Attention
        1. Infants gradually become more efficient at managing their attention, taking
information in more quickly.
        2. Research reveals that preterm and newborn infants require a long time to habituate and
dishabituate to novel stimuli.
        3. By 4 months, infants attention becomes more flexible and they are better able to
disengage or shift attention from one stimulus to another.
        4. Sustained attention improves throughout the first year.
        5. With age, infants and toddlers become more interested in what others are attending to.
D. Memory
        1. Habituation research indicates 3-month-old infants can recognize a stimulus 24 hours
        2. Recognition is a type of memory that involves noticing whether a stimulus is identical
or similar to one previously experienced.
        3. Recall is a type of memory that involves remembering a stimulus that is not present; by
the middle of the first year, infants can engage in recall.
        4. Infantile amnesia, or the fact that practically none of us can remember events before
age 2 or 3, may be due to brain development during early childhood. Alternatively, it may be due
to the emergence of autobiographical memory, which occurs during the preschool years.
E. Categorization
        1 . Evidence indicates that infants organize their physical, emotional, and social worlds.
        2. By the end of the first year, categories are conceptual-based on function and behavior.
        3. During the second year, children actively categorize items during their play.
F. Evaluation of Information-Processing Findings
        1. Information-processing research emphasizes the continuity of thinking from infancy
into adulthood.
        2. One drawback to this approach is that, although it separates the different components
of cognition , it does not build a broad, comprehensive theory of cognitive development.
       3. More recent theorists have combined Piaget's theory with the information-processing
approach or applied a dynamic systems view to early cognition to overcome this weakness.

A. Vygotsky believed that complex mental functions originate in social interaction.
B. The zone of proximal development refers to a range of tasks that a child cannot yet handle
alone, but can do with the help of more skilled partners.
C. Research indicates that adult guidance and support within the zone of proximal development
is related to advanced play, language, and problem-solving skills during the second year.

A. Cognitive theories are concerned with the process of development. In contrast, mental tests
measure cognitive products that reflect mental development.
B. Infant Intelligence Tests
         1. Most infant tests consist of perceptual and motor responses as well as some tasks that
measure early language and problem solving.
         2. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development consist of the Mental Scale, which includes
items such as turning to a sound and looking for a fallen object; and the Motor Scale, which
assesses gross and fine motor skills.
         3. Infant test scores may not accurately reflect abilities because the babies are likely to
become distracted, tired, or hungry during test administration.
         4. Computing Intelligence Test Scores: a. Results for people at each age level form a
normal or bell-shaped curve, in which most scores fall near the center and progressively fewer
fall out toward the extremes. b. An intelligence quotient is a score that permits an child's
performance on an intelligence test to be compared to the performances of other children of the
same age.
         5. Predicting Later Performance from Infant Tests: a. Although infant tests are carefully
constructed, they are poor predictors of later intelligence. b. In one study, the average IQ shift
between 2 and 17 years of age was as great as 28.5. points. c. Infant test scores are called
developmental quotients rather than lQs because they do not tap the same intelligence
dimensions measured at older ages. d. Infant test scores have somewhat better long-term
prediction for extremely low-scoring babies. e. The habituation-dishabituation response and
Piagetian object permanence tasks predict IQ more effectively than traditional infant measures.
C. Early Environment and Mental Development
         1. The Home Environment: a. The Home Observation for Measurement of the
Environment is a checklist for gathering information about the quality of children's home lives
through observation and parental interviews. b. An organized, stimulating physical setting and
parental encouragement, involvement, and affection repeatedly predict infant and early
childhood IQ, regardless of SES and ethnic group. c. When parents are intrusive with questions
and instructions, infants and toddlers are likely to be distractible, show less mature forms of play,
and do poorly on mental tests.
         2. Infant and Toddler Day Care: a. Today, over 60 percent of mothers with a child under
age 2 are employed. b. Quality of day care has an impact on children's mental development and
social skills. c. Developmentally appropriate practice is a set of standards that specify program
characteristics that meet the developmental and individual needs of young children of varying
ages, based on current research and consensus of experts. d. Day care in the U.S. is affected by a
macrosystem of individualistic values and weak government regulation and funding.
D. Early Intervention for At-Risk Infants and Toddlers
        1. Studies indicate that children of poverty are likely to show gradual declines in
intelligence test
scores and to achieve poorly when they reach school age.
        2. Interventions for infants and toddlers are either center- or home-based. The Carolina
Abecedarian Project is a center-based project that demonstrates the benefits of continuous, high-
quality enrichment from infancy through the preschool years.
        3. The more intense the intervention, the greater the intellectual gains of participating

A. On average, children say their first word at around 12 months of age, with a range of 8 to 18
B. Between 1.5 and 2 years, toddlers combine two words; soon their utterances increase in length
and complexity.
C. Three Theories of Language Development
        1. The Behaviorist Perspective: a. This perspective regards language development as
entirely due to environmental influences. b. Through operant conditioning, parents reinforce their
baby's sounds that most sound like words. c. Imitation combines with reinforcement to promote
language development.
        2. The Nativist Perspective: a. This view assumes that children are born with a
biologically-based system-called the language acquisition device -for mastering language. b.
Chomsky maintained that the LAD contains a set of rules common to all languages; thus,
children speak in a rule-oriented way from the beginning. c. Children all over the world tend to
master language milestones in a similar sequence- evidence that fits with Chomsky's ideas. d.
Can Great Apes Acquire Language? a) Findings reveal that the ability of chimps to acquire a
humanlike language system is limited. b) Even pygmy chimps, a highly intelligent species,
require several extra years of training to attain the basic grammar understood by human 2- and 3-
year-olds. e. Language Areas in the Brain a) Humans have evolved specialized regions in the
brain that support language skills. b) Broca's area, located in the frontal lobe, controls language
production. c) Wernicke's area, located in the temporal lobe, controls language comprehension. f.
Limitations of the Nativist Perspective 1) Researchers have had difficulty identifying the single
system of grammar believed to underlie all languages. 2) Research indicates that language
acquisition is not immediate but occurs in a steady and gradual manner.
        3. The Interactionist Perspective: a. This view emphasizes that language achievements
emerge through the interaction of innate abilities and environmental influences. b. Native
capacity, a strong desire to interact with others, and a rich linguistic and social environment
contribute to budding a child's language capacities. c. A great deal of evidence supports the
interactionist position.
D. Getting Ready to Talk
        1. Cooing and Babbling: a. Around 2 months, babies make vowel-like noises called
cooing. About 6 months, consonants combine with vowels and the baby begins babbling. b.
Babies must hear human speech for babbling to develop further. c. Adult-infant interaction
increases the amount of spoken language a baby is exposed to.
        2. Becoming a Communicator: a. By 4 months, infants and adults follow each other's
gaze. The adults label what is seen. Experiencing this joint attention often speeds up language
development. b. Simple infant games such as pat-a-cake and peek-a-boo demonstrate
conversational turn-taking. c. At the end of the first year, infants use preverbal gestures to
influence the behavior of others.
E. First Words
        1 . Children's first words usually refer to important people, objects that move, familiar
actions, or outcomes of familiar actions.
        2. Underextension is a vocabulary error in which a word is applied to a smaller number of
objects and events than is appropriate.
        3. In contrast, overextension occurs when a word is applied to a wider collection of
objects and events than is appropriate.
F. The Two-Word Utterance Phase
        1 Vocabularies slowly build from age 12 to 18 months. However, between 18 and 24
months, children may add from 10 to 20 new words a week.
        2. Telegraphic speech is the two-word utterance phase of toddlers which leaves out
smaller and less important words.
G. Comprehension versus Production
        1 . Production is the words and word combinations that children use.
        2. Comprehension is the language that children understand.
        3. At all ages, comprehension develops ahead of production. Comprehension only
necessitates recognition of word meaning, whereas production requires active recall of the word
and its meaning.
H. Individual and Cultural Differences in Early Language Development
        1 . Many studies show that girls are ahead of boys in early vocabulary growth.
        2. A referential style of early vocabulary learning is one in which toddlers mainly use
language to label objects.
        3. An expressive style uses language mainly to talk about one's own feelings and needs
and those of other people.
        4. Referential style vocabularies grow faster than expressive styles because languages
contain more object labels than social phrases.
        5. A problem with language development may exist if a child is greatly delayed when
compared to language norms, if he does not follow simple directions, or if he has problems
putting thoughts into words.
I. Supporting Early Language Development
        1 . When adults speak to infants and toddlers, they often use a form of language called
child-directed speech that consists of short sentences with high-pitched, exaggerated expression
and very clear pronunciation.
        2. From birth on, children prefer to listen to CDS, and the use of CDS supports early
language development.
        3. Make-believe play, reading to toddlers, and conversational give-and-take between
toddlers and adults all support early language learning.
        4. CDS is an example of how the zone of proximal development operates.

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