1. Kathleen Stassen Berger
Part II Chapter Six
The First Two Years: Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Intelligence
Information Processing
Language: What Develops in the
First Two Years?
Prepared by Madeleine Lacefield 1
Tattoon, M.A.

2. The First Two Years: Cognitive Development
• Infant cognition
– cognition = “thinking”
• “thinking” in a very broad sense includes…
– language
– learning
– memory
– intelligence
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3. The First Two Years: Cognitive Development
• Infants organize by the end of the first
year…
– sensations and perceptions
– sequence and direction
– the familiar and the strange
– objects and people
– events and experiences
– permanence and transiency
– cause and effect
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4. Sensorimotor Intelligence
• Remember…
– Piaget’s first stage (chapter 2)
• infants learn through senses and
motor actions
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6. Piaget and Research Methods
• Piaget’s sensorimotor intelligence actually
occurs earlier for most infants than Piaget
predicted.
– Habituation, the process of getting used to (i.e., bored with)
a stimulus after repeated exposure. An infant can show this
by looking away.
– If a new object appears and the infant reacts (change in
heart rate, sucking), it is assumed they recognize the object
as something different.
• Summing up…
– In six stages of sensorimotor, Piaget discovered, described,
and then celebrated active infant learning.
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7. Information Processing Theory
• “a perspective that compares human
thinking processes, by analogy, to
computer analysis of data, including
sensory input, connections, stored
memories, and output”
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8. Information Processing Theory
• With the aid of technology this theory has found
some impressive intellectual capacities in the
infant
• Intellectual capacities, concepts, and categories
seem to develop in the infant brain by 6 months
• Perspective helps tie together various aspects of
infant cognition: affordance and memory.
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9. Information Processing Theory
• affordance
– “…an opportunity for perception and
interaction that is offered by a person,
place, or object in the environment”
• afford = offer
• perception is the mental processing of
information that arrives at the brain from
the sensory organs
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10. Information Processing Theory
• affordance
– One puzzle of development is that two
people can have discrepant perceptions of
the same situation, not only interpreting it
differently but actually observing it
differently
• depending on:
– past experiences
– current developmental level
– sensory awareness of opportunities
– immediate needs and motivation
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11. Information Processing Theory
• Research on Early Affordance
– Information processing improves over the
first year as infants become quicker to
remember
– Experiences affect which affordances are
perceived…
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12. Information Processing Theory
• Sudden Drops
– …the visual cliff, an apparatus to
measure depth perception
– infants become interested in “crossing”
the cliff about 8 months (having had
experience falling)
– the cliff “affords” danger for older infants
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13. Information Processing Theory
• Movement and People
– infants have:
• dynamic perception
– primed to focus on movement and change
• a people preference
– a universal principle of infant perception,
consisting of an innate attraction to other
humans, which is evident in visual, auditory,
tactile, and other preferences
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14. Information Processing Theory
• Memory
– Developmentalists now agree that even
very young infants can remember under
the following circumstances:
• experimental conditions are similar to
“real life”
• motivation is high
• special measures are taken to aid
memory retrieval
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15. Information Processing Theory
• Reminders and Repetition
– reminder sessions
• a perceptual experience that is
intended to help a person recollect an
idea, a thing, or an experience, without
testing whether the person remembers
it at the moment
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16. Information Processing Theory
• A Little Older, a Little More Memory
– after about 6 months infants can retain
information for longer periods of time…
with less training or reminding
– by the middle of the 2nd year toddlers
can remember and reenact more
complex sequences
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17. Information Processing Theory
• Aspects of Memory
– Memory is not one “thing”
• brain-imaging techniques reveal many
distinct brain regions devoted to
particular aspects of memory
– implicit memory is memory for routines
and memories that remain hidden until
particular stimulus bring them to mind
– explicit memory is memory that can be
recalled on demand
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18. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• “The acquisition of language,… its
idiomatic phases, grammar rules,
and exceptions, is the most
impressive intellectual achievement
of the young child.”
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19. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• The Universal Sequence
– Around the world children follow the
same sequence of early language
development
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21. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Listening and Responding
• infants begin learning language before
birth…
• infants prefer speech over other sounds
– child-directed speech
• the high-pitched, simplified, and
repetitive way adults speak to infants
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22. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Babbling
– repeating certain syllables (e.g., da-da-
da).
• all babies babble, even deaf babies
(although later and less frequently).
• babbling is a way to communicate.
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23. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• First Words
– usually around 1 year the average baby
speaks, or signs a few words
• they are often familiar nouns
– by 13 months spoken language increases very
gradually
– 6 to 15 month-olds learn meaning rapidly and
comprehend about 10 times as many words
as they speak
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24. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• The Naming Explosion
– a sudden increase in an infant’s
vocabulary, especially in the number of
nouns begins at about 18 months
– vocabulary reaches about 50 expressed
words at a rate of 50 to 100 per month,
21 month-olds saying twice as many as
18 month-olds
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25. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Cultural Differences
– the ratio of nouns to verbs and
adjectives show cultural influences.
– one explanation is the language itself
(i.e. English, Chinese differ)
– another explanation is social context
(toys and objects)
– every language has some concepts
encoded in adult speech
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26. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Sentences
– “The first words soon take on nuances
of tone, loudness, and cadence that are
precursors of the first grammar,
because a single word can convey
many messages by the way it is
spoken.”
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27. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Sentences
“Dada!” “Dada?” and “Dada.”
– each is a holophrase, a single word that
expresses a complete, meaningful thought.
– intonations varying in tone and pitch is extensive
in babbling and again in holophrases at about 18
months
– grammar--all the methods that languages use to
communicate meaning. Word order, prefixes,
intonation, verb forms,… are all aspects of
grammar.
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28. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Theories of Language Learning
• 2 year olds worldwide use language well
• bilingual children keep two languages
separate and speak whatever language a
listen understands
– each theory of language acquisition has
implications for parents and educators…all
want children to speak fluently…without
instruction
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29. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Theories of Language Learning
– There are 3 theories of how infants
learn language:
• they are taught (view of B. F. Skinner)
• they teach themselves (view of Noam
Chomsky)
• social impulses foster learning
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30. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Theory One: Infants Need to Be Taught
– 50 years ago the dominant learning theory in North America
was behaviorism
– B. F. Skinner (1957) noticed that spontaneous babbling is
usually reinforced… a grinning mother appears, repeating,
praising, giving attention to the infant
– Parents are expert teachers, other caregivers help
– Frequent repetitions instructive when linked to daily life
– Well-taught infants become well-spoken children
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31. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Theory Two: Infants Teach Themselves
– a contrary theory is that language learning is
innate--adults need not teach it
– Norm Chomsky (1968,1980) felt that
language is too complex to be mastered
merely through step-by-step conditioning
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32. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Theory Two: Infants Teach Themselves
– universal grammar--all young children
master basic language at about the same
age
– Language acquisition device (LAD)
• a term used for a hypothesized mental structure
that enables humans to learn language, including
the basic aspects of grammar, vocabulary and
intonation
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33. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• Theory Three: Social Impulses Foster Infant
Language
– a third theory called social-pragmatic perceives the
crucial starting point to be neither vocabulary
reinforcement (behaviorism) nor innate connection
(epigenetic), but rather the social reason for
language; communication
– Infants communicate in every way they can because
humans are social beings and depend on one
another for survival and joy
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34. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
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35. Language: What Develops
in the First Two Years?
• A Hybrid Theory
– the integration of all three perspectives…
notably in a monograph based on 12
experiments designed by 8 researchers
– their model an emergentist coalition…
combing valid aspects of several theories
about the emergence of language during
infancy
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