Chapter Introduction

The First Two Years: Cognitive Development

  • Sensorimotor Intelligence
    • Stages One and Two: Primary Circular Reactions
    • Stages Three and Four: Secondary Circular Reactions
    • Stages Five and Six: Tertiary Circular Reactions
    • Piaget and Modern Research
  • Information Processing
    • Affordances
    • Memory
  • Language: What Develops in the First Two Years?
    • The Universal Sequence
    • First Words
    • Cultural Differences
    • Theories of Language Learning
    • OPPOSING PERSPECTIVES: Language and Video

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WHAT WILL YOU KNOW?

  1. Why did Piaget compare 1-year-olds to scientists?

    Piaget said that toddlers “experiment in order to see.” They use trial and error to explore and understand the world around them. They are devoted to discovery just like every scientist is.

  2. Why isn’t Piaget’s theory of sensorimotor intelligence universally recognized as insightful?

    Hundreds of researchers have since shown that many infants reach the stages of sensorimotor intelligence earlier than Piaget predicted. In addition, several specific criticisms of Piaget’s research methods have been lodged. His sample was too small (initially based on his own infant children), his methods were too simple (relying almost exclusively on direct observation using imprecise measurement tools), and new methods of measuring brain activity allow modern researchers to record infant cognition before the infant is old enough to display behaviors that would establish the existence of those cognitions.

  3. What factors influence whether infants remember what happens to them before they can talk?

    If an infant experiences a reminder session, it will help to ensure that the infant will remember the event. Repetition is important, too; multiple reminders produce better memory than single reminders. When the context is the same at initial exposure and at memory test, memory will be better than when the context is different.

  4. When and how do infants learn to talk?

    Most infants utter their first words around their first birthdays. These one-word utterances typically label familiar things and are accompanied by gestures, facial expressions, and intonation that assist in conveying meaning. Infants learn vocabulary words from their caregivers’ use of child-directed speech. But exactly how language is learned remains uncertain. According to Skinner, language is learned through training and reinforcement from parents and other caregivers. According to Chomsky, infants possess an innate language acquisition device that allows them to naturally discover the rules and vocabulary of the language to which they are exposed.

My Aunt Anna’s husband, Uncle Henry, boasted that he did nothing with his three children—all boys—until they were smart enough to talk. He may have found an excuse to avoid diapering, burping, and bathing, but he was wrong about infant cognition.

Babies are smart from the first days of life; they think about people and things, communicating long before they say their first words. His sons grew up to be devoted to their mother and much more interactive with their own infants than Uncle Henry had been with them. The research presented in this chapter explains why his sons’ approach represents a marked improvement in fathering.

Newborns seem to know nothing. Two years later they can make a wish, say it out loud, and blow out their birthday candles. Thousands of developmentalists have traced this rapid progression, finding that preverbal infants know much more than adults once realized and that every month brings new cognitive developments.

We begin with Piaget’s overall understanding of early cognition, specifically his six stages of intellectual progression over the first two years. We then describe another approach to infant cognition, information processing, with some intriguing research that reveals preverbal memory and communication, using methods such as habituation and brain scans. The most dramatic evidence of early intellectual growth—the talking that Uncle Henry waited for—is then described.

The final topic of this chapter may be most important of all: How do early cognitive accomplishments, particularly language, occur? The implications for caregivers are many—none of which Uncle Henry understood.