What Have You Learned?

1. Question 6.1

   Why did Piaget call his first stage of cognition sensorimotor intelligence?

   Piaget called cognition in the first two years sensorimotor intelligence because infants learn through their senses and motor skills.

2. Question 6.2

   How do the first two sensorimotor stages illustrate primary circular reactions?

   In every aspect of sensorimotor intelligence, the brain and the senses interact with experiences, each shaping the other. Sensation, perception, and cognition cycle in what Piaget called circular reactions. The first two stages of sensorimotor intelligence involve primary circular reactions, which involve the infant’s own body.Stage one, called the stage of reflexes, lasts only for a month. It includes senses as well as motor reflexes, the foundations of infant thought. Reflexes become deliberate; sensation leads to perception and then to cognition. Sensorimotor intelligence begins.As reflexes adjust, the 1-month-old enters stage two, first acquired adaptations (also called the stage of first habits). Adaptation is cognitive; it includes both assimilation and accommodation, which people use to understand their experience. Infants adapt their reflexes as repeated responses provide information about what the body does and how that action feels.

3. Question 6.3

   How is object permanence an example of stage four of sensorimotor intelligence?

   Piaget thought that at about 8 months babies first understand the concept of object permanence, the realization that objects or people continue to exist when they are no longer in sight. As Piaget predicted, not until about 8 months do infants search for toys that have fallen from the crib, rolled under a couch, or disappeared under a blanket. As they grow older, toddlers become better at seeking hidden objects, which Piaget again considered symptomatic of their sensorimotor intelligence.If very young infants fuss because they want something they see but cannot have (your keys or a piece of candy), all an adult needs to do is put it out of sight. Fussing stops. By contrast, for toddlers, merely hiding the forbidden object is not enough. It must be securely locked or thrown away, or else a young child might remember where it is hidden and retrieve it.

4. Question 6.4

   What is the difference between stages five and six in sensorimotor intelligence?

   Stage five (ages 12 to 18 months) is called new means through active experimentation. This builds on the accomplishments of stage four. Now goal-directed and purposeful activities become more expansive and creative. Toddlers delight in squeezing all the toothpaste out of the tube, taking apart an iPod, and uncovering the anthill. Piaget referred to stage-five toddlers as “little scientists” who create “experiments in order to see.” Their scientific method is trial and error. Their devotion to discovery is familiar to every adult scientist and to every parent.Finally, in the sixth stage (ages 18 to 24 months), toddlers begin to anticipate and solve simple problems by using mental combinations; an intellectual experimentation that sometimes supersedes the active experimentation of stage five. Thankfully, the sequence may begin with thought (especially if an adult previously said something was forbidden) before moving on to action.Also in the sixth stage, children are able to combine ideas. For instance, they know that a doll is not a real baby but can instead be a pretend baby, placed into a stroller and taken for a walk. Two words can be combined by this point as well, an impressive intellectual accomplishment.

5. Question 6.5

   What steps of the scientific method does the “little scientist” follow?

   Little scientists create “experiments in order to see” what is happening in their world or to make sense of their world. Their scientific method is trial and error. They seem to pose a question, formulate a hypothesis, and then test that hypothesis. Based on the results, they alter their hypothesis.

6. Question 6.6

   What caused Piaget to underestimate how rapidly early cognition occurs?

   Piaget underestimated how rapidly early cognition occurs because his methods for determining what infants could think relied only on direct observation of behavior, such as noticing whether or not a baby pulled away a cloth to search for a hidden object. Scientists now have many ways of measuring brain activity long before any observable evidence is apparent.

7. Question 6.7

   Explain how the affordances of this book differ to a baby at age 1 month, 12 months, and 20 years?

   The affordance of this book at 1 month is minimal at best; perhaps it offers the affordance of propping a baby up. At 12 months, the book’s corners might make a great thing to chew on for a child who is teething, or the pictures might engage a child briefly. At 20, the affordances are comprehending developmental psychology materials.

8. Question 6.8

   What hypotheses have been offered to explain why infants refuse to crawl over visual cliffs?

   Initially, researchers assumed that younger infants were willing to cross the visual cliff because they could not perceive the difference in depth. Older infants refused to cross the cliff because their depth perception had developed adequately. Newer theories suggest that the infant’s awareness of the affordance of the visual cliff depends on past experience. The difference is in processing, not input; in affordance, not mere stimulus. Further research on affordances of the visual cliff included the social context, with the tone of the mother’s encouragement being a significant indicator of whether the cliff affords crawling or not.

9. Question 6.9

   What strategies help 3-month-old babies to remember something?

   Researchers find that reminders help infants remember. In addition, the context is crucial, especially for infants younger than 9 months old.

10. Question 6.10

    What is the crucial difference between implicit and explicit memory?

    Implicit memory is memory that remains hidden until a particular stimulus brings it to mind (like the mobile reminder session described in the text). Explicit memory is memory that can be recalled on demand. Explicit memories are usually verbal, and thus although explicit memory emerges sometime between 6 and 12 months, it is far from fully developed.

11. Question 6.11

    Why is explicit memory difficult for babies under age 2?

    Explicit memory is memory that can be recalled on demand. Explicit memories are usually verbal, and therefore although explicit memory emerges sometime between 6 and 12 months, it is far from fully developed. The particular part of the brain on which explicit memory depends is the hippocampus (explained in Chapter 8), present at birth but very immature until about age 5 or 6 years.

12. Question 6.12

    What communication abilities do infants have at 6 months?

    By 6 months of age, babies engage in babbling, including consonant and vowel sounds, repeated in syllables. Infants in this age group also make use of gestures, especially pointing.

13. Question 6.13

    What aspects of early language development are universal, apparent in babies of every culture and family?

    In almost every language, the name of each significant caregiver and sibling is learned between 12 and 18 months. Other frequently uttered words refer to the child’s favorite food and to elimination. A “naming explosion” takes place once children have around 50 words in their vocabularies. They prefer child-directed speech and are perhaps influenced by the language acquisition device proposed by Chomsky.

14. Question 6.14

    What is typical kind of the first words that infants speak?

    At about 1 year, the average baby utters his or her first words. First words are typically labels for familiar things, but each can convey many messages. “Dada!” “Dada?” and “Dada” may each be conveyed differently. Each is a holophrase, a single word that expresses an entire thought. Spoken vocabulary increases gradually.

15. Question 6.15

    What have developmentalists discovered about the way adults talk to babies?

    Adults everywhere use higher pitch, simpler words, repetition, varied speeds, and exaggerated emotional tones when they speak to infants. This is known as child-directed speech.

16. Question 6.16

    What are the early signs of grammar in infant speech?

    When infants start using two-word combinations, they use the proper word order. For example, no child asks, “Juice more.” Soon the child combines three words, usually in subject–verb–object order in English rather than any of the five other possible sequences of those words.

17. Question 6.17

    According to behaviorism, how do adults teach infants to talk?

    Skinner believed that most parents are excellent instructors, replying to their infants’ gestures and sounds, thus reinforcing speech. According to behaviorists, if adults want children who speak, understand, and (later) read well, they must talk to (and read to) their infants.

18. Question 6.18

    According to sociocultural theory, why do infants try to communicate?

    According to sociocultural theory, infants communicate because humans have evolved as social beings, dependent on one another for survival and joy. Each culture has practices that further social interaction; talking is one of those practices.

19. Question 6.19

    What is Chomsky’s theory about how young children learn language?

    According to Chomsky, humans are born with a mental structure that prepares them to seek some elements of human language. He called this structure the language acquisition device (LAD). The LAD enables children to derive the rules of grammar quickly and effectively from the speech they hear every day.

20. Question 6.20

    What does the idea that language development results from brain maturation imply for caregivers?

    Since infants are innately ready to use their minds to understand and speak, and because all infants are eager learners, a caregiver can rest assured that his or her baby will acquire language naturally, without specific lessons or effort on the caregiver’s part. Language is experience-expectant, and most caregivers naturally adopt child-directed speech when talking to infants, so in most households, language acquisition proceeds normally.

21. Question 6.21

    How does the hybrid theory of language development compare to the eclectic approach to developmental study described in Chapter 2?

    Most developmentalists prefer an eclectic perspective. That is, rather than adopt any one theory exclusively, they make selective use of all of them.A hybrid of previous theories implies that since infants learn language to do numerous things—indicate intention, call objects by name, put words together, talk to family members, sing to themselves, express their wishes, remember the past, and much more—some aspects of language learning may be best explained by one theory at one age and other aspects by another theory at another age.