COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

HOW DO LANGUAGE AND COGNITION

RELATE TO EACH OTHER?
• It is not possible to separate language and thinking.
• Humans can think in ways other than language. (i.e. music,
numbers, colors)
• Multiple intelligences theory
• We learn differently and through many avenues
• Linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial-visual, bodily-
kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist
• Language is necessary in our interactions with others, a critical
aspect of learning and being a social member of our communities.
• Multiple Intelligences Test: [Link]
/mi/assessment/[Link]
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
• Cognitive organization (page 65)
• Schema: a category
• Assimilation: adding new information to an existing category
• Accommodation: creating a new category for information that
does not fit in an existing category
• Equilibrium: balance not too broad of categories but not too
many categories.
• Humans continually use assimilation and accommodations to
accept new information, reshape existing categories, and create
new categories throughout our lives.
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
• Stages of intellectual development form birth to late adolescence
• Sensorimotor intelligence (birth-2)
• Child’s behaviors are mostly reflexive and motor.
• Child physically interacts with his/her environment.
• Child is experimenting with his environment not necessarily in learned ways.
• Preoperational thought (2-7)
• Rapid language development
• Child begins to categorize his/her environment.
• Child begins to solve physical problems (ex: moving around a barrier or dragging
a stool)
• Child begins to think conceptually.
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
• Stages of intellectual development form birth to late adolescence cont.
• Concrete operations (7-11)
• Child begins to think logically with about concrete or physical problems.
• Child is categorizing learned information based order and level.
• Formal operations (11-15)
• Fully developed cognitive abilities
• Child can think in abstract thoughts to solve problems.
• Child is able to hypothesize and test theories.
• Child reasons and thinks logically.
• These stages are not independent or absolute.
• They are cumulative and develop consecutively.
 SENSORIMOTOR DEVELOPMENT
• A person receives information through the senses.
• What are the senses??
• Perception refers to the processes by which the person selects, organizes,
integrates, and interprets sensory information.
• Distancing: refers to the distance between the child and the actual object.
• Language eventually represents the ultimate perceptional distance.
• Representation: the ability to use words in place of things.
• Distancing moves our experiences from our mouth and hands to our brain
as we develop.
 SENSORIMOTOR DEVELOPMENT
• Object permanence: out of sight out of mind
• How would you target this in play?
• Causality: cause and effect
• How would you target this in play?
• Means/ends: using cause and effect to solve problems
• How would you target this in play?
• Important for language development; we use language to get things done
• We adjust our language depending on who the listener is and our type of relationship
with listener.
• Imitation: duplicating the model
• How would you target this in play?
• Most children learn as a result of attending to models and attempting to duplicate
them.
 SENSORIMOTOR DEVELOPMENT
• Delayed imitation: producing a desired behavior when model is not
present
• How would you target this in play?
• Without delayed imitation, language would not progress beyond imitation.
(we would be parrots)
• Play: provides children with many opportunities to learn about things,
people and concepts in their world.
• How would you target this?
• Symbolic Play: activity in which one object represents another object
• How would you target this in play?
• Communication
• Who can define?
 BIRTH – 1 MONTH
SUBSTAGE 1
• Has not realized people can do
things for him/her.
• Is not imitating motor or
communication
• Not playing

• Tremendous cognitive and

communication potential.
 1-4 MONTHS
• Interacts with objects but it is
awareness of sensory rather than
SUBSTAGE 2
conceptual
• Mouthing toys, attempting to grasp
toys, etc.
• Reacts to objects visually and
auditorily
• Beginning to search for sounds;
will follow objects within line of
sight
• Imitates his/her own behavior that
is imitated by a parent/caregiver
• Uses differentiating cries, coos,
and laughing
 4-8 MONTHS
SUBSTAGE 3
• Sitting and crawling
• Exploring objects in front of them
• Following moving objects
• Causality is emerging.
• Doesn’t understand the effects of
his/her behavior
• Produces goal oriented behaviors.
• Imitates only behaviors he/she
spontaneously produced at an earlier
time.
 8-12 MONTHS
SUBSTAGE 4
• May begin walking
• Pulling up on stationary objects
• Object permanence develops
• Begins to understand causality
• Understands people and objects
cause activities
• Intentional behaviors are being
planned
• Figuring out how toys work
• Says FIRST WORDS!
• Communication becomes intentional.
 12-18 MONTHS
SUBSTAGE 5
• Capable of following sequential
displacements
• Causality is becoming more
sophisticated
• Becoming a problem solver!
• Active and successful Imitator
• Imitating both verbal and motor
• Communication is intentional.
• Communication is still dependent on
nonverbal messages.
 18-24 MONTHS
SUBSTAGE 6
• Becoming a cognitive thinker
instead of a touchy-feely
experiencer
• True mastery of object permanence
• Can create mental images of objects
vs needing physical contact with
object
• Uses deferred imitation
• Beginning to use pretend play
• Limited to realistic objects
• Using words and word combinations
 RECENT RESEARCH
• Suggests Piaget theory has identified the cognitive abilities the child
acquires and the time frame is mostly on target.
• Contrary to Piaget’s belief, research suggests children show first signs of
cognitive abilities much early.
• Innate perceptual abilities and environmental experiences are also
thought to be factors in cognitive development, not just the sensorimotor
experiences.
• Piaget’s theory is not specifically for language development.
• Scholars have related aspects of cognitive development to language.
 PIAGET’S HIGHER COGNITIVE
STAGES
• Preoperational Thought (2-7 years)
• Child assumes that others see his own view of objects and events.
• Able to focus on one dimension of a problem at a time
• Conservation tasks are also challenging
• Concrete Operations (7-11 years)
• Developing ability to think logically when dealing with concrete or physical
problems
• Do not have the ability to think abstractly
• Still bound by manipulation of objects to solve problems
• Formal Operations (11-15 years)
• Begin to manipulate ideas in their minds
• Create ideas to make stories or drawings
• Predicting text