GOOD MORNING

MODULE 13
Gerlyn M. Solocio
Herzelle Mae F. Prayna
 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF
INFANTS AND TOODLERS

“Infants and toddlers are born ready to learn. They learn through listening to
language, trying out sounds, tasting foods and exploring their environment in
countless ways everyday.”

-Kahlil Gribran-
Here are the 6 stages of
the sensorimotor
developmental stage
(Santrock, 2002):
 Sensorimotor stage
The sensorimotor stage is the first of the four stages of
cognitive development. “In this stage, infants construct an
understanding of the world by coordinating sensory
experience (such as seeing and hearing) with physical,
motoric actions. Infants gain knowledge of the world from
the physical actions they perform on it. An infant
progresses from reflexive, instinctual action at birth to the
beginning of symbolic thought toward the end of the
stage.”
 Piaget divided the
sensorimotor stage
into six sub-stages:
 Sub-Stage Age Description
1. Simple Reflexes Coordination of sensation and action through reflexive
behaviors. Three primary reflexes are described by Piaget;
sucking of objects in the mouth, following moving or
Birth-6 interesting objects with the eyes, and closing of the hand
weeks when an object makes contact with the palm (palmar grasp).
Over the first six weeks of life, these reflexes begin to
become voluntary actions; for example, the palmar reflex
becomes intentional grasping.

2. First habits and Coordination of sensation and two types of schemes: habits
primary circular (reflex) and primary circular reactions. Primary reaction
reactions phase 6 weeks- because the action is focused on the infant’s body. Circular
4 months reaction because it is a repetition of an action that initially
occurred by chance. As an example of this type of reaction,
infants might repeat the motion of passing their hand before
their face. Also at this phase, passive reactions, caused by
classical or operant conditioning, can begin. Infants tend to
repeat interesting sensation.
 Sub-Stage Age Description
3. Secondary curricular Development of habits. Infants become more object-oriented, moving
reaction phase beyond self-preoccupation repeat action that bring interesting or
pleasurable result. This stage is associated primarily with the
development of coordination between vision and prehension. Three new
abilities occur at this stage: intentional grasping for a desire object,
secondary circular reaction and differentiations between ends and
4-8 means. At this stage, infants will intentionally grasp the air in the
months direction of a desire object, often to the amusement of friends and
family. Secondary circular reactions, or the repetition of an action
involving an external object begin; for example, moving a switch to turn
on a light repeatedly. This means the secondary action is focused on an
object outside the body of an infants.

4. Coordination of Coordination of vision and touch-hand-eye coordination; of schemes

reactions stage and intentionally. This stage is associated primarily with the
secondary curricular 8-12 development of logic and the coordination between means and ends.
months This is an extremely important stage of development, holding what
Piaget calls the “first proper intelligence”. Also, this stage marks the
beginning of goal orientation, the deliberate planning of steps to meet an
objective. The action is directed towards a goal.
 Sub-Stage Age Description
5. Tertiary circular Infants become intrigued by many properties of objects and
reaction, novelty, and by the many things they can make happen to objects; they
curiosity 12-18 experiment new behavior. This stage is associated
months primarily with the discovery of new means to meet goals.
Piaget describe the child at this juncture as the “young
scientist,” conducting pseudo-experiments to discover new
methods of meeting challenges.

6. Internalization of Infants develop the ability to use primitive symbol and form
schemes (invention enduring mental representation. The stage is associated
of new means 18-24 primarily with the beginning of insight, or true creativity.
through mental months This marks the passage into the preoperational stage.
combination) Evidence of an internal representational system.
Symbolizing the problem-solving sequence before actually
responding.
 Sensorimotor stage
6 substages of the sensorimotor stage of Piaget’s cognitive
development shows that development begins from reflexive behavior
to more refined and more coordinated activities. Cognitive
development of infants evolves in orientation from becoming focused
on themselves to becoming object or world-oriented, from one
that is action-based to the one that is mentally-based, from one
that does not involved much of coordination of schemes to one
involving intentionally, novelty and curiosity and from a thinking
the is purely sensorimotor to a symbolic one.
 Piaget’s substages are termed circular
because the adaptive behavior to the world
involves repeated actions. Circular reactions
are attempts to repeat an event that the baby
likes. Circular reactions serves as the building
for intelligence (Pasek, P and Golinkoff, R,
2003)
Primarily circular reactions are oriented towards the
infant’s own body, whereas secondary circular
reactions are aimed toward the environment
including others. Here is an example of an primary
circular reaction:
At first, by accident, the baby gets her thumbs in her
mouth. But she doesn’t know how to de it again.
She waves her hand around and, after many
attempts, eventually succeeds in doing it again.
Gradually, she learns how to do it at will (Pasek, K
and R. Golinkoff, 2003)
Secondary circular reactions are repetitive
action that involving recreating events
which 4-10 month old babies observe out-
side of their own bodies, such as making
their mobile crib shake by kicking their
legs (Pasek, K and R. Golinkoff, 2003).
 Tertiary circular reactions, seen from
approximately 10 to 18 months, is when a baby
does things over and over again, just a little
differently each time. e.g. When a baby seems to
enjoy dropping the spoon over and over again in
many different ways, a proof of the creation of
novel variation in events. Piaget describe the
baby at this stage as “the scientist”. When
parents don’t understand their child’s behavior,
they see this act as abusive and get frustrated.
From dropping the spoon many times in
many different ways, the baby discovers
a pattern “objects fall down --- not up.”
They create the patterns with their
repetitive actions and then evaluate
them. Babies are born pattern seeker
(Pasek, K and R. Golinkoff, 2003).
“Acquiring the sense of object permanence is
one of the infant’s most important
accomplishments, according to Piaget.” Object
permanence is the understanding that objects
continue to exist even when the objects are not
immediately perceptible through the sense.
Before the infant’s acquisition of the sense of
object permanence, the principle that applies is
“out of sight, out of mind.”
 There are some criticisms of Piaget’s theory on cognitive
development. One criticisms from other developmental theorists is
his fundamental assumption that cognitive development occurs in
fixed sequence of discontinuous spurts across task domains, tasks,
and contexts. Many theorist (e.g. Brainerd, 1978) believe that
cognitive development occurs as a continuous process rather than
in discontinuous stages of development. Recent studies in the
cognitive development of infants support the view the Piaget’s
underestimated young infants’ cognitive ability. Furthermore,
Piaget’s methods of research were said to be quite loose, the fact
that he simply observed his three children and few other were
limited only to European children.
 Learning and Remembering
Do infants learn and remember?
Yes! Pavlov’s classical conditioning and skinner’s operant
conditioning have been proven to apply to infants. All of us
experience infantile amnesia, the inability to recall events that
happened when we were very young (Spear, 1979). We can
remember little or nothing that has happened to us before the age of
about 5 years, and it is extremely rare for someone to recall many
memories before age 3 years. Reports of childhood memories
usually involve memories of significant events.(e.g. Birth of sibling
or the death of parents; Fivush and Hammond, 1991)
 Language Development
From day one, infants appear to be programmed
to tune in to their linguistic environment with the
specific goal of acquiring language. Infants
clearly have remarkably acute language learning
abilities even from an early age (Marcus, Vijaya.
Bandi Rao and Vishton, 1999; Pinker 1997, 1999
cited by Sternberg, Robert, 2003).
Within the first years of life, we humans seem
to progress through the following stages in
producing language(Sternberg, 2003).
1. Cooing, which comprises largely vowel sounds
2. Babbling, which comprise consonant as well as vowel sound; to most
people’s ears, the balling of infants growing up among speakers from
different language group sounds very similar.
3. One-word utterances; these utterances are limited in both the vowels and
the consonants they utilize (Ingrams, 1999 cited by Stemberg, 2003).
4. Two-word utterance and telegraphic speech
5. Basic adult sentence structure (present by about age 4 years) with
continuing vocabulary acquisition.
 The infant uses these one-word utterances termed
holophrases-to convey intention, desires and
demands. By 18 months of age, children typically
have vocabularies of 3 to 100 words (Siegler, 1986).
In linguistics this is called overextension error.
Gradually between 1.5 and 2.5 years of age,
children start combining single words to produce
two-word utterance. These two-word or three-word
utterances with rudimentary syntax but with articles
and prepositions missing are referred to as
telegraphic speech.
 Vocabulary expands rapidly, more than tripling from about
300 words at about 2 years of age to about 1,000 words at
about 3 years of age. At about 4 years, incredibly children
acquire the foundations of adult syntax and language
structure (Sternberg, 2003).
It is clear that no toddler blossoms all of the sudden into one
capable of telegraphic speech. As the 5 stages above show
the acquisition of language comes in stage beginning with
cooing, then babbling, to one-word utterances, to two- or
three-word utterances or even more but without articles and
prepositions that called telegraphic speech.
Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
Noam Chomsky (1965, 1972), noted linguist, claims
that humans have an innate language acquisition
device (LAD). This LAD is a “metaphorical organ that
is responsible for language learning. Just as a heart is
designed to pump blood this language acquisition
device is preprogrammed to learn language, whatever
the language community children find themselves in”.
 Professor Laura-Ann Petito of Dartmouth
College in Hanover, New Hampshire and her
colleagues conducted a recent study that
conclude that “by 5 months of age, babies are
already specializing by using the left side of their
brains for language sounds and the right side for
expression emotion…. We all speak out from the
right side of our mouths….Babies babble out
from the right side of their mouths.”
The right side of the body is controlled by
the left side of the brain while the left side
of the body is controlled by the right side
of the brain (connection of the body is
contralateral or crossed). Babies use the
right side of their mouths for babbling.
Then babbling is a language function
controlled by the left side of the brain.
 A summary of what Infants and
Toddlers Can Do Cognitively
0-6 months
• Watches primary caregiver intently as she speaks to him/her
7-12 months
• Understand “No”
• Points to family member when asked to do so
13-18 months
• Points to 5 body parts on him/herself when asked to do so
• Follow one-step instructions without need for gestures
19-24 months
• Points to 5 named pictured objects when asked to do so
 LANGUAGE (EXPRESSIVE LANGUAGE)
Standard 1. The children is able to use words and gestures to express his thought and
feelings.
0-6 months
• Makes gurling, cooing, babbling or other vocal sounds
• Uses gestures (e.g., stretching his/her arms, pointing) to indicate
what he/she wants.
7-12 months
• Repeat sounds produced by others
• Says meaningful words like papa, mama, to refer to specific persons
• Uses environmental sounds to identify objects/events in the
environment
• (e.g., boom for thunder)
13-18 months
• Speaks in single words
• Say “yes” and “no” appropriately
• Uses words accompanied by gestures to indicate what he/she wants
• Responds to simple questions with single words
19-24 months
• Uses pronouns
• Uses possessive pronouns
• Say what he/she wants without accompanying this with gestures
• Attempts to convince even if he cannot be clearly understood
PRE-READING AND PRE-MATH (MATCHING)
Standard 1;1: The child is able to match identical objects, colors, shapes, symbols.

7-12 months
• Able to match 2 identical objects (e.g., 2 spoons, 2
balls)
19-24 months
• Matches identical objects
• Matches identical pictures
 PRE-READING AND PRE-MATH
(ROTE SEQUENCING)
STANDARD 1.2: The child is able to recite the alphabet and numbers in sequence.

19-24 months
• Counts from 1to 5 with errors, gaps or prompts
 ATTENTION AND ACTIVITY LEVEL
Standard 1: The child is able to sustain attention and modulate his activity at age-expected levels.

0-6 months
• Loos steadily at novel stimuli (e.g., rattle, dangling toys)
7-12 months
• Examines properties of toys for several minutes by handling these
(e.g., pulling apart)
• Looks with interest at picture books
• Able to sit through an entire meal without fussing
13- 18 months
• May be distracted but responds when made to re-focus
• Resists interruption while engaged in play
 Higher - Order Mental Abilities
Standard 1: The child develops basic concepts pertaining to object constancy,
space, time , quantity, seriation, etc. and uses these as the basis for understanding
How materials are categorized in his/her environment.

0-6 months
• Experiment with new objects or toys by banging or putting them in
his mouth
• Looks in the direction of fallen object
7-12 months
• Looks for partially hidden object
• Looks for completely hidden object
13-18 months
• Can tell whether something is hot or cold
• Hand over 1 object when asked
19-24 months
• Can tell which is shorter of 2 items
• Can tell which is taller/longer of 2 items
• Can tell which is bigger of 2 items
• Can tell which is nearer of 2 items
 HIGHER-ORDER MENTAL ABILITIES
(CAUSE-EFFECT RELATIONSHIP)
Standards 1: the child is able to understand the cause-effect relationship

0-6 months
• Acts on an object to achieve an objective (e.g., shakes rattle)
7-12 months
• Uses an object to get something he/she wants (e.g., spoon to reach an object)
19-24 months
• Aks “Why” questions
• Understand reasons behind daily practices (e.g., washing hands before meals)
• Understand reasons behind safety rules & practice at home (e.g., why one
must not play matches)
• Know where to return most of his/her things
 MEMORY (MEMORY FOR
EXPERIENCES: EPISODIC MEMORY)
Standards 1: The child is able to recall people he has met, events, and places he has been to:
0-6 months
• Child reacts, like smiling, in recognition of someone he/she has met
several times but who does not live in his/her home
13-18 months
• Child reacts, like smiling, in recognition of a familiar place besides
his/her home
• 19-24 months
• Child is brought somewhere and correctly recalls having been there
before.
MEMORY(MEMORY FOR CONCEPT-BASED
KNOWLEDGE: SEMANTIC MEMORY)
Standards 1: The child is able to store verbal information in short and long –term memory.

19-24 months
• Hums a recognizable tune
• Memorize some gestures of action songs
 HIGHER-ORDER MENTAL ABILITIES (LOGICAL
REASONING)
Standards 1: The child is able to follow the logic of events (i,e., reasons why these happen)

19-24 months
HIGHER-ORDERED MENTAL ABILITIES
(CREATIVE THOUGHT)
Standard 1: The child is able to generate new ideas or concepts, or new associations between
existing ideas or concepts.
19-24 months
• Enjoy constructing objects or structures out of manipulative toys (e.g., blocks, clay, sand,
papers)
• Uses toys or objects gas symbols in play (e.g., pretends empty milk can is a drum)
• Can use the same toy or object in more than one way (e.g., big empty box as house)