Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
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Transcript Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
Cognitive Development in Infancy and
Toddlerhood
Chapter 5
Piaget’s Cognitive-Developmental
Theory
Children move through 4 stages of cognitive development
between infancy and adolescence
1st stage – sensorimotor stage: birth-2 years
Initially “think” with their eyes, ears, and hands
By the end, children can solve problems and represent their
experiences in speech and gesture
Piaget’s Theory: Schemes
Psychological structures
Organized ways of making sense of experience
Change with age
1st – schemes are action-based sensorimotor patterns
Ex: a 6 month old drops objects in a rigid way, letting go of a rattle or
teething ring and watching with interest
Later move to “thinking before acting” pattern – creative and
deliberate
Ex. 18 month old, “dropping scheme” becomes more deliberate and
creative, tossing toys down stairs, throwing them in the air, bouncing
them off walls
Building Schemes
2 processes account for changes in schemes, adaptation and
organization
Adaptation – involves building schemes through direct
interaction with the environment
Assimilation – use current schemes to interpret the external
world
Ex. When dropping objects, baby is assimilating them to his sensorimotor
“dropping scheme”
Accommodation – create new schemes or adjust old ones
after noticing that the current ways of thinking do not capture
the environment completely
Ex. When a baby drops objects in different ways, it modifies its dropping
scheme to take account of the varied properties of objects
Linking Schemes
Organization –new schemes are rearranged and linked
with other schemes to create an interconnected cognitive
system
Internal process, apart from direct contact with the
environment
Ex. Baby will eventually relate “dropping” to “throwing” and to
its developing understanding of “nearness” and “farness”
The Sensorimotor Stage
Circular reaction – stumbling onto a new experience caused
by the baby’s own motor activity, then trying to repeat the event
again and again
A sensorimotor response that first occurred by chance becomes
strengthened into a new scheme
Provides basis for forming 1st schemes
Ex. 2 month old accidentally makes a smacking noise after a feeding,
then tries to repeat the noise until it is a little expert at lip smacking
Initially centers on the infant’s own body
Then turns toward manipulation of objects
In the second year is aimed at producing novel outcomes
Sensorimotor Substages
Reflexive Schemes
Birth –1 mo.
Newborn reflexes
Primary Circular
Reactions
1–4 months
Simple motor habits centered
around own body
Secondary Circular
Reactions
4–8 months
Repeat interesting effects in
surroundings
Coordination of
Secondary Circular
Reactions
8–12 months
Intentional, goal-directed behavior;
object permanence
Tertiary Circular
Reactions
12–18
months
Explore properties of objects
through novel actions
Mental
Representations
12 months –
2 years
Internal depictions of objects or
events; deferred imitation
Sensorimotor Substages
1 – Reflexive schemes
Babies suck, grasp, and look in much the same way no matter what
experiences they encounter
Ex. 2 week old laying in bed next to her father, begins sucking on his arm
2 – Primary circular reactions
Repeat chance behaviors largely motivated by basic needs
Ex. 1 month old will open its mouth differently for a nipple than for a spoon
3 – Secondary circular reactions
Try to repeat interesting events in the surrounding environment that are
caused by their own actions
Ex. 4 month old accidentally knocks a toy hanging in front of her producing
a fascinating swinging motion and attempts to repeat this effect
Sensorimotor Substages
4 – Coordination of secondary circular reactions
Combine schemes into new, more complex action sequences
Intentional or goal directed behavior – coordinating schemes
deliberately to solve simple problems
Object permanence – understanding that objects continue to exist
when out of sight
Ex. Mother shows 11 month old a toy, then hides it under a blanket
Infant coordinates two schemes, “pushing” the blanket aside and “grasping” the
toy
Still make the A-not-B search error
If they reach several times for an object in 1st hiding place (A), then see it moved
to a 2nd hiding place (B), they still search for it in the first hiding place (A)
Sensorimotor Substages
5 – Teritary circular reactions
Toddlers repeat behaviors with variation or experiment
Ex. 16 month old figures out how to fit a shape through a hole
in a container by turning and twisting it until it falls through
Ex. 18 month old figures out how to use a stick to get toys that
are out of reach
Sensorimotor Substages
6 – Mental representations
Ability to create internal depictions of information that the mind can
manipulate
Images – mental pictures of objects, people, and spaces
Concepts – categories in which similar objects or events are grouped
together
Arrive at solutions suddenly rather than through trial-and-error, like
they are experimenting with actions inside their heads
Ex. 19 month old bumps his new push toy against a wall, pauses for a
moment as if “thinking,” then immediately turns the toy in a new direction
Deferred imitation – ability to remember and copy the behavior
of models who are not present
Make-believe play – acting out everyday and imaginary activities
Follow-Up Research
Many studies show that infants display certain understandings earlier
than Piaget believed
Ex. Even newborns try to explore and control the external world
Violation-of-expectation method
Used to explore what infants know about hidden objects and other
aspects of physical reality
Can habituate babies to a physical event (expose them to the event until
their looking declines)
Familiarize them with a situation in which their knowledge will be tested
Can also show babies an expected event (one that follows physical laws) and
an unexpected event (a variation of the first event that violates physical
laws)
Heightened attention to the unexpected event suggests that the infant is
“surprised” by a deviation from physical reality and therefore, is aware of that
aspect of the physical world
Object Permanence
Infants young as 2.5 to 3.5 months old show indications of object permanence, Piaget
believed this didn’t occur until 8-12 months
look longer at the unexpected event
Suggests that they had some awareness that an object moved behind the screen would
continue to exist
Object Permanence
Investigators measuring ERP brain-wave activity of 6 month
olds found brain-wave patterns the same as those of adults
told to sustain a mental image of an object
Deferred Imitation
Piaget: said doesn’t occur until 18 months
Newer research
6 weeks old – facial imitation
Infants who watched an unfamiliar adult’s facial expression imitated it when exposed
to the same adult making a neutral expression the next day
6-9 months – copy actions with objects
Infants who watched an adult perform specific actions with a puppet, reenacted those
actions a day later when given the puppet
12-14 months – imitate rationally
Infer others’ intentions
More likely to imitate purposeful behaviors than accidental behaviors
18 months – imitate intended but not completed actions
Ex. 18 month old watches mother try to pour cereal into a bowl but she misses and
spills some on the counter, the child then starts picking up the cereal and dropping it
into the bowl, indicating he knew what her intentions were
Problem Solving
Develop intentional action sequences around 7-8 months
Piaget was right!
BUT… representational skills soon permit more effective
problem solving than Piaget’s theory suggests
10-12 months – solve problems by analogy
Can take a solution strategy from one problem and apply it to
other relevant problems
Ex. 11 month old uses a stick to knock down a toy that is out of
reach. Later, she uses her toy rake to knock her juice bottle off
the table.
Evaluation of Sensorimotor Stage
Develop when • Object search
• A-not-B
Piaget
• Make-believe play
suggested
• Object permanence
Develop earlier • Deferred imitation
than Piaget
• Categorization
suggested
• Problem solving by analogy
Some suggest infants are born with core knowledge in
several domains of thought
Alternative Explanations
Most researchers now believe infants have some built-in
cognitive equipment for making sense of experience
But there is intense disagreement over the extent of this initial
understanding
Some researchers believe babies’ cognitive starting point is
limited to a set of biases for attending to certain information
and general-purpose techniques for analyzing perceptual
information
Others support the core knowledge perspective
Acknowledges that experience is essential for children to
extend their initial knowledge but does not identify which
experiences are most important
Core Knowledge Perspective
Babies are born with a set of innate knowledge systems, or core domains
of thought, that support early, rapid development
Argues that infants could not make sense of the complex stimulation
around them without having been genetically “set up” to do so
Acknowledges that experience is essential for children to extend their
initial knowledge but does not identify which experiences are most
important
In the first few months of life infants already have some physical knowledge
Awareness of basic object properties such as permanence, solidity, and
gravity
An inherited foundation of linguistic knowledge enables rapid language
acquisition
Infants’ early orientation toward people initiates rapid development of
psychological knowledge
Understanding of mental states, intentions, emotions, desires, and beliefs
Information Processing
Contrasts Piaget’s unified theory of cognitive development
Focuses on various aspects of thinking, including attention,
memory, categorization skills, and problem solving
Remember the flow charts for problem solving?
Structure of the Information-Processing
System
Assumes that we hold information in 3 parts of the mental system
Sensory register, working or short-term memory, and long-term
memory
Assumes we use mental strategies to operate on information so
that we will retain it, use it efficiently, and adapt it to changing
circumstances
Believe the basic structure of the system remains similar
throughout life
But, capacity (amount of information that can be retained and
processed at once) and the speed of processing information increases,
making more complex forms of thinking possible with age
Structure of the Information-Processing
System
Sensory register – where information enters, sights and sounds are
represented directly and stored briefly
Working, or short-term memory – 2nd part of the mind, where we
actively apply mental strategies as we “work” on a limited amount of
information
As we connect separate pieces of information into a single representation, we
make more room in working memory for more information
The central executive, a special part of working memory, is the conscious,
reflective part of our mental system
Decides what to attend to and coordinates incoming information with information already
in the system
Long-term memory – 3rd and largest storage area, our permanent
knowledge base, unlimited
The longer we hold information in working memory, the more likely it will be
transferred to long-term memory
Retrieval – getting information back from the system, aided by categorization
(like a library arranged by subject)
Attention
Infants gradually attend to more aspects of the environment,
taking in information more quickly
Ex. Newborns require 3-4 minutes to habituate and recover to
novel visual stimuli
By 4-5 months old habituation to complex visual stimulus takes about 5-
10 seconds
With the transition to toddlerhood, sustained attention
improves
Ability to keep attention focused
Ex. A toddler who stacks blocks or puts them in a container
must sustain attention long enough to reach the goal
Memory
Retention of visual events increases dramatically over infancy and
toddlerhood
3 month olds – remember habituated action for 1 week
6 month olds - remember habituated action for 2 weeks
Continues to increase with age
Recognition – noticing when a stimulus is identical or similar to
one previously experienced
Simplest form of memory: all babies have to do is indicate that a new
stimulus is identical or similar to a previous one
Recall – more challenging because it involves remembering
something not present
Emerges by 12 months of age
Indicated by ability to find hidden objects and imitate others’ actions
long after observing the behavior
Categorization
Even young infants can categorize
Grouping similar objects and events into a single representation
Helps infants learn and remember new information
Earliest categories are perceptual
Based on appearance (shape, size, color, and other physical properties)
By end of 1st year of life are conceptual
Based on common functions (food items, furniture, animals, plants, vehicles, kitchen
utensils and spatial location)
In the 2nd year toddlers become active categorizers
Play behaviors (such as touching and sorting) reveal the meaning they have attached
to categories
Ex. 14 month olds shown a rabbit and a motorcycle usually offer a drink only to the
rabbit, indicating they understand that certain actions are appropriate for some
categories but not for others
Exploration of objects and expanding knowledge of the world, as well as advancing
vocabulary, contribute to the capacity to group objects by functions and behaviors
Evaluation of Information-Processing
Findings
Emphasized the continuity of human thinking from infancy into
adulthood
Challenging Piaget’s stage view of early cognitive development
Ex. If 3 month olds can remember events over a period of time and can
categorize stimuli, then they must have some ability to mentally represent
their experiences
Piaget believed mental representation did not occur until 18 months
Major strength: analyzing cognition into its components
Also its major weakness: hasn’t yet put these components together into a
comprehensive theory
How to overcome this weakness
Combine Piaget’s theory with the information-processing approach
Apply a dynamic systems view
Analyze each cognitive attainment to see how it results from a complex system of
prior accomplishments and the child’s current goals
Social Context of Early Cognitive
Development
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory: complex mental activities are
based in social interaction
Through joint activities with more mature members of their society,
children master activities and think in ways that are meaningful in
their specific culture
Zone of proximal development – a range of tasks that a child
cannot yet handle alone but can do with the help of more skilled
partners
Ex. Adult introduces child to a new activity the child is capable of
mastering but is challenging enough that the child cannot do it alone
As the adult guides and supports, the child joins in the interaction and picks
up mental strategies
As the child’s competence increases, the adult steps back, permitting the
child to take more responsibility for the task
Social Context of Early Cognitive
Development
Vygotsky’s idea have been applied mostly to older children,
who are more skilled in language and social communication
Recently, these ideas have been extended into infancy and
toddlerhood
Babies are equipped with capacities that ensure that caregivers
will interact with them
Then adults adjust the environment and their communication in
ways that promote learning adapted to their cultural
circumstances
Vygotsky shows how cultural variations in social experiences
affect the development of mental strategies
Individual Differences in Early Mental
Development
Mental tests measure cognitive products that reflect mental
development and predict future performance
Contrasts cognitive theories which are concerned with the
process of development
Goal of mental tests: measure behaviors that reflect
development and arrive at scores that predict future
performance
Such as later intelligence, school achievement, and adult
vocational success
Infant and Toddler Intelligence Tests
Challenging because babies cannot answer questions or
follow directions
Simply present stimuli and observe the babies’ responses
Most tests emphasize perceptual and motor responses
Some new tests focus on early language, cognition, and social
behavior
Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler
Development
Used with children from 1 month to 3.5 years old
Most recent edition: Baley-III, 3 main subtests
Cognitive scale
Includes items regarding attention to familiar and unfamiliar objects, looking for a fallen object,
and pretend play
Language scale
Assesses understanding and expression of language
Ex. Recognition of objects and people, following simple directions, and naming objects and
pictures
Motor scale
Includes gross and fine motor skills, such as grasping, sitting, stacking blocks, and climbing stairs
2 additional scales depend on parental report
Social-emotional scale: asks caregivers about behaviors such as ease of calming, social
responsiveness, and imitation in play
Adaptive behavior scale: asks about adaptation to the demands of daily life, including
communication, self-control, following rules, and getting along with others
Computing Intelligence Test Scores
Intelligence tests for infants, children, and adults are scored in
much the same way
Intelligence Quotient (IQ) – indicates the extent to which the
raw score (# of items passed) deviates from the typical
performance of same-aged individuals
To make this comparison possible test designers engage in
standardization
Standardization – giving the test to a large, representative sample
and using the results as the standard for interpreting scores
Within the standardization sample, results at each age level form a
normal distribution
Normal distribution – a bell-shaped curve in which most scores
fall near the mean, or average, with progressively fewer towards the
extremes
Computing Intelligence Test Scores
When intelligence tests are
standardized, the mean IQ
is set at 100
An individual’s IQ is higher
or lower than 100 by an
amount that reflects how
much his or her test
performance deviates from
the standardization-sample
mean
IQ offers a way of finding
out whether an individual
is ahead, behind, or on
time in mental
development compared
with others of the same age
Predicting Later Performance from
Infant Tests
Infant tests are poor predictors of later intelligence
Infants and toddlers easily become distracted, fatigued, or bored
during testing, so their scores often do not reflect their true abilities
However, Bayley-III cognitive and language scales are good
predictors of pre-school mental test performance
Because items on infant tests do not tap the same dimensions of
intelligence measured at older ages, they are labeled
developmental quotients, or DQs (not to be confused with
Dairy Queen)
Infant test scores are somewhat better at making long-term
predictions for extremely low-scoring babies
Thus are largely used to help identify babies who are at-risk for
developmental problems
Early Environment and Mental
Development
Home environment
Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment
(HOME) – checklist for gathering information about the quality of
children’s home lives through observation and parental interviews
Regardless of SES and ethnicity an organized, simulating physical
setting and parental affection, involvement, and encouragement of
new skills repeatedly predict better language and IQ scores in
toddlerhood and early childhood
Especially the extent to which parents talk to infants and toddlers
When parents interact intrusively, bombarding young children
with instructions, infants and toddlers are likely to play
immaturely and do poorly on mental tests
Infant and Toddler Child
Care
Today, more than 60% of U.S. mothers with a child under
age 2 are employed
Quality of child care for infants and toddlers has an impact
on development of cognitive and social skills regardless of
SES or ethnicity
Poor-quality child care: score lower on measures of cognitive
and social skills
Good child care:
can reduce the negative impact of a stressed, poverty-stricken home life
can sustain the benefits of growing up in an economically advantaged
family
Infant and Toddler Child care
Many U.S children from low-income families have
inadequate child care
Worst child care: middle-SES families
Especially likely to place children in for-profit centers where
quality tends to be the lowest
Low-SES children more often attend publicly subsidized,
nonprofit centers, which have smaller group sizes and better
child-teacher ratios
Signs of Developmentally Appropriate
Infant and Toddler Child Care
Physical setting
Environment is clean, in good repair, well-lit, and well-ventilated, not overcrowded
Toys and equipment
Appropriate for infants and toddlers, stored on low shelves within easy reach; cribs, high-chairs, infant
seats, and child-sized tables and chairs are available
Caregiver-child ratio
No greater than one to three for infants and one to six for toddlers; staffing is consistent, so infants and
toddlers can form relationships with particular caregivers
Daily activities
Times for active play, quiet play, naps, snacks, and meals; schedule is flexible rather than rigid
Interactions among adults and children
Caregivers respond promptly to infants’ and toddlers’ distress; hold, talk to, sing to, and read to them
Caregiver qualifications
Some training in child development, first aid, and safety
Relationships with parents
Parents welcome anytime; caregivers talk frequently with parents
Licensing and accreditation
Licensed by the state
Early Intervention for At-Risk Infants
and Toddlers
Studies indicate that poverty-stricken children are likely to show
gradual declines in intelligence test scores and to achieve poorly
when they reach school age
Due to stressful home environment that undermines children’s ability
to learn and that increase their likelihood of remaining poor
throughout their lives
Center based – children attend an organized child-care or
preschool program where they receive educational, nutritional,
and health services, and parents receive child-rearing and other
social-service supports
Home based – skilled adult visits the home and works with
parents, teaching them how to stimulate young children’s
development
Early Intervention for At-Risk Infants
and Toddlers
Children participating in interventions, both center and home based,
score higher than untreated controls on mental tests by age 2
The earlier and longer the intervention, the better the cognitive and
academic performance in childhood and adolescence
In one research project, the treatment group of children who
participated in year-round full time child care program showed
greater academic achievements throughout the school years as well as
higher rates of college enrollment
Sad reality: without some form of early intervention, many children
born into economically disadvantaged families will not reach their
potential
Language Development
In the 1950s researchers did not take seriously the idea that
very young children might be able to figure out important
properties of language
As a result the first two theories of language development
were extreme views
Behaviorism – regards language development as entirely due to
environmental influences
Nativism – assumes that children are “pre-wired” to master the
intricate rules of their language
Behaviorist Perspective
B.F. Skinner proposed that language, like all behaviors, is
acquired through operant conditioning
When parents reinforce their baby’s sounds that most sound like
words
Ex. Baby babbles “book-a-book-a-dook-a-nook-a”
While baby is babbling, parents show it a book and say “book”
Soon after, baby will say “book-aaa” when it sees a book
Imitation combines with reinforcement to promote language
development
But, both are viewed as supporting language rather than fully
explaining it
Nativist Perspective
Linguist Noam Chomsky’s theory regards young childrens’ language skill
as innate
Children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD)
containing a set of rules common to all languages
Permits children to understand and speak whichever language they hear in a
rule-oriented fashion, as soon as they learn enough words
Nativist perspective is consistent with evidence that childhood is a
sensitive period for language acquisition
Challenges to Nativism suggest that it is not a complete account of
language acquisition
Children do not acquire language as quickly as nativist theory suggests
They refine grammatical forms more gradually than Chomsky assumed
For most people, language is housed largely in the left hemisphere of the
cerebral cortex, but language areas in the cortex also develop as children
acquire language
Interactionist Perspective
Emphasizes interactions between inner capacities and environmental
influences
Some interactionists apply information-processing theory to language
development
Believe that children use powerful general cognitive capacities to make sense
of their complex language environment
Other interactionists emphasize that children’s social skills and language
experiences are centrally involved in language development
An active child, well-endowed for making sense of language, strives to
communicate
In doing so, the child cues her caregivers to provide appropriate language
experiences, which help relate the content and structure of language to its
social meaning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfOlPK2P_G8
Getting Ready to Talk
Cooing and babbling
Around 2 months – babies begin to make vowel-like noises (called cooing)
Around 6 months – babbling appears: infants repeat consonant-vowel
combinations in long strings
Ex. “bababababa” or “nanananana”
By around 7 months – babbling includes many sounds common in spoken
languages
By 10 months – babbling reflects the sound and intonation patterns of the
infant’s language community
Babies everywhere, even those who are deaf, start babbling at about the
same age and produce a similar range of early sounds
But for speech to develop further, infants must be able to hear human
speech and if a deaf infant is not exposed to sign-language babbling will
stop entirely
Deaf infants exposed to sign-language from birth babble with their hands
Getting Ready to Talk
Becoming a communicator
At birth, infants initiate interaction through eye contact and end it by
looking away
Preparation for some aspects of conversational behavior
By 4 months – infants start to display joint attention: gazing in the
same direction adults are looking in
Joint attention becomes more accurate around 10-11 months
Adults also follow the baby’s gaze and label what is seen
Around 4-6 months – caregiver-infant interaction begins to include
give-and-take, as in pat-a-cake and peek-a-boo games
At the end of the 1st year infants use preverbal gestures to influence the
behavior of others
Parents responsiveness teaches them that using language leads to desired
results
Ex. Pointing at the refrigerator when hungry, mother then feeds the child
First Words
2nd half of the 1st year – infants begin to understand word
meanings
Utter 1st words around 1 year
This achievement builds on the sensorimotor foundations
Piaget described and on categories that children form during
the 1st 2 years
Usually they refer to important people (“mama,” “dada”),
animals (“doggie,” “kitty”), objects that move (“ball,” “car”),
foods (“milk,” “apple”), familiar actions (“bye-bye,” “more”), or
outcomes of familiar actions (“wet,” “hot”)
In their 1st 50 words, toddlers rarely name things that just sit
there, like “table” or “vase”
First Words
When toddlers first learn words, they often apply them too narrowly, an
error called underextention
Ex. 16 month old only uses the word “doggie” to refer to her stuffed dog
As vocabulary expands, a more common error is overextention –
applying a word to a wider collection of objects and events than is
appropriate
Ex. Using the word “car” for buses, trains, trucks, and fire engines
Overextentions reflect toddlers’ sensitivity to categories, as in use of “car”
for all wheeled objects
Overextentions illustrate the distinction between language production (the
words children use) and language comprehension (the words they
understand)
At all ages language comprehension develops before language
production
Ex. A 2 year old who refers to trucks, trains, and bikes as “car” may look at or
point to these objects correctly when given their names
The 2-Word Utterance Phase
Young toddlers add 2 to 3 words per week to their spoken vocabularies
But between 18 and 24 months, children may add 1 to 2 words per day
Once toddlers can produce about 200 words, they begin to form 2-word
utterances called telegraphic speech
“go car,” “mommy shoe,” “door open”
2-word speech consists largely of simple formulas
“more + X,” “eat + X” with different words inserted in the X position
Toddlers rarely make gross grammatical errors
Saying “chair my” instead of “my chair”
Word-order regularities are usually copies of adult word-pairings
ex. “would you like some more sandwich,” toddler will learn to repeat “more
sandwich”
Indicates toddlers first acquire “concrete pieces of language” from frequent word
parings they hear and they gradually generalize from those pieces to construct
word order and other grammatical rules
Individual Differences
On average, children produce 1st word around their 1st birthday
But the range is large, from 8-18 months
Studies show that girls are slightly ahead of boys in early vocabulary growth
Personality is also a factor, with shy toddlers slightly behind their agemates
Shy toddlers often wait until they understand a great deal before trying to speak,
but once they do speak their vocabularies increase rapidly
The more words caregivers use the more children learn
2 distinct styles of early language learning
Referential style – vocabularies consist mainly of words that refer to objects
(most common style)
Expressive style – learn to produce many more pronouns and social formulas
(“thank you”)
Because they believe words are for talking about people’s feelings and needs
Supporting Early Language
Infants
Respond to coos and babbles with speech sounds and words
Encourages experimentation with sounds that can later be blended into
first words
Provides experience with turn-taking pattern of human conversation
Establish joint attention and comment on what child sees
Predicts earlier onset of language and faster vocabulary development
Play social games, such as pat-a-cake and peekaboo
Provides experience with turn-taking pattern of human conversation
Supporting Early Language
Toddlers
Engage in joint make-believe play
Promotes all aspects of conversational dialogue
Engage in frequent conversations
Predicts faster early language development and academic success during
school years
Read to child often, engaging them in dialogues about picture
books
Provides exposure to many aspects of language including vocabulary,
grammar, communication skills, and information about written symbols
and story structures
Supporting Early Language
Adults also unconsciously support early language learning
through child-directed speech (CDS)
CDS – form of communication made up of short sentences
with high-pitched, exaggerated expression, clear pronunciation,
distinct pauses between speech segments, and repetition of new
words in a variety of contexts
Fosters development of joint attention, turn-taking, and
caregivers’ sensitivity to toddlers’ preverbal gestures
Ex. Toddler: “go car”
Mother: “Yes, time to go in the car. Where is your jacket?”
Toddler: [looks around, walks to the closet.] “Dacket!”
Mother: “There’s that jacket! [helps toddler the jacket] On it goes! Let’s zip up.
[Zips up the jacket]