Infant cognitive development is the first stage of human cognitive development, in the youngest children. The academic field of infant cognitive development studies of how psychological processes involved in thinking and knowing develop in young children. Information is acquired in a number of ways including through sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and language, all of which require processing by our cognitive system.
Scientific investigation in this field has its origin in the first half of the 20th century, an early and influential theory in this field is Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Since Piaget's contribution to the field, infant cognitive development and methods for its investigation have advanced considerably, with numerous psychologists investigating different areas of cognitive development including memory, language and perception, coming up with various theories—for example Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development.
Overview
Tabula rasa is an idea (by now a discredited theory) that, at birth, the human mind is a "blank slate" without any rules for processing data, that data is added and rules for processing it are formed solely by one's sensory experiences. The modern idea of the theory is mostly attributed to John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, written in the 17th century.
Its corollary, nativism, argues that we are born with certain cognitive modules that allow us to learn and acquire certain skills, such as language, (for example the theory of Universal Grammar, the theory that the 'programming' for grammar is hardwired in the brain) and is most associated with the recent work of Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, and Steven Pinker.
If one accepts that nothing is known until learned, and that everyone shares a basic common sense, it appears infants must—to some degree—make some specific ontological inferences about how the world works, and what kinds of things it contains. This procedure is studied in psychology and its validity is studied in philosophy.
The notion of shared intentionality, a category of processes during social learning at the onset of life when organisms in the simple-reflexes substage of the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development do not maintain communication via the sensory system, proposes another approach to the problem: Cognition is fostered by social bonds between children and caregivers, which gradually increase through shared intentionality.Tomasello, M. (2019). "Becoming human: A theory of ontogeny." Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: Harvard University Press. Based on recent insights in neuroscience research, proponents argue that this collaborative interaction emerges in the mother-child pairs at birth for sharing the essential sensory stimulus of the actual cognitive problem.
Jean Piaget Through observations of children, Jean Piaget established a theory of cognitive development. According to Piaget's theory of cognitive development there are four stages of cognitive development.
Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 24 Months) Preoperational Stage (24 Months to 7 Years) Concrete Operational Stage (7 Years to 12 Years) Formal Operational Stage (12 Years and Up)
Infant cognitive development occurs in the Sensorimotor stage which starts at birth and extends until the infant is about 2 years of age. The sensorimotor stage is made up of six sub-stages. +StageAgeWhat's HappeningExampleStage 1 – ReflexesBirth - 6 weeksInfants primarily interact with the world through reflexes, such as sucking, grasping, and looking.A newborn automatically sucks on anything that touches their lips.Stage 2 – Primary Circular Reactions6 weeks - 4 monthsInfants begin to repeat actions that bring them pleasure or interesting sensations. These actions are focused on their own body.A baby repeatedly sucks their thumb because it feels good.Stage 3 – Secondary Circular Reactions4 months - 8 months Infants start to combine actions to achieve a goal. They show intentional behavior and can anticipate events.A baby repeatedly shakes a rattle to hear the sound it makes.Stage 4 – Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions8 months - 12 monthsInfants start to combine actions to achieve a goal. They show intentional behavior and can anticipate events.A baby pushes aside a toy to reach another toy underneath it.Stage 5 – Tertiary Circular Reactions12 months - 18 monthsInfants actively explore their environment and experiment with new behaviors. They try out different actions to see what happens.A toddler drops different objects from their high chair to see how they fall.Stage 6 – Mental Representation18 months - 24 monthsInfants begin to develop mental representations of objects and events. They can think about things that are not physically present and start to engage in pretend play.A toddler pretends to feed a doll with an empty spoon. In the sensorimotor stage, language is absent however infants do show signs of the development of intelligence via action schemes, the basic ways of learning about the physical world.
This begins with reflexes, fixed and predictable behavioral responses. Reflexes which can be practiced develop into action schemes via assimilation, fitting new experiences into what they already know.
The conditioning of reflexes causes the development of habits, systematic coordinated behaviors, but infants fail to understand the causality of their behavior.
They then develop coordination, involving grasping and manipulating objects to know how their actions cause things to occur, but without understanding why it occurs, in a form of practical intelligence. They then divide different objects by their physical properties.
Once action schemes are formed, they can be connected and differentiated using accommodation based on where and when objects exist.
Finally, infants are able to connect and differentiate their internal world with the external world.
Lev Vygotsky Lev Vygotsky was also very influential in cognitive development theory. His theory included the Zone of proximal development. Vygotsky also believed that social and cultural factors contributed heavily to cognitive development. Vygotsky argued that development first takes place socially as infants observe their parent's behavior and try to imitate it. As this imitation occurs, parents will guide their children, correcting them and provide challenges for them. Play is an integral part of cognitive development according to Vygotsky, as it is through this play that children gain confidence in their language skills, and start regulating their own thought processes. Through his research Vygotsky suggested that a child's performance differs depending on whether they are solving a problem alone or if another child or adult is assisting them. He refers to this difference as the "zone of proximal development". The theory states that if a child is learning to complete a task, and a more competent person is able to provide assistance, then the child is able to move into a new zone of development and problem solving. Vygotsky refers to this movement through assistance as "scaffolding" and helps bridge the gap between the child's current cognitive abilities and their full potential.
Erik Erikson Erik Erikson was a prominent developmental psychologist, who produced a psychoanalytical theory of psychosocial behavior, showing 8 stages of development from infancy to adulthood. At each stage the individual is set with a potential conflict, and either success or failure at each point will go on to determine the outcome of the psychological state of the person. The first stage of development runs from birth to 18 months and thus covers the infancy period. The conflict which Erikson identified during this time was trust vs mistrust. During this vulnerable point in the child's life, they are faced with uncertainties in the world and are therefore reliant on their caregiver. If the child receives consistent care then Erikson claimed that the infant would develop a sense of trust. However, if the care received has been unreliable, mistrust will develop, which may result in heightened feelings of insecurity and anxiety, in future relationships.Sigelman, Carol. K, Rider, Elizabeth. A, 2012, Life-Span Human Development, Cengage Learning
The development of mental processes
Adaptive nature of cognitive immaturity A hypothesis of pre-perceptual multimodal integration explains an adaptive nature of cognitive development and converges two competing naturalist and constructivist viewpoints about cognition. According to the hypothesis, mental processes such as perception, attention, memory, and awareness begin with the association of affective cues with stimuli responsible for triggering the neuronal pathways of simple reflexes. This pre-perceptual multimodal integration can succeed owing to neuronal coherence in mother-child dyads beginning from pregnancy. According to professor Igor Val Danilov, the natural neurostimulation of the mother's heart on the embryonal nervous system ensures the balanced development of the embryo's nervous system with the necessary cognitive functions. Electromagnetic properties of the mother's heart and its interaction with the mother's own and fetal nervous system (physical laws of electromagnetic interference) form neuronal coherence in the mother-fetus bio-system, providing the template beginning from pregnancy. The cognitive-reflex stimuli conjunctions form simple innate neuronal assemblies, shaping the cognitive neuronal patterns in statistical learning that, as empirical evidence showed, are continuously connected with the neuronal pathways of reflexes.
Development is typically considered to be something progressive: as we age we move from more simple to more complex structures or behaviors. This causes us to interpret early or immature forms of cognition as incomplete forms of the adult model. This does not always hold true. Immature forms of development can serve some function of their own, as it adapts for the current environment of the infant. For example, infant's relatively poor perceptual skills protect their nervous system from undergoing sensory overload. The fact that infants have slow information processing prevents them from establishing intellectual habits early in their lives that would cause problems later in life, as their environments are significantly different. From this it could be argued that infants and young children's cognitive and perceptual abilities might be designed to be suited to their needs at that particular time in their lives rather than incomplete versions of the more sophisticated models possessed in adults. Hanus Papousek (1977) looked at the concept that learning at an early stage of development may not be beneficial to the infant if it creates overstimulation. In an experiment he conditioned infants to turn their heads to the sound of a buzzer. The training for the task began either at birth or at 31 or at 44 days. He discovered that infants took many more trials and days to learn the task if they learned from birth than the infants who learned later. Infants need stimulation, but if stimulation is too great, it could distract infants and young children from other tasks, and replace other, more crucial activities to their development such as social interaction.
Attention