PSYA02H3
WEEK 2/LEC05/14.01.13
CHAPTER 10: LIFE SPAN DEVELOPMENT
10.2 Infancy and Childhood
PHYSICAL CHANGES IN INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD
Infants ability to move proceeds in stages – from crawling, to standing, to walking
– over the course of 12 to 18months
The age at which children perform each of these tasks differ from one individual
to the next
Why do some children develop more rapidly than others?
The development of motor skills, in contrast to reflexes, rely more on practice and
deliberate efforts
o Crosscultural studies show that children raised in different environments
mature at different rates than others i.e. infants born to Jamaican mothers
walked at a significantly earlier age likely because those infants were
encouraged to practice these skills
Major structures of the brain are all present but their development is ongoing
o During childhood, the cerebral cortex thickens, first in sensory and motor
areas and then later in regions involved in perceptions and eventually
higherorder thinking and planning
o Changes at individual cell levels include myelination, which begins
prenatally accelerates through infancy and childhood, and then continues
gradually for several decades
o At the synapse level, two events are occurring in the junctions between
connecting nerve cells
1. The formation of new synapse, a process called synaptogenesis,
occurs at blinding speed through infancy and childhood, and
continues through the life span
2. Along with synaptogenesis is synaptic pruning, which is the loss
of weak nerve cell connections
o Both of these processes increase brain functionality by strengthening
needed connections between nerve cells and weeding out unnecessary
ones
COGNITIVE CHANGES: PIAGET’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT THEORY
Jean Piaget (18961980) is often credited for initiating the modern science of
cognitive development
Cognitive development is the study of changes in memory, thought, and reasoning
processes that occur throughout the life span.
Piaget was interested in explaining how different ways of thinking and reasoning
develop
1 According to Piaget, knowledge accumulates and is modified due to two
processes – assimilation and accommodation
o In the case of assimilation, children add new information, but interpret it
based on what they already know i.e. a young child who’s only familiar
with the family pet Chihuahua might develop a concept that all dogs are
small and furry but will later be modified through a different process
o Accommodation occurs when children modify their belief structures based
on experience
Piaget’s observations shows that cognitive development isn’t one long, continuous
process of learning more and more information; rather that cognition develops in
four distinct stages from birth through early adolescence
1. Sensorimotor stage
2. Preoperational stage
3. Concrete operational stage
4. Formal operational stage
Developmental milestones are an important feature of Piaget’s theory
The Sensorimotor Stage: Objects and the Physical World
When we’re adults, if things like our cars, houses, or loved ones aren’t present we
still understand and imagine their continued existence
Imagination is a type of abstraction – what’s in your mind are representations of
objects and people in your physical environment
Fourmonth olds cannot form abstract, mental representations thus an infant’s
thinking and exploration of the world is based on immediate sensory and motor
experiences
Sensorimotor stage (spanning birth to two years) refers to the period of time in which an
infants’ thinking and understanding about the world is based on sensory experiences and
physical actions they perform on objects.
If infants do think in terms of sensorimotor experiences, then what happens when
an object is out of sight and out of reach?
Very young infants mayn’t understand that the object continues to exist but this
isn’t the problem for twoyear old children i.e. the child may be aware that the
dinosaur toy awaits him in another room and mayn’t be able to get the toy out of
his mind
Object permanence is the ability to understand that objects exist even when they cannot
be seen or touched.
o Piaget proposed that this is a major milestone of cognitive development
The Preoperational Stage: Quantity and Numbers
According to Piaget, once children have mastered sensorimotor tasks, they’re on
to the next stage of cognitive development
The preoperational stage, which spans ages two through seven years, is characterized by
understanding of symbols, pretend play, and mastery of the concept of conservation.
2 During this stage, children can look at and think about physical objects but can’t
yet think abstractly
They may count objects and use numbers in their language, yet remain limited in
mental operations (hence the name preoperational)
A way to illustrate this quality is through the cognitive ability of conservation
Conservation is the knowledge that the quantity or amount of an object is not related to
the physical arrangement and appearance of that object.
I.e. a child is present with two identical rows of seven pennies each
o If you ask the child, “Which row has more?” a threeyearold child would
likely point to the row that was spread out
o Here the child in the preoperational stage focuses on simpler method of
answering based on immediate perceptions, instead of an answer that’d
require more sophisticated mental operations
Mastery of cognitive tasks such as conservation doesn’t occur overnight although
developmental psychologists typically emphasize how cognitive development
occur in stages
Various other factors, such as motivation, influence if a child understands the
tasks
I.e. if the child performed the same task, only this time with M&M’s rather than
pennies, they’ll choose the row containing more candy especially if they’re
allowed to eat the row that they choose
The Concrete Operational Stage: Using Logical Thought
Conservation is one of the main skills marking the transition from preoperational
stage to what Piaget called the concrete operational stage
Concrete operational stage (roughly spanning ages 7 to 11 years), is when children
develop skills in using and manipulating numbers as well as logical thinking.
These children are able to classify objects according to properties such as size,
value, shape, or some other physical characteristic
I.e. a child can recognize that if X is more than Y and Y is more than Z then X is
also more than Z (property called transitivity)
The Formal Operational Stage: Abstract and Hypothetical Thought
The formal operational stage (spanning from approximately 11 years of age and into
adulthood) involves the development of advanced cognitive processes such as abstract
reasoning and hypothetical thinking.
Thinking can exist entirely in hypothetical realms
Stage Description
Sensorimotor (02 years) • Cognitive experiences based on
direct, sensory experiences with the
world
3 • Motor movements allowing infants
to interact with the world
• Object permanence is the
significant developmental milestone
Preoperational (27 years) • Thinking moves beyond immediate
appearance of objects
• Child understands physical
conservation and that symbols,
language, and drawings can
More
Less
