Infant Cognitive and Language Development: Intelligence, Learning, and Language Acquisition

Measuring Intelligence in Infancy

Definition and Assessment

Intelligence in infancy refers to the ability to take in information and use it to adapt to the environment. Measuring intelligence in infants is challenging due to their limited verbal and motor skills.

• Intelligence: The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge and skills for adaptation.

• Various instruments exist, but their application in infants is limited.

• Bayley Scales of Infant Development:

  • Measures sensory and motor skills.

  • Useful for identifying developmental delays.

  • Recent versions also assess cognitive and language development.

Example: An infant scoring below average on the Bayley Scales may be referred for early intervention services.

Learning, Categorizing, and Remembering in Infancy

Learning

Learning is defined as permanent changes in behavior resulting from experience. Infants begin learning from birth, with environmental forces shaping their behavior.

• Learning: Permanent behavioral change due to experience.

• Infants show evidence of learning from the earliest moments of life.

Conditioning and Modeling

Infants learn through responses to environmental stimuli, conditioning, and modeling.

• Sensory abilities improve, enhancing responsiveness to stimuli.

• Learning mechanisms include:

  • Classical Conditioning:

    • Emotional responses can be conditioned in the first week of life.

    • Example: Mavis Gunther's research showed that infants could learn to turn away from blocked nostrils during nursing, a response that could be unlearned through conditioning.

  • Operant Conditioning:

    • Infants can learn to perform actions (e.g., sucking a pacifier) to produce outcomes (e.g., music), supporting development.

    • Operant conditioning mechanisms are present at birth.

  • Modeling:

    • Infants imitate behaviors, especially in the second year.

    • By 14-15 months, infants can distinguish between successful and unsuccessful models and are more likely to imitate surprising outcomes.

Schematic Learning

Schematic learning involves organizing experiences into expectancies or known combinations, allowing infants to generalize from specific activities.

• Expectancies are built over repeated exposures.

• Categorical learning is a key feature, with infants forming and using categories as they process information.

• Superordinate categories (broad groupings) begin to develop in the second year, aided by language development.

• Understanding of these categories continues to grow into childhood.

Memory in Infancy

Memory capacity emerges early in life, with infants able to remember specific objects and actions as young as three months old.

• Early memories are context-dependent and can be reactivated with cues.

• Research by Carolyn Rovee-Collier used apparatuses to study infant memory, showing that even young infants can retain and retrieve information.

Example: An infant who learned to kick to move a mobile will remember this action when placed in the same context later.

Theoretical Perspectives and Influences on Language Development

Theoretical Perspectives

Language development is explained by several theoretical perspectives, often framed by the nature-nurture debate.

• Behaviorist View (B.F. Skinner):

  • Language is learned through reinforcement and imitation.

  • Babbling is reinforced by parental praise, leading to more word-like utterances.

  • However, research shows parents praise all sounds, not just word-like ones.

• Generative Perspective (Noam Chomsky):

  • Children possess an innate language acquisition device (LAD) that guides language learning.

  • Children acquire grammar rules before mastering exceptions.

  • Universal grammar underlies all human languages.

• Alternative Views:

  • Infants are born with a computational unit for language.

  • Constructivist approaches emphasize general cognitive abilities and social cues.

  • Statistical learning: Infants track the frequency of linguistic patterns, aiding vocabulary and phonological development.

Influences on Language Development

Environmental factors play a significant role in language acquisition.

• Infant-directed speech (IDS): Simplified, higher-pitched speech used with infants and young children.

• IDS is not required for language learning but can facilitate it.

• Babies prefer IDS and can distinguish it from adult-directed speech within days of birth.

• IDS may be important for grammar development and is effective for infants learning multiple languages.

• Quantity and quality of language exposure are critical for development.

Poverty and Language Development

Socioeconomic status significantly impacts language development.

• By 30 months, children from lower-income families have smaller vocabularies than their wealthier peers, and the gap widens over time.

• Children in poverty are read to less often and use shorter, less complex sentences.

• Early education programs for low-income children emphasize language activities.

• Dialogic reading (interactive reading) leads to greater vocabulary gains, especially when parents are guided in these techniques.

Language Development Milestones

Early Milestones

Language development in infancy follows a predictable sequence, with each milestone contributing uniquely to later language skills.

• From birth to 1 month: Crying is the most common sound, along with fussing, gurgling, and satisfied sounds.

• 1-2 months: Cooing (repetitive vowel sounds) begins.

• 6-7 months: Transition from cooing to babbling as consonant sounds appear.

• Babies play with sounds, developing intonational patterns in babbling.

• Babbling with rising intonation indicates a desire for response; falling intonation indicates no response needed.

• By 9-10 months, babbling narrows to sounds heard in the infant's environment.

Gestures

• Develop between 9 and 12 months.

• Infants use gestures to demand or ask for things, regardless of exposure to spoken or sign language.

• Gestural games, such as "pat-a-cake," are common.

Receptive Language

• By 6 months, infants begin storing individual words in memory.

• By 9-10 months, most can understand the meanings of 20-30 words (receptive language).

• Infants as young as 2 days can use auditory cues to identify single words.

The First Words

• At 9-10 months, infants understand more words than they can say.

• First words emerge in a predictable sequence, often used to name objects.

• Single words are used as substitutes for longer phrases.

• Vocabulary acquisition accelerates rapidly after the first words appear.