SPSI 337 Born To Talk Chapter 3

schema, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium

A schema is a mental category into which information is placed.

Assimilation occurs when an individual includes a new stimulus into an existing schema.

Accommodation occurs when new schemata are developed to allow for organization of stimuli that do not fit into existing schemata.

1. Sensori-motor (0-2)
2. Preoperational thought (2-7)
3. Concrete operations (7-11)
4. Formal operations (11-15)

Perception refers to the process by which the person selects, organizes, integrates, and interprets sensory stimuli.

Distancing is the process of the child relating to objects at greater and greater distances. It starts with physical interaction with the thing itself; it becomes more and more abstract. Language is the ultimate perceptual distance.

Object permanence, a concept of early cognitive development, refers to an understanding that objects exist even when they are not present.

As a child developes intellectually, she begins to understand causality, which means that certain events cause other events. She understand that she can produce behaviors that have predictable results.

"Means-ends" is a concept that extends causality. The child learns to use the cause-effect concept to solve problems and get stuff done.

Imitation means that the child internalizes the behavior of others and tries to duplicate it. At first it is always immediate, but it progresses to become deferred sot that the behavior can be produced even when the model is not present. It's important because otherwise children would only be able to parrot language.

Play is how children learn concepts about the world. In symbolic play, one object represents another, just as in language a word represents an object.

Communication is important because conceptual development contributes to the ever-increasing development of a child's language ability

12-18 months

4-8 months.

1-4 months

Social Interactionist

innate language abilities and social interactions

In private speech, children speak aloud to themselves to guide themselves through actions. This helps them to formulate and execute a plan. Eventually private speech becomes silent.

1. Piaget believed that all children develop cognitively in the same order, but Vygotsky believed that progress is NOT step by step and in the same order for all children.
2. Piaget believed that what was in the environment was not important to cognitive development, whereas Vygotsky believed that cognitions IS shaped by the influence of social environment and culture.

Zone of proximal development means that when a child needs help, the help often comes in the form of language. The child retains the language from these interactions and incorporates it into his/her private speech.

Intersubjectivity means that the adult and child have different levels of understand about how to complete a task work together to get it done. This is a typical teacher/student kind of interaction.
Scaffolding means that the parent gives the child a lot of help and direction with tasks at first, but gradually reduces it as the child becomes more cognitively competent.

Perceptual stimulation - a child recognizes that sensory stimulation is present and reacts to the major characteristics of the stimulation.
Cognitive stimulation - the child recognizes the sensory characteristics of stimulations but ALSO understand what they mean.

1. When a child attends visually, she is better able to benefit from auditory stimuli.
2. In the social interactionist theory of language development, the bond formed with a caregiver (in part through visualization) is important to communication development.

Environment in this case would be the language or languages that a baby is most often exposed to. This has a LIMITING rather than expanding influence a child's ability to discriminate speech sounds.