Intellectual DevelopmentWhat will a baby learn during the first 12 months?

Today

#1 Give examples of intellectual growth

#2 Describe how and what a baby learns

#3 Identify and apply Piaget’s stages of learning

Consider ...

•Babies use their senses as the building blocks for learning. (Learn through physical experience)

•Incapable of symbolic learning (Gathering meaning from reading, understanding numbers)

•The difference in knowledge between birth and one year!!

By Age 1

•Move: creeping, crawling or walking

•Understand: words (say words too)

•Communicate: their own needs, gestures

•Play: with people, games and toys

•Manipulate: holding and moving objects

How do they learn?

•Sensory learning

•sensations > sensory neurons > CNS > brain

•New information is relayed through the central nervous system (spinal cord & brain)

Cerebral Cortex

• Cortex – the outer layer of the brain which allows for more complex learning.

• Memory, attention, thought and language.

• Allows perception – learning from the senses – to improve.

Newborns

•Brain cannot send messages to the body right away.

•Newborns’ actions are usually physical reflexes, not conscious messages from the brain.

The First Months

•Cause and Effect – the idea that one action will result in another action/condition.

•Understanding that for their actions there are consequences. (motor skills)

•Consistency and awareness of their actions and control over them.

Attention Span

•The amount of time we can concentrate on a task without getting bored.

•Bright babies = short attention span.•Boredom arrives quickly.

•Below Avg. Intelligence = long attention span

•After infancy, this becomes a sign of greater intelligence.

Piaget’s Theories

•Swiss Child Psychologist

•Researched and studied his own children.

•Developed patters of intelligence which explain how adult intelligence originates in infancy.

Piaget’s Learning Stages

•These stages will appear in the same order for all children, but not always at the same age.

#1 Sensorimotor Period#2 Preoperational Period#3 Concrete Operations Period#4 Formal Operations

*each have several sub-stages.

Sensorimotor

•Birth > Age 2•Learn through senses and own actions

• Egocentric – thinking only about him or herself

•Object Permanence – the idea that an object exists even when it is not in view.

Preoperational

•Age 2 > Age 7•Children think of everything in terms of:

▫ their own activities▫what they perceive at the moment

•Their unusual perspectives are often seen as “imaginative”

•Understand abstract language (love, beauty)

Preoperational cont’d

•Concentration is limited (one thing at a time)

•Often solve problems by pretending.

•Real and make believe are blurred.

Concrete Operational

•Age 7 > 11•Children can think logically•Still learn best from experience (senses)

•Need to see/experience a problem to solve it.

•Understand logical processes such as “the glasses experiment”

Formal Operational• Age 11 > adulthood• Capable of symbolic learning – interpreting

meaning from words, numbers or reading.

• Do not need to experience something to understand it. (logical, critical, compassionate)

• Able to make plans, goals for the future.• Detect subtle or hidden meaning.