Cognitive and Social Development

• Learning in Infancy SKIP 
• Development of Reasoning 
• Development of Language 
• Contributions of Nature & Nurture to Language Acquisition 
• Conceptions of Social Development 
• Infancy SKIP 
• Childhood 
• Adolescence
• Adulthood SKIP

• What do children need to acquire? 
• Comprehension 
• Production 
• What supports language acquisition? 
• Nature 
• Nurture

• Segment speech stream into phonemes 
• Assemble phonemes into morphemes 
• Map morphemes onto words 
• Extract relationships among the words 
• Obtain meaning

• Goal 
• Intent 
• Apply morphemes to the intent 
• Apply syntax to the morphemes 
• Apply phonology to the morphemes 
• Apply pragmatics to the production

• Nature/Nurture argument 
• Nature

• Nurture

• Interaction

• A relatively restricted time period in an individual’s development during which a particular type of learning can best occur.
• Imprinting - goslings, chicks, ducks follow the first movement they see after hatching 
• Language - Lenneberg (1967) 
• Before 2, brain too immature 
• After puberty, brain too lateralized 
• Evidence

• Background: 
• Extremely abusive father, submissive mother 
• Developmental delays beginning second 6 months 
• Extreme social and physical deprivation and abuse 
• Severe abuse 
• Escaped with mother at 13.5 years of age, 1970 
• Language acquisition 
• Comprehension > Production 
• Phonology = normal 
• Morphology:

• Syntax = poor 
• Pragmatics = improved 
• Language lateralization 
• Right hemisphere

• EEG, fMRI, PET 
• Different aspects of language located in different locations of the cortex 
• Language:

• Reading:

• Deprivation 
• Abnormal "acquisition" after puberty 
• Early CNS - different patterns of lateralization 
• Cognitive Neuroscience 
• Different cortical areas responsible for different functions 
• Lateralization patterns differ for