Textbook Questions

Question 1

A Description of Cooin and Babbling

The initial language development stage is called the cooin or babbling stage. Typically, this period takes place between the age of 3 and 9 months.  According to Santrock (2011), cooin and babbling refer to the sounds that babies make prior to their ability to speak the primary words. Before infants utter their first words, they usually make remarkable progress towards comprehending and speaking their native language. At the age of 3 months, they make cooin noises, which refer to vowel sounds put together such as aaaaaah and ooooooh. At the age about 5 months, they start babbling; adding sounds of consonants to their cooin. The result is a combination of consonants and vowels that are repeated such as ma-ma, ba-ba or da-da. At this stage, infants can utter sounds similar to mature speech, which sometimes are understood by adults (Santrock, 2011).

A Description of How Cooin and Babbling Develop into a Language

Following the cooin and babbling stage, infants enter their second stage of language development known as the holophase (one-word) stage. This occurs between the age of 10 and 13 months when babies start to produce their initial real word. At this point, children are only able to produce a small number of single words, but it is imperative to note that they are capable of comprehending a considerable number of words (Santrock, 2011). The one-word stage is followed by the two-word stage that starts at about 18 months. At this point, children start using two-word sentences usually comprising of nouns and verbs for instance, “puppy big.” At the age of two years, children start producing brief, multi-word phrases like, “I love mummy”. With time, children continue to grow and learn additional new words on daily basis, so that by the age of 5 when they enter school, they basically have a vocabulary of approximately ten thousand words.

Developmental Problems that Arise if Cooin and Babbling Fail to Happen

Even though, kids have different rates of development, a majority of them follow a common developmental pattern. As discussed above, children experience cooing and babbling between the ages of 3 and 9 months, so that by the time they are 1 year old, they can utter a single word. At 2, children are able to produce two-word sentences. However, if a child fails to undergo these stages, and instead exhibits symptoms such as a total lack of speech, avoidance of eye contact, failure to react to sounds, and showing little or no emotion, this could be a sign of a developmental problem (Santrock, 2011). For instance, it may be possible that the child has autism or a hearing problem if there is lack of speech.

Question 2

The Information Processing Theory to Human Thinking

Information processing approach is the one utilized by cognitive psychologists in describing how the human mind works. This approach likens human thinking to a computer. The human mind, just like a computer, contains an input device, processing unit, storage unit as well as an output device. Whereas information is entered in the computer using a key board as the input device, in the human mind, it is the sensory register that plays this role. The sensory register consists of sensory organs such as the ears and eyes via which people receive information regarding their surroundings (Santrock, 2011). The information keyed in the computer is processed within the central processing unit that is comparable to the short-term memory within the human mind. It is here that information is held temporarily prior to it being utilized, disposed of or transferred to long-term memory. The long-term memory is the equivalent of the computer’s hard disk that is used to store information. Information that is currently not in use in the human brain is stored in the long-term memory, and it may be stored there for an indefinite time period. Just like the results of the processed information in a computer are displayed via the computer screen (output device), in human beings, it is the facial expression, body movement, or response to a question that shows the result of the information processed (Santrock, 2011).

Examples of a Person’s Hardware or Software

The hardware in a human being includes ears, eyes, short-term memory, long-term memory as well as facial expressions. The human software, on the other hand, includes the human brain.

Question 3

Explanation of Equilibrium and how Disequilibrium can Result in New Ways of Thinking

Equilibrium entails matching the adaptive functioning of the child to the situational demands. It is a state where children are able to offer explanations for new happenings using existing schemes (Santrock, 2011). For instance, when a child thinks that every ocean living creature is called fish, making him refer to a whale or a crocodile as fish too because they live in the ocean. Disequilibrium on the other hand, is the cognitive conflict that children/ adolescents experience upon realizing that that their beliefs are not true. For instance, when a child realizes that not all creatures in the ocean are fish, he will feel discomfort. Consequently, this feeling of disequilibrium can help a child adapt to a new way of thinking by pushing him to learn and accept the proper names of the other creatures living within the ocean.

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Whether Disequilibrium can be Used within a Classroom Setting

Yes, disequilibrium can be employed within a classroom setting by allowing children to discuss a topic or question without interrupting, then afterwards, the teacher gives the correct answer. The children who did not hold the same view as the teacher, will definitely be disappointed to know that their opinions are wrong, but will learn to accept and adapt the new answer.

Question 4

A Comparison of the Memory Skills of an Infant to that of an Aging Adult

Memory skills refer to the ability of an individual to remember things. An infant at birth for instance, can recognize his mother’s voice, a sound that he has heard often while in the womb, indicating that he has short-term memory. As he continues to develop and learns how to speak, his short-term memory skills develop further, and he is able to remember old information for instance, where he kept his toy. Between the age of 2 to 5, his long-term memory begins to develop and he is able to recall a sequence of happenings during familiar circumstances for instance, the events that take place when he goes shopping with the mother/father. Memory skills reach peak value when a person reaches his early twenties.

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Adults on the other hand undergo a memory decline as they age. Common problems they experience include inability to perform more than a single task at one time, and remembering new names among others. This memory decline is attributed to lower flow of blood into the brain of aging adults, which lessens the efficiency of the brain.