Infants
learn, and ultimately remember, in variety of ways. Our text refers to the
methods of classical conditioning, operant conditioning, attention, imitation, and
memory and concept formation. Each of these methods offers a different way for
children to learn and for parents to enhance their children’s learning.
Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov,
discovered classical conditioning. In classical conditioning, a neutral
stimulus acquires the ability to produce a response originally produced by
another stimulus. Our text relates several examples of this method. A way to
relate this to parents and children is using a lullaby at bed time. A mother
wants to get her child on a bedtime schedule. In an effort to do this, she
begins to sing a lullaby to her child at bedtime. The infant learns that after
the lullaby, his mother will lay him down. The child begins to associate
bedtime with this lullaby and settles down right after the lullaby.
B.F. Skinner introduced the concept
of operant conditioning. In operant conditioning, the consequences of a
behavior produce changes in the probability of the behavior’s occurrence. For
example, a mother wants to condition her infant to help clean up their toys.
Each time the infant helps clean their toys up, the mother positively rewards
the infant with praise. After awhile, the infant will be “conditioned” to clean
up their toys based on the positive praise.
A third method is attention.
Attention refers to the focusing of mental resources on select information.
Attention includes the processes of habituation and dishabituation. Habituation
is the decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations of
the stimulus. Dishabituation is the increased responsiveness after a change in
stimulation. Also included in attention is joint attention, where individuals
focus on the same object or event. According to our text, infants’ attention is
strongly governed by novelty and habituation. (Santrock, 2010) In an effort to teach their child about
objects, a parent points to objects while naming them to get their child to
focus on them.
Imitation is where children imitate
behaviors seen in their role models. Andrew Meltzoff concluded that infants do
not blindly imitate everything they see and often make creative errors. (Santrock, 2010) Deferred imitation
is imitation that occurs after a delay of hours or days. According to a study
conducted in Germany, infants between the ages of 11 months and 12 months could
imitate five actions they saw the researchers perform. (Goertz, Kolling, Frahsek, Stanisch, & Knopf, 2008) A parent can use
imitation as a tool to teach their infants to help clean up. The parent picks
up a toy and puts it away. The parent then claps to show that the behavior is
acceptable. The infant can then imitate the behavior.
Memory involves the retention of
information over a period of time. There are two types of behavior, implicit
and explicit. Implicit memory is memory without conscious recollection. It
involves skills and routine procedures that are automatically performed.
Explicit memory is conscious memory of facts and experiences. An infant
remembers the positive reward from the operant conditioning example earlier.
Therefore, the child will more than likely repeat the behavior again.
Concept formation is the organization
of information into categories. An infant is shown picture cards of birds and
groups them together realizing they are the same. He then realizes that an
airplane can be grouped with the birds as well because they all fly.
A
parent can use concept formation to enhance their child’s learning.
Works Cited
Goertz, C., Kolling, T., Frahsek, S., Stanisch, A.,
& Knopf, M. (2008). Assessing declarative memory in 12-month-old infants:
A test - retest reliability study of the deferred imitation task. European
Journal Of Developmental Psychology , 492-506.
Santrock, J. W.
(2010). Children. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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