Lesson Plan – Growing Brains, Cognitive Development in Infants
75 minute class
Students read before class:
- Ch 4 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood from Berk, L. E. (2014). Development Through the Lifespan. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
- Siegler, R. (2017). Cognitive development in childhood. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers.
Reading 2 is available at the following Link http://nobaproject.com/modules/cognitive-development-in-childhood
Broad Objective: Students will understand and explain basic theoretical and empirical concepts in developmental psychology.
Learning Goals
- Students will learn and critique methods used to study infant cognition and perception
- Students will link the physical changes in the brain with the perceptual and cognitive abilities in infants
- Students will be able to draw a graph of and explain the basic processes of habituation, dishabituation, and recovery.
1.Questions for the day (Show a picture of an infant in a room)
- What do infants know? How can we find out what they know?
2. Habituation Balloon Activity
- Ask students to rate their sense of surprise on a scale of 1 to 10 to the events
- Event 1 – one, two, three, pop a balloon
- Event 2 – one, two, three, pop a balloon
- Event 3 – one, two, three, pop a balloon
- Event 4 – one….POP a balloon
- Have 4 students calculate the averages and standard deviations for the 4 events
- Discuss as a class what should be on the axis, draw the figure
- X = trial number, Y = mean startle response
- Have the 4 students plot the event points
- Label habituation, dishabituation, and recovery on the Figure
- The above activity is adapted from Kohn, A., & Kalat, J. W. (1992). Preparing for an important event: Demonstrating the modern view of classical conditioning. Teaching of Psychology, 19(2), 100-102.
3.Video: Baby Synapse Connection (BBC) (4:42)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J-JflThHks
- Comment on video- videos doesn’t say but they did show the baby a series of the same face and then switched to a new face, assessed this by measuring looking time
- Video related questions: Think-pair-share
- What did the <6 month old babies perceive that >6month old babies could not?
- Why do you think this ability is no longer present after 6 months?
- How could this relate to race-bias in infants? Language?
4.Dissecting Object-Permanence
- Class Discussion
- What is the definition of the sensorimotor stage?
- Watch Video Object-Permanence
- According to Piaget what is happening in this video and why?
- What physical movements and mental processes are required of the infant? – break it down step by step.
- As students answer write it on the board along a line to show order of events
- Examples: look at object, attention to object, memory to remember its location, motor movement to reach for it, motivation, executive functioning (all from reading)
- Can we assume the infant has the physical and cognitive abilities to complete all of these actions?
- What is the definition of the sensorimotor stage?
Homework due next class: Describe an infant’s (0-2 yrs) development in one of these 4 areas: perception, attention, memory, and motor ability. Then describe how this area of development might impact the infant’s ability to perform the object-permanence task. Post your answer on blackboard (200-400 words).
5.Application: Create an age appropriate activity/toy
- With your partner brainstorm ideas for an activity or toys that would aid in an infant’s development. This should be something that could be used in a daycare-type setting. How would you explain to the daycare why they should use your activity/toys?
- Share ideas with class
