This article describes the conceptual foundations of early word learning among infants at different ages. It begins by assess the age at which the infant starts to understand language and specific things they understand at these ages. Early cognition or metal development of an infant has different stages. These include containment, occlusion, support, role contextual surround among others. Skills development in infants can be broadly categorized into extension and intension. Extension is the drawing of boundaries among various categories whereas intension is what is common among the items within the boundaries. It is clear from this article that infants are usually attracted to motions, particularly biological motion such as the moving animal or insect.
However, at 6 to 7 months, they begin to view the difference between different animals such as fish, dogs, cats and birds, but they are all considered same type of thing- animals. Infants are able to categorize things globally, animals, plants and vehicles. They understand naïve physics which entail understanding dynamics of daily events and looks at things not understood longer. In regard to occlusion, infants are able to notice if any hidden object disappears or changes location at 2 months. By 7.5 months, they are able to notice surface change patterns and can detect color at 11 months. It further notes that at 4.5 months they understand that item can be hidden behind containers and inside the container at 7.5 months and can use contained to cover an object. At around the age of 7 months, they begin to learn and recognize path and manner motions. The other aspects covered in the article is construction of an event representation which is concerned with infant analysis of how objects move, start and stops as well as their interaction with other objects. In summary, this article has described concepts of early word learning and cognitive development in infants from birth to age of 12 months.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
