Summary of important cognitive milestones
| Age | Milestones |
|---|---|
| 1 month old | Reacts to voice, established eye contact |
| 2 months old | Tracks object 180* |
| 4 months old | Recognizes hand |
| 6 months old | Grasps, visualizes, manipulates objects |
| 9 months old | Object permanence; recognizes names; consonant babbling |
| 1 year old | Say or recognize a few words |
| 16 months old | Follow some commands; indicate wants by pointing |
| 18 months old | Vocabulary at least 10 words; recognizes “no” |
| 2 years old | Basic sentence; possessive (”mine”) |
| 2.5 years old | Uses “I” to refer to self; knows name |
| 3 years old | Knows age and sex; mostly understood by strangers |
| 4 years old | Tells story, uses past tense |
Piaget’s Cognitive Development theory
Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) is a 20th century Swiss developmental psychologist came up with cognitive developmental theories
| Stage | Age Range | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Sensorimotor | 0-2 years | Driven by motor development. Coordination of senses with motor response, sensory curiosity about the world. Language used for demands and catalouging. Object permanence developed |
| Preoperational | 2-7 years | Linguistic skills develop (drive). Symbolic thinking, use of proper syntax and grammar to express full concepts. Imagination and intuition are strong, but complex abstract thought is still difficult. Conservation developed. |
| Concrete operational | 7-11 years | Concepts attached to concrete situations. Time, space and quantity are understood and can be applied, but not as independent concepts |
| Formal operations | 11+ | Theoretical, hypothetical, and counterfactual thinking. Abstract logic and reasoning. Strategy and planning become possible. Concepts learned in one context can be applied to another |
Cognitive Development
Intellectual development begins in early infancy, but accelerates more prominently in the second and third year of life. Slow or absent language development may be the first sign of mental handicap OR other cognitive issues that affect language (Autism Spectrum Disorder). It may also indicate a hearing disorder (which should be the first thing to rule out). Babies needs to be able to observe adults in order to develop properly. Children who grow up in bilingual/multilingual environments may have slower linguistic development, but tend to do better in school (and have a higher IQ)
- Important aspects of cognitive development
- Learning language – receptive, happens earlier, productive
- Non-verbal communication
- Object permanence – very important milestone that happens at 9 months)
- Identification of quantity and size (conservation)
- Newborn
- Vision highly limited at birth (8-12 inches)
- Should react to voice
- Fixes on moving objects
- Prefers human face; establishes eye contact around one month of age (very rewarding to the parent)
- Regains birthweight by 2 weeks; grows 30 g/d until 4 – 5 months of age (at this point birth weight doubles)
- 2 months of age
- Differentiates patterns, colours, consonants (difficult to notice since baby cannot speak)
- Abe to **track object at midline (*180)
- 4 months of age
- Noticeably more distracted by surroundings
- Explores own body, especially hands and mouth (+ genitals – which is completely normal until about 5 years of age)
- Proprioception matures
- Recognizes emotions in others and mirrors such emotions (social smile, sustained social smile)
- Object permanence not yet developed (surprised by peek-a-boo)
- Growth slows to 20 g/day (birth weight should have doubled)
- 6 months of age
- Primitive reflexes disappear
- More ability to grasp, visualize, manipulate, and explore objects)
- Objects tend to go to mouth first (Oral fixation; keep small objects and unsafe toys from the baby)
- Baby enjoys dropping object (lost palmar reflex, perplexed; have not yet developed object permanence so they think object has disappeared
- 9 months of age
- Development of object permanence (will uncover object if hidden)
- Recognize and respond to his/her name
- Language progresses to monosyllabic babbling or consonant voicing (inflection resembles the native language; “mama”, “dada”, “caca”; not clear if the infant necessarily knows the meaning or if it is just mimicry)
- 12 months of age (1 year old)
- Should recognize words other than “mama” or dada” (monosyllabic babbling)
- Cognitive development is particularly nurtured at this point (as the baby begins to walk an navigate away from caretaker – encourage and make them safe)
- Follows one-step commands (”Give me”, “Come here”)
- Birthweight should have tripled
- 16 months of age
- Should be able to stack a 2 or 3 block tower (the size which is 3 times the baby’s years…roughly)
- Child is able to indicate what he/she wants by pointing (eventhough vocabulary is limited)
- 18 months of age (1.5 years old)
- Should stack a 4 block tower
- Vocabulary should include at least 10 words and include at least one body part
- Child should have some understanding of the word “no”
- 24 months of age (2 years old)
- Should stack a 7 block tower
- Should be able to scribble or copy a circle
- Should be able to put a very basic sentence together (”come here” “want more” – vocabulary expands rapidly after age 2 – words are ideas and concepts – number of words a child can put together in a sentence roughly corresponds to his/her age)
- Child should begin to use pronouns and possessives
- 30 months of age (2.5 years old)
- Should understand the word “I’ and “me” and use it to refer to himself or herself
- Should respond with name when asked
- Should be able to make horizontal and vertical lines with crayon
- Birthweight should have quadrupled
- 3 years old
- Should know age and sex (unless there is a legitimate gender/sex identity issues)
- Should be mostly understandable by strangers (75% understandable by strangers)
- Should be able to count to 3
- Should recognize at least 3 colors
- 4 years old
- Should be able to draw a square
- Should be able to tell a short story or narrative of something that happened to him/her
- Thought process is usually magical in nature (i.e. monsters under bed, imaginary friends, play house)
- 7 years of age
- Conservation
