Developmental Playgroup – Cognition (Part 1)

Cognition was the most recent topic at the Developmental Playgroups this past week. It is broken down into: Cause and Effect, Spatial Relationships, Problem Solving, Imitation, Memory, Number Sense, Classification, Symbolic Play, Attention Maintenance, and Understanding of Personal Care Routines. Because it covers such a wide range, for the purposes of the blog, we will break it into smaller components. This post covers Cause and Effect, and Spatial Relationships.

Cause and Effect: Cause and Effect looks at a relationship between actions/events and what the reslt is. This concept helps infants/children to develop an understanding of object properties, relationships between and event and the consequences, and patterns of human behavior. By developing an understanding of this concept, infants/children are able to build their abilities to solve problems, make predictions, and understand the impact their behavior has on others.

Examples: crying and being picked up, shaking a toy and hearing it make noises, pushing a button on a toy and having music play.

Some milestones/age appropriate activities for this concept are:

4-7 months:
- Hear a loud noise and turn head in the direction of the noise
- Explore toys with hands and mouth
- Move body in a rocking motion to get the infant care teacher to continue rocking
8 months: Children perform simple actions to make things happen, notice the relationships between events, and notice the effects of others on the immediate environment.
- Shake toy, hear the sound and shake it again
- Watch someone wind up a toy and then touch the toy trying to make it go off again
- Push button on toy to watch it light up/something pop out.
9-17 months:
- Bang two blocks together
- Keep turning objects to find the side that works (mirror or nesting cup)
- Cry and anticipate someone to come help them
- Continuously drop an item to have someone come pick it up
- Watch someone perform an action and then try to imitate- squeeze water toys.
18 months: Children combine simple actions to cause things to happen or change the way they interact with objects and people in order to see how it changes the outcome.
- Attempt to wind up the toy after not getting the lid to open
- Drop various objects from different heights to observe how they fall – what noise they make
- Making tower of blocks and knocking them over
36 months:
- Demonstrate an understanding of cause and effect by making predictions about what could happen and reflect upon what caused something to happen
- Communicates that they miss someone/cries after they leave
- Make a prediction about what will happen next in the story
- Ask what happened if they see a band aid

Spatial Relationships: Spatial Relationship looks at how an object is located in relation to a reference object. Understanding this concept helps infants/children gain a better understanding of numbers as they get older as well as how things move and fit in space.

Examples: exploring objects with their mouths, tracking objects and people visually, squeezing into tight spaces, fitting objects into openings, and looking at things from different perspectives (Mangione, Lally, and Signer 1992).

Some milestones/age appropriate activities for this concept are:

4 to 7 months:
- Look and explore their own hand
- Reach for nearby items
- Explore toys with hands and mouth
8 months: Children move their bodies, explore the size and shape of objects, and observe people and objects as they move through space.
- Use vision or hearing to track the path of someone walking by
- Hold one stacking cup in each hand
9-17 months:
- Roll a car back and forth on the floor
- Dump toys out of a container
- Move over and between cushions and pillows on the floor
- Put the circle piece of a puzzle into the round opening, after trying the triangle opening and the square opening
18 months: Children use trial and error to discover how things move and fit in space.
- Go around the back of a chair to get the toy car that rolled behind it instead of trying to follow the car’s path by squeezing underneath the chair
- Use two hands to pick up a big truck, but only one hand to pick up a small one
- Put a smaller nesting cup inside a larger cup after trying it the other way around.
19 -35 months:
- Complete a puzzle of three separate cut-out pieces, such as a circle, square, and triangle
- Turn a book right-side up after realizing that it is upside down
- Fit four nesting cups in the correct order, even if it takes a couple of tries