What Are Some Cognitive Competencies That Responsive Caregivers Support in Infants and Toddlers?

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Cognitive development begins at birth as children begin to explore and learn about the world. Children explore the world because they're naturally curious and want to construct their own meaning from their exploration. They learn through hands-on play, exploration, discovery, trial and error, and repetition. We see that a lot. They will play with a toy for a long time, trying to make sense of it and learning the properties of a toy. But cognitive development is not a simple step-by-step process. It develops as a process of underlying skills including maturation. Each child is going to go through the cognitive stages of development uniquely, although there are general pieces that are similar for all children. 

As the brain becomes more sophisticated, it's able to not only have receptive language but expressive language as well. Part of that maturation is when babies begin to roll over, sit up, crawl, and scoot, and begin walking and then running. All those are part of physical development which is also part of the maturation that's going on in the brain. As their cognitive skills increase, children's understanding of the properties of objects increases. In addition, motor and sensory abilities begin to form early on in life.

Here are competencies for cognitive development in infants and toddlers.

• Object permanence
• Mental representations
• Cause and effect
• Memory
• Imitation
• Spatial awareness
• Mathematical awareness
• Connecting experiences together
• Following simple instructions

The competencies we look for and work on for birth to age three are object permanence, mental representations, cause and effect, memory, and imitation, which we begin to see right at birth. Other competencies include spatial awareness, mathematical awareness, connecting experiences together, and following simple instructions. Some people are surprised to hear about mathematical awareness because it seems like an advanced skill.  I'll talk about that in a moment. Following simple directions is something more advanced that we would see from our twos and our threes.

Object Permanence

Object permanence is when infants start to understand that people and objects exist independently of them. They have grasped the cognitive concept that because something or someone is out of sight it doesn't mean that they don't exist. This is a maturation skill that naturally happens, but you can help by doing certain activities with them. Games like peekaboo or taking a familiar object and covering it with a small cloth or a towel then pulling it away helps children begin to see that an object is still there. You'll know when children are beginning to master that because they'll begin to pull that fabric or move, giggle, and laugh because they're waiting in anticipation for you to pull the toy out from underneath or see you behind your hands. 

Mental Representation

Mental representation is the ability for children to begin to collect mental pictures or schema, and symbols to represent objects. This happens after children have mastered object permanence. Mental representation schemas help children develop their thinking, reasoning, problem-solving skills, and follow simple directions. These are those left-brain kinds of skills that we want. When children can hold on to ideas and representations in their head, they can begin to build new objects, expand exploration, join in pretend play, learn to sort, and draw.

Here's an example of what mental representation is. If I asked you to think about a dog, you instantly pulled from your images a mental picture of a dog. Now picture that dog as a white dog with curly hair. Now let's call that a black dog with long, shaggy hair, with a long, long tail and two soft, fuzzy little ears. Hopefully, you've been able to shift those mental images that you have because you have a lot of schema around dogs. It's the same for cats to dogs. Think about what it looks like to have that dog wag his tail, what a dog's bark sounds like, and is that different than what a cat's meow sounds like? There you have images that are tied to your senses because you've heard a dog bark and you've heard a cat meow. Almost everybody has. Then think about what it might feel like to touch the tip of the dog's nose. It's usually wet, or their tongue's kind of wet if it licks the side of your face.

Those are all mental representations, and they're grouped around an idea or a schema. The more opportunities we provide to expand children's schemas and mental representation, the richer their thinking is and the more language they have later as they learn the words to explain or describe that. Mental representation is a very important piece of curricular planning where you provide those novel new ideas, give words and explanation, or provide hands-on, centric experiences to draw from.

Spatial Awareness

Spatial awareness is another competency. It is the ability to understand the position of objects in relation to other objects. Young children learn early about how people and objects move in space. As they begin to roll, crawl, and walk, they begin to learn their own spatial awareness and how their bodies move in space. As they throw and drop things, often food from a high chair, they are beginning to understand some spatial awareness. This is an important part too as they learn to separate themselves from others.

Mathematical Awareness

Mathematical awareness begins as children learn about the properties of objects and can identify, group, and categorize objects. Learning to categorize objects by attributes is mastered over time along with concepts such as more, less, big, little, or some. These are called subsets and concepts that the child’s cognitive skills are developing. They're beginning to learn about amounts even though they don't have the words for it. You might give them directions and say, "Can you bring me the red truck?" A toddler certainly would be able to follow those simple directions. Mathematical awareness ties into mental representation as children are developing these skills.

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Exploring Cognitive and Social-Emotional Development of Infants and Toddlers, presented by Jean Barbre, EdD.