Discoveries of Infancy: Cognitive Development and Learning Veronica Rodriguez, WestEd—Far West Lab Veronica Rodriguez is a Program Associate in the Center for Child and Family Studies at WestEd/Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development in San Francisco. In that capacity, she provides staff in Early Head Start programs, Head Start Quality Improvement Centers, and the Administration for Children and Families with state-of-the-art information, materials, training, and technical assistance that relate to best practices in services to pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers. She is also faculty and the primary contact person for WestEd’s Program for Infant/Toddler Caregivers (PICT) training program and materials. Rodriguez serves as a consultant to the Head Start Quality Improvement Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, the Head Start Quality Improvement Center Institute for Child and Family Studies at Texas Tech University, and the Texas Migrant Council’s Child Care Training Programs and Child Care Management Services. She has also given presentations on indoor and outdoor environments for infants and toddlers; continuity of care; culturally sensitive care; multicultural curriculum; and staff development. "Infants actively explore their environment to learn about it, making discoveries about how the people and objects in the world function and interact." — Veronica Rodriguez Presentation Highlights This discussion and video presentation focuses on how infants learn and develop, including such concepts as cause and effect, object permanence, and understanding space. Discoveries of Infancy: Cognitive Development and Learning The behavior of infants and toddlers is characterized by a constant quest for knowledge. There are six major kinds of discoveries children make in the first three years of life: 1. Learning schemes 2. Cause and effect 3. Use of tools 4. Permanence 5. Understanding space 6. Imitation How Children Learn A child grows and learns holistically, not in segmented categories. Motor, language, moral, intellectual, social, and emotional skills blend to form the personal style of each child. Each area of development enables and influences development in other areas. Infants begin learning at birth and constantly order, classify, and integrate information, much like a computer. They learn from what they see, hear, feel, taste, and touch. Moving from simple sensory motor experiences to more complex ways of thinking is characteristic of the learning patterns of infants. Cause and Effect Infants are not born knowing that their actions have an effect, rather they learn this concept through acting on responsive objects and through experiencing the response of adults to their earliest communications. Object Permanence One of the ways infants first show their understanding of object permanence is by identifying and tracking objects as they move through space. Understanding Space Infants move through the environment exploring spatial relationships. The concept of space includes many types of learning, such as distance, perspective, size, relationships, gravity, and balance. Building Foundations for Future Learning The foundation for an infant’s future learning can be set by using an approach that focuses on facilitating natural interests and urges to learn by doing the following: Providing close and responsive relationships with caregivers; Designing safe, interesting, and developmentally appropriate environments; Giving infants uninterrupted time to explore; and Interacting with infants in ways that emotionally and intellectually support their initiations in discovery and learning. Video of Presentation Presentation Highlights No Handout for This Presentation List of Mathematics and Science presenters/presentations Information on how to view videos and view/download handouts

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