8.6: Cognitive Processes

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Todd LaMarr

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Processes of Cognition

Imagine being an infant, what would learning about the world be like? From the sounds, sights and smells, there would be a lot of new things to try to make sense of! Indeed, the potential information available in the environment is both voluminous and complex. This led William James to coin his famous phrase about “the blooming, buzzing confusion” that confronts the newborn (James, 1890). Contrary to what James thought, infants show remarkable feats of learning as they make sense of the world, beginning in the last trimester of fetal life and accelerating through infancy and toddlerhood. But how is it that infants are able to learn in such complex environments? Let’s next discuss various cognitive processes during infancy and toddlerhood. ^{^[1]}

^{^[1]} Kidd et al., (2012). The Goldilocks effect: Human infants allocate attention to visual sequences that are neither too simple nor too complex. PloS One, 7(5), e36399. CC by 4.0