Birth to 3 Years – Cognitive Development
18/11/2025 2026-05-11 7:29Birth to 3 Years – Cognitive Development
CHILD DEVELOPMENT - BIRTH TO 3 YEARS
PART 2 - COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in thinking, perceiving, acquiring and organising knowledge. In the first three years of life, cognitive development occurs in three ways: sensorimotor intelligence, perception and language.
Sensorimotor Intelligence
Sensorimotor intelligence refers to learning more through the senses and the development of motor skills than by listening and talking. According to Piaget, a famous psychologist, until infants develop language they think and learn best with their senses and their motor skills. Piaget believed that this sensorimotor intelligence happened in six stages:
- In the first two stages infants learn through their bodies such as sucking, touching and grabbing surrounding objects.
- In the third and fourth stages from four to eight months infants start to respond to people and objects and learn how to make interesting experiences happen repeatedly. E.g if the child throws a ball and a dog fetches it they laugh and throw it again. The child has learned to focus on something that catches her interest.
- The fifth and the sixth stages happen from twelve to eighteen months. Piaget described this time as the little scientist stage, when the infant begins to experiment, plan and carry out things. E.g tapping a xylophone with a stick to hear the noise.
Thoughts
Many researchers, including Maria Montessori, found that thinking depended on previous experience, opportunity to learn, and ability to remember. Recent researchers found that while all children develop sensorimotor intelligence, it doesn’t happen for every child in the same way. Studies have found that such things as race, family, culture, income and individual differences affect the development of cognition. E.g how would the learning of a child be affected if parents became angry every time a noise is made with the xylophone?
Perception
The second important part of cognitive development is perception, the organizing and understanding of information from the senses. Eleanor and James Gibson, two of the researchers who studied perception in the late 20th century, suggested that perception does not happen automatically in the same way for everyone, but happens as a result of a selection from a wide range of possible responses. They suggested that everything in an infant’s surroundings gives her many chances to develop. Everything an infant perceives will be affected by past experiences, present needs and the infant’s understanding of possibilities.
Evidence
The Gibsons believed that infants also need to grasp something they are perceiving so that they learn to organise many sensations and perceptions at once, such as touching, looking, tasting, hitting and shaking. They can also use the information from one sense to anticipate something in another sense. E.g by just sucking on something newborns could perceive information about it. Does it taste good, what shape and size it was, and whether it was hard or soft.
Eleanor Gibson is best known for designing a “cliff experiment” that showed that infants have depth perception. She placed infants (the youngest 6 months old and the oldest 14 months old) on a sheet of plate glass placed on a table and extending beyond the table’s edge. Most of the infants would not crawl past the edge of the glass “cliff”, even when enticed with a favourite object or person.
Like Montessori, the Gibsons discovered that infants learn very quickly to organise people and things by color, size, shape, taste, and even by whether they appear male or female. For example what happens when an one year old holds an unpeeled banana for the first time? They may have many perceptions. A child may look at the banana carefully, bang it a few times on the table, then put it in their mouth. If they have eaten bananas before so they would know the fruit. While chewing the banana, they could find out that the skin is hard not soft. When it’s squeezed the child discovers that the edible banana is inside the skin. This chance to explore and experience will affect the child’s behaviour the next time they are given an unpeeled banana.
Language
The third part of cognitive development is language. It refers to how living beings communicate with each other, whether by making sounds, forming words and sentences, making gestures and facial expressions, or doing certain actions. Language is affected by both sensorimotor intelligence and perception. Montessori found that the time between one and two years old is the time of the second sensitive period, when children are absorbed in acquiring language and fascinated by listening to and replicating sounds.
Many researchers besides Montessori such as Noa Chomsky and B.F. Skinner, explored how language develops. Skinner believed that children learn to talk because they are rewarded for making sounds and saying certain words. He called this way of learning conditioning, gradual training using stimulus response and reinforcement. When an infant learns that every time she makes the sound “da-da”, her parents smile and repeat the sound back to her. Gradually, she learns that saying “da-da” gets the attention of her father especially.
Theories
According to Skinner and other researchers, an infant is most likely to develop language if her parents reward her first sounds that sound like words and repeat them back to her. If her parents make fun of the words or ignore them or correct them the child may be slow to develop language. She may never add as many words as an infant whose parents are encouraging. Skinner and other researchers also found that infants learn by association. For example, if the child’s parents make a habit of naming such things as food, toys, pictures in books, and pieces of clothing, the infant will soon learn to link things with their names. This training will later support the reading process.
Chomsky’s ideas are a bit different from Skinner’s. Chomsky believes that heredity determines how and when infants learn to use language. According to his ideas and other researchers, an infant’s understanding of the basic structure of language is present at her birth. On the other hand she has to learn vocabulary and grammar. This inborn human ability is called a Language Acquisition Device (LAD). They believe that as an infant develops the LAD develops and that the LAD develops around the same time in infants all over the world.
Stages
The ecological approach popular nowadays combines the ideas of Chomsky and Skinner and believe that most children regardless of the country they live they develop language in nine steps. Even though most infants go through the nine steps, each infant develops language differently from other infants depending on heredity, physical growth and experience with others. In a typical infant, the language development may look this way:
- As a newborn she communicates by reflex. For example she cries when she is hungry.
- At two moths, she begins to make a wider range of noises. She coos, fusses, laugs, and gurgles.
- From three to six months, she adds more new sounds and makes her first vowel sounds (a, e, I, o, u).
- From six to ten months, she adds more vowel sounds and begins to repeat sounds (for example, “da-da-da-da”, “ma-ma”, “ba-ba”), especially is she is encouraged to repeat them. She also makes her first consonant sounds which around the world are m.p,b,t and d.
- At ten months, she understands simple words such as “no” and “bye”. She can now say words, but often only her parents know what she means. She also points when she wants something.
- At one year, she says her first recognizable words, usually a single word to stand for a complete thought. For example, she says “bye-bye” both to say goodbye to a family friend and to express sadness about a parent leaving.
- From twelve to eighteen months, she gradually increases her vocabulary to about 50 words.
- From sixteen to eighteen months, she adds words rapidly and use two or three words to make a sentence. For example she says “dog go”.
- At two years old, she can say over 200 words and use sentences that contain grammar.
In order for an infant to be able to say over 200 words and use sentences she needs to train, practice and communicate with others throughout each of the nine stages described above. Montessori suggests that parents should first catch the child’s attention, smile and use a quiet tone, simple words and short sentences.
Finally
As the child becomes older and starts to say first words, the parents begin to carry a conversation with her. This kind of practice in attentive two way interaction helps children to listen when someone talks, learn how people talk to each other and identify the words that are important to the people around her. At the same time she learns that what she communicates affects other people. This learning in turn affects how she learns to develop relationships with others.
Great Minds ECC Team
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Early Childhood Center vs School
Montessori Early Childhood Center vs EYFS at School In Dubai, once your child is around three, a real choice comes into view. Do you enrol them in the FS1 or FS2 of a larger school following the British EYFS framework, or do you choose a dedicated Montessori early childhood center? Both serve children well and both are popular routes here, but they are very different environments. Here we look at what each offers, and why a Montessori early childhood center could be the strongest possible start. What EYFS In a School Offers The Early Years Foundation Stage is the respected British framework, and in the UAE it is usually delivered as FS1 and FS2 inside a primary or through-school. That setting brings genuine advantages such as a clear, often guaranteed pathway into primary. Children have access to a larger school’s facilities and specialist teachers, and their progress is tracked against well-defined milestones with regular reporting. For a family already set on a particular British school, starting in its early years class can secure a place. The trade-off is one of scale. A school is designed around older children, and the early years are one part of a much larger institution. Group sizes tend to be bigger (up to 28), the day more timetabled and adult-led, and the emphasis can lean early toward academic school-readiness. What Montessori Early Childhood Centers Offer A Montessori early childhood center exists for one purpose: the early years. Nothing about it is scaled for older children. The rooms, the routines, the pace, and the materials are all built around how very young children learn. Through movement, repetition, and hands-on discovery rather than sitting and formal instruction. The setting is calmer and more home-like, with smaller groups and more individual attention. Unhurried work cycles follow each child’s own rhythm, and the focus is the whole child in these formative years. Independence, concentration, confidence, and social-emotional growth, not academic benchmarks alone. Why Early Years Deserves a Dedicated Space The years from birth to six are a distinct developmental window, what Maria Montessori called the “absorbent mind.” Children this age are building the foundations of everything that follows: how to concentrate, how to do things for themselves, how to get along with others. A space designed entirely for them can offer the pace, scale, and freedom that a busy school timetable often cannot. Smaller and calmer means a gentler first experience of learning away from home, and more room for a child to grow at their own speed. But What About The Pathway To School This is the question most parents ask, and it is a fair one. The reassuring answer is that Montessori children are known for arriving at primary school confident, independent, focused, and socially capable often ahead on exactly the qualities that make the move into any curriculum, EYFS included, a smooth one. A Montessori Early Childhood Center is the foundation before school. Why Great Minds ECC Great Minds Early Childhood Center is a dedicated Montessori center for the early years. Everything in it from the materials on the shelves to the shape of the day exists to give young children the richest possible start, so that when they move on to the school of your choice, they arrive curious, capable, and ready. Montessori Early Childhood Center EYFS within a school Setting Dedicated to the early years, calm and home-like An early years class inside a larger school Groups Smaller, with individual attention Larger and more structured Daily rhythm Unhurried, child-led work cycles Timetabled and more adult-led Learning style Hands-on, self-directed discovery Guided play toward set milestones Focus The whole child, independence and confidence School-readiness and academic benchmarks Pathway Prepares children to enter any school ready Direct, often guaranteed, into its own primary BOOK A TOUR
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