[1] Information is acquired in a number of ways including through sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and language, all of which require processing by our cognitive system.
[2] However, cognition begins through social bonds between children and caregivers, which gradually increase through the essential motive force of Shared intentionality.
[3] The notion of Shared intentionality describes unaware processes during social learning at the onset of life when organisms in the simple reflexes substage of the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development do not maintain communication via the sensory system.
If one accepts that nothing is known until learned, and that everyone shares a basic common sense, it appears infants must—to some degree—make some specific ontological inferences about how the world works, and what kinds of things it contains.
We acquire these ordinary [common sense] beliefs at an early age and we take them for granted in everyday life; ... Then, because we are also self-reflective creatures, we turn back on our commonsense assumptions and find them to be more puzzling and problematic than we had bargained for.
The concepts we habitually employ raise the kinds of disturbing questions we call philosophical'.The notion of Shared intentionality proposes another approach to the problem.
Based on recent insights in neuroscience research, it is argued that this collaborative interaction emerges in the mother-child pairs at birth for sharing the essential sensory stimulus of the actual cognitive problem.
Vygotsky refers to this movement through assistance as "scaffolding" and helps bridge the gap between the child's current cognitive abilities and their full potential.
[12] Erik Erikson was a prominent developmental psychologist, who produced a psychoanalytical theory of psychosocial behaviour, showing 8 stages of development from infancy to adulthood.
At each stage the individual is set with a potential conflict, and either success or failure at each point will go on to determine the outcome of the psychological state of the person.
However, if the care received has been unreliable then mistrust will develop, which may result in heightened feelings of insecurity and anxiety, in future relationships.
The fact that infants have slow information processing prevents them from establishing intellectual habits early in their lives that would cause problems later in life, as their environments are significantly different.
From this it could be argued that infants and young children's cognitive and perceptual abilities might be designed to be suited to their needs at that particular time in their lives rather than incomplete versions of the more sophisticated models possessed in adults.
Hanus Papousek (1977) looked at the concept that learning at an early stage of development may not be beneficial to the infant if it creates overstimulation.
[14] According to Professor Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), physiologist and philosopher, attention is the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon during a period, which is necessary to elevate the clear perception of the narrow region of the content of consciousness and which is feasible to control this focus in mind.
[15] According to associate professor at Rīga Stradiņš University Sandra Mihailova and research professor in bioengineering at Liepaja University Igor Val Danilov, the development of the scope of attention in young children becomes evident within the first three years of life as they show considerable advances in increasing focal area.
[22] The perception of causality was initially studied by professor Albert Michotte where he presented adults with animated images of moving balls.
[23] By manipulating the direction and timing of the moving balls (spatial and temporal dimensions) he was able to influence participants’ perception of causality.
Through research with very young infants, many studies have shown support for the theory that humans are born with the mechanisms needed for the perception of causality.
Psychologist Jean Piaget conducted experiments with infants which led him to conclude that this awareness was typically achieved at eight to nine months of age.
Studies in psychology[30] also suggest that three dimensionality and depth perception is not necessarily fully intuitive, and must be partially learned in infancy using an unconscious inference.
[33] The noted above hypotheses plausibly explain perception development when the nervous system of the young organism has already mastered the mode to distinguish relevant stimuli from the cacophony of electromagnetic waves, chemical interactions, and pressure fluctuations.