Essay on Your Baby Can Read

Words: 1685
Pages: 7

Exaggeratory Claims of Infant Linguistic Developing Programs
Raymond Mattison
PSYCH 600
September 22nd, 2014
Debbra Jennings

Exaggeratory Claims of Infant Linguistic Developing Programs For as long as human records show, there has been the stereotypical ‘Snake Oil Salesman’. These stereotypical parts of society thrive off of the ignorance of the masses in order to sell an item or theory that may seem as though is works but in reality doesn’t. Examples of these include an early 1900’s method of weight control in which people bought pills containing tape worms and were told to take one pill to start losing weight and then take an anti-parasitic pill that would hopefully kill the tapeworm (Winterman, 2013).
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This level of cognition doesn’t even begin to rapidly develop until late into the first year of life (Woodward, 2005). Object permanence then leads to the development of categorization that also takes time to mature. Without categorization any language simulation in infants is hardly anything more than a parlor trick. Infants who are just learning their first word, which is typically some form of ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’ are just being able to apply a word to an object. This is the first signs of object permanence and categorization.
Credibility
With the evidence of child cognitive development showing that the mental capacity to be able to read at an age that is as young as one or two years of age is mostly inconceivable in any overage children, it is safe to state that the credibility of ‘Your Baby Can Read’ is not respectable. The cognitive development of infants follow an unchangeable path of growth that cannot be altered because the brain and body itself is still changing at a rapid pace. Being able to read requires the infant to be able to have object permanence and the ability to categorize objects and words so that language can start to form in a comprehensible fashion, which is not even formed until an average of one year of age. Despite this, the curiosity of the mental capabilities of infants is still studied in order to establish what they actually are capable of. Researchers performed a study in which