Early Childhood: Cognitive Development

Chapter 10

Children between ages 21/2-5 experience:

Dramatically expanding world. Notable developments in self-

reliance, self-control, & self-regulation.

Exploration of adult roles. Begin to show more organization

and coherence in their behavior. Display a greater capacity to be

connected to peers.

We are HERE

Preoperational period:

In Piaget’s theory, the period from ages 2-7, characterized by an inability to use logical operations.

Photo copyright © 2003 www.arttoday.com. Used with permission.

Preoperational Stage Cognitive advances

Begin to represent their world with words, images, and drawings

Perception and thinking are linked

Advances in mental representation Language & Thoughts Pretend Play Drawings

Preoperational Stage Cognitive limitations

Logic and reasoning are still absent from thoughts

Thoughts are highly influenced by perception Centration and the inability to decenter egocentrism

Animistic thinking

Inability to understand conservation irreversability

Lack of hierarchical classification

Children begin to represent their world with words, images, and drawings.

Thinking tied to perception

Advances in mental representation (symbolic function)

Language and thought Make-believe play

Sociodramatic play

Drawings From Scribbles to… First representational

shapes and forms to… More realistic

drawings

Reasoning about Causation Reality is defined by

superficial appearance

Preschoolers can give good causal explanations for simple, familiar processes, but do not yet have an abstract understanding of plausible cause

Reasoning about Animateand Inanimate Objects

Animism: attribute life to nonliving things

It is hard for young children to distinguish between living and nonliving things

This reasoning develops throughout this age period

Reasoning About Quantity• Preschoolers made errors when the

appearance of two equal quantities makes them look unequal

• Concepts of Conservation & Measurement• liquid volume, number, mass, length

• Once children understand conservation (around age 7), they explain it several ways:

• compensation• reversibility• identity• the nodded added or subtracted criterion

Reasoning about Quantity

Awareness of how many items are present and how math can affect the number

2-3 yrs: Primitive rule Addition increases number, subtraction decreases

number

4-5 yrs: Qualitative rule Take into account any initial difference but not the

magnitude

6-7 yrs: Quantitative rule Take into account the magnitude of the difference

between the initial groups

Logical Reasoning Goals

Classification: grouping by shared characteristics Boys & girls, fruits & vegetables

Seriation: arrange things in logical progression Shortest sticks to longest sticks

Transitive inference: infer the relationship between two objects by knowing their respective relationships to a third Ex: If Jane is taller than Tasha but shorter than Kim,

then Tasha is shorter than Kim

Egocentrism Egocentrism: inability

to understand others’ perspectives

Perceptual egocentrism: not differentiating one’s own perceptual experience from that of another

Cognitive egocentrism: assume that others have the same knowledge, beliefs, and desires that they do Ex: buying gifts for others

Piaget’s three-mountain task. A preoperational child is unable to describe the “mountains” from the doll’s point

of view - an indication of egocentrism, according to Piaget

Egocentrism in Preschoolers

Overcoming egocentrism

Knowledge of existence: Realizing other people have thoughts, viewpoints, & desires that differ from the child’s.

Awareness of need: Realizing it can be useful to consider another’s perspective.

Social inference: Reading another person’s actions and imagining that person’s point of view.

The Child’s Theory of Mind

Theory of mind knowledge dramatically increases between 2 and 5, peaking at 4.

Egocentrism may prevent children as young as 3 from recognizing false beliefs

Ability to distinguish between appearance and reality linked to false belief awareness

Distinguishing fantasy from reality occurs somewhere between 18 mos and 3 years

Theory of mind: emerging awareness of their own and others’ mental processesTheory of mind: emerging awareness of their own and others’ mental processes

The Store Model

3 steps of memory: encoding, storage and retrieval

Attention & Memory Attentional system not yet fully

developed Do not consider attention a limited

resource that must be used selectively

Preschoolers demonstrate: Recognition: perceive a stimulus

as familiar Free recall: spontaneously pull

information out of long-term memory for current use

Short-term memory only holds 3-4 items

Preschoolers’ Memory• Young children are often oblivious

to the memory demands of a situation.

• Abilities and Limitations• Preschoolers demonstrate both

recognition and free recall in their daily activities.• Usually do more poorly on recall tasks

than older children and adults. They have a digit span of 3 to 4 items.

Adults help by teaching memory strategies and building on skills child already has

Memory Development Forming Childhood Memories

Generic memory: Memory that produces a script of familiar routines to guide behavior

Episodic memory: Long-term memory linked to time and place

Autobiographical memory: Memory of specific events in one’s own life

Understanding of the social world.

Social cognition:

• Deals with the impact of children's cognitive skills on their social relationships and the role of social interaction in supporting cognitive development.

• Children start to learn how other people think and feel, what their motives and intentions are, and what they are likely to do.

An Overview of PreschoolCognitive Development

Cognitive advances during preschool years include: emerging understanding of causation ability to distinguish living & nonliving things qualitative understanding of many concepts

related to quantity gradual development of ability to distinguish

appearance and reality expanding attention & memory skills increasing understanding of others’ perspectives &

thoughts

Vygotsky and Psychometric Approaches Measurement of intelligence in early

childhood Stanford-Binet Weschler Preschool and Primary Scale

of Intelligence, Revised Influences on intelligence Vygotsky

Zone of Proximal Development: adults effectively guide child in reachable tasks

Scaffolding ehlp child acquire tools for learning

Language Development

Vocabulary Fast mapping: child forms an idea of

a new word’s meaning after hearing it once or twice in conversation

Metaphor, a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that usually designates one thing is applied to another, becoming increasingly common in the preschool years

Grammar and Syntax At 3, children typically begin to use

plurals, possessives, and past tense

They still make errors of overregularization

By ages 5 to 7, children’s speech is quite adultlike, but they still have not mastered the fine points of language

Pragmatics and Social Speech

Pragmatics: The practical knowledge needed to use language for communicative purposes

Social speech: Speech intended to be understood by a listener

Communication Private speech:

talk to themselves while playing, collective monologues

Limited ability to adjust speech to the needs of their listeners

Social Interaction and Preparation for Literacy

Emergent literacy: development of these skills, knowledge, and attitudes that underlie reading and writing

Social interaction can promote emergent literacy

Reading to children is one of the most effective paths to literacy

Language benefits of reading/being read to

Language and Literacy: Reading to Children*

Be a good role model by reading yourself and reading to your child

Provide varied reading material Encourage activities that require reading Establish a reading time Encourage children to write Ask an older child to read to a younger

sibling Establish a reading routine Encourage your child in all reading efforts*How can I improve my child’s reading? (1993) KidSource.org