Test 3 Study Guide Chapter 8 Cognitive Development in Early Childhood Thinking in early childhood is a mixture of impressive accomplishments and surprising shortcomings o Children learn thousands of words during this period an average of 10 new words per day Piaget s Theory The Preoperational Period o Piaget identified the second stage of cognitive development as the preoperational period ages 2 7 Period during which children acquire a mental storehouse of images and symbols especially spoken and written words o Preoperational thinking is organized differently than cognition in earlier and later stages More than a quantitative change Also a qualitative change o Accomplishments of the Preoperational Period Children are able to re present previous experiences to themselves mentally Symbolic representations may take the form of internalized activities images or words Language is one of the clearest examples Children s vocabularies expand dramatically as does their ability to combine words into original sentences Make believe play is another example Pretend play make believe play in which common objects are often used to symbolize other objects Piaget believed deferred imitation reproducing a series of actions that the child has seen at a previous time is a sign that the child is moving from action to symbols Out of sight is not out of mind o Gaps in Preoperational Thinking Language and pretend play indicate that a preoperational child is a symbolic thinker but s he cannot according to Piaget reason logically Thinking does not yet include logical operations Reversibility requires an understanding that relations can be returned to their original state by reversing operations if nothing has been added or taken away Classification ability to divide or sort objects into different sets and subsets and to consider their interrelationships Conservation the understanding that characteristics of objects do not change despite changes in the form or appearance when nothing is added or taken away Appearance trumps logic in early childhood one dimensional thinking Preoperational child is pre logical Egocentrism a child s inability to see other people s viewpoints Animism the belief that inanimate objects are alive and have thoughts feelings and motives like humans o Can Parents and Teachers Accelerate Logical Thinking in Preschoolers Piaget believed that the development of logical thinking is a natural outgrowth of everyday opportunities to observe and manipulate objects and materials Stressed the importance of independent discoveries Interactions with other children promote cognitive development Beyond Piaget o Contemporary Challenges to Piaget s Theory o Theory of Mind Stages of development are not as clear cut as Piaget believed Cognitive development better described as a series of overlapping waves than as discrete and distinctly different periods Young children understand more than Piaget credited them for Preschoolers aren t as consistently deceived by appearances as Piaget suggested The ability to attribute mental state beliefs desires knowledge to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs desires and intentions that are different from one s own Young children aren t always egocentric like when talking to babies Three year olds can distinguish between real and pretend events 4 years is considered a watershed in the development on theory of mind False belief task MnMs in a crayon box What cases children to begin developing a theory of mind Cognitive and language abilities Experiences with adults and other children Judy Dunn proposed that interactions between siblings may be a particularly fertile ground for the development of social understanding and the theory of mind o Symbol Referent Relations Symbol any entity that stands for something other than itself according to Judy DeLoache Object similarity test with Terry in model room observation room Vygotsky s Sociocultural Theory o Vygotsky saw the child as embedded in a social context and focused on what s he could do with the assistance of adults older more skilled children o Cognitive development as the result of collaboration in a particular Sociocultural setting Continuous not distinct stages o Zone of Proximal Development ZPD the gap between what a child can do alone and what a child can do with assistance Skills ideas and understandings that are just beyond a child s reach Scaffolding providing learning opportunities materials hints and clues when a child has difficulty with a task Vygotsky saw pretend play as another ZPD o Guided Participation o Language and Thought The guided ways children learn their society s values and practices through participation in family and community activities Ex when adults laugh praise or place shame on a child s activity Emulating adults is one way children actively seek knowledge and skills Piaget believed that the development of thought preceded language we think before we communicate Vygotsky argued that thought and language develop together The child s first attempts to speak are efforts to maintain social contact Social speech is important at this stage Inner speech self directed talk that has become internalized facilitates problem solving Children talk aloud to themselves beginning around age 3 or 4 in an effort to organize their thoughts Information Processing in Early Childhood o Deals with basic questions about how people acquire encode store and use information o Analogy brain is similar to a computer Brains acquire and select information store and retrieve information and use information to cope with the present situation or plan for the future o Being able to focus selectively on specific information and then being able to store and retrieve that information are essential to all types of learning o Attention o Memory The process of focusing on particular information while ignoring other information Classic measure of attention is the CPT Continuous Performance Task a laboratory task designed to assess attentiveness and impulsivity by pushing a button when a specific object appears on the computer screen Attention is measured by how many times the child correctly pushes the button Impulsivity is measured by how often the child incorrectly pushes the button Attention increases and impulsivity decreases throughout childhood Improvements in attention are linked to the maturation of the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia Sensory memory a subconscious process of picking up