CHD2220 Exam 3 Lecture and Etext notes Murray Krantz Chapters 9 10 12 13 Chapter 9 Cognitive and Language Development in Early Childhood Preoperational Stage of development Piaget uses operational to refer to logical systems of thought that eventually Preschoolers are incapable of logical thought systems hence the term emerge in middle childhood preoperational Symbolic Function ability to use symbols to represent or stand for perceived objects and events and is a major turning point in cognitive development Takes several forms o Deferred Imitation children observe the behavior of a model and imitate that behavior after a delay or when the model is not present Requires storage and retrieval from memory o Symbolic pretend play pretending that an object is something other than it really is Pretend skills course of development Shifting context 2 and 3 yr old children require support from play setting to initiate and sustain their pretense Pretending to eat in a kitchen then shifting to dinner in back yard as pretend play matures Substituting Objects children substitute one object for another in their pretend play By age 3 they can transform any object into the props they need for their play Substituting other agents for Oneself Children gradually use objects like dolls as agents in their pretend play As the grow older the objects take a more active role until they become their own agent and child gives them human like qualities and has conversations with them Sequencing and Socialization of Pretend Episodes children coordinate acts of pretense into sequences of increasing length and complexity throughout preschool years Hair combing may sequence into complete grooming of pretend object Mental images are another way in which symbolic function is expressed They account for mental representations of external objects or events Enables children to think about things when they aren t present Centration Piaget s notion that preschool aged children tend to focus their attention on minute and inconsequential aspects of their experience Notice popcorn at a zoo but fail to remember important aspects of the event Syncretism process by which bits and pieces of information and experience come together to form the pre concept Pre school kids are fun because they are goofy which is usually based on syncretic processes which are unorganized and self centered Pre concepts disorganized illogical representations of child s experiences It is derived from a centrated perception More logic begins working into the pre concept of the mind and usually has a lot to do with experience Pre conceptual understanding of everything One of the most important pre concept is that of the self The first concept of the self is the self pre concept Start systematically recording information they see in their world Transductive reasoning reasoning within their pre concepts private and meaningful only within pre conceptual understanding This type of reasoning usually has a good amount of illogical reasoning and is poorly organized because the pre concepts are imperfect representations of the world Can only reason with snap shots of experiences Preoperational children use this type of reasoning since they can t use inductive or deductive reasoning Induction derive general principles from specific examples Deduction Use general principles to predict particular outcomes o Preoperational children are unable to use both of these Egocentrism inability to conceptualize the perspective of other people They think everyone sees the world as they do Three mountain problem Piaget s experiments with children between 4 and 12 who were shown a 3 D model of a mountain scene They were each asked to observe the model from their perspective and were then asked to describe the doll s point of view from different angles Used to illustrate Egocentrism Children under 8 demonstrated egocentrism later research shoes non egocentric behaviors in children as young as 3 Irreversibility preschoolers cannot mentally reverse their transductive sequences of thought be able to recognize they have a sister but not that their sister has a sister Limitations that affect child s reasoning Classification tendency to group objects on basis of particular sets of characteristics These characteristics don t follow adult logic but have inherent logic to child Includes 3 stages of developmental progression o Stage 1 6 children have no overall plan for sorting and engage in spontaneous organization o Stage 2 6 8 sorting is more organized and produces collection of objects based on different dimensions of similarity but cannot focus on more than one dimension at a time organize items by shape then size o Stage 3 understand class inclusion Understand that a dog is an animal but not all animals are dogs and can organize using different dimensions simultaneously Quantitative Reasoning ability to estimate the amount of things and changes in amounts of things in terms of number Conservation Certain attributes of objects and events may remain unchanged despite transformations or changes in the way they are presented Concept of Quantity 1 1 Correspondence Concept of Number in which children respond to physical appearance of how things are arranged and ignore the number 2 rows of equal amounts of quarters arranged in a row one spaced out more than the other the one that is spaced out more will appear to have more quarters than the row that is closer together Concepts of Counting o 1 1 Principle one single number must be assigned to each item No item can be counted or used more than once Most preschool children make more errors as number grows o Stable order principle number names must be assigned in stable repeatable order Some children have their own organization system that they can maintain as long as it stays in the same order o Cardinal Principle final number in a counting sequence gives total number of items Children can usually follow this up to 19 items o Abstraction Principle anything can be counted When young children play w number sequences they count any set of objects they encounter o Order irrelevance principle the order that objects are counted is irrelevant as long as each item is eventually given a number 3 and 4 year old children incorporate all 5 principles when counting small numbers of objects and are able to use larger numbers towards the end of preschool years Distinguishing appearance and reality Young children cannot understand discrepancies between
View Full Document
Unlocking...