Chapter 9 Cognitive and language development in early childhood By end of preschool years most children engage easily in conversation and thinking is beginning to approximate the logic we see in adult thought Logical errors in children when relating to stories Piaget believed these errors reflect the slow and difficult challenge for preschool children as they gradually learn to think symbolically Preoperational stage of development piagets stage from 3 6 years Operational refers to the logical systems of thought that emerge in middle school like addition is reverse of subtraction Symbolic function Symbolic function ability to use symbols to represent objects and events Deferred imitation imitate the behavior of a model when the model isn t present Like watching a parent use a spoon for several months will eventually try to use one on his own Symbolic or pretend play make believe for preschool children has pervasive effects on their social and emotional development Different skills required for this o Shifting context performing routine behaviors outside the typical setting More likely to do this as children get older Like pretend to eat in backyard vs kitchen o Substituting objects 14 19 mo Act out pretense of realistic dolls During 3rd year they can transform virtually any object into the props needed for their pretend play episodes Imaginary guests appear at age 3 or 4 usually o Substituting other agents for oneself beings using their own acts like pretending to feed themselves with an empty spoon In 2nd year begin to use dolls etc and talk to them but don t imagine them talking back By 3rd year most use dolls as active agents and imagine them talking running etc o Sequencing and socialization of pretend episodes make sequences increasing length and complexity through preschool years Also associate roles with behavior patterns like nurses give shots not milk cows Mental images internal representations of external objects or events Can imagine objects when they aren t there These 3 forms express meanings from personal experience Preconcepts Centration focus attention on minute and often inconsequential aspects of an experience Like don t remember your babysitter just her shirt color Preconcepts collection of images from centrated perception Disorganized illogical representation of childs experiences Induction derive general principles from particular examples 8 yr old notices his teachers favor girls thinks girls are teachers pets Deduction use general principles to predict particular outcomes same child will deduce that in his next grade the teacher will be likely to favor girls Preoperational children incapable of thinking inductively or deductively Think by transduction Transduction reasoning within the unsystematic collections of images which constitute their preconcepts Only meaningful to her preconceptual understanding Limitations of preoperational thought Egocentrism inability of child to conceptualize perspective of other individuals Major limitation Only see their perspective Irreversibility cannot reverse their transductive sequences of a thought Explains why they can take things apart but not put back together or climb up but not down Classification tendency to group objects on basis of particular sets of characteristics o Class inclusion adult classification systems All dogs are animals not o Stage 1 5 and younger had not plan for sorting Produced graphic all animals are dogs collections o Stage 2 6 8 yo Producing a series of collections of objects based on a similarity Non graphic collections Circles then squares Then switch to large and small o Stage 3 late childhood early adolescence classify using multiple dimensions like monkeys are animals but animals aren t monkeys Language labels are one of the most important elements in a child s emerging ability to classify objects in the environment o Quantitative reasoning deals with estimating in terms of size weight volume speed time distance How hard should I throw the ball to go this distance o Quantity when children can be aware that things in nature exist in specific amounts Thinking taller thinner glass has more water o Number seeing a 1 1 ratio even when things are more spread out or compressed Preoperational children thing more compressed has less o Counting must be able to use the 5 principles 1 1 principle no item counted more than once and no number used more than once Stable order principle number names in a stable repeatable order Cardinal principle final number in sequence gives the total number of items Usually preschool follow this up to 19 items Abstraction principle virtually anything can be counted tangibles like objects and events intangibles like ideas values Order irrelevance principle the order the objects are counted is irrelevant Most children can do this accurately to 20 30 by first grade Appearance and reality young children appear confused by discrepancies between appearance and reality like a pet changes from black to white from getting flour spilled on it doesn t think it s the same one Information processing children s use of attention and memory to gain and retain info about their environment and use of that info to solve problems o Attention o Remembering short term memory storage component w capacity for retaining info up to 20 seconds Any longer needs to be long term memory Rehearsal and organization older children more likely to use these Metacognition older children more able to do this also conceptualize their own cognitive processes Knowing how much you know and knowing how to improve your knowledge o Theory of mind how we explain and predict human behavior Mindreading cognitive process which we attribute desires and beliefs to other individuals in order to explain and predict their behavior Begins early preschool years Deception ability to generate false beliefs in other individuals Deceiving others Language Development Preschoolers learn up to 9 new words a day Wh words like what where when which why are a common sequence of words for preschoolers Understand big small before tall short etc Grammar system of rules that structures how to combine words into meaningful sequences Flavell suggested that young children approach this learning as if they expect the language to be governed by rules Grammatical morphemes ing ed s that modify nouns verbs and adjectives Morpheme is smallest unit of meaning in a language Over regularize once preschoolers learn a rule they over do it she
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