CHD EXAM 3 STUDY GUIDEChapter 9: Cognitive Development In The Preschool Years• Piaget’s Preoperational Stage of Developmento Period from 3-6 years o “Operational”= logical systems of thought in middle childhood Ex. All horses are animals, but not all animals are horseso “Preoperational”= incapable of advanced forms of reasoning• The Symbolic Functiono Piaget says end of 2nd year major turning point in development Marked by symbolic function (pretend play, mental images, etc.)• Deferred imitation: child observe behavior and imitate it at a later time when the model is no longer present• Symbolic/Pretend play: children pretend an object is something other than what it really is Distinct cognitive skills required to sustain pretend play • Shifting context: performing routine behaviors outside of their particular setting (ex. Transforming car into a kitchen) • Substituting objects: children substitute one object for anothero 14-19 months~ pretense on realistic dolls will little use of unrealistic substitute objectso 3rd year~ children able to transform any object into needed propso 3-4 years~ incorporation of imaginary guests • Substituting other agents for oneself: how children use agents in their pretense o Early in 2nd year, child may pretend to feed herself by bringing empty spoon to moutho Later in 2nd year, child may use dolls in pretend playo By 3rd year, use dolls as active agents with their own behaviors (doll becomes “human-like”) • Sequencing and socialization of pretend episodes: children coordinate acts into sequences of increasing length and complexity through the preschool yearso Ex. 2 year old combing hair may turn to 4 year old grooming sequence (washing, combing, dressing) o Incorporates behavior patterns for agents which reflect conventional roles (police catch bad guys, but do not clean)o Symbolic function also expressed in ability to form mental images, internal representations of the outside world o Deferred imitation, pretend play, and mental images express private, idiosyncratic meanings derived from personal experience The private and idiosyncratic nature of the symbolic function in young children limits their ability to communicate their thoughts to others, challenging caregivers' interpretive skills and patience.• The Advent of Preconceptso Preschool-age children focus their attention on minute and inconsequential aspects of their experience, known as centration Child may remember nothing about babysitter except her big earrings Results in unsystematic sampling Collections of images derived from centrated perception merge into preconcepts: illogical representations of child’s experiences • Less than adequate but establish foundation for emergence of logical concepts • Transductive Reasoning: Thinking With Preconceptso In induction, general principles are derived from particular ideas Ex. An 8 year old boy who observes that a teacher favors girls in his class may induce the general principle that girls are teacher’s petso In deduction, general principles are used to predict particular outcomes Ex. The same child above could use his general principle to deduce that when he enters his next grade, his new teacher will be likely to favor girlso Piaget says preoperational children think by transduction, reasoning within the unsystematic collections of images which constitute their preconcepts Lashonda believed that Little Red Riding Hood took the fine red hat from the wolf because he had been "so bad." Her logic is transductive: private and meaningful only within her preconceptual understanding of the story• Egocentrism: major limitation in preoperational thought is child’s inability to take the perspective of another child• Irreversibility: notion that preschoolers cannot mentally reverse their transductive sequence of thought o Ex. Girl can tell you how she walked to school, but has trouble retracing her steps• Reasoning In Specific Content Domainso Classification Tendency to group objects based on similarities Adult classification systems organized on basis of class inclusion, a class must be smaller than any more inclusive class in which it is contained• Ex. Adults know that all dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs Piaget’s 3 stage developmental progression:• Stage 1- children 5 and youngero No overall sorting plano Graphic collections, pictures made with objectso Child might arrange several of the forms into a rectangle and refer to it as a house• Stage 2- children 6-8o Sorted in a more organized wayo Non-graphic collectionso Child might first place all circles in one pile, all squares in another, then switch to all large forms in one pile and all small forms in anothero Children were not able to classify on two dimensions simultaneously• Stage 3- later childhood to early adolescenceo Understood class inclusion Ex. Working with a set of four toy cows and two monkeys, children could answer if there were more cows or more animalso Successfully classified using multiple dimensions- separating on basis of color There is evidence that children begin to spontaneously sort objects into different categories by the end of the second year of life Language labels are one of the important elements in a child’s emerging ability to classify objects in the environmento Quantitative reasoning The ability to estimate the amount of things and changes in the amount of things in terms of numbers, size, weight, etc. • Ex. When 3 year old throws ball, must estimate force needed to project the ball a certain distance • Quantityo Critical point when children become aware that things exist in specific amounts o Preschool children have difficulty with conservation (ex. Water in different shaped glasses)• Numbero Young preoperational children show no understanding of 1:1 correspondence (if one row spread out, more in row)o Conservation of numbers not achieved until concrete operations, age 7-8o Preschool children can conserve number if task is kept simple• Countingo Five principles One to One: no item should be counted more than once, only one number assigned to each item Stable Order: number names must be in stable, repeatable order Cardinal: final number in a sequence gives the total number of items listed Abstraction: virtually anything can be counted Order-Irrelevance: order in which objects are counted is irrelevant—as long
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