Chapter 91. Preoperational Development:-Period from 3-6 years of age.A. The Symbolic Function-During the second year of life-The ability to use symbols to represent or stand from perceived objects and events-Takes several distinct forms as child moves into 3rd year:-Deferred Imitation: Children observe the behavior of a model and imitate that behavior after a delay and in some cases when the model is no longer present.-Symbolic or Pretend Play: children pretend that an object is something other than what it really is.-Shifting Context: 2-3 year old children require support from the play setting to initiate and sustain their pretense. -older children can shift their context better-Substituting Objects: During 3rd year children can transform any object into props needed to pretend play-Substituting Other Agents for Oneself: Beginning of 3rd year, children use dolls as active agents; doing their own behaviors.-Sequencing and Socialization of Pretend Episodes: Children coordinate acts into sequences of increasing length and complexity through preschool years-Mental Images: internal representations of external objects of eventsB. The Advent of Preconcepts:-Centration: Preschool-age children focus their attention on minute and often inconsequential aspects of their experience-ex: 3 year old only remembers bright-colored earrings about his babysitter-Preconcepts: collections of images derived from centrated perceptionmerge into this-disorganized, illogical representations of the child’s experiences C. Transductive Reasoning: Thinking with Preconcepts:-Induction: We derive general principles from particular examples-ex: boy observes that teachers have favored girls in his classes, might induce general principle that girls are teacher’s pets-Deduction: We use general principles to predict particular outcomes-ex: Same child could use his general principle to deduce that when he enters next grade, his new teacher will likely favor girls-Transduction: Reasoning with the unsystematic collections of images which constitute their preconcepts-private and meaningful only within her preconceptual understanding of the storyD. Egocentrism: Child’s inability to conceptualize the perspective of other individuals -They have difficulty seeing the world as others see it-Three-mountain Problem: children 4-12 were shown 3-dimensional model of a mountain scene. Each mountain had unique color, size, and shape and unique object on its peak. Asked each child toexamine model from different visual perspectives. Then moved a doll to various vantage points around the model and asked child to select picture that represented the doll’s point of view at each location.-Reported that children under 8 identified their own views as that of the doll. (egocentrism)E. Irreversibility: Notion that preschoolers cannot mentally reverse their transductive sequences of thought.-ex: 3 year old who has sister is asked if she has a sister- will answer yes. If asked if her sister has a sister- will answer no. -incapable of mentally reversing concept of relationshipF. Reasoning in Content Domains1. Classification: Tendency to group objects on the basis of particular sets of characteristics-ex: Adults maintain distinct categories for fruits and veggies, indoor and outdoor sports, etc… -Three-stage developmental progression:-Stage 1: (5 and younger) no overall plan for sorting, butproduced graphic collections of pictures made with objectsex: arrange several forms into rectangle, refer as house-Stage 2: (6-8) sorted more organized, producing series of collections based on different dimensions of similarity- (Non-graphic collections)-ex: Place all squares and circles in two piles, then sort between large and small. Not able to do so simultaneously-Stage 3 (later childhood to later adolescence) Understood relationship rule of class inclusion-ex: with 4 cows and 2 monkeys, children correctwhen asked whether there were more cows or more animals.-understand larger class of animals includes smaller subclass of cows2. Quantitative Reasoning: The ability to estimate the amount of things and changes in amount of things in terms of number, size, weight, volume, speed, time and distance-Conservation: Notion that certain attributes of objects and events may remain unchanged, despite transformations or changes in other attributes-preschoolers have difficulty with this, ex: the tall, thin glass-1:1 Correspondence: Young preoperational children showed no understanding of this, responding only to physical row or beans-Older children show some understanding of this, but continue to be confused by superficial appearance of rows-Not achieved until concrete operations 7-8 ages-Concepts of Counting: To give credit for ability to count, child must beable to systematically assign numbers to items in array using following 5 principles:-One-to-One Principle: No item should be counted more than once and no number used more than once-Stable-Order Principle: Number names must be assigned in a stable, repeatable order-Cardinal Principle: Final number in a counting sequence gives total number of items in the array-Preschool children follow this up to 19 items-Abstraction Principle: Virtually anything can be counted-Order-irrelevance Principle: Order in which objects are counted is irrelevant-ex: child counting animals in room, bear could be counted 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, as long as it eventually is assigned a number3. Appearance and Reality:-refers to the fact that adults generally sense that appearances do not always reflect reality, that people do not necessarily mean what they say, intend what they do, or feel emotions implied by look on their face-Children often appear confused by discrepancies between appearance and realityG. Information Processing:1. Attention: Children have trouble keeping attention and only have selective attention.2. Remembering (Memory): -Strategies: purposeful efforts to facilitate memory (older mostlikely than younger to use this)-ex: Older children use rehearsal and organization-Metacognition: knowing how much you know and knowing how to improve your knowledge or performance on some mental task-Older children can better conceptualize their own cognitive processes than younger-Young children’s skills in this began to show improvement around time they attend 1st grade3. Theory of Mind: humans develop this in which they use to explain and predict human behavior-Mindreading: cognitive process by which we
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