1 Preoperational Development Period from 3 6 years of age A The Symbolic Function Chapter 9 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 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 Substituting Other Agents for Oneself Beginning of 3rd year children use dolls as active agents doing own behaviors Sequencing and Socialization of Pretend Episodes Children coordinate acts into sequences of length and complexity through preschool cases when pretend play their increasing years Mental Images internal representations of external objects of B The Advent of Preconcepts events 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 perception merge 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 favor ex Same child could use his general principle to deduce that when he enters next grade his new teacher will likely girls Transduction Reasoning with the unsystematic collections of images which constitute their preconcepts private and meaningful only within her preconceptual understanding of the story D 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 examine doll to child to select at each location shape and unique object on its peak Asked each child to model from different visual perspectives Then moved a various vantage points around the model and asked picture that represented the doll s point of view 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 relationship F Reasoning in Content Domains 1 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 but produced graphic collections of pictures made with objects ex 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 so simultaneously Stage 3 later childhood to later adolescence Understood relationship rule of class inclusion ex with 4 cows and 2 monkeys children correct when asked whether there were more cows or more animals able to do size or row or appearance of understand larger class of animals includes smaller subclass of cows 2 Quantitative Reasoning The ability to estimate the amount of things and changes in amount of things in terms of number weight volume speed time and distance Conservation Notion that certain attributes of objects and events may remain unchanged despite transformations changes in other attributes preschoolers have difficulty with this ex the tall thin 1 1 Correspondence Young preoperational children showed no understanding of this responding only to physical glass beans Older children show some understanding of this but continue to be confused by superficial rows Not achieved until concrete operations 7 8 ages Concepts of Counting To give credit for ability to count child must be able 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 number refers to the fact that adults generally sense that appearances do not always reflect reality that people do not mean what they say intend what they do or feel implied by look on their face Children often appear confused by discrepancies between 3 Appearance and Reality necessarily emotions G Information Processing appearance and reality 1 Attention Children have trouble keeping attention and only have selective attention 2 Remembering Memory Strategies purposeful efforts to facilitate memory older most likely than younger to use this some ex Older children use rehearsal and organization Metacognition knowing how much you know and knowing how to improve your knowledge or performance on 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 grade 3 Theory of Mind humans develop this in which they use to explain and predict human behavior Mindreading cognitive process by which we attribute desires and beliefs to other individuals in order to explain and first mindreading takes place during early preschool years Deception their ability
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