CHD2220 FINAL EXAM Chapter 9 Cognitive and Language Development in Early Childhood By the end of the preschool years most children are engaging in conversation and their logic is beginning to start Cognitive Development In the Preschool Years This part of the chapter refers to a story of a baby Lashonda who read the story of little red riding hood to her stuffed animal and did it by memorization 2 years earlier Lashonda could not listen to her mother tell a story however now at age 4 she can listen to a story and relate it back to it Although she can remember parts of the story her rendition is filled with errors content and logic Piaget believed that these logical errors reflect the slow and difficult challenge for preschool children as they gradually learn to think symbolically Piaget s Preoperational Stage of Development o Preoperational stage of development 3 6 years of age o Operational Piaget uses this term to refer to the logical systems of thought which emerge from middle childhood ages 7 8 most children can understand reverse subtraction and things like all horses are animals but not all animals are horses o Preoperational Piaget uses this term to refer to the period when preschoolers are incapable of these advanced forms of reasoning Shifting Context Deferred Imitation Symbolic or Pretend Play Symbolic Function Piaget identified the end of second year as a major turning point in cognitive the ability to children pretend that an object is something other performing routine behaviors outside of their typical Children observe the behavior of a model and imitate development and marked by the arrival of symbolic function use symbols to represent or stand for perceived objects and events that behavior when the model is no longer present than what it really is Ex lifting a cup to his mouth and licking his lips then grinning at his mother indicates that he knows he didn t really drink setting Ex 2 3 year olds will typically pretend to eat in a kitchen like setting than in the backyard however older children are capable of turning the abandoned car into a dining room dolls 3rd year can transform any object into the props they need the second year toddlers are the agents of their own acts of pretense For instance a child may pretend to feed herself by bringing an empty spoon to her mouth or pretend to go to sleep by putting her head down on a table Later in the second year children begin to use dolls in pretend play but only as passive agents For example the child may talk to the doll but does not imagine the doll talking back to the child or to other dolls By the beginning of the third year most children use dolls as active agents pretending that dolls initiate and sustain their own behavior as in talking running or playing with other dolls 14 19 month old toddlers act out pretense on realistic When pretense first appears early in Substituting Other Agents of Oneself Substituting Objects CHD2220 FINAL EXAM Sequencing and Socialization of Pretend Episodes begins with single acts children coordinate such acts into sequences of increasing length and complexity through the preschool years Internal representations of external objects or events Although pretense Mental Images Preconcepts Centration Piaget believed that preschool age children tend to focus their attention on minute and often inconsequential aspects of their experiences Ex a 3 year old may not remember anything about the baby sitter except that she had blue earrings Piaget suggested that such collection of images derived from centrated perception merge into Preconcepts representations of the child s experiences Although preconcepts provide a less than adequate representation of children s experiences they do establish a foundation for the eventual emergence of logical concepts in the subsequent stage of cognitive development which are disorganized illogical Transduction Thinking with Preconcepts Deduction we derive general principles from particular examples Ex A boy Induction who observes that a teacher favored girls may induce the general principle that girls are teacher s pets boy may think that next year his teacher will favor girls again inductively or deductively but instead they reason within the unsystematic collections of images which constitute their preconcepts Piaget believes that preoperational children do no think We use general principles to predict particular outcomes Ex The Transduction Egocentricity Irreversibility the child s inability to conceptualize the perspective of other individuals Children have difficulty seeing the world as others see it preschoolers cannot mentally reverse their transductive Irreversibility sequences of thought Ex when a preschooler is asked if she has a sister she will answer yes but when asked if her sister has a sister she will answer no Domains Piaget s preoperational stage has described the centrated egocentric transductive and irreversible qualities of preoperational thought We will examine how these limitations affect children s reasoning in specific content domains classification quantity and appearance reality tendency to group objects on the basis of particular set of Classification Classification characteristics is how adult classifications systems are organized on this Class Inclusion basis a class must be smaller than any more inclusive class in which it is contained Piaget studied this behavior and asked children to sort geometric forms that varied on two or more dimensions such as size shape and color He found a 3 stage developmental progression CHD2220 FINAL EXAM Stage 1 Stage 2 Children 6 8 years old sorted in a more organized way using Children 5 years old have no plan of sorting the objects but produced Graphic Collections which are pictures made with objects Ex the child arranged the forms into a house Non graphic collections producing a series of collections of objects each based on a different dimension of similarity Ex A child might first place all the circles together and then all the squares together however they will then switch to another dimension by placing all the big objects in a pile classified using multiple dimensions Children early adolescence at this stage successfully Stage 3 Although Piaget helped us create this idea there is evidence now that says that children begin to spontaneously sort objects by the end of their second year Quantity Quantitative reasoning and changes in the amounts of things in terms of number size weight volume
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