CHD EXAM 3 STUDY GUIDE Chapter 9 Cognitive Development In The Preschool Years Piaget s Preoperational Stage of Development o Period from 3 6 years o Operational logical systems of thought in middle childhood Ex All horses are animals but not all animals are horses o Preoperational incapable of advanced forms of reasoning The Symbolic Function o 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 another o 14 19 months pretense on realistic dolls will little use of unrealistic substitute objects o 3rd year children able to transform any object into needed props o 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 mouth o Later in 2nd year child may use dolls in pretend play o 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 years o 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 Preconcepts o 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 Preconcepts o 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 pets o 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 girls o 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 Domains o 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 younger o No overall sorting plan o Graphic collections pictures made with objects o Child might arrange several of the forms into a rectangle and refer to it as a house Stage 2 children 6 8 o Sorted in a more organized way o Non graphic collections o 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 another o Children were not able to classify on two dimensions simultaneously Stage 3 later childhood to early adolescence o 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 animals o 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 environment o 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 Quantity specific amounts different shaped glasses Number o Critical point when children become aware that things exist in o Preschool children have difficulty with conservation ex Water in o 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 o Preschool children can conserve number if task is kept simple age 7 8 Counting o 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 as each is eventually assigned a number o 2 year olds engage in counting but assign numbers o 3 4 year olds begin to incorporate all 5 principles when counting unsystematically small numbers Information Processing children s use of attention
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