CHD2220 Final 04 22 2013 Piaget 1962m 1970 believed that these logical errors reflect the slow and difficult challenge for preschool children as they gradually learn to think symbolically Children can be read the story numerous times and their rendition can still be filled with errors of content and logic Piaget refers to the period from 3 6 years of age as the preoperational stage of development He uses the term operational to refer to the logical systems of thought which emerge in middle childhood Incapable of advanced forms of reasoning after age 6 then the child will be able to o By age 7 8 children understand that all horses are animals but not all animals are horse o Understand that addition is the reverse of subtraction Piaget identified the end of the second year of life as a major turning point in cognitive development marked by the advent of symbolic function Symbolic function ability to use symbols to represent or stand for perceived objects and events Takes several forms as child moves into 3rd year o Deferred imitation observe behavior of a model imitate that behavior when model is no longer present over relatively long periods of time imitating behavior only when adaptive to do so o Symbolic or pretend play pretend that an object is something other than what it really is tea party with fake food drinks unlimited world of make believe for children Shifting context performing routine behaviors outside of their typical setting transforms abandoned car into kitchen mentally Substituting objects turn any objects into props they need for their episodes and become progressively less dependent on realistic props during preschool years o Mental images internal representations of external objects or events enable child to think of things when they are not physically present Piaget believed that preschool age children tend to focus their attention on minute and often inconsequential aspects of their experience a process he referred to as centration Collections of images derived from centrated perceptions merge into preconcepts disorganized illogical representations of the child s experience they may be relevant to topic but don t all fit together in one thought sequentially bits and pieces of the thought According to Piaget the disorganized and illogical nature of preconcepts severely limits the quality of preschool age children s reasoning and problem solving Preoperational children are incapable of thinking inductively deductively instead they think transductively o Induction we derive general principles from particular examples an 8 yr old who saw that teachers favor girls in his class may induce that girls are teachers pets o Deduction general principles to predict particular outcomes the same child could use the general principle that when he enters his next grade that the new teacher will be likely to favor girls o Transductive reasoning within the unsystematic collections of images which constitute their preconcepts Dealing with this work through sequences of events and show which one comes first understand her perspective then show her yours provide repetitive experience with real objects and events reduce complexity to bite size pieces encourage exploration One of the major limitations of preoperational thought is the child s inability to conceptualize the perspective of other individuals egocentrism Ages 4 12 were shown 3 D model of mountain scene and asked child to examine it from different visual perspectives children under 8 years old consistently identified their own views as that of the doll instead of recognizing that every time the doll moved there was a new perspective that is different than their own Second Limitation is irreversibility the notion that preschoolers cannot mentally reverse their transductive sequences of thought Difficult retracing paths cant put things back together once they ve taken them apart find their way to distant locations but cant find their way back climbing to the stop of structures but cant get down Limitations can affect children s reasoning in specific content domains Classification tendency to group objects on the basis of particular sets of characteristics o Adults classify based on class inclusion class must be smaller than any more inclusive class in which it is contained indoor outdoor fruits vegetables automobiles airplanes o Principles younger kids use to spontaneously classify objects Is different from adults Piaget found a three stage developmental progression Stage 1 children 5 years and younger has no overall plan for sorting but produced graphic collections pictures made with objects put all rectangles together and call it a house Stage 2 children 6 8 years sorted more organized producing a series of collections of objects each based on a different dimension of objects non graphic collections put separate all circles and squares then sort those by size but couldn t do this simultaneously Stage 3 children 9 early adolescence understand the relationship the rule of class inclusion successfully classify using multiple dimensions if they have 4 cows and 2 monkeys they understand that there are more animals than there are cows o Systematic classification happened earlier than Piaget originally thought evidence that children begin to spontaneously sort objects into different categories by the end of the second year Quantitative Reasoning the ability to estimate the amount of things and changes in the amounts of things in terms of number size weight volume speed time and distance o When a 3 year old throws a ball he needs to estimate how much force Is needed to project a ball a certain distance o Quantitative reason is reached when children become aware that things in nature exist in specific amounts and only change when you add subtract Quantity In Piaget s work on conservation certain attributes of objects and events may remain unchanged despite transformations or changes in other attributes Number young preoperational children showed no understanding of 1 1 correspondence responding only to the physical appearance of the rows if one row was spread out it was judged to have more beans if it was compressed then it was thought to have less beans slightly older children show some understand of 1 1 correspondence but continue to be confused by the superficial appearance of rows its not achieved until the stage of concrete operations at 7 8 years old Counting must be able to systematically assign numbers to items in an
View Full Document
Unlocking...