Chapter 9 PREOPERATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 3 6 years of age preoperational stage of development Operational refers to the logical systems of thought which emerge in middle childhood By age 7 or 8 realize things such as horses are animals but not all animals are horses THE SYMBOLIC FUNCTION development End of second year of life as a major turning point in cognitive Deferred imitation children observe the behavior of a model and imitate that behavior when the model is no longer present For example after watching his parents use utensils to eat for several months a toddler makes his first spontaneous attempt to use a spoon Symbolic pretend play children pretend an object is something other than what it really is For instance child transforms doll into real person or pretends a wooden block is a boat Shifting context performing routine behaviors outside of their typical setting pretend to eat in a setting such as a kitchen For instance Lashonda and friends transformed an abandoned car into a kitchen and dining room Substituting objects children often substitute one object from another typically b age 3 4 they can transform any object into props needed for their pretend play episodes Substituting other agents for oneself act of how children use agents in their pretense When pretense first appears in the second year toddlers are their own pretense ex They pretend feed themselves 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 Sequencing and socialization of pretend episodes children coordinate such acts into sequences of increasing length and complexity through the preschool years Ex doctors give needles but do not milk cows Mental images internal representations of external objects or events Centration preschool age children tend to focus their attention on minute and often inconsequential aspects of their experience Ex Toddler doesn t remember anything about babysitter except bright colored earrings Pre concepts disorganized illogical representations of the child s experiences Ex Carlos went to the zoo and remembers relevant concepts to zoo such as the lion or raw meat but also irrelevant images such as his mother tearing her dress THE ADVENT OF PRECONCEPTS TRANSDUCTIVE REASONING THINKING WITH PRECONCEPTS Induction we derive general principles from particular examples Ex An 8 year old boy who observes that teachers have favored girls in past classes may induce the principle that girls are teacher s pets Deduction we use general principles to predict particular outcomes Ex The same child could use his general principle to deduce that when he enters his next grade hos new teacher will be likely to favor girls Transduction reasoning within the unsystematic collections of images which constitute their pre concepts When their reasoning is private and meaningful only within her preconception understanding of the story Egocentrism one of the major limitations of preoperational thoughts the child inability to conceptualize the perspective of other individuals Does not mean young children are selfish merely that they have difficulty seeing the world as others see it Three mountain problem Children between 4 and 12 years of age were shown a three dimensional model of a mountain scene Each mountain had its own unique color size and shape and a unique object a cross a snowcap or a tiny house on its peak Piaget asked each child to examine the model from different visual perspectives He then moved a doll to various vantage points around the model and asked the child to select a picture that represented the doll s point of view at each location Irreversibility the notion that preschoolers cannot mentally reverse their sequences of thought Ex When a three year old girl who has a sister is asked if she has a sister she will respond yes if she is asked if her sister has a sister she will typically respond no indicating that she is incapable of mentally reversing the concept of the relationship Another example is taking things apart not being able to put them together finding their way to a distant location but not finding their way back or climbing to the top of a structure and not being able to climb back down EGOCENTRISM IRREVERSIBILITY REASONING IN CONTENT DOMAINS CLASSIFICATION Classification tendency to group objects on the basis of particular sets of characteristics Ex Fruits vegetables Stage 1 children 5 years old and younger had no overall plan for sorting but produced graphic collections or pictures made with objects For instance a child might arrange several of the forms into a rectangle and refer to it as a house Stage 2 children 6 8 years sorted in a more organized way producing a series of collections of objects each based on a different dimension of similarity Piaget called these non graphic collections For example a child might first place all circles in one pile and all squares in another and then switch to a new dimension placing all large forms in one pile and all small forms in another Children were not able to classify on two dimensions simultaneously Stage 3 children later childhood to early adolescence understood the relationship the rule of class inclusion For instance working with a set of four toy cows and two monkeys children responded correctly when asked whether there were more cows or more animals showing that they understand that the larger class of animals includes the smaller subclass of cows Children at this stage successfully classified using multiple dimensions for example separating small red squares large from large blue circles Refers to 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 For example when a 3 year old tries to throw a ball he must try to estimate hoe much force is needed to project the ball a certain distance Conservation the notion that certain attributes of objects and events may remain unchanged despite transformations or changes in other attributes 1 1 correspondence the concept of number and generally described in Piaget s container of beans According to Piaget children s responses showed a consistent developmental trend Young preoperational children show no understanding of 1 1 correspondence responding only to the physical appearance of the rows if one row is spread out it is judged to have more beans if compressed
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