Exam III Chapter 9 10 12 13 CHD 2220 Chapter 9 Cognitive and Language Development in Early Childhood Cognitive Development Piaget believed that logical and content errors reflect the slow and difficult challenge for preschool children as they gradually learn to think symbolically I Preoperational Stage of Development the period of development 3 6 years old where the brain works in a certain way of symbolic reasoning where a child experiences cognitive limitations and illogical ways of thinking such as sequences of events getting out of order Central problem the way they perceive the world Symbolic reasoning a new capability in the brain that generates mental symbols or images that stand for objects events and actions that take place within the real world A child can now picture things that aren t in view at that particular moment by the ability to create concepts in their mind by tracing and studying specific objects 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 Perception to actively seek information Centration the concept of only being able to focus on small detail Example a three year old may remember nothing about his babysitter other than her bright colored earrings Pre concepts disorganized illogical representations of the child s experiences Example A child remembers her experience at the zoo by seeing all the animals but also included irrelevant images of the visitors and unique events associated with his family s experience Types of Symbolic Reasoning 1 Deferred imitation children observe the behavior of a model and imitate that behavior after a delay and in some cases when the model is no longer present Example A ten month old may imitate her father s use of a spoon several minutes after observing her father s use of a utensil The infant would not be expected to defer that imitation hours or days later without additional repetitions of the modeled behavior 2 Symbolic or pretend play children pretend that an object is something other than what it really is Example a child transforms a doll into a real person or pretends that a wooden block is a boat sailing the treacherous waters of the bathtub 3 Mental images internal representations of external objects or events Mental images free children from the here and now enabling them to think about objects when the objects are not physically present and to think about events before during and after their occurrence Pretend Skills 1 Shifting Context Two and three year old children typically require support from the play setting to initiate and sustain their pretense Example transforming the abandoned car into a kitchen and dining room 2 Substituting Objects Children often substitute one object for another in their pretend play During their third year children become increasing able to transform virtually any object into the props needed for their pretend play episodes and they become progressively less dependent on realistic props during the preschool years Example substituting an assortment of ambiguous pieces of junk for the utensils and food items necessary for play Also by incorporating imaginary guests at dinner a capacity that typically appears by age 3 or 4 3 Substituting Other Agents for Oneself When pretense first appears early in the second year toddlers are the agents of their own acts of pretense Example 1 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 Example 2 Later in the second year children begin to use dolls in pretend play but only as passive agents The child may talk to the doll but does not imagine the doll talking back to the child or to other dolls Example 3 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 When the doll becomes its own agent the child pulls the strings as the doll assumes a human like or sometimes super human like role in the pretense 4 Sequencing and Socialization of Pretend Episodes Although pretense begins with single acts children coordinate such acts into sequences of increasing length and complexity through the preschool years Example a 2 year old s hair combing may expand into the 4 year old s sequenced grooming washing putting on makeup combing hair and dressing Example 2 the police are expected to catch crooks but not to perform housecleaning tasks Transductive Reasoning Thinking with pre concepts Induction to derive general principles from particular examples Example An eight year old boy who observes that teachers have favored girls in each of his classes might induce the general principle that girls are teacher s pets Deduction we use general principles to predict particular outcomes Example The same child could use his general principle to deduce that when he enters his next grade his new teacher will be likely to favor girls Transduction reasoning within the unsystematic collections of images which constitute their preconcepts Piaget believed that preoperational children are incapable of thinking inductively or deductively Example 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 the inability to take another perspective of something else and the inability to see the world through someone else s eyes from hidden angles that cannot be visually seen The Three Mountain Problem Piaget s experiment 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 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 Piaget reported that children under eight years of age consistently identified their own view as that of the doll a clear demonstration of egocentrism Irreversibility the notion that preschoolers cannot mentally reverse their transductive sequences of thought Example when a three year old girl who has a sister is asked
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