Cognitive Language Development in Early Childhood Cognitive Development Lashonda listening to a complete story her mother read but changed the story when she was explaining it to her stuffed animal Piaget believed that these logical errors reflect the slow and difficult challenge for preschool children as they gradually learn to think symbolically Preoperational Development Preoperational stage of development what Piaget refers to as the period from 3 6 years of age Uses term operational to refer to the logical systems of though which eventually emerge in middle childhood Pre in preoperational describes that preschoolers are incapable of these advanced forms of reasoning Key Concepts and Principles of the Preoperational Stage of Development The Symbolic Function o The end of the second year of life is known as a major turning point in cognitive development marked by the advent of symbolic function o Symbolic function the ability to use symbols to represent or stand for perceived objects and events o Takes several distinct forms as child moves into 3rd year of life Deferred imitation Symbolic or pretend play Mental images Language o 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 This ability requires that the child store and later retrieve information about the model s behavior from memory Infants display deferred imitation only with brief delay after a behavior has been modeled As the brain matures children s ability to engage in deferred imitation is improved Advances in perception allow the infant to engage in a more detail study of the model s behavior Improvements in memory allow the child to retain the modeled behavior longer The model s behaviors that are not related to the model s specific goals are less likely to be imitated o Symbolic or Pretend Play what it really is Children pretend that an object is something other than Symbolic play transforms virtually any situation into an unlimited world of make believe for preschool children with extensive effects on their social and emotional development Pretend Skills Shifting Context Performing routine behaviors outside of their typical setting Two and three year old children typically require support from the play setting to initiate and sustain their pretense Older children are more capable of shifting context Substituting Objects Children often substitute one object for another in their pretend play During their 3rd year children become able to transform virtually any object into the props they need for their pretend play episodes and become less dependent on realistic props during the preschool years Substituting Other Agents for Oneself Early in the 2nd year toddlers are the agents of their own acts Later in the 2nd year children use dolls in pretend play as passive agents By beginning of the 3rd 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 Although pretense begins with single acts children coordinate such acts into sequences of increasing length and complexity through the preschool years o 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 For the 1st time the child can integrate experiences from the past and into the present to plan for the future o Language 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 Piaget believed in centration o Centration the process when preschool age children tend to focus their attention on minute and often inconsequential aspects of their experience o Centrated perception results in unsystematic samplings of isolated bits of information from any given experience Ex A 3 year old only remembering bright colored earrings when asked about his babysitter o Such collections of images derived from centrated perception merge into preconcepts o Preconcepts disorganized illogical representations of the child s experiences Ex Carlos s representation of his zoo trip o 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 Transductive Reasoning Thinking with Preconcepts o The disorganized and illogical nature of preconcepts severely limits the quality of preschool age children s reasoning and problem solving o We can understand the difficulty by comparing preoperational thought to the primary forms of logical though in older children and adults induction and deduction o Induction we derive general principles from particular Ex An 8 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 o Deduction we use general principles to predict particular examples 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 Egocentrism o Piaget believed that preoperational children are incapable of thinking inductively or deductively Instead they think by transduction o Transduction reasoning within the unsystematic collections of images which constitute their preconcepts Ex 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 o Trying to force your logic on a child is unlikely to succeed since preschoolers learn from natural corrective experiences In general provide lots of repetitive experience with real objects and events reduce complexity to bite size pieces and encourage exploration o According to Piaget one of the major limitations of preoperational thought is egocentrism o Egocentrism the child s inability to conceptualize the perspective of other individuals children have difficulty seeing the world as others see it o Effects of egocentrism on
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