Exam 3 Chapters 9 10 11 13 Chapter 9 Cognitive Development in Early Childhood By age 2 children are speaking in two word utterances but still rely on action oriented schemas to solve problems Preoperational Stage Piaget refers to the period from 3 6 years old preoperational stage of development Operational refers to the logical system of thought which eventually emerge in middle school o Ex By age 7 or 8 most kids understand that while all horses are animals not all animals are horses o Addition is the opposite of subtraction Preoperational preschoolers are incapable of these advanced forms of reasoning 1 Symbolic Function during preoperational stage The ability to use symbols to represent or stand for perceived objects and events Major turning point in cognitive development end of 2nd year of life can reconstruct images when object isn t present Preschool age children 4 5 6 view their world with misconception cannot wrap their head around the image Haptics interaction involving touch Different forms of this function deferred imitation pretend play mental images and language A 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 o Children learn to imitate behavior only when it becomes adaptive to do so o The ability to defer imitation requires child to store and later retrieve information and the model s behavior from memory o Ex A 10 month old may imitate her father s use of a spoon several minutes after observing her father use the utensil The infant would not be expected to defer that imitation hours or days later without additional repetitions of the modeled behavior B Symbolic or Pretend Play children pretend that an object is something other than what it really is o Ex An 18 month old lifts an empty cup to his face pretends to drink licks his lips and then looks at his mother with a grin indicating that he didn t actually drink anything o An older kid would transform a doll into a real person or pretend that a wooden block is a boat sailing huge waves in the bathtub o Transforms any situation into an unlimited world of make believe Cognitive Skills needed to initiate sustain Pretend Play o Shifting Context 2 3 year old children typically require support from the play setting to initiate and sustain their pretense o Ex NOT SHIFT CONTEXT A toddler is more likely to pretend to eat in a setting such as a kitchen that in a back yard o Ex Older children are capable of shifting context performing routine behaviors outside of their typical setting LaShonda and her friends shifted context by transforming the abandoned car into a kitchen and dining room o Substituting Objects Children often substitute one object for another in their pretend play o 14 19 month toddlers act or pretense on realistic dolls with little use of unrealistic or ambiguous substitute objects such as blocks or sticks o During 3rd year of life children become increasingly able to transform virtually anything into props needed for their pretend play o Ex LaShonda using junk from the garbage as utensils and food items as well as imaginary guests a capacity that typically appears by age 3 or 4 o Substituting Other Agents for Oneself Early in the 2nd year toddlers are the agents of their own acts of pretense o Ex 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 o Later in the 2nd year children begin to use dolls in pretend play but only as passive agents o Ex A child may talk to the doll but does not imagine the doll talking back to them or to other dolls But by the 3rd year most children use the 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 roll in the pretense o Sequencing and Socialization of Pretend Episodes Although pretense begins with single acts children coordinate such acts into sequences of increasing length of complexity through preschool years o Ex A 2 year old s hair combing may extend into a 4 year olds sequenced grooming washing putting on makeup combing hair and dressing Such sequences also begin to incorporate behavior patterns i e doctors give needles they do not milk cows Police catch bad guys not clean houses The symbolic function is also expressed in the ability to form mental images internal representations of external objects or events Mental images free children from the here now enabling them to think about objects when the objects aren t physically there and to think about events before during and after their occurrence 2 Preconcepts during preoperational stage Centration preschool aged children tend to focus their attention on small and often inconsequential aspects of their experience o Ex A three year old may remember nothing about his babysitter other than her bright colored earrings o Bits pieces of information unsystematic sampling of centrated perceptions o Syncretism process where brain glues perception together o Centers picks up bits and pieces syncretism preconcepts o Collection of images derived from centrated perception merge into preconcepts disorganized illogical representations of the child s experiences Ex Carlos remembers certain things from the zoo like the lion and the big cage It also includes remembering things like how he ate popcorn and the color of her hat o Although preconcepts provide illogical less adequate representation of child s experiences it establishes a foundation for the eventual emergence of logical concepts in the subsequent of cognitive development Induction we derive general principles from particular examples Ex An 8 year old boy observes that teachers have favored girls in each of his classes might induce the general principle that girls are teacher s pets Ex All men are mortal Harold is a man Harold is moral Deductive we use general principles to predict particular outcomes Ex The boy uses general principal to deduce that when he enters his next grade his new teacher will likely favor girls Ex Harold is a grandfather Harold is bald All grandfathers are bald FALSE STATEMENT Piaget believes that preoperational children are incapable of thinking inductively or deductively Instead they think by transduction reasoning within the unsystematic collections of images which constitute
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