C H D 2 2 2 0 E x a m 3 P a g e 1 CHAPTER 9 COGNITIVE AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD Preoperational Stage 2 6 years of age o Preschoolers are incapable of advanced forms of reasoning o Very slow and long stage o Primitive imagination starts don t get the big picture Child can recreate images in mind and will gradually get stronger pictures as get more visual and hands on experience o Symbolic Function ability to use mental symbols to represent or stand for perceived objects or events Can premeditate and think before they act Deferred imitation child observes behavior and imitates it after the model is no longer present Symbolic or pretend play child pretends that an object is something other than what it really is ex pretending a doll is a real person Shifting context ability to perform routine behaviors outside of their typical setting o Abandoned car into kitchen dining room Substituting objects substitute one object for another in pretend play child become progressively less dependent on realistic props during the preschool years o Junk items into plates food utensils etc Substituting other agents for oneself 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 the table Sequencing and socialization of pretend play coordinate acts into sequences of increasing length and complexity o Comb hair into washing putting on makeup combing hair dressing etc o Also police catch criminals but don t perform housecleaning tasks Mental images internal representations of external objects or events think about objects when they are not physically present Three forms of symbolic function express private idiosyncratic meanings derived from personal experience Children can premeditate and think before they act Some children remain impulsive but unsure why o Probably more emotional than cognitive but still get diagnosed with ADD ADHD o Preconcepts disorganized illogical representations of a child s experiences o Similar to sleep deprived college students Ex preconcept of zoo is composed of a lion s head popcorn cages ice cream throwing peanuts his father taking pictures and mother accidentally tearing her dress Centration children tends to focus their attention on minute and often inconsequential aspects of their experience Ex a 3 year old may remember nothing else about her babysitter other than her big bright earrings Typically around preschool age 2 4 years old Focus on details rather than big picture can t come up with conclusions or generalizations o Can t see the forest through the trees Metaphor camera in head with limited shots that narrows the view o Random shots get glued together in mind syncretism Experience trauma preconcept gets stuck frozen in mind and resists change C H D 2 2 2 0 E x a m 3 P a g e 2 o Transduction Thinking with Preconcepts Induction we derive general principles from particular examples Boy observes that teachers have favored girls in each of his classes and so he might induce that girls are teacher s pets Deduction we use general principles to predict particular outcomes Same child deduces that when he enters next grade new teachers will be likely to favor girls Children cannot think inductively or deductively they think by transduction reasoning within the unsystematic collections of images which constitute their preconcepts illogical reasoning Little Red Riding Hood took red hat from wolf because he had been bad Private and meaningful only within her preconceptual understanding of the story o Egocentricity child is unable to conceptualize the perspective of other individuals Three mountain problem children ages 4 12 shown model of a mountain scene and asked questions about different visual perspectives Under 8 years old constantly identified their view rather than others o Irreversibility notion that preschoolers cannot mentally reverse their transductive sequences of thought Domains Can go from 1 2 3 but cannot go 3 2 1 Do you have a sister Yes Does your sister have a sister No o Classification the tendency to group objects on the basis of particular sets of characteristics Piaget found a three stage developmental progression of classification in children Stage 1 5 years old and younger no overall plan for sorting but produce graphic collections or pictures made with objects Stage 2 6 8 years old sorted in a more organized way producing a series of collections of objects Each based on a different dimension of similarity o Non graphic collections circles vs squares then large vs small Stage 3 later childhood to early adolescence understood the relationship and rules of class inclusion 4 cows and 2 monkeys and children asked if there more cows or more animals but they understand that cows are a subclass of animals There is new evidence suggesting that children begin to spontaneously sort objects into different categories by the end of the second year o Quantity Quantitative reasoning 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 Concepts of Quantity Conservation certain attributes of objects and events may remain unchanged despite transformations or changes in other attributes o Failure to conserve moving the same amount of liquid from a short and wide glass to a tall and thin glass Children do not understand that there is the same amount of liquid although the container is changed Concepts of Number Young preoperational children show no understanding of 1 1 correspondence responding only to the physical appearance of rows o Two rows of beans that contained the same number 1 row was more spread out so it was judged that it had more o Preschool children can conserve if task is kept simple C H D 2 2 2 0 E x a m 3 P a g e 3 Concepts of Counting one and only one distinctive number name must be assigned to names must be assigned in a stable repeatable order One to one principle each item in the array Stable order principle Cardinal principle items in the array Abstraction principle order in which objects are counted is irrelevant 2 years assign numbers unsystematically repeating and reversing numbers 3 4 years begin to incorporate all 5 principles when counting numbers objects Order irrelevance principle virtually anything can be counted tangible and intangible the final number in a counting sequence gives the total number of o Appearance and Reality Distinguishing appearance and reality
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