Chapter 9 Young children are egocentric understanding only their perspective and develop ideas of theory of mind an understanding of how minds work or a set of ideas about other people s thinking Preoperational intelligence is a time for symbolic thought especially language and imagination They don t use logical operations reasoning processes but not limited to senses and motor skills sensorimotor Symbolic thought is when a child can think symbolically adept at pretending and words can refer to things not seen Allows language explosion talk about what they think imagine and remember Children switch from sensorimotor to symbolic thinking as the result of brain maturation experience expectant and social interactions experience dependent Centration is the tendency to focus on one aspect of a situation to the exclusion of all others Egocentrism is when children contemplate the world exclusively from their personal perspective Focus on appearance is the exclusion of other attributes and focus on characteristics Static reasoning is believing that the world is unchanging always in the state in which they currently encounter it Irreversibility is when a child fails to recognize that reversing a process sometimes restores whatever existed before Conservation is the notion that the amount of something remains the same despite changes in its appearance Animism is the belied that natural objects and phenomena are alive A child is an apprentice in thinking someone whose intellectual growth is stimulated and directed by older and more skilled members of society According to Vygotsky social learning children learn because their mentors present challenges offer assistance add crucial information and encourage motivation Guided participation sharing social experiences and explorations between mentor and child Zone of proximal development ZPD is crucial for early childhood learning includes the ideas children are close to understanding and skills they are close to attaining but not yet able to master Scaffolding is the temporary sensitive support a mentor s willingness and wisdom provides Overimitation evident in children from many cultures but not in other animals is when children imitate adult actions that are irrelevant time consuming and inefficient Language advances thinking in two ways First is internal dialogue private speech in which people talk to themselves and aids in cognition and self reflection Second is social mediation occurs during both formal instruction and casual conversation advances thinking and learning Culture may affect language and therefore math knowledge in preschoolers Theory Theory refers to the idea that children naturally construct theories to explain whatever Children develop theories about intentions before they employ their impressive ability to imitate Genes affect expressive spoken or written language more than receptive heard or read they see and hear language Overregularization is when children apply the rules of grammar when they should not Young bilingual children sit both languages in the same areas of the brains yet manage to keep them separate allowing them to activate one language and temporarily inhibit the other Children transpose sounds drop consonants and convert difficult sounds to easier ones Balanced bilingual is a person who speaks two languages so well that no audible hint suggest the Language shift is becoming more fluent in the school language than in their home language other language Fast mapping is when children develop an interconnected set categories for words a kind of grid or mental map which makes speedy vocabulary acquisition possible Logical extension after learning a word children use it to describe other objects in same category