Chapter 9 Cognitive and Language Development in Early Childhood Preoperational Development Preoperational stage 3 6 years of age Piaget Operational logical systems of thought which eventually emerge in middle childhood The Symbolic Function o Ex age 7 8 all horses are animals but not all animals are horses o Preschoolers incapable of this Symbolic Function ability to use symbols to represent or stand for perceived objects and events 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 Improvements in perception memory and motor behaviors enhance deferred imitation Age four imitation is matured Symbolic or Pretend Play children pretend that an object is something other than what it really is Transforms virtually any situation into an unlimited world of make believe Prevalent effects on their social and emotional development Shifting Context A younger child needs the play setting to initiate their pretense Example a child will pretend to eat in a kitchen while an older child might want to pretend to eat in the backyard Substituting Objects Younger children need more realistic objects to play with the older they get they can substitute a block for a table etc Substituting Other Agents for One s Self Stage one child will put their head on the table if they re pretending to fall asleep Stage two talk to doll but won t imagine the doll talking back Stage three talk to doll and imagine doll talking back Sequencing and socialization of Pretend Episodes children coordinating such acts into sequences of increasing length and complexity through the preschool years Mental Images internal representations of external objects or events The Advent of Preconcepts Centration When preschool children tend to focus their attention on minute and often inconsequential aspects of their experience Example the only thing a child remembers about his babysitter is her bright colored earrings Preconcepts disorganized illogical representations of the child s experiences Transductive Reasoning Thinking with Preconceptions Disorganized and illogical nature of Preconcepts limits quality of preschoolers reasoning and problem solving Easy to understand if compared preoperational thought to primary logical thought induction and deduction Induction derive meant of general principles from particular examples o Example a boy sees that a teacher likes the girls so he assumes girls are teacher s pets Deduction using general principles to predict particular outcomes o 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 o When logic is private and meaningful only within his her preconceptual understanding of the story o Example Lashonda believed Little Red Riding Hood took the fine red hat from the wolf because he had been so bad Egocentrism Egocentrism Major limitation of preoperational thought is the child s inability to conceptualize the perspective of other individuals Not to call children selfish they have a difficulty understanding the world as the others see it Three Mountain problem Experiment by Piaget to measure the effects of egocentrism on perception and cognition In this experiment the children saw a diagram of a 3 D mountain range and had to choose which picture matched the perspective of a doll Only 8 years and above could consistently do this Irreversibility Irreversibility the notion that preschoolers cannot mentally reverse their transductive sequence of thought Reasoning in Content Domains Classification tendency to group objects on the basis of particular sets of characteristics Adults think in inclusive classes when a classification of one will fit into another classification Different for children Stage 1 5 years and younger no overall plan for sorting but produced graphic collections pictures made with objects Example child arranges several forms into a rectangle and call it a house Stage 2 6 8 years Non graphic collections All squares in one pile all circles in another then all big objects in one pile then all small objects in another pile Stage 3 later childhood to early adolescence understand the relationship the rule of class inclusion Example when there was four cows and two goats children answer correctly when asked are there more cows or more animals Piagets experiments are helpful but further studies show that as early as two years children begin systematic classification Quantitive Reasoning Quantitive reasoning Refers to the ability to estimate the amount of things and changes in amounts of things in terms of number size weight volume speed time and distance Examples Child must estimate how far the ball will go if they throw it When passing out party favors a girl must try a 1 1 ratio despite the fact that she wants to give more to the children she likes best Piaget 1962 has a pattern to give children less credit than they deserve based on recent research Concepts of Quality Conservation the ntion that certain attributes of objects and events may remain unchanged despite transformations or changes in other attributes Example preschool children assume the taller glass of water holds more water even though the glass may be skinnier Concepts of Number 1 1 Correspondence When a child thinks the more spaced out row of black beans has more beans than an evenly spaced out row of white beans This skill according to Piaget is not accomplished til 7 8 years This skill may come at an earlier age as long as the task is kept simple Concepts of Counting How to tell if your child is a true counter The one to one principle no number counted more than once or used more The stable order principle Number names must be assigned in a stable than once repeatable order The cardinal principle The last number they count gives the total number of items in the array even when asked how many are there The abstraction principle Children can count both tangibles objects and events and intangibles ideas values emotions The order irrelevance principle The order in which a person counts doesn t matter For example if a girl is counting stuffed animals it doesn t matter if the bear is first second or third as long as it gets assigned a number Appearance and Reality Distinguishing appearance and reality refers to the fact that adults
View Full Document
Unlocking...