1. Chapter 9 Early Childhood: Cognitive Development

2. Early Childhood: Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction?
A preschooler’s having imaginary playmates is a sign of loneliness or psychological problems.
Two-year-olds tend to assume that their parents are aware of everything that is happening to them, even when their parents are not present.

3. Early Childhood: Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction?
“Because Mommy wants me to” may be a perfectly good explanation – for a 3-year-old.
One and 2-year olds are too young to remember the past.

4. Early Childhood: Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction?
Children’s levels of intelligence – not just their knowledge – are influenced by early learning experiences.
A highly academic preschool education provides children with advantages in school later on.

5. Early Childhood: Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction?
During her third year, a girl explained that she and her mother had finished singing a song by saying, “We singed it all up.”
Three-year-olds usually say “Daddy goed away” instead of “Daddy went away” because they do understand the rules of grammar.

6. Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage

7. How Do Children in the Preoperational Stage Think and Behave?
Symbolic thought and play
Pretend play
12-13 months – familiar activities; i.e. feed themselves
15-20 months – focus on others; i.e. feed doll
30 months – others take active role; i.e. doll feeds itself
Imaginary Friends
More common among first-born and only children

8. How Do We Characterize the Logic of the Preoperational Child?
Lack of logical operations
No flexible or reversible mental operations
Egocentrism
Only view the world through their own perspective
Three-mountain test

9. Figure 9.1 The Three-Mountains Test
Figure 9.1 The Three-Mountain Test. Piaget used the “three-mountain test” to learn whether children at certain ages are egocentric or can take the viewpoints of others. (Source: Piaget & Inhelder, 1969.)
Figure 9.1 The Three-Mountains Test

10. How Do We Characterize the Logic of the Preoperational Child?
Causality
Influenced by egocentrism
Caused by will
Precausal thinking
Transductive reasoning
Animism
Artificialism
Confusion between mental and physical phenomena
Believe their thoughts reflect external reality
Believe dreams are true

11. What is Conservation?
Properties remain the same even if you change the shape or arrangement
Preoperational children fail to demonstrate conservation
Centration
Irreversibility

12. Figure 9.2 Conservation. (A) The boy in this illustration agreed that the amount of water in two identical containers is equal. (B) He then watched as water from one container was poured into a tall, thin container. (C) When asked whether the amounts of water in the two containers are now the same, he says no.
Figure 9.2 Conservation

13. Figure 9.3 Conservation of Number
Figure 9.3 Conservation of Number. In this demonstration, we begin with two rows of pennies that are spread out equally, as shown in the left-hand part of the drawing. Then one row of pennies is spread out more, as shown in the drawing on the right. We then ask the child, “Do the two rows still have the same number of pennies”? Do you think that a preoperational child will conserve the number of pennies or focus on the length of the longer row in arriving at an answer?
Figure 9.3 Conservation of Number

14. What is Class Inclusion?
Including new objects/categories in broader mental classes
Requires child focus on more than one aspect of situation at once

15. Figure 9.4 Class Inclusion
Figure 9.4 Class Inclusion. A typical 4-year-old child will say there are more dogs than animals in the example.
Figure 9.4 Class Inclusion

16. Lessons in Observation: Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
Describe Jean Piaget’s preoperational stage of development.
How does the ability to use mental symbols to represent objects change the way that children interact in the world?
Describe the behaviors exhibited by the children in the video that illustrate representational or symbolic activity.

17. Lessons in Observation: Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
Using examples from the video, discuss Piaget’s concept of egocentrism.
Why are children in the preoperational stage more egocentric than older children, according to Piaget?

18. Lessons in Observation: Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
What is conservation?
Describe the conservation tasks shown in the video and discuss the performance of Olivia, Debra, Jacob, Christopher, and Jack.
Are their responses typical of children in the preoperational stage? Why or why not?

19. Lessons in Observation: Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
How do Olivia, Debra, Jacob, Christopher, and Jack respond when asked to explain “why” they thought the amount of liquid or play dough had changed or not changed?
How do these responses illustrate deficits in the reasoning abilities of preoperational children, as described by Piaget, including centration, irreversibility, perception-bound thought, and their focus on states rather than dynamic transformations?

20. Evaluation of Piaget Piaget underestimated preschoolers abilities
Three-mountain test
Errors attributed to demands on child and language development
Causality
Logical understanding appears more sophisticated
Conservation
Approach may mislead child

21. Developing in a World of Diversity
Cognitive Development and Concepts of Ethnicity and Race

22. Factors in Cognitive Development
On Being in “The Zone”
(for Proximal Development)

23. What Are Some of the Factors That Influence Cognitive Development in Early Childhood?
Scaffolding
Zone of Proximal Development
Sorting doll furniture into appropriate rooms (Freund, 1990)
Retell a story viewed on videotape (Clarke-Stewart & Beck, 1999)
Recall of task completed in longitudinal study (Haden, et al., 2001)

24. The Effect of the Home Environment
Home Observation for the Measurement of the Environment
Observe parent-child interaction in the home
Predictor of IQ scores
Parental responsiveness, stimulation, independence
Connected with higher IQ and school achievement

25. Developing in a World of Diversity
Cultural Variation in the
Home Environment

26. The Effect of Early Childhood Education
Preschool enrichment programs for children of poverty
Designed to increase school readiness
Enhance cognitive development
Parental involvement
Provide health care and social services to children and families
Programs have shown benefits
Positive influence on IQ scores
Better graduation rates
Less likely to be delinquent, unemployed or on welfare

27. The Effect of Early Childhood Education
Preschool enrichment for middle class children
High parental academic expectations
Increased preschool academic skills (until kindergarten!)
Children less creative,
More anxious and
Think less positively about school

28. The Effect of Television on Cognitive Development
Contradictory evidence
Sesame Street – most successful educational tv show
Regular viewing = increased skill in numbers, letters, sorting, classification
Positive impact on vocabulary
Impulse control
Heavy tv viewing negatively effects impulse control
Exposure to educational tv may have positive effect
Commercials
Couch-Potato Effects

29. Helping Children Use Television Wisely
A Closer Look
Helping Children Use
Television Wisely

30. What Is A Mind? How Does It Work?
Theory of Mind
What Is A Mind?
How Does It Work?

31. What Are Children’s Ideas About How the Mind Works?
Theory of Mind
Understanding of how the mind works
Preschool-aged children
Predict and explain behavior and emotion by mental states’
Beginning to understand source of knowledge
Elementary ability to distinguish appearance from reality

32. Do Children Understand Where Their Knowledge Comes From?
Ability to separate beliefs from another who has false knowledge of a situation.
Ability to deceive
Evident by age 4, sometimes even at age 3

33. Figure 9.5 False Beliefs. John Flavell and his colleagues showed preschoolers a videotape in which a girl named Cathy found crayons in a bag (a). When Cathy left the room, a clown entered, removed the crayons from the bag, hid them in a drawer (b), and filled the bag with rocks. (c). When asked whether Cathy thought there would be rocks or crayons in the bag, most 3-year-olds said “rocks.” Most 4-year-olds correctly answered “crayons,” showing the ability to separate their own beliefs from someone who has erroneous knowledge of a situation.
Figure 9.5 False Beliefs

34. Is Seeing Believing? What Do Preoperational Children Have To Say About That?
Appearance-reality distinction
Understanding difference between real and mental events
May appear in children as young as three
Limitations
Event or object may take more than one form in mind
Understanding changes in mental states
Understanding of relationship between model and represented object

35. Creating Files and Retrieving Them
Development of Memory
Creating Files and
Retrieving Them

36. What Sort of Memory Skills Do Children Possess in Early Childhood?
Recognition
Indicate whether items has been seen before
Recall
Reproduce material without any cues
Preschool children
Recognize more than they recall

37. Figure 9.6 Recognition and Recall Memory
Figure 9.6 Recognition and Recall Memory. Preschoolers can recognize previously seen objects (a) better than they can recall them (b). They also are better at recalling their activities (c) than recalling objects (b). Older preschoolers (green bars) have better memories than younger ones (red bars) (Source: Jones et al., 1988).
Figure 9.6 Recognition and Recall Memory

38. Competence of Memory in Early Childhood
Best for meaningful and familiar events
Details are often omitted
Unusual events have more detail
Scripts – abstract, generalized accounts of repeated events
Formed after one experience
Become more elaborate with repetition
Autobiographical memory
Linked to development of language skills

39. What Factors Affect Memory in Early Childhood?
Types of Memory
Remember activities more than objects
Remember sequenced events better
Interest Level
Individual interest and motivation
Retrieval Cues
Younger children depend on retrieval cues from adults
Parental elaboration improves child’s memory
Types of Measurement
Younger children are limited in measurement by use of verbal reports

40. How Do We Remember to Remember?
Strategies for remembering
Rehearsal, organizing, mentally grouping
Not used extensively until age 5
Concrete memory aids used by young children
Pointing, looking, touching

41. Language Development
Why “Daddy Goed Away”

42. What Language Developments Occur During Early Childhood?
Development of Vocabulary
Fast-mapping
Quickly attach new word to appropriate concept
Whole-object assumption
Assume words refer to whole objects, not parts or characteristics
Contrast assumption
Assume objects have only one label

43. What Language Developments Occur During Early Childhood?
Development of Grammar
Expand telegraphic speech
Include articles, conjunctions and possessive adjectives
Overregularization
Strict application of grammar rules
Represents advances in syntax

44. Figure 9. 7 Wugs. Wugs. Why not
Figure 9.7 Wugs. Wugs? Why not? Many bright, sophisticated college students have not heard of “wugs.” What a pity. Here are several wugs – actually, make-believe animals used in a study to learn whether preschool children can use rules of grammar to form the plurals of unfamiliar nouns.
Figure 9.7 Wugs

45. What Language Developments Occur During Early Childhood?
Development of Grammar
Questions
First questions are telegraphic with rising pitch at the end
Later incorporate why questions
Passive Sentences
Young children have difficulty understanding passive sentences
Do not use passive sentences
Pragmatics
Adjust speech to fit the social situation
Between 3- and 5-years, develop more pragmatic skills
Represents the ability to comprehend other perspectives

46. What Is The Relationship Between Language and Cognition
Cognitive development precedes language development
Piaget: understand concept then describe it
Vocabulary explosion (18-months) related to categorization
Language development precedes cognitive development
Create cognitive classes for objects labeled by words

47. Interactionist View: Outer and Inner Speech
Lev Vygotsky
During first year vocalizations and thoughts are separate
During second year thought and language combine
Children discover objects have labels
Learning labels becomes more self-directed
Inner speech
Initially children’s thought are spoken aloud
Eventually language becomes internalized
Language functions as self-regulative