Early Childhood – Cognitive Development

Children in Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Develop symbolic thought and play: use of symbols to represent objects Move from more sensorimotor play to more functional play with objects, and then to more elaborate 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 Lack of logical operations No flexible or reversible mental operations Egocentrism: Mainly view the world through their own perspective Three-mountain test Truth or Fiction Revisited A preschooler’s having imaginary playmates is a sign of loneliness or psychological problems. (FALSE) Teaching Tip: Education: Have students gather samples of young children’s drawings to bring into class. Have students guess what the child was trying to represent, the age of the child, and the gender of the child. If possible, students should reach conclusions regarding the development of drawing in early childhood. Teaching Tip: Education: Ask students to observe preschoolers in natural settings, such as playgrounds, or preschools. What types of play did they observe? Did they see any examples of symbolic or pretend play? Have students share their findings with their classmates.

The Three-Mountains Test Figure 9.1 The Three-Mountains Test. Piaget used the three-mountains test to learn whether children at certain ages are egocentric or can take the viewpoints of others.

Characterizing the Logic of the Preoperational Child Causality Influenced by egocentrism; Why is it dark; Because I need to sleep Precausal thinking Transductive reasoning: from specific to specific Animism: attribute life qualities to inanimate objects Artificialism: environmental features were made by people Confusion between mental and physical phenomena Believe their thoughts reflect external reality; Believe dreams are true Truth or Fiction Revisited “Because Mommy wants me to” may be a perfectly good explanation, for a 3-year-old. (TRUE) Teaching Tip: Assign students to interview a child between the ages of 4 and 7. Have students develop a list of questions before the interview that will likely reveal the children’s understanding of causality. Students should classify the answers according to the type of thinking and compare their answers with hose of their classmates. If it is not possible to interview enough children, you might provide a list of answers from children in this age group and have students draw conclusions regarding the age, gender, and type of thinking illustrated by their answers.

Cognitive skills Conservation: Properties remain the same even if you change the shape or arrangement; Preoperational children fail to demonstrate conservation Centration (focus on one dimension of objects) Irreversibility: don’t understand that actions can be reversed Sorting, matching, classifying Class inclusion: Requires the child to focus on more than one aspect of situation at once; the child cannot think about two subclasses and the larger class at the same time Counting, number and letter recognition, size, color, and shape concepts Teaching Tip: Have students try these experiments with 3-year-olds. Were their findings the same as Piaget’s? Why or why not?

Conservation 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

Summary of preoperational cognition- Piaget (Table 9.1) Symbolic thought Egocentrism Precausal thinking Confusion of mental and physical events Focus on one dimension at a time

Vygotsky’s Views on Early Childhood: How Children Learn Cognitive Scaffolding; often occurs with interactions with older more knowledgeable individuals Zone of Proximal Development (gearing assistance to the child’s level) Greatly influenced by family/home environment, preschool education, and TV; EARLY LEARNING experiences do affect a child’s intellectual functioning (exposure to cognitive tasks, parents involved, sensitive to the child’s skills and level of understanding, reinforcing learning etc)

Effects of Early Childhood Education Preschool enrichment programs for children in poverty Designed to increase school readiness Provide health care and social services to children and families Encourage parental involvement Short-term benefits Positive influence on IQ scores Gains in school readiness and achievement Long-term benefits Better high school graduation rates Less likely to be delinquent, unemployed, or on welfare Truth or Fiction Revisited A highly academic preschool education provides children with advantages in school later on. (TRUE) Technology Tip: Have students read more about the Head Start program on the National Head Start Association website. Discuss their findings in class. URL: http://www.nhsa.org Teaching Tip: Social Work & Counseling: Invite a Head Start directors or teachers to come to class and talk about their experiences with at-risk children. What does their job entail? What is their evaluation of the Head Start program in terms of helping young children enter kindergarten with the necessary skills to learn?

Effects of Television on Cognitive Development Educational Television Sesame Street – most successful educational TV show Regular viewing = increased skill in numbers, letters, sorting, classification; May increase impulse control and concentration among preschoolers Vocabulary and expressive language development Mixed findings based on show Commercials: Difficulty discerning commercials from program content Heavy TV watchers are more likely to believe commercial claims Couch-Potato Effects: Number of hours watching TV and relationship to obesity

Theory of mind: What Are Children’s Ideas About How the Mind Works? Understanding of how the mind works; Allows us to explain and predict behavior 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 Ability to separate beliefs from another who has false knowledge of a situation develops by age 4; Ability to deceive others By age 4 or 5, children have no trouble identifying their sources of knowledge Technology Tip: Have students learn more about autism and theory of mind on the Indiana Resource Center for Autism website (or other related websites). How does a deficit in this type of thinking influence the behavior of a child with autism? URL: http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/irca/education/TheoryofMind.html

Memory Tasks Recognition Indicate whether items have been seen before Recall Reproduce material without any cues Preschool children recall meaningful activities and events better than objects; recall sequenced events better Interest level and motivation enhances memory Younger children depend on retrieval cues from adults, and parental elaboration improves child’s memory Teaching Tip: Parenting & Family Studies: Ask students to talk to their parents about their early childhood memories. What is the content of these memories and do other family members remember the same events? Have students discuss in what ways family members encourage the content of early memories.

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 at recalling objects (b). Older preschoolers have better memories than younger ones. Source: Jones et al., (1988). Figure 9.6

Competence of Memory in Early Childhood Best for meaningful and familiar events As young as 11 months remember sequences just experienced 16 months can reenact sequence after delay of 6 weeks By 4 years, can remember events up to 18 months earlier Scripts Formed after one experience and become more elaborate with repetition Autobiographical memory Seldom last into adulthood; Linked to development of language skills Strategies can be taught to enhance memory or remembering: Rehearsal (Not used much before age 5), Looking, pointing, touching Truth or Fiction Revisited One- and 2-year-olds are too young to remember past events. (FALSE) Teaching Tip: Social Work & Counseling: Have students find out more about memory of traumatic events, particularly early abuse. What does research say about the validity of such memories? How does this relate to information in the text? Teaching Tip: Parenting & Family Studies: Have students compare and contrast different types of autobiographical memories they have of their early years. What age were they at the time of those memories? Do other family members share these memories? Students should categorize these memories (e.g. related to an intense emotion).

Language Development During Early Childhood? Development of Vocabulary EXPLODES after age 2; learn 9-10 words per day Fast-mapping: Quickly attach new words to appropriate concept Whole-object assumption: Assume words refer to whole objects, not parts or characteristics Contrast assumption: Assume objects have only one label Over-regularization: apply regular grammatical rules “daddy goed away” Expand telegraphic speech to include articles, conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, and possessive adjectives Combine phrases into complex sentences Technology Tip: Students can learn more about the development of speech and language on the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association website. URL: http://www.asha.org/default.htm

Wugs 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

What Language Developments Occur During Early Childhood? Development of Grammar Questions First questions are telegraphic with rising pitch at the end Later incorporate wh 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 Teaching Tip: Have students observe in a local child-care center and keep a running log of conversations they hear during playtime. As a class, have students compare their observations. What examples, if any, did they hear of overregularization?

LANGUAGE MILESTONES 2-2.5: uses 2-3 word sentences; articulation is poor uses up to 500 or more words; uses past tense, plurals, possessives; no more babbling 3 years: over 1000 words 75-100% intelligible; L’s” and “r”s are hard; 30 word in a sentence; asks “wh” questions; yes/no answers’ uses negatives 4-5 years: 1500-2000 words; speech is fluent; coordinates 2 or more 5-6 word sentences LANGUAGE used to comment, request, share, give info, ask for info, express feelings