Early Childhood: Piaget

Dual representation

________: viewing a symbolic object as both an object and a symbol.

Young children have difficulty understanding that other people

________ feel, think, and understand things differently than they do.

Discovery learning involves

________ opportunities for spontaneous interaction with the environment.

Intuitive substage

________: children seem so sure about their knowledge and understanding, yet often cant provide explanations.

Animism

________: preoperational children also may give human characteristics, such as thought and intention, to inanimate things.

Piaget believed young children are beginning to put together logical explanations but

_______ are still influenced more by what they experience through their senses than by logical reasoning.

Play not only reflects but also contributes to

children’s cognitive and social skills.

Acceptance of individual differences

________ means planning for activities for individual children and small groups.

Egocentrism

failure to distinguish others symbolic viewpoints from ones own

Observed limitations of thinking during the why stage

Since not fully logical, children at this age often create causal links where none exist

Conservation

the understanding that the basic quantity of something (its amount, volume, or mass) remains the same even if its appearance changes

According to Piaget and others, children at the preoperational stage cannot yet

conserve. These tasks are mastered gradually over the concrete operational stage.

Children in Western nations typically acquire conservation of number, mass, and liquid sometimes between

6 and 7 years and conservation of weight between 8 and 10 years.

Piaget believed preschoolers’ bias prevents them from

accommodating, or reflecting on and revising their faulty reasoning

Beginning around age 4-7, many children enter the

“why” stage, also referred to as intuitive thought.

Piaget demonstrated egocentrism using

his three-mountains problem

Symbolic function substage occurs

roughly between the ages of 2 and 4.

Symbolic function substage

Child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present

Ways of enhancing make believe play

1. Provide sufficient space and play materials

2. Encourage children’s play without controlling it

3. Offer a variety of realistic materials as well as materials without clear functions

4. Ensure that children have many rich, real-world experiences to inspire positive fantasy play

5. Help children solve social conflicts constructively

Benefits of make believe play

• Leads to gains in social competence.

• Strengthens cognitive capacities:

  • Sustained attention

  • Inhibition of impulses

  • Memory

  • Logical reasoning

  • Language and literacy

  • Imagination, creativity, perspective taking

• Imaginary companions enhance pretend play.

Through pretending, young children

practice and strengthen new representational schemes

As children move from the sensorimotor to the preoperational stage (years 2 to 7),

representational activity increases