CH 9: Cognitive and Language Development in Early Childhood: Piaget, Vygotsky, and Education Strategies

Preoperational Stage

Piaget's second stage, lasting from 2-7 years of age, when children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings.

Operations

In Piaget's theory, reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what they formerly did physically (ex: adding/subtracting).

Symbolic Function Substage

Piaget's first substage of preoperational thought, in which the child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present.

Egocentrism

Piaget's concept that describes the inability to distinguish between one's own perspective and someone else's perspective.

Animism

The belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action.

Intuitive Thought Substage

Piaget's second substage of preoperational thought, in which children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions.

Centration

Focusing of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others.

Conservation

The concept that an object's or substance's basic properties stay the same even if its appearance has been altered.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Vygotsky's term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for children to achieve alone but can be achieved with the guidance and assistance of adults or more-skilled children.

Scaffolding

Changing level of support provided over the course of a teaching session, with the more-skilled person adjusting guidance to fit the child's current performance level.

Private Speech

Young children sometimes use language to themselves to plan, guide, and monitor their behavior.

Social Constructive Approach

Emphasizes the social contexts of learning and the fact that knowledge is mutually built and constructed.

Executive Attention

Involves planning actions, allocating attention to goals, detecting and compensating for errors, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.

Sustained Attention

Focused and extended engagement with an object, task, event, or other aspect of the environment.

Short-Term Memory

The memory component in which individuals retain information for up to 30 seconds, assuming there is no rehearsal.

Long-Term Memory

Relatively permanent type of memory that stores huge amounts of information for a long time.

False Memories

Factors that can affect accuracy of a young child's memory, including age, individual differences, and interviewing techniques.

Executive Function

An umbrella-like concept that consists of a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the brain's prefrontal cortex.

Theory of Mind

A concept that refers to awareness of one's own mental processes and the mental processes of others.

Phonology

The sound system of a language, including the rules for combining sounds.

Morphology

The study of the structure and form of words in a language.

Fast Mapping

A process that helps to explain how young children learn the connection between a word and its referent so quickly.

Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP)

Education that focuses on the typical developmental patterns of children as well as the uniqueness of each child.

Developmentally Inappropriate Practice

Ignores the concrete, hands-on approach to learning, relying instead on abstract paper-and-pencil activities.

Project Head Start

Established in 1965, compensatory education designed to provide children from low-income families the opportunity to acquire skills and experiences important for school success.

Early Head Start

Established in 1995 to serve children from birth to 3 years old.