Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Early childhood = Preschool

• Preschool period

• 2.5-5 years of age

Children’s Theories

• Children attempt to explain everything they see and hear by constructing theories

• they ask lots of questions about human behavior and natural things

  • ex: “why do you kiss mom?” “why does it rain"?”

Piaget stages

• Sensorimotor stage (0-2)

• Preoperational stage (2-7 yrs)

• Concrete Operations (7-11)

• Formal Operations (11 up)

Preoperational stage

• marked by rapid growth in representational/symbolic, mental activity

• Operations:

  • mental representations of actions obeying logical rules

  • children’s thinking is rigid, limited to the way things appear at the moment

Limitations of Preoperational Thought

• Perceputal Egocentrism

  • inability to distinguid the symbolic viewpoints of others from one’s own

• Animistic thinking

  • inanimate objects have lifelike qualities (the clouds rain bc they are sad)

• (Lack of) convervation

  • physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when outward appearance changes (wide cup to narrow cup )

• Centration

  • focus on one aspect and neglect others

Limitations of preoperational thought cont.

• Perception-Bound

  • easily distracted by concrete appearance of objects

• States versus transformations

  • the initial and final state of problem are unrelated

• Irreversibility

  • inability to follow series of steps in a problem and return to starting poin

• (Lack of) Hierachial Classification

  • group objects into hierarchies of classes and subclasses

• Appearance vs. Reality

  • preschoolers are easily tricked by the outward appearance of things

    • a change in appearance is thought to reflect a change in reality

    • ex: cat named Maynard had a dog’s mask on it’s face. Children thought that Maynard was a dog

Challenges in Piaget’s research

• Children can conserve; they fail the task bc of a pragmatic bias

• Pragmatic Bias

  • the pragmatics (principles of conversations) of questioning affect children’s responses

  • children wonder why adult asks the same question again if they were right the first time

  • so , they change their answer

• Research support “Naughty Teddy”

  • 70% pass this test

Challenges to piaget’s research- Perceptual Egocentrism

• When objects changed to familiar ones 4 yr olds will show awareness of other vantage points

Challenges to piagets research- Animistic thinking

• decreases with familiar objects

• depends on knowledge of the physical world

• Hierarchical classification

  • children do better with familiar objects

Vygotsky: The Sociocultural Perspective

Concepts

• born with basic mental functions (attention, memory)

• all higher mental functions has social origins

  • ex: problem solving, critical reasoning

• The zone of proximal development

  • is the difference between what a child can do alone and what they can do with help from a more expert other

Modern take on ZPD: Scaffolding

• support for learning and problem solving adjusted to meet student’s changing need

  • clues to help in learning

  • reminders and encouragement

  • breaking the problem down into smaller steps

Vygotsky: Language & Thought

• Three stages of speech

• Social

  • language used for communication, but is unrelated to thoughts

• Egocentric

  • use speech to form and regulate thoughts

  • must be spoken out loud

  • children use this type of speech to solve difficult problems

  • evidence: muttering when thinking

• Inner

  • use speech to form and regulate thoughts

  • “hearing words in your head”

  • between 3-7 years, language and thought merge

  • private speech:

    • egocentric or inner speech

Social cognition

• Processing of information related to social relationships and social situations

• learn how others think and feel

• learn that other perspectives may be different than own

• allows child to respond more appropriately in the interactions with other

Social cognition cont.

Cognitive egocentrism

• assume that others have the same knowledge, beliefs, and desires as you

• by age 6, a sharp reduction in cognitive egocentrism occurs

• ex: pick birthday gift for grandpa based on others desires, not your own

Theory of Mind

• Understanding that others’ actions are motivated by internal mental states

• realize that others beliefs and desires may be different that your own

• If lack theory of mind

  • believe that thoughts in head are public knowledge

  • children lie more once they develop a theory of mind