4.2 cognitive development in early childhood

Preoperational stage

Piaget children continue to hone ability to make mental representations, 2 and 7 year olds, children aren’t fully internalizing their actions,

Operations

mental activities like adding and subtracting

Two substages of per operational stage

symbolic function and intuitive thought

Symbolic function

age 2 to , establishment of object permanence, basic abstract thought

Object permanence

mentally represent objects that are not right infant of them

Egocentrism

children have difficulty understanding perspectives other than their own.

Animism

Childs belief that inanimate objects can have human like qualities like feelings

Intuitive thought

age 4 to 7, start to develop reasoning ability

Centration

focusing all attention on one feature of an object and prevents them from engaging in rational thought. Missing the big picture

Conservation

understanding that physical properties of substances or objects do not change If merely appearance is altered (dough in a ball vs flat)

3 features of Piaget’s theory that teachers use

childrens readiness to learn/ not rushing a skill if they are not ready, learning through exploring environment discovering learning is the ideal model, recognizing individuals differences in learning

Lev Vygotsky

emphasized cognitive development always occurs in a social context

Zone of proximal development

gap between what children can accomplish alone and what they can do if guided by and expert

Scaffolding

teacher/expert offering changing levels of support as child competence increase