Piaget's Theory: The Preoperational Stage
-Spans the years 2 to 7 during which the most obvious change is an extraordinary increase in representational, or symbolic, activity
Piaget: Advances in Mental Representation
-Piaget acknowledged that language is our most flexible means of mental representation
-But Piaget did NOT regard language as a primary ingredient in childhood cognitive change
-Instead, he believed that sensorimotor activity leads to internal images of e
Piaget: Make-believe play
Piaget believed that through pretending, young children practice and strengthen newly acquired representational schemes
Piaget: Development of make-believe play
There are three important changes that reflect the preschool child's growing symbolic mastery:
1. Play detaches from the real-life conditions associated with it:
-before age two, children have trouble using an object (cup) that already has an obvious use
When do children display awareness that make-believe is a representational activity?
-Children as young as age 2 display awareness that make-believe is a representational activity
-They distinguish make-believe from real experience and grasp that pretending is a deliberate effort to act out imaginary ideas
Piaget: Benefits of make-believe play
-Piaget's view of make-believe as mere practice of representational schemes is regarded as too limited
-Make believe play strengthens a wide variety of cognitive capacities:
-Sustained attention
-Inhibiting impulses
-Memory
-Logical reasoning
-Language an
Piaget: Symbol- Real-World Relations
-Dual Representation: viewing a symbolic object as both an object in its own right and a symbol
-Appearance reality tasks: When asked whether a stone painted to look like an egg is really and truly an egg, children younger than age 6 responded "yes." But
Piaget: Limitations of Preoperational Thought
-Piaget described preschoolers in terms of what they CANNOT understand.
-According to Piaget, young children are not capable of operations- mental representations of actions that obey logical rules.
-Rather, their thinking is rigid, limited to one aspect
Piaget: Egocentric Thinking
-For Piaget, the most fundamental deficiency of preoperational thinking is egocentrism
-Egocentrism: failure to distinguish the symbolic viewpoints of others from one's own
-He believed that when children first mentally represent the world, they tend to f
Piaget: Animistic Thinking
-Piaget regarded egocentrism as responsible for animistic thinking
-Animistic Thinking: the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities, such as thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions
-Piaget argued that preschoolers' egocentric bias prevent
Piaget: Inability to Conserve
-Conservation: the idea that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes
-Example: a child is shown two identical tall glasses of water and asked if they contain equal amounts. Once the child agr
Piaget: The inability to converse highlights which aspects of preoperational children's thinking?
1. Their understanding is centered, or characterized by centration. They focus on one aspect of a situation, neglecting other important features.
2. Children are easily distracted by the perceptual appearance of objects.
3. Children treat the initial and
Piaget: Irreversibility
-The most important illogical feature of preoperational thought
-Irreversibility: an inability to mentally go through a series of steps in a problem and then reverse direction, returning to the starting point
Piaget: Lack of Hierarchical Classification
-Preoperational children have difficulty with hierarchical classification
-Hierarchical Classification: the organization of objects into classes and subclasses on the basis of similarities and differences.
-Piaget's famous class inclusion problem demonstr
Piaget: Follow-Up Research on Preoperational Thought: Egocentric, Animistic, and Magical Thinking
-Non-egocentric responses actually do occur when researchers simplify tasks with familiar objects, 3 year olds and even some 2 year olds show clear awareness of other's vantage points such as recognizing how something looks to another person who is lookin
Piaget: Follow-Up Research on Preoperational Thought: Logical Thought
-Many studies show that when preschoolers are given tasks that are simplified and made relevant to their everyday lives, they do not display the illogical characteristics that Piaget saw in the preoperational stage
-They can engage in impressive "reasonin
Piaget: Follow-Up Research on Preoperational Thought: Categorization
-By the beginning of early childhood, children's categories include objects that go together because of their common function, behavior, or natural kind (animate versus inanimate, challenging Piaget's assumption that preschoolers' thinking is wholly gover
Basic-level categories, general categories, and subcategories in early childhood
-During the 2nd and 3rd years, children's categories differentiate
-They form "basic level categories"- ones at an intermediate level of generality, such as chairs, ables, and beds.
-By the 3rd year, children easily move back and forth between basic level
Some Cognitive Attainments of Early Childhood: 2-4 years
2- 4 years
-Shows a dramatic increase in representational activity, as reflected in the development of language, make-believe play, understanding of dual representation, and categorization
-Takes the perspective of others in simplified, familiar situation
Some Cognitive Attainments of Early Childhood: 4-7 years
4 to 7 years
-Becomes increasingly aware that make-believe (and other thought processes) are representational activities
-Replaces beliefs in magical creatures and events with plausible explanations
-Passes Piaget's conservation of number, mass, and liqui
Which 3 educational principles derived from Piaget's Theory continue to influence teacher training and classroom practices?
1. Discovery Learning : children are encouraged to discover for themselves through spontaneous interaction with the environment
2. Sensitivity to children's readiness to learn: teachers build on children's current thinking, they do not try to speed up dev
Why do Western children ask "why" questions more often than Non Western children?
-In Non Western village cultures, young children engage in question asking just as often as their Western counterparts, but they rarely ask why questions. Preschoolers in village societies are included in nearly all aspects of family and community life re
Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory
-Stresses the social context of cognitive development
-In Vygotsky's view, the child and the social environment collaborate to mold cognition in culturally adaptive ways
-Rapid growth of language broadens preschoolers participation in social dialogues
-So
Vygotsky: Private Speech
-Piaget called these utterances egocentric speech
-Vygotsky disagreed strongly with Piaget's conclusions.
-Vygotsky saw private speech as the foundation for all higher cognitive processes
-In Vygotsky's view, children speak to themselves for self-guidance
Vygotsky: To promote cognitive development, social interaction must have which two vital features?
1. Intersubjectivity
2. Scaffolding
Vygotsky: Intersubjectivity
-The process by which two participants who begin a task with different understandings arrive at a shared understanding
-Between ages 3 and 5, children strive for intersubjectivity in dialogues with peers
-"I think this way. What do you think?
Vygotsky: Scaffolding
-Adjusting the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child's current level of performance
Guided Participation
-Barbara Rogoff
-Refers to endeavors between more expert and less expert participants, without specifying the precise features of communication
-Broader than scaffolding
Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education
-Both Piagetian and Vygotskian classrooms emphasize active participation and acceptance of individual differences
-Vygotsky promotes "assisted discover" where teachers guide children's learning with explanations, demonstrations and verbal prompts.
-Assist
Shortcomings of Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory
-Challenging Vygotsky, in some cultures, verbal dialogues are not the only- or even the most important- means through which children learn
-Vygotsky was also criticized for saying little about how basic motor, perception, attention, memory, and problem-so
Planning
-Thinking out a sequence of acts ahead of time and allocating attention accordingly to reach a goal
-As long as tasks are familiar and not too complex, older preschoolers can follow a plan
Recognition Memory
-The ability to tell whether a stimulus is the same as or similar to one they have seen before
-4 and 5 year olds perform nearly perfect
-Example: show a young child a set of 10 pictures or toys. Then mix them up with some unfamiliar items, and ask the ch
Recall
-Generating a mental image of an absent stimulus.
-Children's recall is much poorer than their recognition
-Example: how a young child a set of 10 pictures or toys. Then mix them up with some unfamiliar items, and ask the child to point to the ones in the
Memory Strategies
-Even preschoolers with good language skills recall poorly because they are not skilled at using memory strategies
-Memory Strategies: deliberate mental activities that improve our chances of remembering, like rehearsing (repeating over and over again) or
Episodic Memory
-Your memory for everyday experiences
Scripts
-General descriptions of what occurs and when it occurs in a particular situation
-Scripts help children organize, interpret, and predict everyday experiences
-They also act out scripts in make-believe play as they pretend to put the baby to bed, go on a
Autobiographical Memory
-Representations of personally meaningful, one time events
-Adults use 2 styles to elicit children's autobiographical narratives:
1. Elaborative Style: adults follow the child's lead, ask varied questions, add information to the child's statements, and vo
Overlapping-Waves Theory
-When given challenging problems, children try out various strategies and observe which work best, which work less well, and which are ineffective.
-Views development as occurring gradually, rather than discontinuous
-Gradually they select strategies on t
Which regions of the brain are involved in memory-based problem solving?
-Prefrontal Cortex
-Hippocampus
-Other areas in the cerebral cortex known to support long-term retention
Metacognition
-Thinking about thought
-Complex appreciation of inner mental worlds, which we use to interpret our own and other's behavior
Example of a False-Belief Task
-An adult shows a child the contents of a Band-Aid box and of an unmarked box. Th Band-Aids are in the unmarked contained
-The adult introduces the child to a hand puppet named Pam and asks the child to predict where Pam would look for the Band-Aids and t
What factors contribute to the development of a theory of mind in young children?
1. Language (understanding the mind requires the ability to reflect on thoughts, which language makes possible)
2. Executive Function (ability to inhibit inappropriate responses, think flexibly, and plan- predict mastery of false-belief)
3. Make-believe p
Limitations of the young child's theory of mind
-3 and 4 year olds are unaware that people continue to think while they wait, look at pictures, listen to stories, or read books, that is, when there are no obvious cues that they are thinking
-Children younger than 6 pay little attention to the process o
Autism
-Limited ability to engage in nonverbal behaviors required for successful social interaction such as eye gaze, facial expressions, gestures, imitation, and give and take
-Langue delayed and stereotyped.
-Engage in much less make-believe play
-Larger than
Emergent Literacy
-Children's active efforts to construct literacy knowledge through informal experiences
-Observing and participating in activities involving storybooks, calendars, lists, and signs
-Phonological Awareness: the ability to reflect on and manipulate the soun
Mathematical Reasoning in Early Childhood
-Like literacy, mathematical reasoning builds on informal knowledge
-Between 14 and 16 months, toddlers display a beginning grasp of "ordinality"
-Ordinality: order relationships between quantities, for example, that 3 is more than 2 and 2 is more than 1
Min
-Strategy that minimizes work
-Counting bags of marbles, a preschooler first counts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, but then realizes he could count from a higher number 2, 4, 5, 6, and get the the total number of marbles faster, or 4, 5, 6
Do low SES children usually receive high or low HOME scores?
-Low
-HOME scores assess aspects of 3 to 6 year olds home lives that foster intellectual growth like having educational toys and books and parents who are warm and affectionate that stimulate language and academic knowledge
Preschool vs Childcare
-Preschool: a program with planned educational experiences aimed at enhancing the development of 2 to 5 year olds.
-Childcare: refers to a variety of arrangements for supervising children of employed parents, ranging from care in the caregiver's or the ch
Child-centered programs vs. academic programs
-Child-centered programs: teachers provide activities from which children select, and much learning takes place through play
-Academic programs: teachers structure children's learning, teaching letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and other academic skills t
Prekindergarten
-Preschoolers from all SES backgrounds show gains in cognitive and social development still evident in elementary and secondary school
-Up to a one-year advantage in kindergarten and first grade language, literacy, and math scores relative to those childr
Montessori Education
-Multiage classrooms, teaching materials specially designed to promote exploration and discovery, long time periods for individual and small-group learning in child-chosen activities, and equal emphasis on academic and social development.
Project Head Start
-Began in 1965
-A typical Head Start center provides children with a year or two of preschool, along with nutritional and health services.
-Parent involvement is central to the Head Start philosophy
-Parents serve on policy councils, contribute to program
Benefits of Preschool Intervention
-Poverty stricken children who attended programs scored higher in IQ and achievement than controls during the first two to three years of elementary school
-Two years exposure to cognitively enriching preschool was associated with increased employment and
Strengthening Project Head Start
-Head Start REDI
-Enriched curriculum designed for integration into existing Head Start classrooms.
-Before school begins, Head Start teachers take workshops in which they learn research- based strategies for enhancing language, literacy, and social skill
Signs of Developmentally Appropriate Early Childhood Programs
1. Group Size: in preschools and child-care centers, group size is no greater than 18 to 20 children with two teachers
2. Teacher-Child Ratio: In preschools and child-care centers, teacher is responsible for no more than 8 to 10 children. In family child-
Educational Television
-Time devoted to watching children's educational programs, including Sesame Street, is associated with gains in early literacy and math skills and with academic progress in elementary school
-A link was found between viewing Sesame Street and getting high
Learning with Computers
-Computer literacy and math programs, including online storybooks, expand children's knowledge and encourage diverse language, literacy, arithmetic skills
-As long as adults support children's efforts, these activities promote problem solving and metacogn
Fast-mapping
-Connect new words with their underlying concepts after only a brief encounter
-Does not imply that children immediately acquire adultlike word meaning
Types of Words in Early Childhood
-Children in many Western and Non Western language communities fast-map labels for objects especially rapidly because these refer to concepts that are easy to perceive
-Soon children add verbs (go, run, broke) which require understandings of relationships
Mutual Exclusivity Bias
-The assumption that words refer to entirely separate (non overlapping) categories
-Two year olds seem to rely on mutual exclusivity when the objects named are perceptually distinct- for example, differ clearly in shape
-Children's first several hundred n
Syntactic Bootstrapping
-Observing how words are used in syntax, or the structure of sentences
-As children hear the word in various sentence structures, they use syntactic information to refine the word's meaning and generalize it to other categories
-Example: A mother points t
Vocabulary Development
-Children draw on a "coalition of cues"- perceptual, social, and linguistic- which shift in importance with age
-Infants reply solely on perceptual features
-Toddlers and young preschoolers, while still sensitive to perceptual features (such as object sha
Grammar in Early Childhood
-First use of grammatical rules, is piecemeal- limited to just a few verbs
-Once children form three-word sentences, they also make small additions and changes in words that enable speakers to express meanings flexibly and efficiently. For example, they a
Semantic Bootstrapping
-A view that young children rely on semantics, or word meanings to figure out grammatical rules
-For example, children might begin by grouping together words with "agent qualities" (things that cause actions) as subjects, and words with "action qualities
Pragmatics
-Children must engage in effective and appropriate communication- by taking turns, staying on the same topic, stating their messages clearly, and conforming to cultural rules for social interaction
-These abilities increase with age
-Having older siblings
Name two strategies for which adults often provide indirect feedback about grammar?
1. Recasts: restructuring inaccurate speech into correct form
2. Expansions: elaborating on children's speech, increasing its complexity