Chapter 7 - Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Question 1

What ages is early childhood?

Answer 1

-2 to 6 years

Question 2

Why is play so important for children, what does it teach them or give them practice with?

Answer 2

-it gives them practice with physical, cognitive, social and emotional skills

Question 3

What happens after children go from the sensorimotor period to after age 2?

Answer 3

-they go from playing through sensorimotor experiences, touching things, and now they are going to symbolic play, imaginative play

Question 4

What is symbolic function? When is it used? (2)

Answer 4

-sophisticated forms of pretending or imagining
-during play, think that the floor is lava

Question 5

What is sociodramatic play?

Answer 5

-acting out imaginary situations or stories

Question 6

What is a the importance of cognitive development with play?

Answer 6

-pretend play and more complex forms of play showcase cognitive development

Question 7

What is Piaget’s second stage and what age? (2)

Answer 7

-pre-operational
-18 month - 6 years

Question 8

What are the two main characteristics of Piaget’s pre operational stage? (2)

Answer 8

-increase in use of symbolic function (use of symbols to play)
-children have difficulty with ‘logical’ thinking (cup pouring issues)

Question 9

What is conservation?

Answer 9

-difficulty understanding that properties of an object remain the same despite changes in appearance (two cups of water, one skinnier)

Question 10

What is centration? When is this happening? (2)

Answer 10

-the child thinks of the world in terms of one variable at a time, they tend to focus on appearance
-the child said the cups have the same amount of water or don’t based on how high the water is

Question 11

What is irreversibility? When does this show up?

Answer 11

-difficulty in thinking backward from end to beginning
-for the conservation issue, they struggle to think that if the experimenter poured the water back into the two containers they would still be the same

Question 12

Piaget said children in the pre operational stage struggle to distinguish appearance and reality. What experiment shows this concept?

Answer 12

-the experiment where they had a cat and the children said yes this is a cat and then they put a dog mask on this cat and then the children said this was a dog

Question 13

Piaget also says children have egocentrism during the pre operational stage. What does this mean? Example? (2)

Answer 13

-difficulty thinking outside of one’s own viewpoint
-3 mountain task where they can’t think about other people’s perspectives

Question 14

Discuss the concepts that Piaget says children struggle with during the pre operational stage? (5)

Answer 14

-conservation
-centration
-irreversibility
-appearance vs. reality
-egocentrism

Question 15

What was a critique of Piaget’s tasks about the limitations of early childhood cognition?

Answer 15

-that the tasks are too complex and language dependent, like the 3 mountains test

Question 16

What experiments supported the critique for Piaget’s tasks being too complex and language heavy for preschoolers? (2)

Answer 16

-used a doll to say what should the doll say to eat the most fruit? (when shown 3 apples and 2 bananas)
-also avoiding repetitive questions that signify that the child is wrong or right

Question 17

Describe the conservation paper plate mice experiment.

Answer 17

-put fake mice on two plates and asked the children which plate is the winner

Question 18

What is the chipped beaker study? What was the result and why? (2)

Answer 18

-showing them two identical beakers filled with the same amount of liquid, then pouring one into a chipped beaker and assessing whether they recognized that the volume remained unchanged despite the different shapes.
-70% of 4 year olds say quantity remained the same and they believed it was because this happens in real life

Question 19

What are experiments that tested the egocentrism-perspective taking task that challenged Piaget’s age criteria?

Answer 19

-flash cards with dog on one side and cat on the other and they were able to say which side of the flashcard the researcher is seeing

Question 20

What is the theory of mind? Example.

Answer 20

-the ability to understand that other people have their own thoughts, beliefs, desires, and perspectives that are different from your own.
-A child with theory of mind knows that if they hide a toy, another person in the room won’t know where it is unless they saw it being hidden. They realize that others don’t have access to the same information they do.

Question 21

At what age do children develop an understanding that each person’s actions depend on their own representation of reality?

Answer 21

-4-5

Question 22

What is the false-belief task? What were the results? (2)

Answer 22

-Researcher showed children a box with a picture of candy on front; showed them it was actually filled with pencils then would ask what would another child say was in the box?
-3 - pencils and 4: candy

Question 23

Maxi sees his mother place chocolate in an upper cupboard. He leaves the room. She places it in the lower cupboard. Children are asked; when Maxi comes back, where will he look?

When the child is 3-4? 4-5? and 6? (3)

Answer 23

3-4: lower cupboard
4-5: nearly all say upper cupboard
6: upper cupboard

Question 24

What does the development of a working memory help with?

Answer 24

-theory of mind

Question 25

What is enhance by shared pretend play?

Answer 25

-theory of mind

Question 26

What language skills are needed for developing a theory of mind?

Answer 26

-words like want, need, think, remember

Question 27

What is reciprocal nature of thought? When does it develop? (2)

Answer 27

-I understand you know that I know
-5-7 years

Question 28

What two concepts under information processing theories alternatively explain cognitive development in early childhood? (2)

Answer 28

-short-term storage space (STTS)
-operational efficiency

Question 29

What is short-term storage space? (STTS)

Answer 29

-term for working memory, there is a limit to how many schemes can be attended to

Question 30

What is operational efficiency?

Answer 30

-a neo-Piagetian term for the maximum # of schemes that can be processed in working memory at one time

Question 31

What is metamemory? Example? (2)

Answer 31

-knowledge about how memory works and the ability to control and reflect on one’s own memory function
-using pneumonics to remember something

Question 32

What is metacognition? Example? (2)

Answer 32

-knowledge about how the mind thinks and the ability to control and reflect on one’s own thought processes
-when you’re reading a difficult text and realize you don’t understand it, so you decide to slow down and reread certain sections to improve comprehension. This is thinking about your own thinking and adjusting your approach accordingly.

Question 33

How does Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory provide an alternative theory to childhood thinking?

Answer 33

-he discusses social learning and language as important for cognitive develoopment

Question 34

What was Vygotsky’s egocentric speech stage? What age? At what age does egocentric speech become internalized? (3)

Answer 34

-uses language as a guide to solve problems, when children talk out loud to themselves as they work through tasks, helping them think and guide their actions.
-ages 3-7
-6 or 7 years old

Question 35

Explain what Vygotsky’s egocentric speech stage would look like.

Answer 35

-A child in this stage might say aloud, “First, I need to stack the big block, then the small one,” while building a tower. They’re using self-directed speech to help themselves figure out the task.

Question 36

What are the two most important aspects of Vygostky’s theories? (2)

Answer 36

-scaffolding
-zone of proximal development

Question 37

What is scaffolding? Example? (2)

Answer 37

-learning new cognitive skills guided by someone more skilled
-helping a child learn how to get themselves dressed everyday

Question 38

What is the zone of proximal development? Example? (2)

Answer 38

-range of tasks that a child can do with some help, but not yet independently. It represents the learning potential that can be reached with guidance from a more knowledgeable person, such as a teacher or parent.
-If a child can solve a simple puzzle on their own but needs a little help to solve a more complex one, the more complex puzzle falls within their ZPD.

Question 39

Who emphasized talk aloud?

Answer 39

-Vygotsky

Question 40

What is fast mapping? Example. (2)

Answer 40

-the process by which children quickly learn and associate new words with their meanings after only a few exposures, even without explicit teaching
-If a child hears the word “giraffe” for the first time while looking at a picture of the animal, they can quickly connect the word to the image and remember it in the future, even after hearing it just once or twice

Question 41

How many words do 5-6 year olds know?

Answer 41

-around 15,000

Question 42

What things are happening for children’s development in terms of changes in language? (3)

Answer 42

-fast mapping
-grammar explosion
-overregularization

Question 43

What is an example of over regularization? What does this suggest? (2)

Answer 43

-I goed or it breaked
-children are actually learning grammatical rules, not just imitating what they’re hearing

Question 44

What is phonological awareness? Example? (2)

Answer 44

-the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds of spoken language, such as identifying, thinking about, and working with sounds in words
-being able to sound out words, a child demonstrating phonological awareness might be able to break down the word “cat” into its individual sounds: /k/ /a/ /t/,

Question 45

What are some ways we can strengthen children’s language development?

Answer 45

-quantity and quality of reading and language experiences early on

Question 46

What type of communication skills do early children learn?

Answer 46

-developing referential communication skills

Question 47

What are referential communication skills? (2)

Answer 47

-provide and understand specific information like give and follow direction
-learning to clarify (not just guess) in response to ambiguity like during the 20 questions game