Chapter 9 Flashcards
Pre-Operational Stage
Ages 2 to 7 yrs
Defined by increase in capacity for mental representations
How do children develop mental representations?
Sensorimotor activity —> internal images —> labeling with words
Imaginary Play
Before age 2: detaches from real life conditions
After age 2: becomes less self-centered and more flexible
Age 3: includes complex combinations of schemes; can take part in socio-dramatic play, or the make-believe with others that increases rapidly in complexity during early childhood
Why is imaginary play important?
◦ Social competence ◦ Sustained attention ◦ Inhibiting impulses ◦ Memory ◦ Logical reasoning ◦ Language ◦ Literacy ◦ Creativity ◦ Perspective-taking
Symbolic Representation and Reality
Dual representation: viewing a symbolic object as both an object in its own right and a symbol
When does this ability develop?
NOT at 2.5 yrs of age, but at approximately 3 yrs (DeLoache,
1987)
HOWEVER—
◦ Adult intervention
◦ Realistic pictures
◦ Exposure to diverse symbols
Limitations of Preoperational Thought:
Egocentrism & Animistic thinking
Egocentrism
Egocentrism: failure to distinguish the symbolic viewpoints of others from one’s one
Limitations of Preoperational Thought
Inability to conserve
What is conservation?
Typically a product of CENTRATION & IRREVERSIBILITY

Conservation Flaws: They focus on one aspect of a situation, neglecting other important features (looking at only the height of the juice in the glass)
Limitations of Preoperational Thought
Lack of Hierarchical Classification

…..
Follow-up research on preoperational thought
Piaget underestimated children’s abilities
◦ Children do not consistently show egocentric thinking
◦ Preschool children can hierarchically classify (Markman, 1990)
◦ Conservation errors stem from underdeveloped language skills (Mehler & Bever, 1968; McGarrigle & Donaldson, 1974)
Kids partake in prosocial behavior
Can classify better when asked in a way that they understand
Egocentric
What does the mountain task require?
Talk to adults vs. peers (Gelman & Schatz, 1978)
Prosocial behavior
Name on paper
Private speech
Children’s self directed talk
People used to think it meant that the kid was crazy, but it is actually builds on child’s emerging cognitive abilities
Social origins of early childhood cognition
Effective Social Interaction
Intersubjectivity: the process by which two participants who begin a task with different understandings arrive at a shared understanding
Scaffolding: adjusting the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child’s current level of performance
More successful independent attempts
Advanced cognitive development
Guided Participation refers to shared endeavors between more expert and less expert participants without specifying the precise features of communication
Information Processing
Gains in cognitive functions:
◦ Attention
◦ Impulse control
◦ Working memory
◦ Planning
Information Processing:
Attention
Sustained attention increases sharply between 2 and 4 years.
Inhibition
◦ Responding with the opposite of the dominant stimulus
◦ Helpful parents
◦ Learning Aids
Planning
◦ Children can participate in planning if there aren’t too many options
Information Processing:
Memory
Easier to study in early childhood because they have language and some retention
Recognition & Recall
◦ Memory strategies
Memory for Everyday Experiences
◦ Episodic Memory
◦ Memory for familiar events
◦ Memory for one-time events
Evaluation of Vygotsky’s theory
Says little about basic motor, perceptual, attention, memory, and problem solving skills contribute to socially transmitted higher cognitive processes
Probably best to mold this with Piaget’s theory
Autobiographical Memory
Two styles of caregiver–child communication:
Elaborative Style and
Repetitive Style
Elaborative Style: • Follows child’s lead • Asks varied questions • Adds information • Volunteers own recollections
Repetitive Style: • Provides little information • Keeps repeating same questions • Ignores child’s interest
Elaborative style leads to better recall and more organized, detailed personal stories one to two years later.
Information Processing:
Problem Solving
Children experiment with many ways of problem solving
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;
select strategies based on accuracy and efficiency
Information Processing:
Theory of Mind
Metacognition:
Thinking about thought
Milestones:
◦ Age 1: view others as intentional beings who are available for communication
◦ Age 2: aware of others’ emotions and desires
◦ Age 3: realize that thinking is internal, but focus on desires
◦ Age 4: realize both beliefs and desires determine behavior; awareness of false beliefs
Information Processing:
Factors Contributing to Preschoolers’ Theory of Mind
◦ Language and verbal reasoning
◦ Cognitive skills
◦ Make-believe play
◦ Social interaction
False-Belief
….
Information Processing:
Early Literacy Development
◦ Emergent Literacy: children’s active efforts to construct literacy knowledge through informal experiences
◦ At first, children rely on sounds of letters
◦ Phonological Awareness
◦ What can parents & teachers do to increase a child’s likelihood of success in future reading endeavors?
Supporting Emergent Literacy in Early Childhood
◦ Provide literacy-rich homes and preschool environments.
◦ Engage in interactive book reading.
◦ Provide outings to libraries, museums, parks, zoos, and other community settings.
◦ Point out letter–sound correspondences, play rhyming and language–sound games, and read rhyming poems & stories.
◦ Support children’s efforts at writing, especially narrative products.
◦ Model literacy activities.
Information Processing:
Mathematical Development
Builds on informal knowledge
Ordinality
◦ Order relationships between quantities
◦ Emerges at 14-16mo
Cardinality
◦ Last number when counting is the total.
◦ Mastered by 3.5-4 years
Estimation
Early Childhood Intelligence Tests
Wider range: ◦ Verbal ◦ Memory ◦ Quantitative ◦ Spatial Reasoning
Lower SES tend to get anxious during testing
Stabilize at 6–7 yrs
Home Observations for Measurement and Environment
Assess intellectual growth support of 3- to 6- year-olds’ home life
Home with educational toys and books
Warm and affectionate parents ◦ Stimulate language ◦ Academic knowledge ◦ Arrange interesting outings ◦ Demand socially mature behavior ◦ Resolve conflict with reason
Preschool, Kindergarten, and Child Care
More than 60% of children in child care or preschool
Preschool: planned educational experiences
◦ Range from child-centered to academic programs
Child care: program designed for child supervision
Some states offer government-funded pre-kindergarten programs located within public schools to all 4-year olds
Early Intervention for At-Risk Preschoolers
Project Head Start
◦ Began in 1965
◦ Currently serves 904,000 children
◦ Provides children with a year or two of preschool, along with nutritional and health services
How successful are interventions?
Intense analysis of 7 different programs
◦ Gains in IQ and achievement during first 2-3 years
◦ Less likely to be placed in special education or retained in a grade
◦ Greater number graduated from high school
Perry Preschool Project
Child Care
Substandard child care can impair
cognitive and social skills and psychological well-being.
Good child care enhances language, cognitive, and social development, especially for low-SES children.
Center-based care is more strongly linked to cognitive gains than home-based care.
Signs of Developmentally Appropriate Early Childhood Programs
Safe, clean, richly equipped physical setting
No more than 18–20 children with 2 teachers
No more than 8–10 children with each teacher
Small-group and individual activities chosen by children
Positive adult–child interactions
Specialized, college-level teacher preparation
Encouragement of parent observation and participation
State licensing and voluntary accreditation (NAEYC, NAFCC)
Educational Media
Time spent watching educational programs (such as Sesame Street) leads to
◦ gains in early literacy and math skills.
◦ academic progress in elementary and high school.
Background TV viewing
◦ impairs sustained attention.
◦ decreases quantity and quality of parent–child interaction.
◦ delays acquisition of reading skills.
Language Development
By age 6 children have acquired about 10,000 words
Fast mapping: connecting words with their underlying concepts after only a brief encounter
How do children discover which concept each word picks out?
Mutual Exclusivity Bias
The assumption that only one label can be applied to each object in early word learning
Bias might cause an infant to map a novel word onto an unfamiliar object

Child is presented with a duck and a novelty object.
When asked to identify a “blicket,” the child will point to the unfamiliar object, because he knows the word duck and he knows what a duck has looked like in his past. So he associates the new object with the new word “blicket”
Syntactic Bootstrapping
Discovering word meanings by observing how words are used in syntax
How are words used in the context of a sentence?
“This is a citron one.” # must indicate a property of the car
“That lemon is a bright citron.” # must indicate a property of the lemon
“Joe has to wear a muzzle, so he doesn’t lick guests”
“You can call it a flying car, but it is better to say airplane.”
Grammar
Overregularization – applying rules to words that are
exceptions
“Look at those gooses”
“She goed to the store”
“I have two foots”
Age 4 to 5 years – forming more complex sentences
“I think he will come.”
“Mom will come back tomorrow, right?”
“She gave her best friend the candy.” referring to indirect objects
Explaining Grammar Development
Grammatical development is an extended process…
Does this support Noam Chomsky’s views?
Semantic bootstrapping: relying on word meanings to figure
out grammatical rules
! “agent qualities” (things that cause actions) = subjects ! “action qualities” = verbs
Observe structure of language
Conversation
Around age 2, preschoolers begin to master pragmatics
Presence of sibling helps children acquire pragmatics
By age 4, children adapt language to social expectations
From age 4 – 8, telephone talk improves significantly

How can caregivers support language learning?
Conversational give-and-take
DO NOT overcorrect
DO
◦ Recast: restructure incorrect speech into correct form
“I goed to the park.”
“Yes. We went to the park yesterday.”
◦ Expansion: elaborating on children’s speech, increasing its
complexity
◦ Listen attentively, elaborate, model, stimulate child’s talk further
