Chapter 9: Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Question 1

When (between what ages) does the pre operational period occur in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development?

Answer 1

2 to 7

Question 2

Be familiar with the changes that take place in children’s thinking during the pre operational period. What change is the most obvious?

Answer 2

extraordinary increase in representational, or symbolic, activity.

Question 3

What is dual representation?

Answer 3

the ability to view a symbolic object as both an object in its own right and a symbol

Question 4

According to Piaget, what is the purpose of make-believe play during the pre-operational period?

Answer 4

Piaget believed young children practice and strengthen newly acquired representational schemes through pretending

Question 5

Be familiar with the 3 trends in how children’s make-believe play changes during the preschool period?

Answer 5

1. More detached from real-life
   conditions Decontextualized
2. Less self-centered Decentered
   Independent agency
3. More complex
   More complex combinations of schemes
   Culminating in sociodramatic play with peers (21⁄2 years and on)

Question 6

Be familiar with the different types of play observed during the preschool period (relational, functional, constructive, and sociodramatic). Be able to list some of the benefits of social pretend play (sociodramatic) play.

Answer 6

relational - using thats that are meant to be used

functional - play that connects action to things occurring

constructive - daycare based, building things/blocks

sociodramatic - play through combining schemes with peers, ex: pretending to drink from a cup but then combining drinking with pouring.

Question 7

What is imaginary companion? Are children who have 1 maladjusted?

Answer 7

no,

– Display more complex pretend play
– Are more advanced in understanding others’ view points
– Are more sociable with peers

Question 8

What is egocentrism and how did Piaget assess it? According to Piaget, what other limits in thinking does egocentrism produce during the pre operational period? (Be able to define animistic thinking, centration, and irreversibility).

Answer 8

Failure to distinguish others’ views from one’s own

3 mountain task

Piaget believed that preschoolers’ egocentric bias prevents them from accommodating, or revising their faulty reasoning in response to the physical and social world.

animistic thinking - Belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities such as thoughts or wishes.

centration—the tendency to focus on one aspect of a situation while neglecting other important features

irreversibility—the inability to mentally go through a series of steps in a problem and then reverse direction, returning to the starting point

Question 9

What is conservation? How did Piaget measure it?

Answer 9

– the idea that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when outward appearance changes.

• number, mass, liquid, weight
• number - know that amount doesn’t change just because objects are placed closer together.
• mass - things don’t increase in size just because it has a different shape.
• liquid - water doesn’t become less just because it is in different container.
• weight doesn’t change just because it changes shape.

Question 10

What is hierarchical classification? How did Piaget measure it?

Answer 10

organizing objects into classes and subclasses based on properties.

• class inclusion problem - shown 16 flowers, 12 are red, 4 are different colors, ask are there more red flowers or flowers? pre-operational - more red flowers, not realizing that you can combine

Question 11

What is the appearance-reality distinction? Do preschoolers have a problem with this? Give an ex.

Answer 11

Appearance-Reality tasks involves “dual representation” (the realization that an object can be one thing while symbolizing another)

Piaget claimed preschoolers have difficulty dual representation

– When permitted to solve appearance-reality problems nonverbally, most 3-year-olds perform well
Indicates problems with language used in the tasks, not the tasks themselves

ex: piggy bank - looks like a pig, functions as a bank

Question 12

According to Neo-Piaget research, did Piaget underestimate or overestimate children’s cognitive skills during the pre operational period? why or why not, give ex.

Answer 12

they believed he underestimated, because he didn’t take into consideration of information-processing emphasis on task-specific change.

• they want him to consider a flexible state; notion recognizes the unique qualities of early childhood thinking, but provides a better account of the complexity of preschoolers’ minds

Question 13

Compare and contrast how Piaget and Vygotsky characterized how children learn

Answer 13

Piaget’s de-emphasis on language as a source of cognitive development is challenged by Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory

Vygotsky emphasized the important role of collaboration between child and the social environment (especially social interactions with more competent individuals) in children’s cognitive development

Question 14

How do modern preschools incorporate Piagetian vs. Vygotskian concepts about learning?

Answer 14

Preschools still use piaget principles for learning; discovery learning, sensitivity to children’s readiness to learn, and acceptance of individual differences.

Question 15

Wat is private speech? Compare and contrast Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s views on reasons children use private speech. Which view is best supported by research?

Answer 15

• self-directed speech instead of egocentric speech.

Vygotsky
– Used for self-guidance and self-direction Used more when tasks are difficult, after errors, or when confused
– Gradually becomes “internalized” with age and as tasks become easier
– Children with learning and behavior problems use private speech for longer periods of time

Piaget
– Children talk out loud to themselves because they have difficulty taking the perspective of others
Declines with cognitive maturity and social experiences such as arguments with age-mates

research shows Vygotsky’s theory - children use it on moderate task during zone of proximal development but it decreases if task is too hard.

Question 16

A growing focus of research centers is on the social context of children’s learning. Be able to define an give ex for each of the following terms related to this: intersubjectivity, zone of proximal development, scaffolding, and guided participation.

Answer 16

intersubjectivity: the process by which two participants begin a task with different understandings and arrive at a shared understanding, creating a common ground for communication by adjusting to each other’s perspectives

zone - range of mastery

Scaffolding: adjusting the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child’s current level of performance
Who are scaffolders?

guided participation – Is a broader term than scaffolding
– Refers to shared endeavors between more expert and less expert participants, without specifying the precise features of communication
– Applies to mastery-like tasks and also other contexts such as play and everyday activities
In contrast, scaffolding applies mainly to school and school-like (mastery) tasks

Question 17

Describe changes in preschool aged children’s ability to plan and suppress competing or inappropriate responses. What specific brain development is associated with these changes

Answer 17

The ability to sustain to a specific task increases sharply between 2 and 3 1/2 years
– Distractibility decreases

– steady gains in the ability to inhibit impulses
– focus on a competing goal
– rapid growth of the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex

Question 18

Describe changes in young children’s ability to sustain attention during the preschool years.

Answer 18

– Preschoolers can sometimes follow a plan for tasks
that are familiar and not too complex
– On complex tasks, preschoolers are rarely able to
follow a plan in an orderly fashion
– Children’s learn from cultural tools that support
planning, such as directions for games and recipes for cooking
Especially when collaborating with more expert planners

Question 19

Describe children’s recognition vs. recall memory skills and how they change during the preschool leads/ Which type of memory is easier?

Answer 19

–Recognition: rememberingsomethingwhen you see it again
–Recall: rememberingsomethingintheabsence of perceptual support

Recognition memory is better than recall memory during early childhood (as was the case during infancy)

Question 20

Be familiar with different types of memory during early childhood. What is episodic memory? event memory? scripts? autobiographical memory? Be able to give ex of each. How do different types of memory change during the preschool years?

Answer 20

• episodic - recalling complex, meaningful events, as compared to recalling isolated bits of information on a list
• Between ages 3 and 6 years, preschoolers improve sharply in event memory, as they develop the capacity to bind together stimuli when encoding and retrieving them
• scripts—general descriptions of what occurs and when it occurs in a particular situation
• autobiographical memory - representations of
  personally meaningful, one-time events

– As preschoolers cognitive and conversational skills improve, their descriptions of such special events become better organized, more detailed, and related to the larger context of their lives, often including subjective information that explains the event’s personal significance

Question 21

Be familiar with the 2 adult styles for promoting children’s autobiographical memories (elaborative vs repetitive styles). Which one is associated with children’s enhanced memory skills?

Answer 21

– Adults use two styles for prompting children’s
autobiographical narratives:

Elaborativestyle: Adultfollowsthechild’slead,asking varied questions, adding to the child’s statements, and volunteering his/her own recollections and evaluations of events

Repetitive style: Adult repeats the same questions over and over, providing little additional information

– The elaborative style elicits more organized and detailed personal stories than the repetitive style

Question 22

What is theory of mind? when does it first emerge? How does it change during the preschool years? What factors influence its development? ex.

Answer 22

As children begin to reflect on their own thought processes, they begin to construct a theory of mind (set of ideas about mental activities)

– Also called “metacognition” (“thinking about thought”)

As adults, we rely on understandings of our mental activities to interpret our own and others’ behavior and to improve on our performance on various tasks

Question 23

What is a false belief? At what age do children understand that people can have false beliefs?

Answer 23

false beliefs—ones that do not represent reality accurately—strengthen between ages 4 and 6 among children of diverse cultural and SES backgrounds

Question 24

What is mind-blindness –> case of autism?

Answer 24

failure of false belief task, crayon box and candles

Question 25

What is phonological awareness? ex. What and why is it linked to emergent literacy and later reading and spelling skills?

Answer 25

• the ability to reflect on and manipulate the sound structure of spoken words; knowing pauses will help separate words and correct spelling

Question 26

What is ordinality? cardinality? when do they develop in early childhood?

Answer 26

• ordinality (14 to 16 months)- order relationships among quantities

cardinality (3.5 to 4 years)- the last number in a counting sequence indicates the quantity of items in the set

Question 27

Be familiar with the benefits of preschool interventions such as head start, the abecedarian project, and the high scope/perry project. Explain why gains in IQ and achievement test scores from attending Head Start and other interventions typically are not maintained over time. What a factors are associated with longer-lasting positive child outcomes?

Answer 27

head start - provides children with a year or two of preschool, along with nutritional and health services. Parent involvement is central to head start philosophy.

abecedarian project ??

Scope/ Perry Project - cognitive enriching preschool program; shows increase in high school graduate, earning more than 2000 per month, married, owning a house, and spending less time in prison.

• parent involvement must be maintained in order to sustain high achievement

Question 28

Describe trends in vocabulary and grammatical development during early childhood. How much does a child’s spoken vocabulary increase during 2 - 6?

Answer 28

vocab can increase from 200 words to 10,000 words; learning 5 new words each day.

Question 29

What is fast mapping? semantic bootstrapping? overregularization? ex.

Answer 29

fast mapping - connecting new words with their underlying concepts after only a brief encounter

semantic bootstrapping - young children rely on semantics or word meanings to figure out grammatical rules: subjects and words with action qualities = verbs

overregularization - once children acquire markers, they sometimes overextend the rules to words that are exceptions, a type of error; ex, we each got two foots.