childhood: cognitive development Flashcards
mental representation
internalization of thought during the transition from sensorimotor to preoperational stage.
- helps language dev
deferred imitation and object permanence
symbolic understanding
understanding that things can stand/represent other things
dual representation
understanding that an object may simultaneously be itself and stand for another thing
shrinking room study
when a small doll is hidden in a small scale room, and then a big doll was hidden in a real room in the same place.
- 2 and a half y/ couldn’t find it but the 3 year old could
- dont understand that small room represents big one.
- shrinking room study: can fail first version but understand and find the dill if we say that the room shrank.
pretend/fantasy/sociodramatic play
children act out imaginary stories related to life experiences and may involve others in created play scenarios
- related to some cognitive abilities
limitations to preoperational stage
- egocentrism
- animistic thinking
- conservation
- appearance-reality distinction
cognitive achievements of preoperational stage
- symbolic understanding
- dual representation
- pretend play
egocentrism
tendency of children to think that other people view the world from their perspective
- inability to consider of POVs
ex: 3 mountain task
3 mountain task
each mountain has different things on it and the child is asked to describe each one from their perspective. asked again to describe from if someone else were seeing it from the other side and they tended to repeat what they had said the first time
Animistic thinking
belief that inanimate objects have human qualities
- ex: thinking that the stars shine because they are happy
- piaget thought that children would have difficulty distinguishing etween animate and inanimate objects. (underestimation by him)
essentialism
humans represent some categories as having underlying essence that unifies members of a category and is casually responsible for their attributes
ex: child knows males and females are different but dont know how or why
- could lead to stereotypes
conservation
can children understand that the number, mass or volume of something remains the same even if it looks different
- preoperational children usually dont (centration)
centration
tendency to focus on one perceptually salient feature of something (like only look at the height even if width is different)
- reason for children failing conservation tasks
reversibility
unable to mentally undo actions
piagets correct theory about conservation
he was right that children passed these task in particular orders.
- ex: learning liquid conservation before number
appearance-reality distinction
the knowledge that the appearance of something does not necessarily correspond to its reality
ex: sponge may look like a rock when its really a sponge
- children under three struggle making these distinctions
ex: dog in a cat mask
preoperatinal stage
- 2-7
- children are capable of mental representation or the internalization of thought