Cognitive Development: Early Childhood

Question 1

What is Piaget’s sensorimotor stage and approximate years?

Answer 1

Birth - 2 years, Coordination of sensory and motor activity; achievement of object permanence. This is how infants perceive and interact with their world, they developed object permanence.

Question 2

What is Piaget’s preoperational stage and approximate ages?

Answer 2

2-7 years, use of language and symbolic representations; egocentric view of the world, make-believe play.

Question 3

What is Piaget’s concrete operational stage and approximate ages?

Answer 3

7-11 years, solution of concrete problems through logical operations; objects are organised into hierarchies and classes and subclasses; thinking is not yet abstract.

Question 4

What is Piaget’s formal operational stage and approximate ages?

Answer 4

11-adulthood, Systematic solution of actual and hypothetical problems using abstract symbols.

Question 5

Early childhood is correlated with Piaget’s preoperational stage, what do children in this stage form?

Answer 5

Symbolic representations and the capacity to evolve language, engage in pretend play (including imaginary companions) and are able to refer to the past and future as well as solidify object permanence.

Question 6

Although children in early childhood are able to form symbolic representations, what phenomenon are they tripped up by in this period of development?

Answer 6

Perceptual salience - Meaning, the most obvious features of an object or a situation are represented over deeper meaning. Therefore, children have difficulty with tasks that require logic.

Question 7

As children are reliant on perceptions and lack logical thinking between the ages of 2-7, what phenomenon do they have difficulty with?

Answer 7

Conservation - Certain properties of an object or substance do not change when its appearance is altered in a superficial way.

Question 8

What are some criticisms of Piaget’s conservation tasks?

Answer 8

The language used by the experimenter had ambiguous meanings to the child, therefore conservation could be confused with language understanding.

Gestures, sometimes indicated understanding however the verbal responses didn’t align with what the gesture may have been.

Question 9

Piaget’s key cognitive limitations to conservation tasks; what is centration?

Answer 9

Focusing on one aspect of a problem or object (i.e., the larger blue water, the length of the playdoh)

Question 10

Piaget’s key cognitive limitations to conservation tasks; what is irreversible thought?

Answer 10

Cannot mentally undo an action (i.e., the child needs the action to be done in front of them to see the change)

Question 11

Piaget’s key cognitive limitations to conservation tasks; what is static thought?

Answer 11

Focusing on the end state rather than the changes that transform one state into another.

Question 12

Piaget’s key cognitive limitations to conservation tasks; what is “difficulty with classification” and two examples of this limitation?

Answer 12

Using criteria to sort objects on the basis of characteristics such as shape, colour, and function.

and/or

Lack of class inclusion, the ability to relate the whole class to its subclasses.

e.g. of an object; A child is given a group of buttons that are all different colours. The child is asked, “do you have more buttons or more red buttons”. If they can discern that “red” is a sub-class of a button then they have overcome this limitation.

e.g. of class inclusion; a “dog” is a subclass of an animal.

Question 13

Piaget’s key cognitive limitations to conservation tasks; what is egocentrism?

Answer 13

this is a central idea in Piaget’s work where “my” perspective on the world is different from “your” perspective” - children find it difficult to separate the way they view the world as shared by others. This evolves later in adolescence and is part of social development.

Question 14

How is egocentrism tested in a laboratory environment and the findings and criticisms of the task?

Answer 14

The three mounds task.
A child was still able to reach over the mounds and point out other objects, meaning egocentrism is not absolute.

Memory could be a limitation as well as an experimenter’s visual perspective on the scene.

Question 15

What Theory takes egocentrism further, particularly into the social dimensions of development?

Answer 15

Theory of Mind - The ability to attribute mental states- beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge- to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one’s own.

Question 16

Theory of mind experiments test “what we know” and what a “hypothetical other may know”, what are two false-belief tasks that test this and how are they conducted?

Answer 16

The Sally-Anne Task and the Smarties Task.

S-A task: Sally has a marble, she places it in the basket and leaves the room. Anne takes the marble out of the basket and puts it in the box. Sally comes back in, where does Sally think the marble is? the smarties task is a practical version of this.

Question 17

What are the implications of theory-of-mind?

Answer 17

This has massive social implications, whereby being able to attribute a mental state to another creates a strong understanding of social dimensions. This is the synthesis of cognitive and social development.

Question 18

What did Lev Vygotsky focus on as the driver of a child’s development and what was a key part of his theory?

Answer 18

He focused on the nature of human development particularly through culture as a tool “within” a person, stating that social interaction drives cognitive development. He theorised, the “Zone of Proximal Development”.

Question 19

What is the Zone of proximal development?

Answer 19

A region that falls between what a child can do independently and a task that lies beyond their capability. Vygotsky argued that learning happens in the zone in-between. Referring to tasks that can be done by a child with the help of another.

Question 20

What is the MKO?

Answer 20

More Knowledgeable Other. This is a person within a child’s proximity that can help them achieve tasks they cannot do on their own. Vygotsky focuses on the social plane rather than the cognitive.

Question 21

What is the philosophy behind Vygotsky’s work?

Answer 21

A child has to external experience something before it can be internally regulated. For example, in emotion, we firstly experience something as an interpsychological interaction (a social interaction) where an MKO co-regulates emotion, but as a child develops they begin to internalise these skills, meaning they do not need an MKO to help regulate thus becoming an intrapsycholoigcal category.

Question 22

What are the differences between Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories?

Answer 22

Sociocultural context
P: Little emphasis, V: Strong emphasis

Constructivism
P: Cognitive constructivist, V: Social constructivist

Stages
P: Strong emphasis on stages of development, V: No general stages of development proposed

Key processes in development & learning
P: Equilibration; schema; adaption; assimilation; accommodation, V: Zone of Proximal Development; scaffolding; language/dialogue; tools of the culture.

Role of language
P: Minimal- language provides labels for children’s experiences (egocentric speech), V: Major- Language plays a powerful role in shaping thought.

Teaching implications
P: Support children to explore their world and discover knowledge, V: Establish opportunities for children to learn with the teacher and more skilled peers.

Question 23

Play is a crucial component of social development and is a large part of Vygotskian theory. As developmental psychologists, we need to have a common definition of play. What are the pillars or features proposed by Saracho & Spodek (1998) that are associated with play?

Answer 23

1. Intrinsically, not extrinsically motivated
2. Process-, not product-orientated
3. Creative and non-literal
4. Having implicit rules
5. Spontaneous and self-initiated
6. Free from major emotional distress

Question 24

The ages of 2 to 5 are called the play years, what are the two changes that play undergoes between infancy to age 5?

Answer 24

1. It becomes more social
2. It becomes more imaginative

Question 25

Mildred Parten (1932) found that play becomes increasingly social and socially skilled from ages 2 to 5. Parten developed a classification system for the play of preschool children from least to most social, what are the categories of play in this order- what is important to remember?

Answer 25

The progression of these play types is not linear at all, there is no clear linear path that children engage in terms of their play, and it will shift and change always.

1. Unoccupied play
2. Solitary play
3. Onlooker play
4. Parallel Play
5. Associative play
6. Cooperative play

Question 26

What is unoccupied play?

Answer 26

Children stand idly, look around, or engage in apparently aimless activities such as pacing

Question 27

What is solitary play?

Answer 27

children play alone, typically with objects, and appear to be highly involved in what they are doing.

Question 28

What is onlooker play?

Answer 28

Children watch others play, take an active interest, perhaps talk with the players, but do not directly participate.

Question 29

What is parallel play?

Answer 29

Children play next to one another and do much the same thing, but they interact little (for example two girls might sit near each other in the sandpit but do not talk however their play is reflected in one another)

Question 30

What is associate play?

Answer 30

Children interact by swapping materials, conversing, or following each other’s lead, but they are not united by the same goal (for example, the two girls may share sandpit toys and comment on each other’s sand structures)

Question 31

What is cooperative play?

Answer 31

Children join forces to achieve a common goal; they act as a pair or group, dividing their labour and coordinating their activities in a meaningful way (two girls collaborate to make a sandcastle)

Question 32

How does pretend play emerge and how does it evolve, what is its relationship to symbolic representations?

Answer 32

It begins in the second year of life. Children begin to associate objects with symbolic meanings in which one object stands to represent another (e.g. a stick as a phone). In the earliest pretend play, infants perform actions that symbolise familiar activities such as eating, sleeping, and washing. Between the ages of 2 and 5, pretend play increases in frequency and sophistication.

Question 33

Social pretend play drives many aspects of cognitive and social development, this is where children come together to enact dramas, how is this formed?

Answer 33

Children cooperate with caregivers or playmates to enact dramas.

It requires social competence, including the theory-of-mind or people-reading skills.

Social pretend play is universal.

The content of preschoolers’ play is influenced by their culture.

Emerges around 4 years, or earlier in the context of a more proficient partner such as an older sibling, mother or father.

Question 34

What are the cognitive skills that pretend play nurtures, how are they important?

Answer 34

1. Social referencing
   Using another person’s response to an ambiguous situation as a guide for one’s own response.
2. Reading intentions
   It allows us to anticipate the social intentions of others
3. Symbolic function
   A tableau of real-world experiences
4. Decentration
   Allows us to see multiple aspects of a problem than just one

Question 35

What are the psychoanalytic and social learning reasons why we play?

Answer 35

Psychoanalytic
Opportunity to gain mastery over anxieties
Repetition compulsion
Catharsis

Social Learning
Roles learned through direct, vicarious or self-reinforcement

Question 36

What are the ethological and cognitive reasons why we play?

Answer 36

Ethological
Similar to animal behaviour
Physical activity play (rhythmic stereotypes, exercise play, rough-and-tumble play)

Cognitive
Symbolic play extends possibilities
Social and cognitive development