Early Childhood: Cognitive Development

Question 1

symbolic thought

Answer 1

symbolic thought, an object or a word can stand for something else, including something out of sight or imagined.

Question 2

pre operational intelligence

Answer 2

Preoperational intelligence means the young child is capable of mental representations, but does not have a system for organising this thinking (intuitive rather than logical thought). The child is egocentric – which is they have problems distinguishing from their own perceptions and perceptions of others.

Question 3

animism

Answer 3

Symbolic thought helps explain animism, the belief of many young children that natural objects (such the sun and clouds) are alive and that nonhuman animals have the same characteristics as the child.

Question 4

centration

Answer 4

A characteristic of preoperational thought in which a young child focuses (centers) on one idea, excluding all others.

Question 5

egocentrism

Answer 5

literally, “self-centeredness.” Egocentric children contemplate the world exclusively from their personal perspective.

Question 6

irreversibility

Answer 6

Preoperational thinkers fail to recognize that reversing a process might restore whatever existed before. A young girl might cry because her mother put lettuce on her sandwich. She might still reject the food when the lettuce is removed because she thinks what is done cannot be undone.

Question 7

conservation

Answer 7

The principle that the amount of a substance remains the same (i.e., is conserved) even when its appearance changes.

Question 8

Zone of proximal development

Answer 8

the space between what a learner can do without assistance and what a learner can do with adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.

Question 9

scaffolding

Answer 9

Learning requires wise and willing mentors to provide scaffolding, or temporary support, to help children within their developmental zone

examples: guiding children to look both ways when crossing a street

Question 10

private speech

Answer 10

The internal dialogue that occurs when people talk to themselves (either silently or out loud).

Question 11

Executive function

Answer 11

The cognitive ability to organize and prioritize the many thoughts that arise from the various parts of the brain, allowing the person to anticipate, strategize, and plan behavior.

Question 12

theory-theory

Answer 12

the theory about how children think is that they construct a theory.

examples:
one child thought Grandpa died because God was lonely; another thought thunder meant God was rearranging the furniture; a third thought mountains were created to stop the world from floating away.

Question 13

Theory of mind

Answer 13

Theory of Mind is the branch of cognitive science that investigates how we ascribe mental states to other persons and how we use the states to explain and predict the actions of those other persons.

Part of theory of mind is understanding that someone else might have a mistaken belief. For example, a child watches a puppet named Max put a toy dog into a red box. Then Max leaves and the child sees the dog taken out of the red box and put in a blue box.

When Max returns the child is asked, “Where will Max look for the dog?” Without a theory of mind, most 3-year-olds confidently say, “In the blue box”; most 6-year-olds correctly say, “In the red box.”

Question 14

Fast Mapping

Answer 14

Fast-mapping is the ability to acquire a word rapidly on the basis of minimal information

An example of fast mapping occurs when a child uses a familiar word to figure out an unfamiliar word. If someone shows a child a picture of a dog and a picture of a platypus, and then they are asked to point to the platypus, they should know what it is simply by knowing what the dog is