Early Childhood - Cognitive Development Flashcards
Theories of Cognitive Development (Piaget’s Preoperational Stage)
The term Operation is used to refer to a mental representation that is performed throught logical thinking.
Preoperational thinking (illogical thinking) cannot engage in mental operations.
Theories of Cognitive Development (Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Symbolic/Pre-conceptual period)
Age 2-4: Complex symbols meaning children begin to attach meaning and words, numbers, or images.
Theories of Cognitive Development (Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Intuitive Period)
Age 4-7: Children so sure of their world and what they know however can’t tell you know they’re come to know or what exactly they know. Primitive reasoning “why questions” and develop own ideas about the world.
Theories of Cognitive Development (Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Advance of Pre-operational thought
Deferred Imitation: The ability to repeat the behavior of a model that is no longer present, like a child sees their father make a braai and they also want to have a braai later on.
Symbolic Play/Pretend Play: Substituting imaginary situations for real one, like pretending a broom stick is a horse.
Spoken Language: The development of language, thinking occurs through representation of actions, rather than through actions alone, thus the ability to understand the symbolic meanings of the words gives the child a completely new significance to the child’s world.
Theories of Cognitive Development (Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Immature Aspects of preoperational thought)
Perceptual Centration: Attend to one attribute of what is observed and iqnore the rest (having a poor understandingof conservation).
Irreversiblity: Cannot reverse an operation, like 2+3=5 but struggles to understand 5-3=2.
Egocentrism: Difficulty seeing things someone else perspective and think that the universe centres on them, like the child believes they control the world.
Animistic Thinking: Young children assume non-living objects have thoughts, feels, motives.
Transductive Reasoning: Make links between two occurrences in cause-and-effect fashion whether logical or not, like a child whose parents are getting a divorce might feel as though their naughty behavior is the reason for the divorce.
Theories of Cognitive Development (Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Conclusion)
By the end of the Pre-operational Period, children should be able to classify and categorise objects on the basis of one dimension (like colours and shapes but not together), but they are not capable of multiple classificationand do not have a number of concept (meaning children do not have basic number skills such as ordinality, cardinality, number transformations, and estimations).
Evaluation of Piaget’s View
Current research does not support Piaget’s views. Animism is of too small a degree as young children are uncertain about objects and they possess incomplete knowledge which leads to mistakes.
Studies of children’s emotional development and theory of mind also reveal that many pre-schoolers are able to display empathy and awareness of how other people feel.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (Contribution to Developmental Theory)
Vygotsky criticised Piaget for disregarding cultural influences. He beleieved that, to develop their minds fully, children need intellectual tools provided by cultures, such as language, memory aids, writing and scientific concepts.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (Zone of Proximal Development)
The difference between the level of performance a child may achieve when working independently and the higher level of performance when working under the guidance of a more skilled person.
He believed that finely tuned coordinated adults support assists children in completing actions that they will later come to accomplish independently and this can be achieved by encouragement and joint participation.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (Zone of Proximal Development Scaffolding)
Temporary assistance provided by one person to a less-skilled person when learning something new. The defining characteristic of scaffolding is giving help, but not more than is less is needed, subsequently promoting learning.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (Zone of Proximal Development Guided Participantion)
The participation of an adult in a child’s activity in a manner that helps to structure the activity and to bring the child’s understanding of it closer to that of the adult.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (Zone of Proximal Development Language and Thought)
Piaget suggested that Cognitive Development comes first (makes language possible). Vygotsky disagree, he believed that language ability comes first because if reflects almost every aspect of the child’s thought.
Language is a vital instrument in structuring thought and regulating cognitive behaviour. Age 2, speech and thought combine and mutually influence each other. Piaget coined egocentric speech whereas Vygotsky coined private speech.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (Zone of Proximal Development Pivate Speech)
Intermediate step toward self-regulation of cognitive skills and cognitive growth. Instruct themselves by speaking at Age 6-7.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (Zone of Proximal Development Mechanisms of Development)
For Vygotsky, development follows a dialectical process of thesis (one idea or phenomenon), antithesis (an opposing idea/phenomenon), and synthesis (resolution).
Evaluation of Vygotsky’s Theory
Vygotsky’s main theoretical contribution is the account of the relation between development and learning, one of the most important issues of cognitive development and he argues that learning drives development. His work suffers one-sidedness and his accounts of intrinsic development are vague while research focuses largely on cultural forces.
