Lecture 5 Flashcards
Time when child overcomes limitations in their thinking that stand in the way of true mental operations
Preschool (2-6)
Why do preschool children make reasoning errors?
Centration
Inability to focus attention on more than one aspect of an object or event at a time; tendency to focus attention on surface appearance, inability to simultaneously consider several features of an object
Centration
Characterizes pre-operational thought
Centration
Realization that certain qualities of objects are conserved across changes in appearance
Conservation
What are some examples of centration and conservation tasks?
number, liquid, mass, weight, identity, gender
Task that has 9 wooden beads (7 brown 2 white) and asks if there are more wooden or brown beads
Classification task
What will the child say if they fail the classification test?
There are more brown beads
Putting sticks in order from biggest to smallest
Centration causing errors in seriation task
What age will fail seriation test?
3-4
What age will pass seriation test, yet often can;t insert additional stick until later
5-6
Preoperational child has difficulty distinguishing between the way things seem and they way things actually are
Appearance vs. reality
What are some appearance vs. reality test?
Sponge that looks like a rock, cat with dog mask
Tendency to center on oneself, consider the world entirely from our own point of view
Egocentrism
What is an example of egocentrism?
Three mountain problem
Requires child to simultaneously look at display from given position and represent appearance of display from another
Three mountain problem
__ to __ years consistently preoperational
2-4
__ to ___ years giving away to true operations; improvement in conservation, classification, and seriation tasks
5-6
Understanding of self and others; thought and knowledge regarding people and their actions; understanding how the human mind works
Social cognition
During this period, children begin to understand that people have inner-mental experiences
Preoperational
Recognizing self and others as things which think, believe, desire, imagine and intend; assigning mental states to self and others
Theory of mind
Can children distinguish between their mental state from the mental state of someone who lacks information
False beliefs task
Contrast erroneous mental impression with a known reality; box appears to contain chocolate candy but contains straws
Unexpected contents task
____ years ; fails tasks by reporting they thought box contained straws and x will think straws are in the box; don’t understand others can hold a false impression
3 year olds
___ to ___ years; pass the task by reporting they thought the box contained chocolate and x will think chocolates are in the box; know that people act according to false beliefs
4-5
