Week 4 - Early Childhood (Kindy/Preschool years) Flashcards
What were the two main topics of interest in this lecture?
~ Piaget Pre-operational stage
~ Play
What is the argued age span of Early Childhood?
2-7
What do infants come into the pre-operational stage with?
Capacity for symbolic representations:
~ Language ability, pretend play
~ However, there is still a focus on obvious features of an object of situation - perceptual salience
What did Piaget’s conservation task show?
Properties of an object could be changed in a superficial. However, this would not necessarily change the properties of the object - something kindy children could not understand
What were the criticisms of the Conservation Task?
~ The language used: child’s understanding of the word “more”
~ Due to motor inabilities, this task might not be assessing pure cognitive abilities of a child for OP
~ Conservation is not mastered due to cognitive limitations
What are the 5 points the pre-operational stage, described about children’s cognitive abilities?
- Centration
- Irreversible thought
- Static thought
- Difficulty with classification
- Egocentrism
Define centration.
Centration = focussing on one aspect of a problem or object - the most perceptually salient aspect. For example, in the conservation task, the height of the glass is more salient than the amount of liquid.
Define irreversible thought
Irreversible thought = cannot mentally undo an action. For example, a child wasn’t able to mentally understand when playdough was reversed after being smooshed.
Define static thought.
Static thought = focus on the end state, rather than changes that transform one state into the another. (No focus/ thought of the in between process)
Define difficulty with classification.
A child might use criteria to sort objects on the basis of colour or shape. However, they lack class inclusion. For example, a child might be able to sort colour of buttons into a group. However if you ask have you got more blue or red buttons they might struggle.
Or, they might struggle to understand dogs are a subclass of a higher order class “animals”
Define egocentrism
Egocentrism = difficulty to understand the way they view the world is shared by others. Physical/ visual perspective.
(differs from theory of mind which relates to beliefs, knowledges, desires).
What experiment was done to test Theory of Mind?
Sally-Ann task: where does Sally think the marble is when she returns? Sally thinks the marble is in the basket, even though the child knows it’s in the box.
Understanding that others have a different perspective - that they, (child), might know something we don’t.
Smarties experiment: let’s put something else in the smarties box and not tell dad. What does dad think is in the box?
Did Piaget underestimate the preschool years? What are the criticisms?
~ Assessing conservation, egocentrism, drawing on other cognitive skills beyond conservation and understand that others have different perspectives than our own.
Piaget focusses on the child as the agent.
Describe Vygotsky’s cognitive-developmental approach.
Zone of Proximal Development = region between something the child can do independently without assistance, and something impossible for child to do without assistance.
Vygotsky emphasised socio-cultural nature of development, particularly for cognitive development.
What did Vygotsky argue about Zone of PD?
Development occurs in this zone where tasks can be done alone OR with others.
