chapter 9 early childhood: cognitive development

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. RathusChapter 9

Chapter 9Early Childhood:

Cognitive Development


A preschooler’s having imaginary playmates is a sign of loneliness or psychological problems.

Two-year-olds tend to assume that their parents are aware of everything that is happening to them, even when their parents are not present.

Early Childhood: Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction?


“Because Mommy wants me to” may be a perfectly good explanation – for a 3-year-old.

One and 2-year olds are too young to remember the past.



Children’s levels of intelligence – not just their knowledge – are influenced by early learning experiences.

A highly academic preschool education provides children with advantages in school later on.



During her third year, a girl explained that she and her mother had finished singing a song by saying, “We singed it all up.”

Three-year-olds usually say “Daddy goed away” instead of “Daddy went away” because they do understand the rules of grammar.



Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage


• Symbolic thought and play• Pretend play

– 12-13 months – familiar activities; i.e. feed themselves– 15-20 months – focus on others; i.e. feed doll– 30 months – others take active role; i.e. doll feeds itself

• Imaginary Friends– More common among first-born and only children

How Do Children in the Preoperational Stage Think and Behave?


• Lack of logical operations– No flexible or reversible mental operations

• Egocentrism– Only view the world through their own perspective– Three-mountain test

How Do We Characterize the Logic of the Preoperational Child?


Figure 9.1 The Three-Mountains Test


• Causality– Influenced by egocentrism

• Caused by will– Precausal thinking

• Transductive reasoning• Animism• Artificialism

• Confusion between mental and physical phenomena– Believe their thoughts reflect external reality– Believe dreams are true

How Do We Characterize the Logic of the Preoperational Child?


• Properties remain the same even if you change the shape or arrangement

• Preoperational children fail to demonstrate conservation– Centration– Irreversibility

What is Conservation?


Figure 9.2 Conservation


Figure 9.3 Conservation of Number


• Including new objects/categories in broader mental classes– Requires child focus on more than one aspect of situation at once

What is Class Inclusion?


Figure 9.4 Class Inclusion


• Describe Jean Piaget’s preoperational stage of development.– How does the ability to use mental symbols to represent objects

change the way that children interact in the world?

– Describe the behaviors exhibited by the children in the video that illustrate representational or symbolic activity.

Lessons in Observation: Piaget’s Preoperational Stage


• Using examples from the video, discuss Piaget’s concept of egocentrism.

– Why are children in the preoperational stage more egocentric than older children, according to Piaget?



• What is conservation?– Describe the conservation tasks shown in the video and discuss the

performance of Olivia, Debra, Jacob, Christopher, and Jack.

– Are their responses typical of children in the preoperational stage? Why or why not?



• How do Olivia, Debra, Jacob, Christopher, and Jack respond when asked to explain “why” they thought the amount of liquid or play dough had changed or not changed?

– How do these responses illustrate deficits in the reasoning abilities of preoperational children, as described by Piaget, including centration, irreversibility, perception-bound thought, and their focus on states rather than dynamic transformations?



• Piaget underestimated preschoolers abilities– Three-mountain test

• Errors attributed to demands on child and language development– Causality

• Logical understanding appears more sophisticated– Conservation

• Approach may mislead child

Evaluation of Piaget


Developing in a World of Diversity

Cognitive Development and Concepts of Ethnicity and Race


Factors in Cognitive Development

On Being in “The Zone” (for Proximal Development)


• Scaffolding• Zone of Proximal Development

– Sorting doll furniture into appropriate rooms (Freund, 1990)– Retell a story viewed on videotape (Clarke-Stewart & Beck, 1999)– Recall of task completed in longitudinal study (Haden, et al., 2001)

What Are Some of the Factors That Influence Cognitive Development in Early Childhood?


• Home Observation for the Measurement of the Environment– Observe parent-child interaction in the home– Predictor of IQ scores

• Parental responsiveness, stimulation, independence– Connected with higher IQ and school achievement

The Effect of the Home Environment


Developing in a World of Diversity

Cultural Variation in the Home Environment


• Preschool enrichment programs for children of poverty– Designed to increase school readiness

• Enhance cognitive development• Parental involvement• Provide health care and social services to children and families

– Programs have shown benefits• Positive influence on IQ scores• Better graduation rates• Less likely to be delinquent, unemployed or on welfare

The Effect of Early Childhood Education


• Preschool enrichment for middle class children– High parental academic expectations

• Increased preschool academic skills (until kindergarten!)• Children less creative, • More anxious and • Think less positively about school

The Effect of Early Childhood Education


• Contradictory evidence– Sesame Street – most successful educational tv show

• Regular viewing = increased skill in numbers, letters, sorting, classification• Positive impact on vocabulary

– Impulse control• Heavy tv viewing negatively effects impulse control• Exposure to educational tv may have positive effect

• Commercials• Couch-Potato Effects

The Effect of Television on Cognitive Development


A Closer Look

Helping Children Use Television Wisely


Theory of Mind

What Is A Mind? How Does It Work?


• Theory of Mind– Understanding of how the mind works

• Preschool-aged children– Predict and explain behavior and emotion by mental states’– Beginning to understand source of knowledge– Elementary ability to distinguish appearance from reality

What Are Children’s Ideas About How the Mind Works?


• Ability to separate beliefs from another who has false knowledge of a situation.

• Ability to deceive• Evident by age 4, sometimes even at age 3

Do Children Understand Where Their Knowledge Comes From?


Figure 9.5 False Beliefs


• Appearance-reality distinction– Understanding difference between real and mental events– May appear in children as young as three

• Limitations– Event or object may take more than one form in mind– Understanding changes in mental states– Understanding of relationship between model and represented object

Is Seeing Believing? What Do Preoperational Children Have To Say About That?


Development of Memory

Creating Files andRetrieving Them


• Recognition– Indicate whether items has been seen before

• Recall– Reproduce material without any cues

• Preschool children– Recognize more than they recall

What Sort of Memory Skills Do Children Possess in Early Childhood?


Figure 9.6 Recognition and Recall Memory


• Best for meaningful and familiar events– Details are often omitted– Unusual events have more detail

• Scripts – abstract, generalized accounts of repeated events– Formed after one experience– Become more elaborate with repetition

• Autobiographical memory– Linked to development of language skills

Competence of Memory in Early Childhood


• Types of Memory– Remember activities more than objects– Remember sequenced events better

• Interest Level– Individual interest and motivation

• Retrieval Cues– Younger children depend on retrieval cues from adults– Parental elaboration improves child’s memory

• Types of Measurement– Younger children are limited in measurement by use of verbal reports

What Factors Affect Memory in Early Childhood?


• Strategies for remembering– Rehearsal, organizing, mentally grouping

• Not used extensively until age 5– Concrete memory aids used by young children

• Pointing, looking, touching

How Do We Remember to Remember?


Language Development

Why “Daddy Goed Away”


• Development of Vocabulary– Fast-mapping

• Quickly attach new word to appropriate concept– Whole-object assumption

• Assume words refer to whole objects, not parts or characteristics– Contrast assumption

• Assume objects have only one label

What Language Developments Occur During Early Childhood?


• Development of Grammar– Expand telegraphic speech

• Include articles, conjunctions and possessive adjectives– Overregularization

• Strict application of grammar rules• Represents advances in syntax



Figure 9.7 Wugs


• Development of Grammar– Questions

• First questions are telegraphic with rising pitch at the end• Later incorporate why questions

– Passive Sentences• Young children have difficulty understanding passive sentences• Do not use passive sentences

• Pragmatics– Adjust speech to fit the social situation– Between 3- and 5-years, develop more pragmatic skills

• Represents the ability to comprehend other perspectives



• Cognitive development precedes language development– Piaget: understand concept then describe it– Vocabulary explosion (18-months) related to categorization

• Language development precedes cognitive development– Create cognitive classes for objects labeled by words

What Is The Relationship Between Language and Cognition


• Lev Vygotsky – During first year vocalizations and thoughts are separate– During second year thought and language combine

• Children discover objects have labels• Learning labels becomes more self-directed

• Inner speech– Initially children’s thought are spoken aloud– Eventually language becomes internalized– Language functions as self-regulative

Interactionist View: Outer and Inner Speech

chapter 9 early childhood: cognitive development

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