Chapter 9Cognitive

Development in Preschool

Caprice PaduanoChild Development

Chapter 9 Key Questions

How does Piaget interpret cognitive development during the preschool years?

How do information-processing approaches and Vygotsky’s theory explain cognitive development?

How do children’s linguistic abilities develop in the preschool years, and what is the importance of early linguistic development?

Chapter 9 Key Questions

What kinds of preschool educational programs are available in the United States, and what effects do they have?

What effects do television and computers have on preschoolers?

Intellectual Development

In some ways, the intellectual sophistication of 3-year-olds is astounding.

Their creativity and imagination leap to new heights, their language is increasingly sophisticated, and they reason and think about the world in ways that would have been impossible even a few months earlier.

Piaget’s Stage of Preoperational Thinking

Piaget saw the preschool years as a time of both stability and great change. He suggests that the preschool years fit entirely into a single stage of cognitive development—the preoperational stage—which lasts from the age of 2 years until around 7 years.

Preoperational stage During this stage, children’s use of symbolic thinking grows, mental reasoning emerges, and the use of concepts increases

Piaget’s Stage of Preoperational Thinking

At this stage, children are not yet capable of operations: organized, formal, logical mental processes.

It is only at the end of the preoperational stage that the ability to carry out operations comes into play.

Symbolic function According to Piaget, the ability to use a mental symbol, a word, or an object to represent something that is not physically present

The Relation Between Language and Thought

Symbolic function is at the heart of one of the major advances that occurs in the preoperational period: the increasingly sophisticated use of language.

Piaget suggests that language and thinking are tightly interconnected.

Even more important, the use of language allows children to think beyond the present to the future.

Centration: What You SeeIs What You Think

Centration The process of concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus and ignoring other aspects

Preschoolers are unable to consider all available information about a stimulus. Instead, they focus on superficial, obvious elements that are within their sight.

These external elements come to dominate preschoolers’ thinking, leading to inaccuracy in thought.

Conservation: Learning That Appearances Are Deceiving

Conservation The knowledge that quantity is unrelated to the arrangement and physical appearance of objects

Preschoolers can’t understand that changes in one dimension (such as a change in appearance) does not necessarily mean that other dimensions (such as quantity) change.

The lack of conservation also manifests itself in children’s understanding of area.

Incomplete Understandingof Transformation

Transformation The process whereby one state is changed into another

Children in the preoperational period are unable to envision or recall successive transformations.

Basically, they ignore the intermediate steps.

Egocentrism: The Inability to Take Others’ Perspectives

Egocentric thought Thinking that does not take the viewpoints of others into account

Egocentric thought takes two forms: the lack of awareness that others see things from a different physical perspective and the failure to realize that others may hold thoughts, feelings, and points of view that differ from theirs.

Egocentrism lies at the heart of several types of behavior during the preoperational period.

The Emergence ofIntuitive Thought

Intuitive thought Thinking that reflects preschoolers’ use of primitive reasoning and their avid acquisition of knowledge about the world

In the late stages of the preoperational period, children’s intuitive thinking has certain qualities that prepare them for more sophisticated forms of reasoning.

Children also begin to show an awareness of the concept of identity.

Evaluating Piaget’s Approach to Cognitive Development

Clearly, children are more capable at an earlier age than Piaget’s account would lead us to believe.

Piaget tended to concentrate on preschoolers’ deficiencies in thinking, focusing his observations on children’s lack of logical thought.

By focusing more on children’s competence, more recent theorists have found increasing evidence for a surprising degree of capability in preschoolers.

Information-Processing Approaches to Cognitive Development

Information-processing approaches focus on changes in the kinds of “mental programs” that children use when approaching problems.

For many child developmentalists, information-processing approaches represent the dominant, most comprehensive, and ultimately the most accurate explanation of how children develop cognitively.

Preschoolers’ Understanding of Numbers

Researchers using information processing approaches to cognitive development have found increasing evidence for the sophistication of preschoolers’ understanding of numbers.

The average preschooler is able not only to count, but to do so in a fairly systematic, consistent manner.

Preschoolers’ Understanding of Numbers

By the age of 4, most are able to carry out simple addition and subtraction problems by counting, and are able to compare different quantities quite successfully.

Memory: Recalling the Past

Autobiographical memory Memory of particular events from one’s own life

Preschool children’s recollections of events that happened to them are sometimes, but not always, accurate.

Scripts Broad representations in memory of events and the order in which they occur

Forensic DevelopmentalPsychology: Bringing Child Development to the

Courtroom

Forensic developmental psychology focuses on the reliability of children’s autobiographical memories in the context of the legal system.

It considers children’s abilities to recall events in their lives and the reliability of children’s courtroom accounts where they are witnesses or victims.

Children’s memories are susceptible to the suggestions of adults asking them questions.

Eliciting Accurate Recollections From Children

Information-Processing Theories in Perspective

According to information-processing approaches, cognitive development consists of gradual improvements in the ways people perceive, understand, and remember information.

Its reliance on well-defined processes that can be tested, with relative precision, by research is one of the perspective’s most important features.

Yet information-processing approaches have their detractors, who raise significant points.

Vygotsky’s View of Cognitive Development: Taking CultureInto Account

Vygotsky viewed cognitive development as a result of social interactions in which children learn through guided participation, working with mentors to solve problems.

Children gradually grow intellectually and begin to function on their own.

Vygotsky contends that the nature of the partnership between developing children and adults and peers is determined largely by cultural and societal factors.

The Zone of Proximal Developmentand Scaffolding: Foundations of Cognitive

Development

Zone of proximal development (ZPD) According to Vygotsky, the level at which a child can almost, but not fully, comprehend or perform a task without assistance

Scaffolding The support for learning and problem solving that encourages independence and growth

The Zone of Proximal Developmentand Scaffolding: Foundations of Cognitive

Development

The process of scaffolding not only helps children solve specific problems, but also aids in the development of their overall cognitive abilities.

Evaluating Vygotsky’s Contributions

Vygotsky’s ideas represent a consistent theoretical system and help explain a growing body of research attesting to the importance of social interaction in promoting cognitive development.

Vygotsky’s melding of the cognitive and social worlds of children has been an important advance in our understanding of cognitive development.

Comparison of Theories

The Growth of Language

During the preschool years, children’s language skills reach new heights of sophistication.

By the end of the preschool years, they can hold their own with adults, both comprehending and producing language that has many of the qualities of adults’ language.

Language Development During the Preschool Years

Syntax The combining of words and phrases to form meaningful sentences

By the time a preschooler is 3, the various combinations reach into the thousands. (Table 9-3)

Growing Speech Capabilities

Growing Speech Capabilities, cont’d

Growing Speech Capabilities

Fast mapping The process in which new words are associated with their meaning after only a brief encounter

Grammar The system of rules that determine how thoughts can be expressed

Young preschoolers are correct in their grammatical constructions more than 90% of the time.

Private Speech and Social SpeechPrivate speech Spoken language that is not intended

for others and is commonly used by children during the preschool years

Pragmatics The aspect of language relating to communicating effectively and appropriately with others

Social speech Speech directed toward another person and meant to be understood by that person

How Living in Poverty Affects Language Development

Research has found that the type of language to which children were exposed was associated with their performance on tests of intelligence.

The greater the number and variety of words children heard, for instance, the better their performance at age 3 on a variety of measures of intellectual achievement.

How Living in Poverty Affects Language Development

Family income and poverty have powerful consequences for children’s general cognitive development and behavior.

Early Childhood Education: Taking the Pre- Out of the Preschool Period

Developmentalists have found increasing evidence that children can benefit substantially from involvement in some form of educational activity before they enroll in formal schooling.

When compared to children who stay at home and have no formal educational involvement, those children enrolled in good preschools experience clear cognitive and social benefits.

The Varieties of Early EducationChild-care centersFamily child-care centersPreschoolsSchool child care

The Effectiveness of Child Care

Most research suggests that preschoolers enrolled in child-care centers show intellectual development that at least matches that of children at home, and often is better.

Similar advantages are found for social development.

High-quality care provides intellectual and social benefits, while low-quality care not only is unlikely to furnish benefits, but poor programs actually may harm children.

The Quality of Child Care

The major characteristics of high-quality include the following:

The care providers are well trained.The child-care center has an appropriate overall

size and ratio of care providers to children. The curriculum of a child-care facility is carefully

planned out and coordinated among the teachers.The language environment is rich, with a great

deal of conversation.

The Quality of Child Care

The caregivers are sensitive to children’s emotional and social needs.

Materials and activities are age appropriate.Basic health and safety standards are followed.

Preparing Preschoolers forAcademic Pursuits: Does Head Start Truly

Provide a Head Start?

Whether Head Start is seen as successful or not depends on the lens through which one is looking.

Preschoolers who participate in Head Start are better prepared for future schooling than those who do not take part.

Traditional programs such as Head Start are not the only approach to early intervention that has proven effective.

Are We Pushing ChildrenToo Hard and Too Fast?

According to Elkind, U.S. society tends to push children so rapidly that they begin to feel stress and pressure at a young age.

Developmentally appropriate educational practice Education that is based on both typical development and the unique characteristics of a given child

Learning From the Media: Television and the Internet

Television—and, more recently, the Internet and computers—play a central role in many U.S. households.

Computers are also are becoming influential in the lives of preschoolers.

Controlling TV Exposure

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that until the age of 2, children watch no television, and after that age, no more than 1 to 2 hours of quality programming each day.

One reason for restricting children’s viewing of television relates to the inactivity it produces.

As they get older and their information-processing capabilities improve, preschoolers’ understanding of the material they see on television improves.

Sesame Street: A Teacherin Every Home?

Formal evaluations of Sesame Street find that preschoolers living in lower income households who watch the show are better prepared for school, and they perform significantly higher on several measures of verbal and mathematics ability at ages 6 and 7 than those who do not watch it.

On the other hand, Sesame Street has not been without its critics.