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Early Childhood Cognition

Early Childhood Cognition. Jodie Baird Swarthmore College. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development. Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss psychologist Father of modern cognitive developmental psychology. How do children develop knowledge? According to Piaget. By acting upon the world

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Early Childhood Cognition

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  1. Early Childhood Cognition Jodie Baird Swarthmore College

  2. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss psychologist Father of modern cognitive developmental psychology

  3. How do children develop knowledge?According to Piaget • By acting upon the world • By revising theories of the world • assimilation and accommodation • In stages • qualitative change • invariant sequence • universal

  4. Piaget’s Stages • Sensorimotor (birth - 2 years) • Preoperational (2 - 7 years) • Concrete Operational (7 - 11 years) • Formal Operational (11 years - adult)

  5. Piaget’s Stages • Sensorimotor (birth - 2 years) • Preoperational (2 - 7 years) • Concrete Operational (7 - 11 years) • Formal Operational (11 years - adult)

  6. Limitations of Preoperational Thought • Centration • Egocentrism • Appearance as reality

  7. Centration • Focusing on one aspect of a problem, ignoring other relevant aspects • Example: • Conservation

  8. Conservation of Number

  9. Conservation of Liquid

  10. Egocentrism • Thinking everyone sees things the same way you do • Difficulty taking another’s perspective • Examples: • Three-mountains task • Egocentric speech

  11. Three Mountains Task Child is asked to pick the picture that shows what the diorama looks like from the partner’s point of view.

  12. Egocentric Speech • Child and partner - separated by a barrier - have identical sets of cards • Child has to describe one card to the partner “It’s the dinosaur!” “The one with a tail.”

  13. Appearance as Reality • Tendency to confuse what something looks like with what it really is • Example: • Fear of Halloween costumes

  14. Appearance as Reality

  15. Strengths of Preoperational Thought • Symbolic representation • Pretend play

  16. What is a Symbol? A symbol is any entity that someone intends to stand for something other than itself. Words Numbers Pictures Maps Models

  17. Symbolic understanding requires • Awareness of relation between symbol and referent • Mapping corresponding elements from one to the other • Drawing an inference about one based on knowledge of the other

  18. Children’s Understanding of Scale ModelsJudy DeLoache • Real room and a model of real room • All details are identical except size • Experimenter hides Snoopy in model • Child is asked to find Snoopy in real room

  19. Can children find Big Snoopy? • 3-year-olds CAN (77% correct) • 21/2-year-olds CAN’T (15% correct)

  20. Why do 21/2-year-olds fail? • Not a memory problem • Perhaps a problem of dual representation

  21. Evidence for Dual-Representation • Decrease physical salience • e.g., photograph instead of model • better performance • Increase physical salience • e.g., encourage interaction with model • worse performance • Eliminate need for symbolic understanding • e.g., shrunken room (DeLoache, Miller, & Rosengren, 1997) • better performance

  22. Why does it matter? • Education • Objects to represent abstract concepts • Legal System • Anatomically correct dolls

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