Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

1. Cognitive Developmentin Early Childhood • Psychology 333 • Child Psychology • Dennis H. Karpowitz

2. Piaget - Preoperational Stage • Language • Make-Believe Play • Spatial Representation.

3. Limitations of Preoperational Thought • Rigid thinking • Egocentrism • Animistic thinking • Inability to conserve • Transductive reasoning • Difficulties with hierarchical classification

4. Recent Research on Preoperational Thought • Unfamiliar • Complex • Illogical thought • Hierarchical classification • Appearance versus reality.

5. Evaluation of thePreoperational Stage • Familiar • Gradually more logic • Training helps

6. Piaget and Education • Discovery learning • Sensitivity to children’s readiness to learn • Acceptance of individual differences.

7. Vygotsky’s SocioculturalTheory • Children’s private speech • Piaget’s view • Vygotsky’s view • Social origins of early childhood cognition • Intersubjectivity • Scaffolding.

8. Vygotsky and Education • Active participation • Acceptance of individual differences • Assisted discovery • Peer collaboration • Cooperative learning experiences.

9. Information Processing • Attention • Memory • Less effective at using memory strategies • Rehearsal • Organizing • Episodic memory >> autobiographical memory • Scripts become increasingly complex • Application to child sexual abuse cases

10. Young Child'sTheory of Mind • Metacognition • Development: • “Think,” “remember,” “pretend” • Beliefs and desires • False beliefs • Similarities across cultures

11. Where does the Theoryof the Mind Originate? • Early forms of communication • Joint attention & social referencing • Imitation & modeling • Language • Social interaction

12. Limitations of the Child’sTheory of the Mind • Process thinking de-emphasized • Outcome thinking emphasized • Mind as a passive container of info.

13. Early Literacy • Understand written language • Emergent literacy • Writing as a direct representationof people and objects • Experience is the key.

14. Mathematical Reasoning • Ordinality • Cardinality

15. Individual Differences • Verbal and nonverbal • Cultural bias in testing issues • Home environment > rich instimulating experiences • >64% of Mothers of young childrenare employed.

16. Preschools • Part-time learning and developing centers • Child centered preschools • Academic preschools • May undermine motivation & emotional well-being • At-Risk-Preschoolers • Project Head Start

17. Day Care • Full-time development centers • 17% High Quality • Poor quality day care results in • Lower cognitive abilities • Lower social abilities

18. Day Care Quality • Stability & continuity of teachers/programs • Group size • Caregiver/child ratio • Caregiver’s education • Caregiver’s personal commitment • Safe and stimulating environment

19. Educational Television • Boys watch more TV than girls • Low SES watch more TV than middle SES • “Sesame Street” is effective • May widen gap between advantagedand disadvantaged

20. Sesame Street HI Advantaged Ability Disadvantaged Low Time

21. Language Development • Fast mapping • Mutual exclusivity myth • Syntactic bootstrapping • From simple sentences tocomplex grammar • Overregularization • Semantic bootstrapping.

22. Conversation • Pragmatic • Face-to-face • Older siblings help • Less mature in low queue situations

23. Adult Help with Language • Give-and-take opportunities • Sensitive caring adults - feedback • Explicit feedback • Avoid overcorrection • Adult expansions • Adult recasts..