User:Atcovi/Spring2024/Child Psychology/Chapter 9: Early Childhood: Cognitive Development

9.1 - Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage

 * Preoperational stage - Second stage of Piaget's scheme, characterized by inflexible and irreversible mental manipulation of symbols. Essentially the use of symbols = represent objects and relationships.

How Do Children in the Preoperational Stage Think and Behave?

Children draw and scrabble a lot, usually drawing symbols (scribble and draw pictures that represent objects, people, and events).

What Is Symbolic or Pretend Play?


 * Symbolic play - Play in which children make believe that objects and toys are other than what they are. Starts in second year. Could be divided into violent, elaborative, and solitaritive.

What Are Imaginary Companions?


 * Imaginary companions are an example of parasocial interactions (one-sided interactions, between a person and an imaginary friend).

What Are “Operations”?


 * Operations = Mental acts/schemes in which objects are changed and then can be returned to their original states.

In the preoperational stage, this ability is 'under construction' while egocentrism, confusion, and the inability to focus on one thing at a time prevail.

Egocentrism: Why Do Young Children Think “It’s All about Me”?


 * Egocentrism - "I can't see other people's POV". Seen in the 'three-mountains test'.

'''Causality: Why? Because!'''


 * Sun shines because the shun wants to shine on them --> precausal (type of thinking in which natural cause-and-effect relationships are caused by will).
 * Transductive reasoning - Reasoning from the specific to the specific. "Separate, specific events, daylight (or being awake) and going on the swings, are thought of as having cause-and-effect relationships."
 * Animism, or the attribution of life and intentionality to inanimate objects, and artificialism, the belief that environmental features were made by people. ("Why is the moon gone during the day?" "It is afraid of the sun").

How Do Young Children Confuse Mental and Physical Events?: On “Galaprocks” and Dreams That Are Real

They do not understand that words are arbitrary, they are confused between symbols and things they represent (they could genuinely believe that they are a "galaprock" just cuz!), and believe their dreams are real.

How Many Dimensions of a Problem Do Young Children Focus on at Once?: On Mental Blinders

A child will believe water in a taller, skinnier cup has more water than a larger, smaller cup.

'''What Is Meant By Conservation? (Hint: We’re Not Talking about the Environment)'''

'''What Do Young Children Put in Their Classes? On Class Inclusion'''
 * Conservation: Properties of substances are constant even if you change the arrangement. Focus on two aspects of a situation (height and width).
 * Centration: Focusing on one dimension of a situation while ignoring others.
 * Irreversibility: Actions CAN be reversed, but kids don't know that.


 * Class Inclusion: The principle that one category or class of things can include several subclasses. ("Do you see more dogs or cats? There are more dogs than animals").
 * Essentialist: View that differences between racial groups are fixed due to an inborn nature that defines members of various racial groups.

How Accurately Do Piaget’s Views Represent Cognitive Development in Early Childhood?


 * Accuracy of his age estimates when dealing with children's failures to display certain cognitive skills?
 * Lack of language comprehension?
 * Understanding of CASUALITY is better than we thought.
 * Bias in the standard conservation task (water beakers test)?

9.2 - Vygotsky’s Views on Early Childhood Cognitive Development

 * Scaffolding - Social support
 * Key ingredients in child's cognitive development? Parental responsiveness and interaction. A component of this is scaffolding.
 * Zone of proximal development (ZPD): Adults/older children can guide younger children to the children's capabilities.

How Does the Home Environment Affect the Cognitive Development of Children?

 * Caldwell and friends made up the HOME (Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment), which evaluates children's home environment. It's made up of 6 scales, assessing play toys, parental punishments, involvement, variety in their day, etc.
 * The home environment plays a big role in intellectual development and academic achievement. Good predictor for IQ tests at later ages.

How Do Preschool Educational Programs Affect Children’s Cognitive Development?

 * Good for children's academic achievements. Some are academic-based, such as the Horace Mann School, while majority are child-centered (play-based).
 * Some programs, such as the Head Start program, are aimed at providing healthcare and social services to children and their families (that are struck by poverty). Initial improvements can be massive. Girls in these preschool programs are less likely to become single, education-abandoning mothers.

Is Television a Window on the World for Young Children, or a Prison within a False World?
It's mixed...


 * Educational television shows have positive effects. (Sesame Street, ex.), but pure entertainment (like Spongebob, ex.) could be harmful. Set a time limit and be a guide for your child while watching & explain to them the concepts of advertising, violence, and real-life applications.
 * And What about Commercials? Commercials can be bad, especially if they advertise unhealthy foods (Reeses Puffs for breakfast, ex.).
 * What Is the Couch-Potato Effect? ↑ More television ↑ Likelyhood of being obese.

9.4 - Theory of Mind
Theory of Mind: A common-sense understanding of how the mind works.

What Are Young Children’s Ideas about How the Mind Works? Much to the opposition of Piaget, preschool children can predict and explain human action/emotion in terms of their mental state.

On False Beliefs: Just Where Did Those Crayons Go? 3 year olds thought the fooled Cathy was going to find rocks, but 4-5 year olds knew that Cathy was gonna be fooled and incorrectly believe crayons were in the bag, when the clown had in fact removed the crayons in the bag and replaced it with rocks.

Development of knowing false beliefs is related to executive functioning (working memory).

On the Origins of Knowledge: Where Does It Come From? 3 year olds incorrectly thought a ball was blue just by feeling it. Most children at age 3 learn things through senses/interactions.

The Appearance–Reality Distinction: Are Appearances at Some Ages More Deceiving Than at Others? Children must understand appearance-reality distinction, the difference between real events and mental events, fantasies, and misleading appearances. By preschool ages (4, for example), they are able to distinguish between real items and imagined items. Children of the preschool years have a limited understanding of mental representations (eraser-cooke mix up, etc.). Can't understand change in mental states and items being two things at once.

What Memory Skills Do Children Have in Early Childhood? How Do We Know?

 * Recognition akin to a multiple choice test, recall akin to a fill-in-the-blank test. They are better at recognition, than recall - and better at recalling activities they've done vs. recalling objects.

How Competent Are Young Children’s Memories?

 * From Nelson and Fivush's study, we can see that children have scripts (abstract generalizations of familiar events).
 * The more the children talks about a personal event, the increase in autobiographical memory (memory of specific episodes/events) is evident.

What Factors Influence Memory Skills in Early Childhood?

 * Types of Memory? Better at recalling activities than recalling specific objects. Better at recalling step-by-step orders.
 * Interest Level = Interest Level is aligned with attention/memory.
 * Retrieval Cues = Younger kids need cues more than older kids.
 * Types of Measurement = Subjective analysis of recall. Maybe a physical (show) report (dolls) is better than a verbal report.

Memory Strategies: How Do Children Remember to Remember?

 * 1) Rehearsel
 * 2) Chunking (categories)

9.6 - Language Development: Why “Daddy Goed Away”
Language development goes crazy during preschool years.

Words, Words, and More Words—How Does Vocabulary Develop in Early Childhood?

 * Fast-mapping = Determing a word's meaning, which increases a child's vocab development. The key to is earlier cognitive biases/constraints.
 * Whole-object assumption = Children assume the word refers to the whole objects and not specific characteristics.
 * Contrast assumption = If a word means one thing, then it can't mean another (doggy vs. unknown object [lemur] scenario).

Putting Words Together—How Does Grammar Develop in Early Childhood?

 * Overregularization = Application of regular grammatical rules to irregular verbs and nouns (-d/-ed = regular verbs, walk --> walked). Kids will say "goed", "sitted", "sheeps", "childs", etc.

Pragmatics: Can Preschoolers Be Practical?

 * Pragmatics: The practical aspects of communication, such as adaptation of language to fit the social situation.

What Are the Connections Between Language and Cognition? Which Comes First: The Concept or the Word?

 * Vygotsky's concept of private speech is the theory that a child's vocalization, at 4/5, turns into an internal dialogue, at 6/7. It is the ultimate binding of language and thought.