chapters 9 & 12 cognitive development in early and middle childhood © 2013 the mcgraw-hill...
TRANSCRIPT
Chapters 9 & 12
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
IN EARLY AND MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
COGNITIVE ABILITIES IN 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
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
LOGIC AND THE PREOPERATIONAL CHILD
• Lack of logical operations• No flexible or reversible mental operations
• Stages:• Symbolic Function (Preconceptual) 2-4 years• Intuitive 4-7 years
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Preoperational stage: Piaget’s second stage, lasting from 2 to 7 years of age, during which time children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings
• Operations: Internalized set of actions; Mental manipulations of concepts and ideas
PIAGET’S PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Symbolic function stage• First substage of preoperational thought• Occurs in ages 2 to 4, imaginative drawings• Ability to mentally represent object not present• Thoughts limited by beliefs:• Egocentrism• Animism
PIAGET’S PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Intuitive thought substage• Uses primitive reasoning, seeks answers to all• Occurs about 4 to 7 years of age
• Limits in preoperational thought• Centration• Lack of Conservation• Irreversibility• Lack of Class Inclusion
PIAGET’S PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
LACK CLASS INCLUSION
• Class inclusion means separating things into main classes as well as subclasses.
• Requires child focus on more than one aspect of situation at once
• Cannot think about two subclasses and the larger class at the same time
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Concrete operational stage; ages 7-11• Reversible mental actions applied to real, concrete
objects• Focus on several characteristics at once
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL THOUGHT
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL ABILITIES
• Conservation skills• Object can have several properties or dimensions• Child can de-center and focus on more than one
dimension
• Horizontal Decalage• Conservation of mass develops first
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE STAGE OF CONCRETE OPERATIONS?
• Beginnings of adult logic• Capable of operational thinking• Involves tangible objects, not abstract ideas
• Characterized by• Reversibility and flexibility• Less egocentric• Decentration• Transitivity
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Social constructionist approach • Focuses on cognitive development• Children - Active construction of knowledge and
understanding by actions and interactions• Depends on tools used by society• Shaped by cultural context
VYGOTSKY’S THEORY
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)• Lower limit - What child achieves independently • Upper limit - What can be achieved with assistance of
able instructor• Cognitive skills in process of maturing
• Scaffolding: Changing level of support over course of teaching session to fit child’s current performance level
VYGOTSKY’S THEORY
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Language and thought• Children’s language uses solving tasks and social
communication• Plans, monitors, guides behavior• Private speech: self-regulation
• All mental functions have external, social origins
VYGOTSKY’S THEORY
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Teaching strategies• Assess and use child’s ZPD in teaching• Use more-skilled peers as teachers• Monitor and encourage private speech use• Place instruction in meaningful context• Transform classroom with Vygotsky’s ideas
VYGOTSKY’S THEORY
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Evaluating the theory:• Inner speech important to development• Social interaction affects learning/knowledge• Extends ‘endpoint’ of cognitive development • Teachers serve as facilitators, Piaget agrees• Criticisms:• Age-related changes not specific enough• Over-emphasized role of language• Socioemotional-cognitive link needs more
VYGOTSKY’S THEORY
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Attention• Focusing of cognitive resources• Visual attention dramatically increases during
preschool years; still has deficits• Executive attention: Action planning, focus on
goals, detects errors, deals with novel or difficult circumstances
• Sustained attention: Focused, extended engagement with object, task, event
• Selective attention: Pay attention to relevant features of a task
INFORMATION PROCESSING
DEVELOPMENT OF SELECTIVE ATTENTION
• Ability to focus attention and screen out distractions improves over time
• Early Childhood• Attention dramatically increases, but children still ignore salient
information for more flashy information.• Plannfulness: Haphazard strategies in problem-solving
• Middle Childhood• Control: Increases dramatically from 6-9• Adaptability: Flexible, adjust to situation and to own learning• Planfulness: Can order how they attend to things.
TYPES OF MEMORY
• Sensory Memory• Fraction of a second• Original sensory form
• Working or Short-term Memory• 7+/- 2 chunks of information by adolescence• 5- or 6-year-old – 5 chunks
• Cognitive strategies used to promote memory• Long Term Memory• Unlimited in Capacity and Duration• Organization in long-term memory • Recall memory is improved by categorization
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Memory• Explicit memory • Episodic• Semantic
• Implicit memory• Procedural
INFORMATION PROCESSING
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
MEMORY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
• Best for meaningful and familiar events• As young as 11 months remember sequences just
experienced• 16 months can reenact sequence after delay of 6 weeks• By 4 years, can remember events up to 18 months earlier• Less likely than older children to reject false suggestions
about events
• STM• Increases from 2 digits at 2 years old to 5 digits for 7 year
old• Better able to transfer information to LTM• More room to process information• Speed increases
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
FACTORS THAT AFFECT MEMORY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
• Types of Memory• Memories for activities better than for objects
• 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
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
MEMORY STRATEGIES
• Strategies for Remembering• Rehearsal
• Not used extensively until age 5• Concrete memory aids used by young children
• Looking, pointing, touching
• Moving information to long-term memory• Rehearsal• Elaboration• Organization skills• Use of Memory Strategies
ADVANCED SKILLS IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
• Metacognition• Knowledge and control of cognitive abilities
• Metamemory • Children’s awareness of the functioning of their
memory
• As children develop they utilize more strategies for memory
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Strategies and Problem Solving• Strategies: deliberate mental activities to improve
processing information• Toddlers can learn a strategy• Early childhood: stimulus-driven changes to goal-
directed problem solving• Some cognitive inflexibility in ages 3 to 4 due to lack
of understanding
INFORMATION PROCESSING
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• The Child’s Theory of Mind• Awareness of mental processes of self, others• Ages 18 months to 3 years, child understands three
mental states are related to behavior• Perceptions• Emotions• Desires
• Ages 3-5: realizes there are ‘false beliefs’• Ages 5-7: deeper appreciation of mind itself
INFORMATION PROCESSING
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• The Child’s Theory of Mind• Ages 5-6: knows different experiences exist• Age 7: realizes knowledge is subjective• Theory focuses on preschool years to age 7• Individual differences include: number of siblings,
disabilities, parental interactions
• Important developments occur after age 7
INFORMATION PROCESSING
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Theory of Mind and Autism• Autism: in 2-6 of every 1,000 children• Linked to genetic and brain abnormalities (impairment
ranges from severe to mild)• Difficulty in social interactions and developing theory
of mind affected by:• Inability to focus• Some general intellectual impairment
• Some areas of brain may be above normal
INFORMATION PROCESSING
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Preschool years: • Increased sensitivity to spoken sounds and ability to
produce sounds of their language• Vowels, consonants (simple, complex)• Notice rhymes, poems, silly names
• Knows morphological rules• Learn and use rules of syntax • Vocabulary development is dramatic• By 1st grade: knows 14,000 words
UNDERSTANDING PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Age, maturity improve language skills• Better conversationalists• Engage in extended discourse• Learn culturally-specific rules, behaviors• Talk more about events in time, absent objects and persons
• Ability to change speech style to fit situation develops by age 4-5; more polite and formal
ADVANCES IN PRAGMATICS
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Re-examining early education in U.S. • Concerns about abilities to read and write• Supportive environment needed earlier• Precursors to literacy and academic success:• Language skills• Phonological and syntactic knowledge• Letter identification• Conceptual knowledge about print• Conventions and functions of print
YOUNG CHILDREN’S LITERACY
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• 38 states publicly fund preschool programs• Child-centered Kindergarten• Educate the whole child• Instruction: interests, needs, learning style• Stress how learned; not what is learned• Play is important, various activities used
VARIATIONS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Preschool programs• Montessori approach• Considerable freedom and spontaneity• Encourage decisions, teacher as facilitator• Self-regulated, independent problem solving• Effective time management, responsibility
• Criticisms:• Deemphasizes verbal interaction, neglects social development,
restricts imagination
VARIATIONS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Developmentally appropriate education• Children • Learn best from active, hands-on teaching• Need individual differences considered• Need socioemotional development
• Developmentally inappropriate education• Rely on abstract paper-and-pencil activities• Extensive use of rote drills, seatwork, tests
VARIATIONS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• 1965 - U.S. tries to break cycle of poverty• Project Head Start• To provide opportunity for children from low-income families
to acquire experiences, skills important for school success• Not all programs are created equal• Most provide quality childhood education
EDUCATING YOUNG CHILDREN WHO ARE DISADVANTAGED
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• The curriculum• Universal preschool education• School readiness
CONTROVERSIES IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
© 2013 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Japan• Preschools - Little emphasis on academics• Experience being a member of the group
• Kindergartens have specific aims• Identical uniforms and caps worn• Classrooms: identical in equipment• In large cities: kindergartens tied to universities
• Outside U.S.: children given fewer choices
DIVERSITY IN CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT