Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A.

Rathus
Chapter 9

Chapter 9
Early Childhood:
Cognitive Development

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Jean Piagets
Preoperational Stage

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

How Do Children in the Preoperational Stage

Think and Behave?
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

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

How Do We Characterize the Logic of the

Preoperational Child?
Lack of logical operations
No flexible or reversible mental operations

Egocentrism
Only view the world through their own perspective
Three-mountain test

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Figure 9.1 The Three-Mountains Test

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

How Do We Characterize the Logic of

the Preoperational Child?
Causality
Influenced by egocentrism
Caused by will

Precausal thinking
Transductive reasoning
Animism
Artificialism

Confusion between mental and physical phenomena

Believe their thoughts reflect external reality
Believe dreams are true

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

What is Conservation?
Properties remain the same even if you change the shape or
arrangement
Preoperational children fail to demonstrate conservation
Centration
Irreversibility

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Figure 9.2 Conservation

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Figure 9.3 Conservation of Number

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

What is Class Inclusion?

Including new objects/categories in broader mental classes
Requires child focus on more than one aspect of situation at once

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Figure 9.4 Class Inclusion

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Evaluation of Piaget
Piaget underestimated preschoolers abilities
Three-mountain test
Errors attributed to demands on child and language development

Causality
Logical understanding appears more sophisticated

Conservation
Approach may mislead child

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

What Are Some of the Factors That Influence Cognitive

Development in Early Childhood?
Scaffolding
Zone of Proximal Development
Sorting doll furniture into appropriate rooms (Freund, 1990)
Retell a story viewed on videotape (Clarke-Stewart & Beck, 1999)
Recall of task completed in longitudinal study (Haden, et al., 2001)

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

The Effect of the Home Environment

Home Observation for the Measurement of the Environment
Observe parent-child interaction in the home
Predictor of IQ scores

Parental responsiveness, stimulation, independence

Connected with higher IQ and school achievement

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

The Effect of Early Childhood Education

Preschool enrichment programs for children of poverty
Designed to increase school readiness
Enhance cognitive development
Parental involvement
Provide health care and social services to children and families

Programs have shown benefits

Positive influence on IQ scores
Better graduation rates
Less likely to be delinquent, unemployed or on welfare

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

The Effect of Early Childhood Education

Preschool enrichment for middle class children
High parental academic expectations

Increased preschool academic skills (until kindergarten!)

Children less creative,
More anxious and
Think less positively about school

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

The Effect of Television on Cognitive Development

Contradictory evidence
Sesame Street most successful educational tv show
Regular viewing = increased skill in numbers, letters, sorting, classification
Positive impact on vocabulary

Impulse control
Heavy tv viewing negatively effects impulse control
Exposure to educational tv may have positive effect

Commercials
Couch-Potato Effects

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

A Closer Look
Helping Children Use
Television Wisely

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Theory of Mind
What Is A Mind?
How Does It Work?

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

What Are Childrens Ideas About How the Mind Works?

Theory of Mind
Understanding of how the mind works

Preschool-aged children
Predict and explain behavior and emotion by mental states
Beginning to understand source of knowledge
Elementary ability to distinguish appearance from reality

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Do Children Understand Where Their

Knowledge Comes From?
Ability to separate beliefs from another who has false knowledge of
a situation.
Ability to deceive
Evident by age 4, sometimes even at age 3

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Development of Memory
Creating Files and
Retrieving Them

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

What Sort of Memory Skills Do Children Possess

in Early Childhood?
Recognition
Indicate whether items has been seen before

Recall
Reproduce material without any cues

Preschool children
Recognize more than they recall

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Figure 9.6 Recognition and Recall Memory

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Competence of Memory in Early Childhood

Best for meaningful and familiar events
Details are often omitted
Unusual events have more detail

Scripts abstract, generalized accounts of repeated events

Formed after one experience
Become more elaborate with repetition

Autobiographical memory
Linked to development of language skills

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

What Factors Affect Memory in Early Childhood?

Types of Memory
Remember activities more than objects
Remember sequenced events better

Interest Level
Individual interest and motivation

Retrieval Cues
Younger children depend on retrieval cues from adults
Parental elaboration improves childs memory

Types of Measurement
Younger children are limited in measurement by use of verbal reports

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

How Do We Remember to Remember?

Strategies for remembering
Rehearsal, organizing, mentally grouping
Not used extensively until age 5

Concrete memory aids used by young children

Pointing, looking, touching

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Language Development
Why Daddy Goed Away

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

What Language Developments Occur

During Early Childhood?
Development of Vocabulary
Fast-mapping
Quickly attach new word to appropriate concept

Whole-object assumption
Assume words refer to whole objects, not parts or characteristics

Contrast assumption
Assume objects have only one label

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

What Language Developments Occur

During Early Childhood?
Development of Grammar
Expand telegraphic speech
Include articles, conjunctions and possessive adjectives

Overregularization
Strict application of grammar rules
Represents advances in syntax

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Figure 9.7 Wugs

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

What Language Developments Occur

During Early Childhood?
Development of Grammar
Questions
First questions are telegraphic with rising pitch at the end
Later incorporate why questions

Passive Sentences
Young children have difficulty understanding passive sentences
Do not use passive sentences

Pragmatics
Adjust speech to fit the social situation
Between 3- and 5-years, develop more pragmatic skills
Represents the ability to comprehend other perspectives

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

What Is The Relationship Between

Language and Cognition
Cognitive development precedes language development
Piaget: understand concept then describe it
Vocabulary explosion (18-months) related to categorization

Language development precedes cognitive development

Create cognitive classes for objects labeled by words

Childhood and Adolescence: Voyages in Development, Second Edition, Spencer A. Rathus

Chapter 9

Interactionist View: Outer and Inner Speech

Lev Vygotsky
During first year vocalizations and thoughts are separate
During second year thought and language combine
Children discover objects have labels
Learning labels becomes more self-directed

Inner speech
Initially childrens thought are spoken aloud
Eventually language becomes internalized
Language functions as self-regulative