9.Early Childhood Cognition

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9.Early Childhood Cognition

• Test 2 (Weeks 5 8)
• Berk Chapter 9 (continue)
• Piagets preoperational stage
• Vygotskys sociocultural theory
• Scaffolding
• Film Conservation

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Early Cognition

• How do children think in early childhood?
• 2 - 7 years of age
• What are the distinct developmental features of
  their thinking?

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Early Cognition

• 3 key theoretical perspectives
• Piaget preoperational thought
• Pre-logical limits to mental representations
• Obstacles to logical thought
• Information processing
• Increasing capacity to use mental strategies in
  thinking
• Vygotsky sociocultural theory
• children as social apprentices

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Piagets Preoperational Stage

• In Sensorimotor period
• infant relates to world through reflex activity
  sensorimotor experiences.
• With maturation experiences with environment,
  child begins to use basic symbolic thought
• ability to represent objects mentally marks end
  of sensorimotor period

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Piagets Preoperational period

• Major characteristic is
• development of symbolic schemes
  representational thought.
• child uses symbolic functions
• eg, words, gestures, mental images
• ability to use one thing to stand for another
• represents other objects or events

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Preoperational Thought

• Example of early childhood "thinking" using
  mental symbols for airplane
• language - word
• gesture - swooping
• imaginative play - pretend stick is airplane

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Preoperational Thought

• Young children make impressive cognitive leaps in
  first two years
• Still, Piaget looked at the ultimate goal of
  cognitive development
• as the ability to think logically
• So he emphasized the limits or deficits in how
  young children think

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Characteristics of preoperational thought

• Obstacles to ability to do logical operations
• Egocentrism
• Centration
• Animism
• Lack of reversibility
• Appearance vs reality confusion
• Eg glass of milk looks brown with sunglasses
• Eg, Sib in Halloween costume scary

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Lack of reversibility

• Unable to
• notice transformations,
• understand cause/effect
• mentally go thru steps in a problem then go in
  reverse

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Preoperational thought

• More obstacles
• Categorization is based on appearance
• Reasoning is semi-logical, intuitive
• Child is able to solve simple problems,
• ie, operations like classifying, counting, or
  relating objects
• But child is not aware of principles used
• can't explain reason for solving a problem a
  certain way
• Justification is important in Piagets methods

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Studying preoperational thought

• Because of limitations of pre-op thought,
• Child is unable to conserve
• Conservation
• some characteristics of objects stay same even
  when outward appearance changes
• Limits of thinking identified via Piagetian
  Conservation tasks.

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Preoperational thought

• But, by end of preoperational period,
• young children -
• achieve conservation, firmer classification, etc
• understand that objects can change their
  appearance without changing their basic nature or
  identity.

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Vygotsys Theory of Cognitive Development

• V. saw development as a social relationship
• how children collaborate with more experienced
  others
• How cultural values, shared information are
  transferred from one generation to the next
• 3 key contributions
• Zone of proximal development
• Private speech
• Scaffolding

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Zone of proximal development

• Difference between what child can do alone what
  he can do with help
• Eg, clean your room!
• By structuring the task, adult can help
• Start
• Like training wheels
• Adult provides
• Idea that cognition develops in a social setting

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Private speech

• Children instruct themselves by talking
• to themselves out loud
• helps children regulate their own behaviour
• Vygotsky saw it as intermediate step toward
  self-regulation of cognitive skills
• Eventually becomes inner speech (thought)
• Eg, dressing First I put my socks on. Then I

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Vygotskian Scaffolding

• Family is a social institution
• where culture of educational competence is
  nurtured
• Children rely on parents for assistance when
• they have problems or tasks beyond their
  abilities
• Parents scaffold childrens problem-solving
  efforts
• Until children can internalize skills they need
• Eg, child doing puzzle with help of parent or
  sib
• What colour do you think goes over here?

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Scaffolding

• Scaffolding
• is teaching style (by parents or teachers) that
  matches amount of help given to learners need
• Giving help, but not more than needed
• Do not tell children exactly what to do
• But do not leave them all on their own

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Scaffolding

• General Findings
• Early on, child needs lots direct instruction
• Later on, less direct instruction,
• more reminders hints
• Scaffolding or collaborative teaching
• most effective way for child to learn
• for transfer of cognitive skills from adults to
  child

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Scaffolding Study

• Mothers Scaffolding of Childrens problem
  solving Establishing a foundation of academic
  self-regulatory competence
• (Neitzel Stright, 2003)

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Mothers Scaffolding Study - Neitzel

• Scaffolding defined as instructional interaction
  aimed at
• expanding childs knowledge,
• simplifying complex tasks,
• transferring responsibility to child
• still providing emotional support

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Mothers Scaffolding Study - Neitzel

• Parent differences in scaffolding styles
• Amount type of information they give kids
• How much they simplify complex tasks
• Provide skills, strategies to solve problems
• Encourage child to be active independent
• childs understanding of self
• control of their behaviour in classroom
• Leading to childs autonomous skills
• Suitable emotional support
• Encourage effort persistence in hard tasks

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Mothers Scaffolding Study - Neitzel

• How do parent scaffolding styles relate to
  childrens later problem solving classroom
  behaviour?

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Mothers Scaffolding Study - Neitzel

• Participants
• 68 family dyads mothers preschoolers
• Mean age 5.6 yrs (4 6)
• Procedure
• Home visit to assess problem solving
• Given 4 difficult tasks, 5 min each, in summer
• Kindergarten video observation 48 min
• 24 min with teacher, 24 min independent work
• Videoed for 2 visits, in fall spring

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Mothers Scaffolding Study - Neitzel

• Procedure - 4 problem-solving tasks
• Child hears tape of Mom giving instructions
• on how to draw a figure
• Child listens tries for 5 min, Mom helps for 5
  min
• Build a tower using 9 blocks, different sizes
• Plan a birthday party for teddy
• Who to invite, game, gift, cake
• Make up a story using 6 puppets
• Firefighter, policeman, wizard, nurse, doctor,
  baker

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Mothers Scaffolding Study - Neitzel

• Measures of Mothers scaffolding - iv
• Cognitive support Metacognitive
• Offers rationale, strategies, techniques
• small manageable steps review of steps
• Transfer of responsibility to child
• Encouraging childs autonomy
• Prompts, questions, or hints, not answers
• Emotional support
• Rejection criticism, disapproval, negative
  reactions
• Encouragement positive comments

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Mothers Scaffolding Study - Neitzel

• Childs academic self-regulatory behaviours - dv
• Metacognitive child discusses own thinking
• articulate aware of problem solving approach
• Task persistence sustained effort, interest
• Behavioural self-control (lack)
• not following instructions, being disruptive
• Seeking help
• Number of times child asked teacher for help

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Mothers Scaffolding Study - Neitzel

• Results Differences in Childrens Behaviour
• If Mom gave high levels of emotional support or
• If Mom was less directive controlling
• Childs Task Persistence
• children more sustained effort interest in
  schoolwork
• Childs Behavioural control
• children less disruptive follow instructions
  better

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Scaffolding

• If Mom does not give support at home, kids are
  less likely to ask teacher for help at school
• Important that children see others as important
  resources for information
• Kids may expect rejection
• Moms emotional support at home helped kids ask
  for help from teacher
• Helps kids realize their needs, motivates them to
  ask, be willing to receive assistance from others

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Scaffolding

• General conclusions based on results
• support for Vygotskys theory that parent-child
  interactions are socialized.
• lay foundation for childs behavioural control
  competence in school
• let children acquire tools, to help them
  understand manage their behaviour
• acquire attitudes beliefs that encourage
  persistence interest
• Effective scaffolding helps child be more
  effective

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Scaffolding

• Implications
• Parents may be reluctant to help kids if they
  dont know what the teacher wants
• but emotional support encouraging independent
  attempts foster childs awareness, attitudes
  towards learning that leads to academic
  competence
• Should parents be trained?
• What parent factors are important?

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Scaffolding

• Are there differences in what works for
  individual children?
• Different cognitive capacities
• Different expectations of success
• Different social-emotional confidence
• Teachers can examine the patterns of
  communication control in their classrooms.
• Are emotional support mechanisms in place?
• Do routines or rules influence allow or
  prohibit autonomous behaviour?

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SES and Preschool Academics

• Studies consistently find poorer school
  readiness
• Low SES kids poorer academic skills
• Study (Stipek Ryan, 1997) of 262 presch K
• Low SES kindergarteners showed on average
• 1-year delay in cognitive performance
• memory, language, problem solving
• But, both SES groups had similar academic gains
  over the time they were in school.
• No differences in motivation among kids
• expectations of success, preference for
  challenge, etc

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SES and Preschool Academics

• Study Conclusions Implications
• Low SES kids start off disadvantaged
• They showed the same gains,
• but they would need more rapid gains just to
  catch up.
• How can they catch up?
• Maybe Vygotskian Scaffolding is part of the
  answer.

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Characteristics of preoperational period

• Film Conservation
• shows kids age 5 12 doing Piagetian tasks
• From preoperational to formal stages

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Film Piagets Conservation Tasks

• Preoperational children do not yet have
• Conservation of liquids
• 2 identical containers, equal amounts of water
• contents of 1 poured into taller, thinner
  container
• child centres on heights of liquids, ignores
  width
• concludes taller one has more water
• Conservation of length roads
• Conservation of area barns
• Conservation of volume houses

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Limitations of thinking

• In film, we see
• Centration
• Attends to 1 salient feature, ignores others
• Lack of reversibility
• child ignores process of changing as liquid is
  poured in conservation task
• only thinks about before after states.