Cognitive Development of Early Childhood

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Cognitive Development of Early Childhood

• Lecture 10
• C6035 Human Development

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Cognitive Developmental Changes

• Piagets Preoperational Stage of Development
• Preoperational stage stretches from approximately
  2 to 7 years of age
• Signifies time when stable concepts are formed,
  mental reasoning emerges
• Egocentrism begins strongly then weakens
• Magical beliefs are constructed
• Child does not yet think in operational way
• Operations being internalized sets of actions
  that allow child to do mentally what before did
  physically

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Piagets Preoperational Stage of Development

• Symbolic Function Substage
• First substage of preoperational thought,
  occurring roughly between ages of 2 4
• During which young child gains ability to
  represent object mentally that is not present
• Egocentrism feature of preoperational thought in
  which child is not able to distinguish between
  ones own perspective someone elses
  perspective
• Animism limitation within preoperational thought,
  whereby child believes that inanimate objects
  have lifelike qualities capable of action

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Piagets Preoperational Stage of Development

• Intuitive Thought Substage
• Second substage of preoperational thought
  occurring approximately between 4 7 years
• Children begin to use primitive reasoning want
  to know answers to all sorts of questions
• Centration focusing of attention on one
  characteristic to the exclusion of all others-
  inability to shift quality or function from one
  set of criteria to another
• Conservation evidence of centration in childs
  idea of amount remaining same regardless of how
  container changes

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Vygotskys Theory of Development

• Zone of Proximal Development range of tasks too
  difficult for children to master alone but which
  can be learned with guidance assistance of
  adults or more skilled children
• Scaffolding changing the level of support over
  course of a teaching session-more skilled person
  adjusts amount of guidance to fit students
  current performance level
• Language and Thought young children use language
  to plan, guide monitor their behavior in
  self-regulatory fashion - called this inner
  speech or private speech.

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Evaluating and Comparing Vygotskys and Piagets
Theories

• Vygotskys emphasis on importance of inner speech
• Piagets views such speech as immature
• Vygotskys theory is social constructivist
  approach which emphasizes social contexts of
  learning-fact that knowledge is mutually built
  constructed

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Teaching Strategies Based on Vygotskys Theory in
classroom

• Use childs zone of proximal development, by
  teaching to childs upper limit
• Use scaffolding when children need help with
  self-initiated learning activities, by helping
  move to higher level of skill knowledge
• Use more skilled peers as teachers
• Monitor encourage childrens use of private
  speech
• Assess childs ZPD, not IQ
• Transform classroom with Vygotskian ideas

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Information Processing

• Study of different cognitive processes of mental
  world of young children
• Attention childs ability to pay attention
  changes drastically during preschool years Visual
  attention to television increases during period,
  but they tend to react to features (color, sound,
  size) to exclusion of content
• Memory In short-term memory individual retain
  information for up to 15 or 30 seconds
• Short-term memory increases during early
  childhood
• Studies of memory children, speed of repetition
  was powerful predictor of memory span

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Task Analysis

• Information processing psychologists have found
  that when tasks are made interesting simple
• Children display greater cognitive maturity than
  Piaget realized

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The Young Childs Theory of Mind

• Childrens developing of the mind includes
  awareness that mind exists
• It has connections to the physical world
• It can represent objects events accurately or
  inaccurately
• It can actively interpret reality emotions

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Language DevelopmentStages and Rule Systems

• Browns Stages Mean length of utterance (MLU) is
  a good index of childs language maturity. Stages
  indicate growth of language complexity
• Stage 1 - 12 to 26 months of age MLU 1.00 to
  2.00
• Stage 2 - 27 to 30 months of age MLU 2.00 to
  2.50
• Stage 3 - 31 to 34 months of age MLU 2.50 to
  3.00
• Stage 4 - 35 to 40 months of age MLU 3.00 to
  3.75
• Stage 5 - 41 to 46 months of age MLU 3.75 to
  4.50

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Rule Systems Morphology, syntax, semantics
pragmatics

• As children move beyond two-word utterances, they
  know morphology rules
• Begin using plurals possessive forms of nouns,
• Put appropriate endings on verbs,
• Use prepositions various forms of verb to be
• As children move to elementary school, they
  become skilled at using syntactical rules to
  construct lengthy complex sentences

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Literacy and Early Childhood Education

• Literacy begins in infancy
• Reading writing skills should build on existing
  understanding of oral written language
• Too many preschool children are being subjected
  to rigid, formal pre-reading programs with
  expectations experiences that are too advanced
  for cognitive levels of development
• Instruction should be built on what children
  already know about oral language, reading
  writing

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Early Childhood EducationVariations in Early
Childhood Ed

• Child-Centered Kindergarten involves whole child
  by considering physical, cognitive, social
  development childs needs, interests learning
  styles
• Experimenting, exploring, discovering, trying
  out, restructuring, speaking, listening
  describe excellent kindergarten programs

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Early Childhood EducationVariations in Early
Childhood Ed

• Montessori Approach philosophy of education in
  which children are given considerable freedom and
  spontaneity in choosing activities
• Allowed to move from one activity to another as
  they desire
• Does not emphasize verbal interaction between
  teacher, child, peers

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Developmentally Appropriate Inappropriate
Practices

• Education of Young Children
• Knowing that children develop at varying rates,
  educators and psychologists promote programs in
  which childs specific developmental level is
  taken into consideration
• These programs emphasize hands-on activities
  versus paper-and-pencil activities or other large
  group strategies

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Education for Children Who Are Disadvantaged

• Project Head Start designed to provide children
  from low-income families opportunity to acquire
  skills experiences important for success in
  school
• Project Follow Through different types of
  educational programs where enriched programs are
  carried through first years of elementary school

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Effects of Early Childhood Education

• Studies show that children who attend preschool
  or kindergarten
• Interact more with peers, both positively and
  negatively
• Are less cooperative with responsive to adults
• Are more socially competent mature

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Nonsexist Early Childhood Education

• Important goals of nonsexist early childhood
  education programs
• 1. Free children from constraining stereotypes of
  gender roles
• 2. Promote equality for both sexes by
  facilitating each childs participation in
  activities
• 3. Help children develop skills that will enable
  them to challenge sexist stereotypes behavior

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Does Preschool Matter?

• The issue is not whether preschool is important,
  but whether home schooling can closely duplicate
  what competent preschool program can offer
• Psychologist David Elkind believes early
  childhood education should become part of public
  education, but on its own terms
• Early childhood should have its own curriculum,
  its own methods of evaluation classroom
  management, its own teacher-training programs

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School Readiness

• Expectations for young childrens skills
  abilities need to be based on knowledge of child
  development ways in which children learn
• Basic principle of child development is that
  there is tremendous normal variability both among
  children of same chronological age within an
  individual child