This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Slide 1
Chapter 7 (from page 227) Cognitive Development in Early
Childhood
Slide 2
Piagets Theory: The Preoperational Stage Spans 2-7 years Most
obvious change is an extraordinary increase in representational, or
symbolic activity Mental representation Language is our most
flexible means of mental representation because it detaches thought
from action Piaget believed that sensorimotor activity leads to
internal images of experience, which children label with words But
other theorists regard Piagets view of the link between language
and thought as incomplete
Slide 3
Preoperational Stage: Make-Believe Through pretending, young
children practice and strengthen newly acquired representational
schemes Development of make-believe Over time, play detaches from
the real-life conditions associated with it In early pretending,
toddlers use only realistic objects (ex. A toy telephone to talk
into) First pretend acts imitate adults actions and are not yet
flexible After age 2, children pretend with less realistic toys
(ex. A block might stand for a telephone receiver) Gradually, they
can flexibly imagine objects and events without any support from
the real world Play becomes less self-centered At first,
make-believe is directed toward the self Early in the 3 rd year
children begin to direct pretend actions toward other objects
Make-believe becomes less self-centered as children realize that
agents and recipients of pretend actions can be independent of
themselves Play includes more complex combinations of schemes
Sociodramatic play the make-believe with others that occurs around
age 2 and increases rapidly during the next few years Creating and
coordinating several roles in elaborate plots, by the end of early
childhood children have a sophisticated understanding of story
lines Children display awareness that make-believe is a
representational activity
Slide 4
Preoperational Stage: Make-Believe Today, Piagets view of
make-believe as mere practice of representational schemes is
regarded as too limited Play not only reflects but also contributes
to childrens cognitive and social skills Compared with non-pretend
activities (ex. Drawing, putting a puzzle together), during
sociodramatic play preschoolers interactions last longer, show more
involvement, draw more children into the activity, and are more
cooperative Benefits of make-believe Preschoolers who spend more
time at sociodramatic play are seen as more socially competent by
their teachers Studies reveal that make-believe strengthens a wide
variety of mental abilities Sustained attention, memory, logical
reasoning, language and literacy skills, imagination, creativity,
understanding of emotions, and the ability to reflect on ones own
thinking, control ones own behavior, and take anothers
perspective
Slide 5
Preoperational Stage: Symbol-Real-World Relations To
make-believe and to understand other forms of representation, such
as photographs, models, and maps, preschoolers must realize that
each symbol corresponds to something specific in everyday life
Study 2.5 and 3 year olds watched an adult hide a small toy (Little
Snoopy) in a scale model of a room and then were asked to retrieve
it from the model. Then, they were asked to find a larger toy (Big
Snoopy) hidden in the same place in the larger room that the model
represented Not until age 3 could most children use the model as a
guide to find Big Snoopy in the real room The 2.5 year olds did not
realize that the model could be both a toy room and a symbol of
another room Results indicate that children younger than 3 have
problems with dual representation Dual representation viewing a
symbolic object as both an object in its own right and a symbol
Experiences with diverse symbols (photos, picture books,
make-believe, and maps) help preschoolers appreciate dual
representation of symbolic objects, that one object can stand for
another
Slide 6
Limitations of Preoperational Thought Aside from gains in
representation, Piaget described preschoolers in terms of what they
cannot understand As the term preoperational suggests, Piaget
compared children in the stage to older, more competent children
who have reached the concrete operational stage According to
Piaget, young children are not capable of operations Operations
mental actions that obey logical rules Rather, preoperational
childrens thinking is rigid, limited to one aspect of a situation
at a time, and strongly influenced by the way things appear at the
moment
Slide 7
Limitations of Preoperational Thought: Egocentrism Egocentrism
failure to distinguish the symbolic viewpoints of others from ones
own Piaget believed this was the most fundamental deficiency of
preoperational thinking He believed that when children first
mentally represent the world, they tend to focus on their own
viewpoint and assume others perceive, think, and feel the same way
they do Ex. 3-mountains problem Children in the preoperational
stage cannot select a picture that shows the mountains from the
dolls perspective from the other side of the table
Slide 8
Limitations of Preoperational Thought: Egocentrism Egocentrism
is responsible for preoperational childrens animistic thinking
Animistic thinking the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike
qualities, such as thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions
According to Piaget, because young children egocentrically assign
human purposes to physical events, magical thinking is common
during the preschool years Piaget argued that preschoolers
egocentric bias prevents them from accommodating, or reflecting on
and revising their faulty reasoning in response to their physical
and social worlds
Slide 9
Limitations of Preoperational Thought: Inability to Conserve
Piagets famous conservation tasks reveal a variety of deficiencies
of preoperational thinking Conservation the idea that certain
physical characteristics of objects remain he same, even when their
outward appearance changes Ex. A boy and girl get identical boxes
of raisins at snack time, but when the girl spreads hers out over
the table, the boy is convinced she has more Liquid conservation
task The child is shown 2 identical tall glasses of water and asked
if they contain equal amounts When the child agrees, the water in
one class is poured into a short, wide container, changing its
appearance but not its amount Child is then asked whether or not
the amount of water has changed Preoperational children think the
quantity has changed They explain There is less now because the
water is way down here or There is more now because it is all
spread out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLj0IZFLKvg
Slide 10
Limitations of Preoperational Thought: Inability to Conserve
The inability to conserve highlights several related aspects of
preoperational thinking Understanding is centered Centration
children focus on one aspect of a situation, neglecting other
important features In conservation of liquid, the child centers on
the height of the water, failing to realize that changes in width
compensate for changes in height Children are easily distracted by
the perceptual appearance of objects Children treat the initial and
final states of the water as unrelated events, ignoring the dynamic
transformation (pouring of water) between them
Slide 11
Limitations of Preoperational Thought: Inability to Conserve
Most important illogical feature of preoperational thought is its
irreversibility Irreversibility inability to mentally go through a
series of steps in a problem and then reverse direction, returning
to the starting point Ex. After the girl from the previous example
spreads her raisins out, the boy cannot reverse his thinking to say
I know she doesnt have more raisins than I do because if we put
them back in the box, her raisins and my raisins look the
same.
Slide 12
Limitations of Preoperational Thought: Lack of Hierarchical
Classification Hierarchical classification the organization of
objects into classes and subclasses on the basis of similarities
and differences Piagets famous class inclusion problem Children are
shown 16 flowers, 4 blue and 12 yellow Asked Are there more yellow
flowers or flowers? Preoperational children respond More yellow
flowers. They fail to realize that both yellow and blue flowers are
included in the category flowers.
Slide 13
Follow-Up Research on Preoperational Thought Researchers have
challenged Piagets view of preschoolers as cognitively deficient
Many Piagetian problems contain unfamiliar elements or too many
pieces of information for young children to handle at once, thus
their responses do not reflect their true abilities Piaget also
missed many naturally occurring instances of effective reasoning by
preschoolers
Slide 14
Follow-Up Research: Egocentric Thinking Do young children
really believe that a person standing across a room sees the same
thing they see? When researchers adapt the 3-mountains problem to
include familiar objects and use methods other than picture
selection (which is difficult even for 10 year olds), 4 year olds
show clear awareness of others vantage points Even 2 year olds
realize that what they see sometimes differs from what another
person sees When asked to help an adult looking for a lost object,
24 month olds, but not 18 month olds, handed her a toy hidden
behind a bucket that was within the childs line of sight but not
the adults
Slide 15
Follow-Up Research: Egocentric Thinking Non-egocentric
responses appear in young childrens conversations Preschoolers
adapt their speech to fit the needs of their listeners 4 year olds
use shorter, simpler expression when talking to 2 year olds than to
age-mates or adults Non-egocentric responses in description of
objects Children do not use words such as big and little in a
rigid, egocentric fashion Rather, they adjust their descriptions to
allow for context By age 3 children judge a 2 inch show as small
when seen by itself But, judge the shoe as big for a tiny 5 inch
doll
Slide 16
Follow-Up Research: Animistic Thinking Piaget overestimated
preschoolers animistic beliefs Even young infants have begun to
distinguish animate from inanimate By age 2.5, children give
psychological explanations (he likes to) for people and
occasionally for animals, but rarely for objects They do make
errors when questioned about vehicles, which appear to be
self-moving and have other lifelike features (ex. Headlights that
look like eyes) But these responses result from incomplete
knowledge, not from a belief that inanimate objects are alive
Slide 17
Follow-Up Research: Magical Thinking Most 3 year olds believe
in the supernatural powers of fairies, goblins, and other enchanted
creatures They think that magic accounts for events they cannot
explain Older 3 year olds and 4 year olds think that violations of
physical laws (walking through a wall) and mental laws (turning the
TV on just by thinking about it) require magic more than violations
of social conventions (taking a bath with shoes on) These responses
indicate that preschoolers notions of magic are flexible and
appropriate Between ages 4 and 8, as children gain familiarity with
physical events and principles, their magical beliefs decline
Slide 18
Follow-Up Research: Illogical Thought Many studies show that
when preschoolers are given tasks that are simplified and relevant
to their everyday lives, they do not display the illogical
characteristics that Piaget saw in the preoperational stage Ex.
When a conservation of number task is scaled down to include only 3
items instead of 6 or 7, 3 year olds perform well Preschoolers
possess impressive ability to engage in reasoning by analogy about
physical changes Presented with the picture-matching problem:
Play-dough is to cut-up play-dough as apple is to Even 3 year olds
choose the correct answer (a cut-up apple) from a set of
alternatives, several of which share physical features with the
right choice This indicates that in familiar contexts, preschoolers
can overcome appearances and think logically about cause and effect
Preschoolers seem to use illogical reasoning only when struggling
with unfamiliar topics, too much information, or contradictory
facts that they cannot reconcile
Slide 19
Follow-Up Research: Categorization Although preschoolers have
difficulty with Piagetian class inclusion tasks, they organize
their everyday knowledge into nested categories at an early age By
2 nd half of 1 st year, children have formed a variety of global
categories (furniture, animals, vehicles, plants, etc), each
including objects varying in perceptual features Objects go
together because of their common function or behavior Challenging
Piagets assumption that preschoolers thinking is governed only by
appearances 2 to 5 year olds readily draw inferences about
nonobservable characteristics shared by category members Ex. After
being told that a bird has warm blood and that a stegosaurus has
cold blood, preschoolers infer that a pterodactyl has cold blood,
even though it closely resembles a bird
Slide 20
Follow-Up Research: Categorization During 2 nd and 3 rd years
childrens global categories differentiate They form many
basic-level categories (ones at an intermediate level of generality
Ex. chairs, tables, and beds By 3 rd year children easily move back
and forth between basic-level categories and general categories
(ex. furniture) and they break down basic-level categories into
subcategories Ex. rocking chairs and desk chairs Categorizing
skills are supported by their rapidly expanding vocabularies As
they learn more about the world, they devise ideas about underlying
characteristics that category members share Ex. That a combination
of physical features, internal organs, and behaviors determine an
animals identity Adults also support categorizing by labeling and
explaining categories
Slide 21
Follow-Up Research: Categorization To sum up Preschoolers
category systems are not yet very complex, but they already have
the capacity to classify hierarchically and on the basis of
nonobvious properties Preschoolers use logical, causal reasoning to
identify the interrelated features that form the basis of a
category and to classify new category members
Slide 22
Follow-Up Research: Appearance vs. Reality What happens when
preschoolers encounter objects that have 2 identities (a real one
and an apparent one)? Series of studies presented children with
objects that were disguised in various ways and asked what each
looks like and what each is really and truly. Ex. Shown a candle
that looks like a crayon Preschoolers had difficulty, not until age
6 or 7 did children do well on these tasks Younger childrens poor
performance is not due to a general difficulty in distinguishing
appearance from reality as Piaget suggested Rather, they have
trouble with the language of the tasks When permitted to solve
appearance-reality problems nonverbally, by choosing from a
selection of objects the one that really has a particular identity,
most 3 year olds perform well This appearance-reality distinction
involved an understanding of dual representation
Slide 23
Evaluation of the Preoperational Stage When given simplified
tasks based on familiar experiences, preschoolers show the
beginnings of logical thinking, suggesting that Piaget was partly
right and partly wrong about their cognitive capacities Researchers
vary on the question of whether Piagets preoperational stage
actually exists Evidence that children develop operational thought
gradually undermines Piagets stage theory, which assumes an abrupt
change toward logical reasoning occurs around age 6 or 7 Some
neo-Piagetian theorists combine Piagets stage approach with
information processings emphasis on task specific change, and
believe that a related set of competencies develops over an
extended time period
Slide 24
Piaget and Education 3 educational principles derived from
Piagets theory continue to have a major influence on teacher
training and classroom practices, especially in early childhood:
Discovery learning In a Piagetian classroom, children are
encouraged to discover for themselves through spontaneous
interaction with the environment Sensitivity to childrens readiness
to learn Teachers introduce activities that build on childrens
current thinking, but do not try to speed development by imposing
new skills before children indicate readiness Acceptance of
individual differences Activities are provided for individual
children and small groups, not just the whole class Teachers
evaluate educational progress in relation to the childs previous
development, rather than on the basis of normative standards, or
average performance of same-aged peers Biggest problem with Piagets
theory is his insistence that learning mainly occurs through acting
on the environment, and deemphasis of language- based routes to
knowledge
Slide 25
Vygotskys Sociocultural Theory Vygotskys theory stresses the
social context of cognitive development In which rapid growth of
language broadens preschoolers participation in dialogues with more
knowledgeable individuals in their culture
Slide 26
Private Speech Piaget referred to childrens utterances to
themselves as egocentric speech, reflecting his belief that young
children have difficulty taking the perspective of others Vygotsky
disagreed, believing instead that language is the foundation for
all higher cognitive processes, and that children speak to
themselves for self-guidance In Vygotskys view, as children get
older and tasks become easier, their self-directed speech is
internalized as silent, inner speech The internal verbal dialogues
we carry on while thinking and acting in everyday situations Almost
all studies over the past three decades have supported Vygotskys
perspective Childrens self-directed speech is now called private
speech
Slide 27
Social Origins of Early Childhood Cognition Vygotsky believed
that learning occurs within the zone of proximal development (a
range of tasks too difficult for the child to do alone, but
possible with the help of adults or more skilled peers) For
learning to be effective, the adult must engage in scaffolding
Scaffolding adjusting the support offered to fit the childs current
level of performance Ex. If child is unsure of how to proceed in a
task, adult would provide direct instruction. As the childs
competence increases adult gradually withdraws support and turns
responsibility over to the child Children gradually take the
language of their dialogues with adults and make it part of their
private speech, which they use to organize their independent
efforts
Slide 28
Vygotsky and Education Both Vygotskian and Piagetian classrooms
emphasize independent discovery and acceptance of individual
differences But Vygotskian classrooms also promote assisted
discovery Teachers guide childrens learning tailoring their
interventions to each childs zone of proximal development Assisted
discovery is also aided by peer collaboration as children of
varying abilities work in groups, teaching and helping one another
Vygotsky saw make-believe play as the ideal social context for
fostering cognitive development As children create imaginary
situations, they learn to follow internal ideas and social rules
rather than their immediate impulses Ex. A child pretending to go
to sleep follows the rules of bedtime behavior and a child
pretending to be his father conforms to the rules of parental
behavior
Slide 29
Evaluation of Vygotskys Theory One challenge to Vygotskys
theory suggests that verbal communication is not the only means
through which childrens thinking develops Or in some cultures, even
the most important means In cultures that place less emphasis on
schooling and literacy, parents often expect children to take
greater responsibility for acquiring new skills through observation
and participation in group activities To account for childrens
diverse ways of learning through involvement with others, Barbara
Rogoff suggests the term guided participation Guided participation
broader concept than scaffolding, referring to shared endeavors
between more expert and less expert participants, without
specifying the precise features of communication Vygotskys theory
says little about how basic motor, perceptual, attention, memory,
and problem-solving skills contribute to socially transmitted
higher cognitive processes An area Piaget paid more attention
to
Slide 30
Information Processing Information processing focuses on mental
strategies that children use to transform stimuli flowing into
their mental systems During early childhood, advances in
representation and in the ability to guide ones own behavior lead
to more efficient ways of attending, manipulating information, and
solving problems Preschoolers also become more aware of their own
mental life and begin to acquire academically relevant knowledge
important to school success
Slide 31
Information Processing: Attention Compared to school-age
children, preschoolers spend shorter times involved in tasks and
are easily distracted Inhibition Attention improves in toddlerhood
and beyond as children steadily gain in their ability to inhibit
impulses and remain focused on a goal In Tools of the Mind (an
effective preschool curriculum inspired by Vygotskys theory)
scaffolding of attentional skills is woven into virtually all
classroom activities Ex. Teachers provide external aids to support
attention A child might hold a drawing of an ear as a reminder to
listen during story time Ex. Teachers lead games requiring frequent
shifts in attention and encourage make-believe play, which helps
children follow rules and use thought to guide behavior Planning
During early childhood, children also become better at planning
Planning thinking out a sequence of acts ahead of time and
allocating attention accordingly to reach a goal
Slide 32
Information Processing: Recognition and Recall Memory
Preschoolers recognition memory is remarkably good Recognition
ability to tell whether a stimulus is the same or similar to one
they have seen before Ex. Show child a set of 10 pictures or toys,
then mix them up with some unfamiliar items and ask the child to
point to the ones in the original set 4-5 year olds perform nearly
perfectly But recall is much poorer Recall is more demanding
because it requires the child to generate a mental image of an
absent stimulus Ex. Show child set of 10 pictures, remove them from
view and ask the child to name the pictures they saw 2 year olds
can only recall around 1 or 2 of the items 4 year olds can only
remember about 3 or 4 Why? Because preschoolers are not yet skilled
at using memory strategies deliberate mental activities that
improve the chances of remembering Ex. Rehearsal (repeating items
over and over to remember) and organization (grouping items
together that are alike)
Slide 33
Information Processing: Memory for Everyday Experiences Memory
for familiar events Like adults, preschoolers remember familiar
events in terms of scripts Scripts general descriptions of what
occurs and when it occurs in a particular situation Memory for
unfamiliar events Autobiographical memory representations of
personally meaningful, one- time events Reflects improvements in
preschoolers cognitive and conversational skills Parents who use
the elaborative style to elicit childrens autobiographical memory
follow the childs lead, ask varied questions, add information to
the childs statements, and volunteer their own recollections and
evaluations of events Ex. What was the first thing we did on our
trip to the zoo? Why werent the parrots in their cages? I thought
the lion was scary, what did you think? Parents who use the
repetitive style provide little information and keep repeating the
same questions, regardless of the childs interest Ex. Do you
remember the zoo? What did we do at the zoo? Preschoolers who
experience the elaborative style recall more information and also
produce more organized and detailed personal stories when followed
up 1-2 years later
Slide 34
The Young Childs Theory of Mind As representation of the world,
memory, and problem solving improve, children start to reflect on
their own thought processes and begin to construct a theory of mind
Theory of mind coherent set of ideas about mental activities Also
called metacognition thinking about thought Awareness of mental
life By the end of the 1 st year, babies view people as intentional
beings By age 2, they have a clearer grasp of others emotions and
desires, evident in their realization that people often differ from
one another and from themselves in likes, dislikes, wants, needs,
and wishes By age 3, children realize that thinking takes place
inside their head and that a person can think about something
without seeing, touching, or talking about it From age 4 on,
children realize that both beliefs and desires determine behavior
Seen in their ability to recognize that peoples actions may be
guided by false beliefs False beliefs beliefs that do not
accurately represent reality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hLubgpY2_w
Slide 35
Factors Contributing to Preschoolers Theory of Mind Language,
cognitive abilities, make-believe play, and social experiences all
contribute to theory of mind Many studies indicate that language
ability strongly predicts preschoolers grasp of false-belief tasks
Children who spontaneously use, or who are trained to use, complex
sentences with mental-state words are especially likely to pass
false-belief tasks Gains in the ability to inhibit inappropriate
responses, think flexibly, and plan are strongly related to mastery
of false-belief tasks Social experience also promotes understanding
of the mind Maternal mind-mindedness, when mothers appropriately
comment on their infants mental states (ex. do you remember
grandma? you really like that swing!), relates positively with
later performance on false-belief tasks Core knowledge theorists
believe that children are biologically prepared to develop a theory
of mind They claim that children with autism are deficient in the
brain mechanism that enables humans to detect mental states and
form a theory of mind
Slide 36
Limitations of Preschoolers Understanding of Mental Life
Although surprisingly advanced, preschoolers awareness of mental
activities is far from complete 3-4 year olds are unaware that
people continue to think when there are no obvious cues that they
are thinking Children younger than 6 pay little attention to the
process of thinking When asked about subtle distinctions between
mental states, such as know and forget, they express confusion They
believe that all events must be directly observed to be known and
do not understand that mental inferences can be a source of
knowledge This suggests that preschoolers view the mind as a
passive container of information Consequently, they greatly
underestimate the amount of mental activity that people engage in
and are poor at inferring what people know or are thinking
about
Slide 37
Early Childhood Literacy Preschoolers understand quite a bit
about written language long before they learn to read or write in
conventional ways Through informal experiences, such as listening
to a parent read a story book or trying to help make a shopping
list, children actively try to figure out how written symbols
convey meaning, a process known as emergent literacy Emergent
literacy childrens active efforts to construct literacy knowledge
through informal experiences Preschoolers search for units of
written language as they read memorized versions of stories and
recognize familiar signs (ex. PIZZA) But they do not yet understand
the symbolic function of the elements of print Ex. They may think
that a single letter stands for a whole word or that each letter in
a signature stands for a separate name
Slide 38
Early Childhood Literacy Eventually, children figure out that
letters are parts of words and are linked to sounds in systematic
ways Evident in the invented spellings that are typical between
ages 5-7 At first, children rely on sounds in the names of letters
Ex. ADE LAFWTS KRMD NTU A LAVATR (eighty elephants crammed into
a[n] elevator) Phonological awareness the ability to reflect on and
manipulate the sound structure of spoken language Indicated by
sensitivity to changes in sounds within words, to rhyming, and to
incorrect pronunciation Phonological awareness is a strong
predictor of emergent literacy knowledge The more informal
literacy-related experiences children have, the better development
of their language and emergent literacy skills, as well as later
reading skills Children from low-SES families have fewer home and
preschool language and literacy learning opportunities (a major
reason that they stay behind in reading achievement throughout the
school years) Interventions which provided books to preschools and
homes of low-SES children and trained caregivers on how to get 3-4
year olds to spend time with books, showed great improvement in
emergent literacy
Slide 39
Young Childrens Mathematical Reasoning Like literacy,
mathematical reasoning builds on informally acquired knowledge
Between 14-16 months, toddlers display a beginning understanding of
ordinality Ordinality order relationships between quantities Ex.
That 3 is more than 2 and 2 is more than 1 By age 3 most children
can count rows of about 5 objects, but they do not know exactly
what the words mean Ex. When asked for 1, they give 1 item, but
when asked for 2, 3, 4, or 5, they usually give a larger but
incorrect amount However, they do understand that a number word
refers to a unique quantity By age 3.5 to 4 years, most children
master the principle of cardinality Cardinality that the last
number in a counting sequence indicates the quantity of items in a
set
Slide 40
Young Childrens Mathematical Reasoning Around age 4 children
use counting to solve arithmetic problems At first, their
strategies are tied to the order of numbers presented Ex. To add 2
+ 4, they count up from 2 But soon they experiment with other
strategies and arrive at the most efficient approach Ex. To add 2 +
4, they would begin counting up from 4 Around this time children
realize that subtraction cancels out addition Ex. Knowing that 4 +
3 = 7, they can infer without counting that 7 3 = 4 Grasping basic
arithmetic rules facilitates rapid computation and with enough
practice children recall answers automatically When adults provide
many occasions for counting, comparing quantities, and talking
about number concepts, children acquire these understandings
sooner
Slide 41
Individual Differences in Mental Development Mental tests for
preschoolers sample a range of verbal and nonverbal cognitive
abilities Verbal Vocabulary showing child a picture and asking them
what is in the picture Memory asking children to repeat sentences
and lists of numbers Nonverbal Spatial reasoning asking child to
copy designs with special blocks, figure out the pattern in a
series of shapes, and indicate what a piece of paper folded and cut
would look like when unfolded Intelligences tests do not sample all
human abilities, and performance is affected by cultural and
situational factors Low-SES and certain ethnic minority
preschoolers may react with anxiety when bombarded with questions
by an unfamiliar adult Such children may not define the testing
situation in achievement terms, instead they may look for attention
and approval from the adult and may settle for lower performance
than their actual abilities By age 6-7, mental test scores are good
predictors of later IQ and academic achievement, which are related
to vocational success in industrialized societies
Slide 42
Home Environment and Mental Development Preschoolers who
develop well intellectually have homes rich in educational toys and
books Parents are warm and affectionate, stimulate language and
academic knowledge, and arrange interesting outings Parents also
resolve conflicts with reason instead of physical force and
punishment Ex. Parents require the child to perform simple chores
and behave courteously toward others These characteristics are seen
less often in poverty-stricken families But, when low-SES parents
manage, despite daily pressures, to obtain a positive and
stimulating home environment, their preschoolers do substantially
better on tests of intelligence and emergent literacy skills Home
environment plays a major role in the generally poorer intellectual
performance of low-SES children in comparison to their higher-SES
peers
Slide 43
Preschool, Kindergarten, and Child Care Largely because of the
rise in maternal employment, over 60% of young children in the U.S.
are enrolled in preschool or child care A preschool is a program
with planned educational experiences aimed at enhancing development
in 2-5 year olds Child care describes a variety of arrangements for
supervising children Good child care should do more than simply
keep children safe and adequately fed, it should provide the same
high-quality educational experiences as an effective preschool
Slide 44
Preschool and kindergarten programs range along a continuum
from child-centered to teacher-directed Child-centered programs
teachers provide a wide variety of activities from which children
select, and much learning occurs through play Academic programs
(teacher directed) teachers structure childrens learning, teaching
letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and other academic skills through
formal lessons, often using repetition and drill Despite evidence
that formal academic training in early childhood undermines
motivation and emotional well-being, preschool and kindergarten
teachers have felt increased pressure to take this approach
Montessori education Special type of child-centered education
Schooling includes materials designed to promote exploration and
discovery, child- chosen activities, and equal emphasis on academic
and social development Research has indicated that children who
completed 2 years of Montessori education perform better in
literacy and math skills, false-belief understanding, concern with
fairness in solving conflicts with peers, and cooperative play with
classmates Types of Preschool and Kindergarten
Slide 45
Early Intervention for At-Risk Preschoolers Project Head Start
a long-standing U.S. program that provides low-SES children with a
year or two of preschool education Parent involvement is central to
the Head Start philosophy Parents serve on policy councils,
contribute to program planning, work directly with children in
classrooms, attend special programs on parenting and child
development, and receive services directed at their own emotional,
social, and vocational needs High/Scope Perry Preschool Project
research study on the benefits of preschool Results revealed
lasting benefits into adulthood 2 years exposure to cognitively
enriching preschool was associated with increased employment and
reduced pregnancy and delinquency rates in adolescence At age 27,
those who attended preschool were more likely to have graduated
from high school and college, have higher earnings, be married, and
own their own home, and were also less likely to have been involved
with the criminal justice system Gains from programs such as Head
Start typically decline as low-SES children enter inferior public
schools in poverty-stricken neighborhoods which undermine the
benefits of preschool education Still, Head Start is highly
cost-effective compared with the cost of providing special
education, treating criminal behavior, and supporting unemployed
adults Economists estimate a life-time return to society of more
than $250,000 on an investment of $15,000 per preschool child
Slide 46
Child Care Preschoolers exposed to poor-quality child care,
especially for long hours, score lower on measures of cognitive and
social skills and higher in behavior problems Psychological
well-being also declines when children experience the instability
of several child-care settings The emotional problems of
temperamentally difficult preschoolers worsen considerably In
contrast, good child care enhances cognitive, language, and social
development, especially for low-SES children In a study that
followed very-low-income children over the preschool years,
center-based care was more strongly associated with cognitive gains
than were other child-care arrangements Probably because centers
are more likely to provide a systematic educational program
Slide 47
Educational Media Besides home and preschool, young children
spend much time in another learning environment: electronic media,
including both television and computers (and more recently tablets
and handheld gaming devices) In the U.S. and other industrialized
nations Nearly all homes have at least one television and most have
two or more About 85% of U.S. children live in homes with one or
more computers, 2/3 of which have an Internet connection
Slide 48
Educational Television Time devoted to watching childrens
educational programs, such as Sesame Street, is associated with
gains in early literacy and math skills and academic progress in
elementary school One study reported a link between preschool
viewing of Sesame Street and other similar educational programs and
getting higher grades, reading more books, and placing more value
on achievement in high school Viewing childrens programs with
slow-paced action and easy-to- follow narratives, such as Barney
and Friends, leads to more elaborate make-believe play than viewing
programs that present quick, disconnected bits of information
However, whereas educational programs can be beneficial, watching
entertainment TV, especially heavy viewing, detracts from childrens
school success and social experiences
Slide 49
Learning with Computers Many early childhood classrooms include
computer learning centers Word-processing programs can support
emergent literacy Enables children to experiment with letters and
words without having to struggle with handwriting and to easily
revise their text and check their spelling When children worry less
about making mistakes, their written products tend to be longer and
higher in quality Simplified computer languages that children can
use to make designs or build structures introduce them to
programming skills As long as adults support childrens efforts,
computer programming promotes improved problem solving and
metacognition because children must plan and reflect on their
thinking to get their programs to work However, children spend much
time using computers for entertainment purposes, especially game
playing Both television programming and computer games are filled
with gender stereotypes and violence, which can have a negative
impact on emotional and social development
Slide 50
Language Development: Vocabulary By age 6, a child will have
acquired around 10,000 words Research shows that children can
connect new words with their underlying concepts after only a brief
encounter, a process called fast-mapping Types of words Children
fast-map labels for objects especially rapidly because they refer
to concepts that are easy to perceive Ex. When adults point to,
label, and talk about an object they help the child figure out the
words meaning Verbs (ex. go, run, broke) are soon added, followed
by modifiers (ex. red, round, sad) Verbs require more complex
understanding of relationships between objects and actions To fill
in for words they do not yet know, children as young as 3 coin new
words using words they do know, and also extend language meanings
through metaphors Ex. Saying plant-man to refer to a gardener Ex.
Describing a stomachache as a fire engine in my tummy
Slide 51
Language Development: Vocabulary Strategies for word learning
In early vocabulary growth, children may adopt a mutual exclusivity
bias Mutual exclusivity bias assuming that words refer to entirely
separate and nonoverlapping categories According to one proposal,
children figure out many word meanings by observing how words are
used in the structure of sentences Ex. An adult who says This is a
citron one while showing a child a yellow car 2-3 year olds
conclude that the new word (citron) used as an adjective for the
familiar object (car) refers to a property of the object As they
hear the word in various sentence structures (ex. That lemon is
bright citron.) they refine its meaning When parents provide
children with clarifying information about word meanings, their
preschoolers vocabularies grow more rapidly Ex. Saying You can call
it a sea creature, but its better to say dolphin.
Slide 52
Language Development: Vocabulary Explaining Vocabulary
Development Some theorists believe children are innately biased to
induce word meanings using certain principles, such as mutual
exclusivity But, critics point out that a small set of built-in
principles cannot account for the varied, flexible way in which
children master vocabulary And, many word-learning strategies
cannot be innate because children acquiring different languages use
different approaches to master the same meanings An alternative
view is that children gain vocabulary by using the same cognitive
strategies they apply to nonlinguistic information Children may use
a combination of cues (perceptual, social, and linguistic), which
shift in importance with age Infants rely solely on perceptual
features Toddlers and young preschoolers increasingly attend to
social cues (ex. Speakers direction of gaze, gestures, and
expressions) As language develops further, linguistic cues, such as
sentence structure and intonation, play larger roles
Slide 53
Language Development: Grammar Between ages 2-3, children adopt
the word orders of the adult speech to which they are exposed Ex.
English-speaking children use simple sentences that follow a
subject-verb-object word order Basic rules Children first use of
grammatical rules is bit by bit, limited to just a few verbs As
children listen for familiar verbs in adults speech, they expand
their own utterances containing those verbs, relying on adult
speech as a model Ex. A child adds the preposition with to the verb
open: You open with scissors, but not to the word hit: He hit me
stick Once children can form 3-word sentences, they make small
additions and changes to words (grammatical markers) that enable
them to express meanings flexibly and efficiently Ex. Adding s for
plurals cats, use prepositions in and on, and form various tenses
of the verb to be (is, are, were, has been, will) All
English-speaking children master grammatical markers in a regular
sequence Starting with those that involve the simplest meanings and
structures Once children acquire these markers they sometimes
overextend the rules to words that are exceptions, called
overregularization Ex. My toy car breaked and We each have two
feets.
Slide 54
Language Development: Grammar Complex structures Gradually,
preschoolers master more complex grammatical structures, although
they do make mistakes In first creating questions, 2-3 year olds
use many formulas: Wheres X? or Can I X? Children have trouble with
passive sentences, but by age 5 they usually come to understand
these expressions Ex. When told The car was pushed by the truck,
young preschoolers often make a toy car push a truck By age 4-5,
children form embedded sentences (ex. I think he will come), tag
questions ( Dads going to be home soon, isnt he?), and refer to
indirect objects/people (He showed his friend the present) By age
4-5, children use most of the grammatical constructions of their
language competently
Slide 55
Language Development: Grammar Explaining grammatical
development Information-processing theorists believe that grammar
is a product of general cognitive development Suggest childrens
tendency to search for consistencies and patterns of all sorts
leads them to notice which words appear in the same positions in
sentences and are similarly combined with other words Over time,
they group words into grammatical categories and use them
appropriately in sentences Other theorists believe that children
are specially tuned to acquire grammar One idea proposes that the
grammatical categories into which children group word meanings are
innate In another view, rather than starting with innate knowledge,
children have built-in procedures for analyzing language that
support discovery of grammatical regularities Controversy still
persists over whether a universal language-processing device exists
or whether children hearing different languages devise unique
strategies
Slide 56
Language Development: Conversation Pragmatics the practical,
social side of language This is how children learn to engage in
effective communication with others By age 2, children are skilled
conversationalists In face-to-face interaction they take turns and
respond appropriately to their partners remarks With age, the
number of turns over which children can sustain interaction and
their ability to maintain a topic over time increase By age 4,
children adjust their speech to fit the age, sex, and social status
of their listeners Ex. In acting out roles with hand puppets, they
use more commands when playing socially dominant and male roles
(teacher, doctor, father) and speak more politely and use more
indirect requests when playing less dominant and female roles
(student, patient, mother)
Slide 57
Supporting Language Development in Early Childhood
Conversational give-and-take with adults is consistently related to
language progress Additionally, adults can use other techniques to
promote early language skills When children use words incorrectly
or communicate unclearly, adults can give helpful, explicit
feedback Ex. I cant tell which ball you want. Do you mean the large
red one? But, adults must be careful not to overcorrect, especially
when children make grammatical mistakes Criticism discourages
children from freely using language in ways that lead to new skills
Adults often provide indirect feedback about grammar by using
recasts and expansions Recasts restructuring inaccurate speech into
correct form Expansions elaborating on childrens speech, increasing
its complexity Ex. If a child says I gotted new shoes. the parent
might say Yes, you got a pair of new red shoes.