Wiley 2017 ch 9

Chapter 9

Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Piaget’s Theory and Preoperational Thought

Constructivism: Children construct knowledge based on their experiences and interactions with the world around them.

Preoperational Thought: Children in this pre-logical stage of thought process have predictable ways of reasoning and limitations in their thinking (ages 3–7)

Play

Children learn through playPlay is developmentally vital for infants, toddlers and

preschoolers.

Egocentrism

Egocentrism: the belief that others experience the world the same way you do

Egocentric Speech: self-talk that is said aloud

Socialized Speech: speech taking into account the perspective of the listener

Piaget’s Three Mountain Task

Conservation

Conservation: a recognition that the core component of a substance remains the same despite transformations in the appearance of the substance.

Children in the preoperational stage struggle with tasks about conservation and core components of liquid volume, numerical quantity, length, and mass, which require the child to consider more than one attribute at the same time.

Centration

Centration: the tendency to focus on one aspect of a task

Decenter: the ability to focus on several aspects of an object or problem and relate them

Class Inclusion

Class Inclusion: requires the understanding that a superordinate class of objects contains subordinate classes

Implications of Piaget’s Theory for Preschool Classrooms

Children learn best by being engaged in an activity.

Children need many opportunities to explore objects and their properties.

Children’s reasoning is best explored through strategic questioning.

Children can be encouraged to be less egocentric by sharing their viewpoint and being exposed to the viewpoint of others

The Role of Executive Function

The executive function regulates the flow of information.

It forms the critical link to other processes.It manages the cognitive processes of children: planning,

decision making, and inhibition

Features of Vygotsky’s Theory

Inner speech: internal speech used to guide behavior; serves as a foundation for self-guidance and self-regulation

Scaffolding: guidance or support given to a child by a person who is more skilled and who can adjust the guidance offered according to the child’s level of performance, promotes development as it helps the child move to the next level of accomplishment

Zone of proximal development: the range of abilities that a person can perform with assistance but cannot yet perform independently

Scaffolding

Parenting: Helping Preschool Children Become Readers

Have daily conversations and read with them.

Keep lots of printed materials in the home.

Set up a reading and writing space.

Let children observe you reading and writing.

Read with children everyday!

Call children’s attention to reading/writing in everyday situations.

Make a message board for children and display their work.

Encourage looking at books, magazines, etc.

Take children to the library. Limit TV and technology to DAP

usage.

Counting Objects: knowing that each object needs to be counted only once

Linear Number Line: the sense that numbers proceed in order and differences between numbers are the same

Manipulating Numbers: computation such as adding or subtracting

Early Number Concepts

Head Start

Federally funded for 3- and 4-year-olds whose families live at, or below the poverty level

Broad-based, holistic programResearch indicates gain in early writing skills,

vocabulary, letter recognition, and word knowledgePreschoolers still lag behind national norms of same

age peers from middle to upper SES