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The 5 to 7-Year Shift
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General Topics in Child Development
The
The 5 to 7-Year Shift
The Five-to-Seven Year Shift
The famous Swiss child psychologist Piaget believed that advanced intellectual
performance was not the sole product of learning or intellectual growth, but instead was
mostly driven by developmental processes. Today, we know Piaget was right. Our
understanding of development aligns with recent advances in knowledge from
neuroscience. For instance, the Frontal Lobe of the brain is not fully mature until nearly
age 30. The developmental process that take place between birth and 30 are
phenomenal, and represent very different behavior over the child's life.
A younger child identifies two equal balls of play-dough as equal, but then says the one
ball, when rolled out, is larger than the other ball. Older children know that the dough
just change shape, not volume. This child recognizes a relationship between the ball
when it is a ball, then when it is rolled out; the height is compensated for by the
increase in length. Older children can recognize that nothing was taken away or added.
These developmental advances allow the child to think much more logically, exercise
more advanced rules and moral judgments, and learn on a deeper conceptual level. Truly
effective learning can only happen then the child and the teacher engage in a
partnership in which the teacher provides the appropriate building material for the child
to learn more elaborate mental constructions. There must be a match between the
curriculum and the child's current understanding capabilities.
Piaget tells us that children's intelligence develops over time, with each stage building on
prior, successful stages. As children consolidate earlier processes they grow, but this
happens across many domains. Children do not change their thinking about everything all
at once. There are always more advanced processes that operate alongside delayed
competencies.
The 5-7 Year Shift: Evidence from Developmental Science
• Most research indicates that 5-year-olds focus on only one single dimension or
aspect of a situation.
• Some researchers have found that 5-year-olds can think in multiple dimensions,
but only when prompted by adults or older children. When left alone, they focus
on the single aspect.
• 5-year-olds also lack experience, meaning that they have less knowledge about
situations than older children do. This contributes to one-dimensional cognition.
Theory of Mind (ToM)
Small children (under age 4) do not yet posses the ability to understand other people.
Young children typically believe others have the same thoughts, feelings and perceptions
as they do. When children do become aware that other peoples’ behaviors are a result of
thinking states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, they are developing a Theory of
Mind (ToM). When developing a theory of mind, the child slowly recognizes that beliefs
represent reality, and therefore can be mistaken (false beliefs). Typically, the process of
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The 5 to 7-Year Shift
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beginning to develop a ToM begins around age 4 (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001;
Wimmer & Perner, 1983), with a wide range of individual differences in false-belief
comprehension, which include social relationships and peer influence, self-judgments
and sensitivity to criticism (Cutting & Dunn, 2002; Dunn, 1995). A Theory of Mind
dramatically changes children’s view of the world, especially their peer interaction.
• Before developing a ToM, children believe that other people are all "on the same
page" as them. They do not know that other people think differently, and that
thinking changes reality.
• Research indicates that, while beginning around age 4 (or later), that children do
not always utilize the information about other people's cognition until the child is
age 7.
Memory in Preschool to School Age
Memory for children draws considerable research. The most prominent finding is that
children change vastly in their ability to recall old learning; i.e., children who are nearly
five do not have nearly as effective memory structures as a 7-year-old. How can this be?
We all have been around preschoolers and experienced the things they remember!
• What researchers have found is that younger children do not have certain aspects
of memory that older children possess--categorical knowledge (do not organize
similar items in memory), deliberate rehearsal (rehearsing something in memory
to make it stronger) and metamemory (the conscious awareness of memory and its
existence).
• Other research found that when preschoolers were reminded to engage in a
memory task with a goal, they did better than when not reminded.
• Schemas are frames of reference that exist in memory that we all use daily, so we
do not have to enter every new situation with no knowledge--we access our
schemas. Another human tendency is to reconstruct memory, or reconstruct
environmental events when we recall memories. We usually are unaware of this
reconstruction, or we catch ourselves doing it and stop. Preschoolers reconstruct
and due to their problems with other types of memory, their reconstructions are
normally not very close to reality. School-age children (age 7 and older), become
more aware of their reconstruction and have better recall structures so as not to
have to reconstruct as much as preschoolers.
• Children do have good autobiographical memory (memory about themselves), but
it only starts around age 4).
Self-Understanding in the 5-7-year-shift
There are definite qualitative differences in terms of viewing the 'self' between children
just before age 5 and children older than 7. This difference can be seen in noticing the
difference in self-attributes between the two age groups. Younger (before 5) children
have concrete descriptions of behaviors; they tend to define themselves by what they
do ("I can climb to the top of the monkey bars!" or "I know all of my ABC's--listen (then
recites alphabet). In addition to these concrete behavioral descriptions, young children
define themselves in terms of preferences (I like peanut butter), and possessions (I
have a green bicycle). These representations of the self are all about behavior, not
higher order concepts as in older children.
• In contrast, children past age 7 tend to describe themselves in terms of higher
concepts, such as being smart with some things, dumb with others, popular at
school. This age group may say things like, "I am smart in math and reading, but
dumb in social studies." The cognition behind these beliefs come from a
combination of many experiences, not just one point in time (like the younger
children). The older the children become, the more they can generalize over
many experiences.
• Another domain of vast difference is opposite attributes and feelings. Small
children cannot say that they have two feelings or two attributes at once. They
will say they are either happy or scared, but cannot be both at once. Older
children acknowledge the ability to be in both states at once.
Children between the ages of five and seven will experience the most dramatic change in
their cognition (thinking, perception, motivation, planning, social relations, etc.) than
any other time of their lives. Before age 5, children's cognition takes on a viewpoint that
is constructed from their own point of view; after age 7, they have a much richer
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The 5 to 7-Year Shift
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cognitive system and fully understand that others have cognition different from them.
Of course, their cognition affects the development of the self, self-esteem and
understanding of individual differences. During the five-to-seven year shift, development
is fragmented and uneven; one day a child may demonstrate an advanced ToM (for
example), while the next day the very same child may have abandoned that viewpoint
and returned to earlier years. Around age 7 the attributes of an older child appear to be
more set and less amenable to stress and environmental influences.
Understanding and using the understanding during contact with children at this age range
is crucial for any educator. Knowing 'what to do when' is the key to successful education
of children in the late preschool years.
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