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The 5 to 7-Year Shift Page 1 of 3 About PPK! Contact Us search... Home Child Development 5 7Y Shif Admission • • • • • RSVP for Open House Admissions Application Process Admission Considerations How to Find Us Main Menu • • • • • • Home PPK! Overview PPK! Curriculum FAQ Web Links News Feeds Key Concepts • Child Development • Child Education 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 http://www.preschoolpianokids.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63... 1/27/2011 The 5 to 7-Year Shift Page 2 of 3 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 http://www.preschoolpianokids.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63... 1/27/2011 The 5 to 7-Year Shift Page 3 of 3 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. Copyright © 2011 www.preschoolpianokids.com. All Rights Reserved. Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License. Powered by Joomla!. valid XHTML and CSS. http://www.preschoolpianokids.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63... 1/27/2011