Download Life span chapter 4-2 File

Piaget’s Approach to Cognitive
Development
Information Processing and Vygotsky’s Approach to
Cognitive Development
The Growth of Language and Learning
Piaget’s Approach to Cognitive
Development
Preoperational Thinking
Preoperational
Time of stability
Stage
and change
Use of operations
at end of stage
Relationship Between
Language and
Thought
Symbolic function
– Ability to use symbols,
words, or object to
represent something that
is not physically present
Language allows
preschoolers to
During the preoperational
period children begin to imagine
the future.
– Represent actions
symbolically
– Think beyond present to
future
– Consider several
possibilities at same time
Centration
Which row contains more buttons?
Which row has more buttons?
Conservation
What you see is NOT always what you get!
Incomplete Understanding of Transformation
Preoperational children
• Unable to envision successive
transformations
• Ignore middle steps
Egocentrism
Preschoolers do not understand that others
have different perspectives from their own
Egocentric thought takes two forms
– Lack of awareness that others see things from a
different physical perspective
– Failure to realize that others may hold thoughts,
feelings, and points of view that differ from theirs
Emergence of Intuitive Thought
Curiosity blossoms and answers to a
wide variety of questions are sought
• Often act as authorities on particular topics
• Leads preschoolers to believe that they know
answers to all kinds of questions, but there is
little or no logical basis for this confidence
Late Stages of Intuitive Thought
Slowly certain qualities prepare children
for more sophisticated forms of
reasoning
– Begin to understand the notion of functionality
– Begin to show an awareness of the concept of
identity
Evaluating Piaget’s Approach
Positive
Negative
• Masterful observer
• More recent experimental
work suggests higher
child performance on
tasks involving
conservation, reversibility,
transformation, and ability
to count
• Useful way to consider
progressive advances in
child cognition
• Contentions about
continuity of development
as theorized in Piaget’s
stages
According to Piaget, children in the
preoperational stage develop symbolic function,
a qualitative change in their thinking that is the
foundation of further cognitive advances.
Preoperational children are hampered by a
tendency toward egocentric thought.
Recent developmentalists, while acknowledging
Piaget’s gifts and contributions, take issue with
his underestimation of preschoolers’ capabilities.
Children in Piaget’s preoperational stage
begin using symbolic thinking; however, they
are not capable of ______________, or
organized, logical mental processes that
characterize schoolchildren.
a. operations
b. transcendence
c. levitation
d. egocentric thought
Egocentric thought can involve (1) the lack of
awareness that others see things from a different
physical perspective and (2) ______________.
a. the inability to present their own perspectives
to others
b. their unwillingness to consider how their
perspectives have been consistent over time
c. failure to realize that others may hold thoughts,
feelings, and points of view that differ from theirs
d. that preoperational children are intentionally
selfish and inconsiderate
Piaget’s perspective has been criticized by
others because he overestimated children’s
abilities.
• True
• False
Do you think it is possible to break a
preschooler’s habit of egocentric thought by
directly teaching him to take another person’s
point of view?
Would showing him a picture of himself
“hidden” behind a chair change his thinking?
Why?
Information Processing and Vygotsky’s
Approach to Cognitive Development
Focus of Approaches
• Changes in kinds of “mental programs”
that children use when approaching
problems
• Changes are analogous to the way a
computer program becomes more
sophisticated as a programmer modifies it
on basis of experience
Two Approaches
1, 2, 3, 7…11-T-hundred!
How can we tell when a preschooler
knows how to count?
You must remember
this…maybe!
Recollections of events are
sometimes, but not
always, accurate
– Typically accurate in
responses to openended questions
– Partly determined by how
soon memories are
assessed
– Affected by cultural
factors
This preschooler may recall this
ride in 6 months, but by the time he
is 12, it will probably be forgotten.
Can you explain why?
Autobiographical memory
– Largely inaccurate before
age 3
– Not all memories last into
later life
Why are some preschool memories
inaccurate?
Preschoolers’ memories of familiar
events often organized in scripts
• Scripts become more elaborate with age.
• Frequently repeated events meld into scripts.
• Particular instances of scripted event are
recalled with less accuracy than those that are
unscripted in memory.
Any other causes of inaccuracies?
Difficulty describing certain kinds of
information, such as complex causal
relationships, may oversimplify recollections
SHE did it…I think!!
Children’s Eyewitness Testimony
Forensic developmental psychology
• Embellishment characteristic of fragility,
impressionability, and inaccuracy of memory
• Memories susceptible to suggestions of adults
asking them questions, especially repeatedly
• Children more prone to make inaccurate
inferences about reasons behind others’
behavior and are less able to draw appropriate
conclusions based on their knowledge of a
situation
• Error rate is heightened when same question is
asked repeatedly
Information Processing in Perspective
PRO
• Relies on well-defined
testable, processes
which alternative
approaches
traditionally have paid
little attention
•
Provides a clear,
logical, and full
account of cognitive
development
CON
• Focuses on series of
single, individual
cognitive processes
•
Individual sequence of
processes never
adequately paint
whole, comprehensive
picture of cognitive
development
Vygotsky’s View of Cognitive Development
• Cognition is the result of social
interactions in which children learn
through guided participation
• Children gradually grow intellectually and
begin to function on their own because of
assistance that adult and peer partners
provide
Culture and
Society Influences
Nature of the
partnership between
developing children and
adults and peers
determined largely by
cultural and societal
factors
Russian developmental psychologist
Lev Vygotsky proposed that the focus
of cognitive development should be
on child’s social and cultural world
Zone of Proximal Development
• Cognition increases through exposure to
information that is new enough to be intriguing,
but not too difficult
• Greater improvement with help = greater
increases in zone of proximal development
Scaffolding
• Supports learning and problem solving
that encourages independence and
growth
• Aids in development of overall cognitive
abilities
Cultural Tools
Actual, physical items or intellectual and
conceptual framework for solving problems
– Language
– Alphabetical and numbering schemes
– Mathematical and scientific systems
– Religious systems
Assessing Vygotsky’s Perspective
PRO
• Increasingly influential
in the last decade
•
Helps explain growing
body of research about
importance of social
interaction in promoting
cognitive development
•
Consistent with growing
body of multicultural
and cross-cultural
research
CON
• Lack of precision in
conceptualization of
cognitive growth
•
Sparse information
about attention and
memory develop and
how children’s natural
cognitive capabilities
unfold
Proponents of information processing
approaches argue that quantitative changes
in children’s processing skills largely account
for their cognitive development.
Instead of focusing on children’s cognitive
limitations, developmentalists using an
information processing approach focus on the
cognitive advances that enable children to
develop considerable abilities.
Vygotsky believed that children develop
cognitively within a context of culture and
society. His theory includes the concepts of
zone of proximal development and
scaffolding.
Piaget viewed children as working by
themselves to develop an independent view
of the world, whereas Vygotsky proposed that
children learned the skills of their culture from
master teachers.
According to the information processing
approach of cognitive development, memories
of particular events occurring in one’s own life
are also known as______________.
a. autobiographical memory
b. explicit memory
c. personal memory
d. cultural memory
______________believed that children learn
about their world through their interactions
with others.
a. Vygotsky
b. Piaget
c. Siegler
d. Gelman
One reason Vygotsky has only begun to have
an nfluence in psychology is because he was
largely unknown to developmentalists.
• True
• False
Do you agree with the view that information
processing approaches see too many trees and lose
sight of the forest? Or do you think that Piaget saw
too much forest without accounting for enough
trees? Explain.
In what ways have educators and others begun to
apply Vygotsky’s ideas in schools and communities?
Should governments take an active role in this?
Growth of Language and Learning
Language Development
During preschool years:
Sentence length increases at a
steady pace
Syntax doubles each month
Enormous leaps in number of
words used through fast mapping
What is fast mapping?
New words are associated with their
meaning after only brief encounter.
– By age 6, the average child has a vocabulary of
around 14,000 words
– Vocabulary acquired at rate of nearly one new
word every 2 hours, 24 hours a day
Preschool Language on the Grow
• Use plurals and possessive forms of
nouns
• Employ the past tense
• Use articles
• Ask, and answer, complex questions
• Extend appropriate formation of words to
new words
Learning what is not said…
Preschoolers also learn what cannot be
said as they acquire principles of
grammar.
• Although they still make frequent
mistakes, 3-year-olds:
• Follow principles of grammar most of time
• Are correct in their grammatical constructions more
than 90 percent of time
Appropriate
Formation of Words
•
Even though no
preschooler—like the
rest of us—is likely to
have ever before
encountered a wug,
they are able to
produce the
appropriate word to fill
in the blank (which, for
the record, is wugs).
Source: WORD, Journal of the
International Linguistic
Association.
Do you ever talk to yourself?
I’m not talking to YOU…
Private Speech of Children
Speech by children that is spoken and
directed to themselves
– Performs important function
– Serves to try out ideas, acting as sounding
board
– Facilitates children’s thinking and helps them
control their behavior
– Serves an important social function
What about practical communication?
Pragmatics is the aspect of language relating to
communicating effectively and appropriately with
others
Helps children to understand the basics of
conversations
– Turn-taking
– Sticking to a topic
– What should and should not be said, according to
the conventions of society
– Use of different language in various settings
Social Speech
Before the age of 3:
– Speak only for their own entertainment
– Apparently unaware if anyone else can understand
During preschool years:
– Begin to direct their speech to others
– Want others to listen
– Become frustrated when they cannot make themselves
understood
– Begin to adapt their speech to others through
pragmatics
Learning from the Media
What do children
learn from television?
What do children
learn from the media?
Saying No to the Show
American Academy of Pediatrics
– Recommends that exposure to television should
be limited
– Suggests that until age of 2, children watch no
television, and after that age, no more than 1 to
2 hours of quality programming each day
What are the limits of preschoolers’
“television literacy”?
Preschool children
• Often do not fully understand plots
• Unable to recall significant story details
• Make limited and often erroneous inferences
about motivations
• Difficulty separating fantasy from reality
• Not able to critically understand and evaluate
advertising messages
So…would you let your young child watch?
Who cares for our children?
Taking The Pre Out Of Preschool
• Increasing number of children in out-ofhome care
• Some benefits to educational activities
before formal schooling
Cognitive and social development benefit from
high quality preschool experiences.
Varieties of Early Education
•
•
•
•
Child care centers
Family child care programs
Preschools
School-age child care
How effective are early education
programs?
Children in Early Education programs
Are more verbally fluent, show memory and
comprehension advantages, and achieve higher IQ
scores than at-home children
Are more self-confident, independent, and
knowledgeable about social world in which they live
than those who do not participate
Any downside?
Not all outcomes of outside-the-home care are
positive
Children in child care:
– Are found to be less polite, less compliant, less
respectful of adults, and sometimes more
competitive and aggressive than their peers
– Have a slightly higher likelihood of being disruptive
in class extending through the sixth grade (when
spending 10+ weeks in child care)
What makes a good program great?
Characteristics of Quality Child Care
• Providers are well trained
• Appropriate overall size and ratio of care providers to
children
• Curriculum is carefully planned and coordinated among
teachers
• Language environment is rich
• Caregivers are sensitive to children’s emotional and
social needs
• Materials and activities are age appropriate
• Basic health and safety standards are followed
Why does the U.S. lag behind?
No coordinated national policy on
preschool education
– Decisions about education have traditionally
been left to states and local school districts
– No tradition of teaching preschoolers
– Status of preschools in United States is
traditionally low
In the preschool years, children rapidly
increase in linguistic ability, developing an
improved sense of grammar and shifting
gradually from private to social speech.
Preschoolers watch television at high levels
with mixes consequences.
Preschool educational programs are
beneficial if they are of high quality, with
trained staff, good curriculum, proper group
sizes, and small staff-student ratios.
Being able to combine words and phrases
in order to form sentences is also known as
______________.
a. fast mapping
b. grammar
c. syntax
d. social speech
Preschoolers are able to learn the meaning of
words after only a brief encounter. This is also
known as ______________.
a. synaptic explosion
b. word unification
c. social speech
d. fast mapping
When it comes to child care and its
effectiveness, the key factor is ___________.
a. size
b. program type (i.e., Montessori)
c. age of the child
d. quality
Is private speech egocentric or useful? Do
adults ever use private speech? What
functions does it serve?
In your view, how do thought and language
interact in preschoolers’ development? Is it
possible to think without language? How do
children who have been deaf from birth think?