CHAPTER 9
Early Childhood:
Cognitive Development
Learning Outcomes
LO1 Outline the cognitive developments of
Piaget’s preoperational stage.
LO2 Discuss factors in cognitive development,
focusing on Vygotsky’s views and the effects
of the home environment, early childhood
education, and television.
LO3 Discuss the development of theory of mind,
including false memories, origins of
knowledge, and the appearance–reality
distinction.
LO4 Discuss memory development during early
childhood, including strategies for
remembering.
LO5 Outline language development during early
childhood and explain the interactions
between language and cognition.
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TRUTH OR FICTION?
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T-F A preschooler’s having imaginary playmates is
a sign of loneliness or psychological problems.
T-F Two-year-olds tend to assume that their parents
are aware of everything that is happening to them,
even when their parents are not present.
T-F “Because Mommy wants me to” may be a
perfectly good explanation for a a 3-year old.
T-F Children’s levels of intelligence, not just their
knowledge, are influenced by early learning
experiences.
T-F Three-year olds are likely to say “Daddy goed
away” instead of “Daddy went away” because they do
understand rules of grammar.
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LO1 Jean Piaget’s
Preoperational Stage.
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Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
• 2nd Stage in Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development: Preoperational Stage
• Age 2-7 years: Early Childhood
• Includes concepts of:
– Symbolic Functioning
– Egocentrism
– Centration
Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
• Symbolic Thought
– Using symbols to represent
objects and relationships
• Most important type of
symbolic activity: language
• Drawings are also symbols
of objects, people, events
• Symbolic or Pretend Play
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• Around 1 year children may pretend they are sleeping
or eating (focus is on self).
• By 15-20 months focus shifts from self to others
(pretending to feed doll).
• By 30 months they can pretend the doll feeds itself
(objects take an active role).
Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
• Symbolic or Pretend Play, con’t.
– Imaginary Friends
• 65% of preschoolers have imaginary friends
• Most common among firstborn or only children
• Children with imaginary friends are:
– Less aggressive; more cooperative; more creative;
have more real friends; have better concentration; are
more advanced in language development
– Implications of Pretend Play
• Quality of pretend play is connected to later academic
performances, creativity, and social skills
• Those who engage in violent Pretend Play are less
empathic and more likely to engage in antisocial later on.
Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
• Egocentrism: It’s All About Me
– Preoperational children do not understand that other
people may see the world differently than they do.
– They think in one-dimensional terms which leads to
viewing the world only from their own perspective.
– The “Three Mountains Test” exhibits that children 5-6 yrs
old can only relate information from their existing
viewpoint.
Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
• Three Mountains Test:
– Child is shown a table with models of 3 mountains on it.
– Each mountain is a different color, one has a house on it,
and another has a cross on top of it.
– A doll is placed across the table from the child (if the doll
could see, it would have a different view of the scene).
– The child is asked what the doll sees.
– Since language abilities are not developed enough for a
child at this stage to provide verbal descriptions of
objects or events they are directly observing, they can
answer in one of two ways:
• By selecting a photo taken from the dolls view
• Or by constructing another model of the mountains as they
would be seen by the doll
• The child usually selects a photo or builds another model
that corresponds to their own viewpoints.
Figure 9.1 - The Tree-Mountains Test
Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
• Egocentrism: It’s All About Me, con’t.
– Causality: (other facets of egocentrism)
• Precausal: When preoperational children are asked
questions about events and they do not know the natural
causes of those events, their answers are likely to have an
egocentric flavor and not be based on science.
• Transductive Reasoning: Children at this stage will
“reason” by going from one specific isolated event to
another. They will attribute “cause-and-effect” to totally
unrelated events.
• Animism: Children will attribute life and intentions to
inanimate objects at this stage.
• Artificialism: The child assumes that environmental
features such as rain and thunder have been designed and
made by people
Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
• Egocentrism: It’s All About Me, con’t.
– Confusion of Mental and Physical Events: (other facets
of egocentrism)
• 2-4 years: children show confusion between symbols and
the things they represent
• Egocentrism contributes to the assumption that their
thoughts exactly reflect external reality.
• They do not recognize that words are arbitrary and people
can use different words to refer to the same objects.
Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
• Conservation:
– The law of conservation holds that properties of
substances such as volume, mass, and number remain
the same, or are conserved, even if you change their
shape or arrangement.
– Centration
• Conservation requires the ability to focus on two aspects of
a situation at once, such as height and width.
• Preoperational children tend to focus on only one aspect of
a problem at a time.
– Irreversibility
• The preoperational child does not understand that things
can be restored to their original condition.
– Class inclusion
• Including new objects or categories in broader mental
classes or categories
• Preoperational children are not yet capable of focusing on
two aspects of a situation at the same time.
Figure 9.2 - Conservation
Figure 9.3 - Conversation of Number
LO2 Factors in Cognitive
Development.
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Factors in Cognitive Development
• The “HOME” Environment:
– An acronym for The Home Observation for the
Measurement of the Environment
– A testing tool developed to evaluate the effects of a
child’s home environment on their cognitive
development.
– Parent/child interactions are directly observed in the
home; the inventory contains six subscales.
– The HOME inventory is a better predictor of later IQ
scores than social class, mother’s IQ, or infant IQ
scores.
– Early learning experiences affect children’s levels of
intellectual functioning.
– The home environment is the single most important
predictor of scores on IQ tests in children ages 3-8 yrs.
Table 9.2 – Scales of the HOME Inventory
Factors in Cognitive Development
• Effects of Early Childhood Education:
– Preschool education enables children to get an early
start on achievement in school.
– Programs that involve and educate parents are
particularly beneficial.
– Effects of Poverty
• Children raised in poverty generally score lower on IQ
tests and are at greater risk for school failure.
• Environmental enrichment can enhance the cognitive
development of economically disadvantaged children.
– Head Start
• Federally funded program started in 1960s for low income
families
• Designed to increase readiness for elementary school
• Head Start and similar programs are effective and lead to
gains in in school readiness and achievement tests.
Factors in Cognitive Development
• Effects of Television:
– Hours
• American children spend more
time watching TV than they do
in school.
• By age 3 yrs, the average child
watches 2-3 hrs of TV a day
– Children’s Television Act (1990)
• Requires networks devote 3 hours per week, between 7
a.m. and 10 p.m., to educational television.
• Sesame Street is the most successful example; it’s shown
to increase intellectual growth in preschool children,
especially those in lower SES.
– Commercials
• Preschoolers cannot differentiate between content of
commercials and programming.
• Commercials encouraging nutritionally inadequate foods
are harmful to their nutritional beliefs and diets.
LO3 Theory of Mind
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Theory of Mind
• A “common sense” understanding of how the mind
works
– Knowing the difference between real and mental events
– Knowing the difference between how things appear and
how they really are
– Being able to infer perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of
others
– Understanding that mental states affect behavior
Theory of Mind
• Research shows preschoolers can accurately predict and
explain human action and emotion in terms of mental states
– Indicators:
• False Beliefs:
– By age 4-5 yrs, most children are able to separate their
beliefs from those of another person who has false
knowledge of a situation.
• Origins of Knowledge: (how we acquire knowledge)
– By age 3 yrs, realization that people gain knowledge about
something by looking at it
– By age 4 yrs, understand the distinction between senses:
color through eyes, weight through feeling, etc.
• The Appearance-Reality Distinction:
– Knowing the difference between reality and fantasy or
misleading appearances
– Piaget believed this did not occur until age 7-8 years
Figure 9.4 – False Beliefs
LO4 Development of
Memory.
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Development of Memory
• Age 1-2 yrs:
– Can remember specific events called autobiographical
memory or episodic memory
– Are facilitated by talking about them with others
– But are seldom retained into adulthood
• Age 3 yrs:
– Can present coherent, orderly accounts of familiar
events
• Scripts: abstract, generalize accounts of recurring events;
lacking in detail; not case specific
– Scripts begin forming after a single event and get more
elaborate with repeated experience.
• However, unusual events (something traumatic or highly
emotional) may be remembered in specifically in detail for
years.
• Age 4 yrs:
– Can remember events that happened at least 1.5 years
earlier
Development of Memory
• Factors Influencing Memory
– Interest Level
• Children typically show better recognition and recall for
preferred toys
– Retrieval Cues or Reminders
• Easier to remember events that follow a fixed, logical
order
• Using a computer analogy: you must have a name for a
file in order to locate it; the name is the retrieval cue
• Young children depend of elders to help them retrieve
memories
– Asking questions and elaborating on the child’s experience
aid in child’s ability to remember
– What Measure of Memory is Used
• Verbal reports, especially from preschoolers, appear to
underestimate the child’s memory.
• Using “props” to reenact an event shows better recall
ability
Development of Memory
• Memory Strategies: Remembering to Remember
– Rehearsal:
• The act of repetition: saying something over and over
helps to integrate the memory into long-term memory
• Typically use of rehearsal begins about age 5
– Organization:
• Assigning categories to things
• Grouping objects into related categories aid in
remembering
• Even 3-4 year olds will use both rehearsal and
organization if they are asked to remember something
LO5 Language Development:
Why “Daddy Goed Away”
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Language Development
• Development of Vocabulary
– Preschoolers learn an average of 9 new words a day.
• Fast-Mapping
– Process whereby the child quickly attaches a new word
to its appropriate concept
• Whole-Object Assumption
– They also assume that words refer to whole objects
and not to their component parts or characteristics.
• Contrast Assumption
– Also known as the mutual exclusivity assumption
– Children will seem to assume that objects have only
one label.
– Therefore new words must refer to unfamiliar objects,
not ones that are already named
Language Development
• Development of Grammar
– Age 3: “grammar explosion” occurs
– Sentence structure expands to include missing words as
seen in telegraphic speech.
– By age 3-4, children show knowledge of rules for
combing phrases and clauses into complex sentences.
– Over-regularization
• Children acquire grammatical rules as they learn language.
• At younger ages they tend to apply the rules rather strictly,
not allowing for exceptions.
• This leads to errors such as incorrect past tense and
pluralization use.
Language Development
• Asking Questions:
– Children’s first questions are telegraphic and
characterized by a rise in pitch.
– Consistent with general cognitive development:
• End of 3rd year: begins the “what, who, where” questions
• By age 4, they begin to ask the “why, when, which, and
how” questions.
– Later on, the child will add the
auxiliary verbs to indicate
present, past, or future tenses.
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Language Development
• Passive Sentences:
– 2-3 yr olds have difficulty understanding passive
sentences and almost never use them.
– Even at 5-6 yrs, they usually will not use.
• Pragmatics:
– Refers to the practical aspects of communication
– Children show pragmatism when they adjust their
speech to fit the social situation.
– They will show more formality in word choice and syntax
when role-playing high-status figures.
– Once children are able to perceive the world through the
eyes of others, they advance in ability to make
themselves understood.
Language Development
• Language and Cognition
• Piaget believed cognitive
development precedes
language, arguing that children
must first understand concepts
before using words to describe them.
• Some studies support that theory: for example, the
vocabulary explosion seen at 18 mos is related to the
child’s ability to group objects into categories
– Language First?
• Other researchers argue that children create cognitive
classes to understand things that are already labeled by
words.
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– Cognition First?
Language Development
• Language and Cognition, con’t.
– Currently most developmental researchers find value in
both views.
• In the early stages of language development, concepts
often precede words (many first words describe classes
that have already developed).
• But later language skills reflect that language influences
thought
– Vygotsky
• Inner Speech
• The ultimate binding of language and thought
• Involved in development of planning and self-regulation
and facilitates the learning process
– At first, children’s thoughts are spoken aloud.
– 3-year olds talk out loud to themselves to regulate
behavior.
– Gradually by age 6-7 spoken words become
internalized.