Kathleen Stassen Berger
Part III Chapter Nine
The Play Years: Cognitive Development
Piaget and Vygotsky
Children’s Theories
Language
Early-Childhood Education
Prepared by Madeleine Lacefield
Tattoon, M.A.
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The Play Years: Cognitive Development
…thinking and learning from age 2 to 6…
…remarkable advances in language and
thought…
…the simple sentence of the typical 2-yearold that are nonstop, complex outpourings
of a talkative 6-year-old, who can explain
almost anything…
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Piaget and Vygotsk
…famous for their description of
cognition… the eager learning of
children… are compatible in many
ways…
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Piaget: Preoperational Thinking
• Preoperational Intelligence
• Includes languages and imagination (in
addition to the senses and motor skills of
infancy)
• However, logical, operational thinking is
not yet possible
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Piaget: Preoperational Thinking
• Obstacles to Logical Operation
– Centration
• a young child focuses (centers) on one idea,
excluding all others
– Egocentrism
• children’s tendency to think about the world
entirely from their own personal perspective
– Focus on Appearance
• a young child ignores all attributes that are not
apparent
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Piaget: Preoperational Thinking
• Obstacles to Logical Operation
– Static Reasoning
• thinking that nothing changes: Whatever
is now has always been and always will
be
– Irreversibility
• the idea that nothing can be undone; the
inability to recognize that something can
sometimes be restored to the way it was
before a change occurred
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Piaget
• Conservation and Logic
– Conservation
• the idea that the amount of a substance
remains the same (i.e., is conserved)
when its appearance changes
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Limitations of Piaget’s Research
• underestimated the conceptual ability
of young children and infants…
– Designing experiments to reveal what
children seemed not to understand,
rather than to identify what they could
understand
– Relied on the child’s words rather than
the child’s nonverbal signs in play
context
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Vygotsky: Social Learning
• young children can be very sensitive
to the wishes and emotions of others
• young children have social thoughts
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Vygotsk
• Children as Apprentices
– cognitive development is embedded in a
social context
– curious and observant
– ask questions
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Vygotsky: Apprentices cont.
• Apprentice in Thinking
– a person whose cognition is stimulated and
directed by older more skilled members of
society
• Guided Participation
– the process by which people learn from others
who guide their experiences and explorations
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Vygotsk
• Children as
Apprentices
– guided
participation
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Vygotsk
• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
– the skills that a person can exercise only with
assistance, not yet independently
– ZPD applies to the ideas or cognitive skills a
person is close to mastering as well as to more
apparent skills
• Scaffolding
– temporary support that is tailored to a learner’s
needs and abilities and aimed at helping the
learner master the next task in a given learning
process
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Vygotsk
• Language as a Toll
– Private Speech
• internal dialogue that occurs when people talk
to themselves (either silently or out loud)
– Social Mediation
• a function of speech by which a person’s
cognitive skills are refined and extended
through both formal instruction and casual
conversation
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Children’s Theories
• Theory-Theory
– the idea that children attempt to explain
everything they see and hear by
constructing theories
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Children’s Theories
• Theory of Mind
– a person’s theory of what other people might
be thinking
– children must realize that other people are not
necessarily thinking the same thoughts that
they themselves are thinking
– the realization is seldom possible before age 4
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Children’s Theories
• Belief and Reality: Understanding the
Difference
– a sudden leap of understanding occurs at
about age 4
• between age 3 – 6 children come to
realize that thoughts may not reflect
reality
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Children’s Theories
• Contextual Influences
– maturation of the brain’s prefrontal
cortex appears to be the reason for the
age-related advance in children
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Language
• is pivotal to cognition in early childhood
• is the leading cognitive accomplishment in
early childhood
• 24-month-olds begin this period with short
sentences and limited vocabulary
• 6-year-olds end it with the ability to
understand and discuss almost anything
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Language
• Critical Period
– a time when a certain development must
happen if it is ever to happen
• Sensitive Period
– a time when a certain type of
development is most likely to happen
and happens most easily
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Language
• Vocabulary
– new words are
added rapidly
• at age 2
knows about
500 words
• at age 6 about
10,000 words
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Language
• Fast-Mapping
– the speedy and sometimes imprecise
way in which children learn new words
by mentally charting them into
categories according to their meaning
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Language
• Words and the Limits of Logic
– logical extension
• used to describe other objects in the
same category
• use of available vocabulary to cover all
the territory they want to talk about
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Language
• Grammar
– includes the structure, techniques, and rules
that are used to communicate meaning
– word order and word repetition, prefixes and
suffixes, intonation and emphasis
• Overregularization
• the application of rules of grammar even when
exceptions occur, so that the language is made
to seem more “regular” than it actually is
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Language
• Learning Two Languages
– bilingualism is an asset—a necessity
– language-minority children are at a
disadvantage (not the dominant language of
the nation)
– more likely to:
• do poorly in school
• feel ashamed
• become unemployed as adults
– learning the majority language is crucial
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Language
• What is the goal of having a second
language?
– research supports that children should learn at
least two languages…the language-sensitive
years of early childhood are the best time
– soon after the vocabulary explosion, young
are able to master two
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Language
– Bilingualism, Cognition, and Culture
• “Since language is integral to culture,
bilingualism is embedded in emotions of
ethnic pride and fear. This reality
hampers developmental research.”
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Early-Childhood Education
– a hundred years ago children had no
formal education until first grade
– today 3 – 5-year-olds in developed
nations are in school
– early educational institutions differ, but
names do not indicate the nature of the
program
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Early-Childhood Education
• Child-Centered
Programs
• Montessori Schools
• The Reggio Emilia
Approach
• Teacher-Directed
Programs
• Intervention
Programs
• Head Start
• Experimental
Programs
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Early-Childhood Education
• Costs and Benefits
– quality early-childhood education matters
– financial aspects are especially significant
– parents pay the bulk of the cost or preschool in the United
States
– quality child care:
• safety
• adequate space and equipment
• low adult-child ratio
• positive social interaction among children and adults
• trained staff and educated parents
• continuity helps
– “How long has each staff member worked at the center?”
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