Philippine Women’s University
Topic: Cognitive Development of Preschoolers
Reporter: Dejesus, Caroline C.
1. Cognitive Development
It is the progress of the way of thinking of a person wherein it gradually becomes
more complex and organized.
Cognitive development is the study of childhood neurological and psychological
development.
Cognitive development asses based on the level of conception, perception,
information processing, and language as an indicator of brain development.
It is generally recognized that cognitive development progresses with age, as
human awareness and understanding of the world increases from infancy to
childhood, and then again into adolescence.
2. Piaget’s Operational Stage
“Most revolutionary and influential work published since 1950”
— (Dixon, 2002)
“Assessing the impact of Piaget on developmental psychology like assessing the
impact of Shakespeare on English literature or Aristotle in Philosophy— impossible
The impact is too monumental to embrace and at the same time too omnipresent to
detect.
— (cited in Beilin, 1994)
Jean Piaget
Most influential theorist in the study of cognitive development
August 9, 1896-September 16, 1980
Born in Neuchatel, Switzerland
His career on Psychology spanned in seven decades
He showed early interest in nature by observing wildlife in its natural setting.
Published his first article that is a one-page report about an Albino Sparrow he
observed at the park that led to his first scientific publications.
He also worked with a zoologist who specialize mollusks (clams, oysters, snails,
etc.) at the Museum of Natural History in Neuchatel.
Catalogued and studied adaptation by detailing how mollusks’ shells changed in
relation to movement of the water they lived.
From age 15 to 18, Piaget published a series of articles on the mollusk research.
Works were marked noteworthy that a natural history museum in Geneva offered
him a position as curator of their mollusk collection in which he declined
because he did not graduate high school yet.
Earned PhD at the age of 21 and had interest in Psychology.
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Learned Freudian Psychoanalysis and the process of conducting a clinical review
as he worked as a psychiatric in a clinic located at Zurich for a certain time.
Later, he moved to Paris wherein he worked in the Binet laboratory with
Theopile Simon and Alfred Binet who were known for their work in intelligence
testing while Jean Piaget work was to help develop a standardized French
version of some reasoning tasks.
As he worked, he developed his theory where he said that: (1) Children were
active in their thinking and not passive, (2) actions shows regularity and
consistency and (3) Children are passive recipients of information.
They conducted a clinical method that instead of just giving an answer, children
were recommended to explain their answers.
Piaget’s Operational Stage
The first stage is the sensorimotor stage. It is where the infant progresses
in the ability and coordinate sensations, and perceptions with physical movements
and actions.
As a proceeding, the second stage is called the preoperational stage.
At the age of 2 to 7 years old, children begin to represent the world with words,
images, and drawings.
It is also the stage where children from stable concepts and begin to reason out.
The children’s mind is dominated with egocentrism also magical beliefs.
Pre-operational is necessary though children do not perform operation yet.
Operation refers to the reversible mental actions that allow children to do
mentally what they formerly did physically.
Pre-operational stage is the beginning of the ability to reconstruct in thought what
has been established in the behavior.
Pre-operational stage has two sub-stages: (1) Symbolic function stage and (2)
Intuitive thought stage
Symbolic function stage
2-4 years old
It is the stage where the children gain the ability to represent an object that
is not present mentally. It is when the children vastly expand their mental
world (Carlson and Zelazo, 20018).
There are two important limitations of their thinking: (1) egocentrism and
(2) animism
Egocentrism is the inability to distinguish between one’s
own perspective and someone else’s perspective.
Animism is the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike
qualities and capable of action.
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Intuitive thought stage
The second sub-stage of pre-operational stage/thought.
Approximately 4-7 years old
Children use primitive reasoning
They want answers to all of their questions. It is the stage where they
constantly ask questions.
Piaget called this stage intuitive because it is the stage where the children
seemed to be so sure about the knowledge and understanding though they
are unaware of how they know what they know.
Knowing without the use of rational thinking
Centration and the Limits of Preoperational Thought
Centration is the centering of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of
all others. Centration is most clearly evidenced in young children that are lack
of conservation, the awareness that altering an object’s or a substance’s
appearance does not change its basic properties.
3. Lev Semenovich Vygotsky Theory
Lev Semenovich Vygotsky
November 17, 1896 in Belorussia (a province of Russia; later part of the Soviet
Union)
He came from a Jewish family and shared a rich cultural background with their
fellowmen.
Vygotsky experienced prejudice, discrimination, and strict restrictions of the
government under the Tsarist regime because of the fact that they are Jewish.
A private tutor using Socratic dialogue taught Vygotsky.
He also studied law, history, and philosophy in the University of Maslow.
He graduated in the year of 1917 (Russian Revolution).
Lev Semenovich Vigotsky is a Marxist and a strong believer of Marx’s emphasis
on the importance of social history as an influence on people’s behavior and
development (Kozulin, 1990; Wertsch, 1985).
In 1924, Vygotsky took a position that helps restructure the institute and develop
a Marxist psychology that is called “Mozart of Psychology”.
Died: 11 June 1934 because of Tuberculosis
Lev Semenovich Vygotsky’s Theory
Children are more often described as social creatures than in Piaget’s theory.
They develop their ways of thinking and understanding primarily through social
interaction. Their cognitive development depends on the tools provided by
society, and their minds are shaped by the cultural context in which they live
(Gredler, 2008; Holzman, 2009).
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The Zone of Proximal Development
Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to master
alone but that can be learned with guidance and assistance of adults or more-
skilled children.
Thus, the lower limit of the ZPD is the level of skill reached by the child working
independently.
The upper limit is the level of additional responsibility the child can accept with
the assistance of an able instructor.
The ZPD captures the child’s cognitive skills that are in the process of maturing
and can be accomplished only with the assistance of a more skilled person
(Alvarez & del Rio, 2007).
Vygotsky (1962) called these the “buds” or “flowers” of development, to
distinguish them from the “fruits” of development, which the child already can
accomplish independently.
Scaffolding
Scaffolding means changing the level of support. Over the course of a teaching
session, a more-skilled person (a teacher or advanced peer) adjusts the amount of
guidance to fit the child’s current performance (Daniels, 2007).
Language and Thought
As children use speech not only, to communicate socially but also to help them
solve tasks. Vygotsky (1962) further believed that young children use language to
plan, guide, and monitor their behavior. This use of language for self-regulation is
called private speech. For Piaget, private speech is egocentric and immature, but
for Vygotsky it is an important tool of thought during the early childhood years
(JohnSteiner, 2007).
Vygotsky said that language and thought initially develop independently of each
other and then merge.
He emphasized that all mental functions have external, or social, origins. Children
must use language to communicate with others before they can focus inward on
their own thoughts.
Children also must communicate externally and use language for a long period
before they can make the transition from external to internal speech. This
transition period occurs between 3 and 7 years of age and involves talking to
oneself.
Self-talk becomes second nature to children, and they can act without verbalizing.
When they gain this skill, children have internalized their egocentric speech in the
form of inner speech, which becomes their thoughts.
Vygotsky reasoned that children who use a lot of private speech are more socially
competent than those who do not.
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He argued that private speech represents an early transition in becoming more
socially communicative. For Vygotsky, when
young children talk to themselves, they are using language to govern their
behavior and guide themselves.
Piaget maintained that self-talk is egocentric and reflects immaturity. However,
researchers have found support for Vygotsky’s view that private speech plays a
positive role in children’s development (Winsler, Carlton, & Barry, 2000).
Researchers have found that children use private speech more when tasks are
difficult, after they have made errors, and when they are not sure how to proceed
(Berk, 1994). They also have revealed that children who use private speech are
more attentive and improve their performance more than children who do not use
private speech (Berk & Spuhl, 1995).
Vygotsky’s theory has been embraced by many teachers and has been
successfully applied to education (Daniels, 2007; Holzman, 2009)
Even though their theories proposed about the same time, most of the world
learned about Vygotsky’s theory later than they learned about Piaget’s theory.
Thus, Vygotsky’s theory has not yet evaluated as thoroughly. However,
Vygotsky’s view of the importance of sociocultural infl uences on children’s
development fi ts with the current belief that it is important to evaluate the
contextual factors in learning (Holzman, 2009).
3. Information processing
The information-processing approach has generated research that illuminates how
children process information during the preschool years (Galotti, 2010).
Limitations and advances in the young child’s ability to pay attention to the environment, to
remember, to develop strategies and solve problems, and to understand their own mental
processes and those of others:
Attention
It is focusing of mental resources on select information. The child’s ability to pay
attention improves significantly during the preschool years (Posner & Rothbart,
2007).
Young children especially make advances in two aspects of attention—executive
attention and sustained attention (Rothbart & Gartstein, 2008). Executive
attention involves action planning, allocating attention to goals, error detection
and compensation, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or
difficult circumstances. Sustained attention focuses and extends engagement with
an object, task, event, or other aspect of the environment.
Mary Rothbart and Maria Gartstein (2008, p. 332) recently described why
advances in executive and sustained attention are so important in early childhood.
Increases in attention are due, in part, to advances in comprehension and language
development. As children are better able to understand their environment, this
increased appreciation of their surroundings helps them to sustain attention for
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longer periods. In at least two ways, however, the preschool child’s control of
attention is still deficient:
Salient versus relevant dimensions: Preschool children are likely to pay
attention to stimuli that stand out, or are salient, even when those stimuli
are not relevant to solving a problem or performing a task. After the age of
6 or 7, children attend more efficiently to the dimensions of the task that
are relevant, such as the directions for solving a problem. This change
reflects a shift to cognitive control of attention, so that children act less
impulsively and reflect more.
Planfulness: Children are more likely to systematically compare the
details across the pictures, one detail at a time (Vurpillot, 1968) (see
Figure 7.11).
Memory
Memory—the retention of information over time—is a central process in
children’s cognitive development.
Short-Term Memory: In short-term memory, individuals retain information for up
to 30 seconds if there is no rehearsal of the information. Using rehearsal
(repeating information after it has been presented), we can keep information in
short-term memory for a much longer period. One method of assessing short-term
memory is the memory-span task. You hear a short list of stimuli—usually
digits—presented at a rapid pace (one per second, for example). Then you are
asked to repeat the digits.
Young Children’s Long-Term Memories: While the toddlers’ short-term memory
span increases during the early childhood years, their memory also becomes
more accurate. Young children can remember a great deal of information if they
are given appropriate cues and prompts. Increasingly, young children are even
being allowed to testify in court, especially if they are the only witnesses to
abuse, a crime, and so forth. Several factors can influence the accuracy of a
young child’s memory (Bruck & Ceci, 1999):
In sum, whether a young child’s eyewitness testimony is accurate or not
may depend on a number of factors such as the type, number, and intensity
of the suggestive techniques the child has experienced. It appears that the
reliability of young children’s reports has as much to do with the skills and
motivation of the interviewer as with any natural limitations on young
children’s memory (Ceci & others, 2007).
Strategies and Problem Solving
Information-processing theory emphasizes the importance of using good
strategies. Strategies consist of deliberate mental activities to improve the
processing of information.
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The Child’s Theory of Mind
It refers to awareness of one’s own mental processes and the mental processes of
others. Studies of theory of mind view the child as “a thinker who is trying to
explain, predict, and understand people’s thoughts, feelings, and utterances”
(Harris, 2006, p. 847).
Developmental Changes Children’s theory of mind changes as they develop
through childhood (Gelman, 2009; Lagattuta, Nucci, & Bosacki, 2010). Some
changes occur quite early in development, as we see next. From 18 months to 3
years of age, children begin to understand three mental states:
Perceptions: By 2 years of age, a child recognizes that another person will
see what’s in front of her own eyes instead of what’s in front of the child’s
eyes (Lempers, Flavell, & Flavell, 1977), and by 3 years of age, the child
realizes that looking leads to knowing what’s inside a container (Pratt &
Bryant, 1990).
Emotions: The child can distinguish between positive (for example,
happy) and negative (sad, for example) emotions. A child might say,
“Tommy feels bad.”
Desires: All humans have some sort of desires. But when do children
begin to recognize that someone else’s desires may differ from their own?
Toddlers recognize that if people want something, they will try to get it.
For instance, a child might say, “I want my mommy.”
Individual Differences
As in other developmental research, there are individual differences in when
children reach certain milestones in their theory of mind (Pellicano, 2010
Executive function
It describes several functions (such as inhibition and planning) that are important
for flexible, future-oriented behavior, also may be connected to theory of mind
development (Doherty, 2008).
References:
Santrock, J.W. (2017) Life Span Development 13th Edition. New York City, United States of
America: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.,
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