Early Childhood Thought: Islands of Competence

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Early Childhood Thought Islands of Competence

• The Development of Children (5th ed.)
• Cole, Cole Lightfoot
• Chapter 9

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Early Childhood (age 2-6)

• Typical pattern of thinking in preschool years
• Mixture of sound logic and magical thinking
• Insight and ignorance
• The reasoned and the unreasonable
• A patchwork of competence and incompetence

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Early Childhood (age 2-6)

• Crucial questions
• Are young children simply inconsistent?
• Or do their thought processes vary from one task
  to the next because they are more familiar with
  some than others?
• Or might it be that their abilities vary because
  the parts of their brain that govern these
  abilities mature at different rates?

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Overview of the Journey

• Bio-Behavioral Foundations
• Focusing on General Processes of Cognitive Change
• Focusing on Domain-Specific Approaches to
  Cognitive Change
• Development of Drawing A Case in Point

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Bio-Behavioral Foundations

• Physiological Growth
• Brain Maturation

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Physiological Growth

• After third birthday, rate of growth slows to
  about 2½ to 3 inches per year
• Walking is distinctly adultlike with their hands
  at their sides
• Improvement in fine motor skills
• More agile in controlling their eating utensils
• Can unbutton (but not button) their jacket
• Better control of crayons
• Can pour water more or less reliably

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Brain Maturation

• Age 2 ? 50 adult weight Age 6 ? 90 weight
• Results from increasing myelination (low level
  in hippocampus may account for short-term
  working memory deficiencies, in frontal cortex
  may explain failures to consider someone elses
  point of view)
• Rapid increase in frequency size of brain waves
  when children are engaged in cognitive tasks

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Focusing on General Processes of Cognitive
Change

• Piagets Account of Early Childhood Thinking
• The Problem of Uneven Levels of Performance
• Information-Processing Approaches

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Piagets Stages of Thinking

• Infancy (Birth-2) Sensorimotor
• Thinking based on overtly physical acts
• Early childhood (2-6) Preoperational
• Overcoming limitations to logical thinking
• Due to one-sidedness (i.e., the inability to keep
  two aspects of a problem in mind), as seen in the
  beaker and wooden beads experiments
• Middle childhood (6-12) Concrete Operational
• Manipulation of symbols and internalized mental
  operations that combine, separate, and transform
  information logically
• Adolescence (12-19) Formal Operational
• Thinking systematically about all logical
  relations within a problem keen interest in
  abstract ideas and thinking itself

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Preoperational Limitations

1. Egocentrism
2. Confusion of appearance and reality
3. Precausal reasoning

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Limitation 1 Egocentrism

• Tendency to consider the world entirely in terms
  of ones own point of view
• Preschoolers cannot decenter (i.e., see things
  from anothers perspective)
• Illustrated in
• Lack of spatial perspective taking
• Egocentric speech
• Failure to understand other minds

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Lack of Spatial Perspective Taking

• Allowed to view diorama (3 mountain experiment)
  from all sides
• Seated on one side doll on opposite side
• Shown pictures from various perspectives and
  asked to identify how things would look to doll
• Almost always chose view corresponding to their
  own point of view

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Egocentric Speech

• Tendency to engage in collective monologues
• Speaker gave too little information (e.g.,
  Take this one)
• Listeneraskedtoo fewquestions

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Failure to Understand Other Minds

• Inability to engage in mental perspective taking
  (i.e., think about other peoples mental states
  theory of mind)
• Think others will not have a false belief because
  they no longer do
• Discover that a box with the picture of candy on
  the outside has only a pencil inside
• Believe that a friend who has not yet seen what
  is in closed box will think that it has a pencil
• Form of moral reasoning that does not take
  intentions into account

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Limitation 2 Confusing Appearance and Reality

• Tendency to focus exclusively on the most
  striking aspects of an object (i.e., surface
  appearance)
• Believe the stick has actually changed
• Become frightened when someone puts on a mask
• Believe that a cat with a dog mask actually turns
  into a dog

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Limitation 2 Confusing Appearance and Reality
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Limitation 3 Precausal Reasoning

• Instead of reasoning from general premises to
  particular cases (deduction) or from specific
  cases to a more general premise (induction),
  preschoolers tend to think transductively (i.e.,
  from one particular to another)
• I havent had a nap, so it isnt afternoon.
• Since graveyards are places where dead people
  are found, graveyards must be the cause of death

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Problem of Uneven Performance

• Under some circumstances, children show signs of
  having certain cognitive abilities earlier than
  Piaget suggested
• Horizontal décalage Variations in performance
  from one version of a problem to another

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Problem of Uneven Performance

• Example Understanding Other Minds
• When childs role changed in false-belief task
  from that of the deceived to that of the
  deceiver, even 3-year-olds exhibit some
  understanding of other peoples thought processes

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Problem of Uneven Performance

• Example Spatial Perspectives
• Can take anothers spatial perspective when task
  involves familiar, easily differentiated objects
  (e.g., farm, Grover)

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Problem of Uneven Performance

• Example Distinguishing Appearance/Reality
• When the child is enlisted in trying to fool
  another adult with a fake object (e.g., a sponge
  rock), 3-year-old child could answer correctly
  what the object really is, what it looks like,
  and what the absent adult will think it is
• Thus children seem to have a conceptual grasp of
  the difference between reality and appearance,
  but to be able to use it, they must be primed by
  making the knowledge part of an ongoing activity
  that the child understands

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Problem of Uneven Performance

• Example Causal Reasoning

How a bicycle works
9-year-old(retarded)
8-year-old(normal)
5-year-old
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Problem of Uneven Performance

• Example Causal Reasoning

3-year-olds usually said the first ball caused
Snoopy to jump up, but 5-year-olds could give at
least a partial explanation that cause must
precede effect
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Neo-Piagetian Theories

• Retain the idea that acquisition of knowledge
  passes through stages, but believe that it occurs
  at different rates in different domains
• The information processing account is one of
  these alternative explanations

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Information-Processing Account

• Computer analogy Hardware (e.g., myelination of
  a particular brain region), Software (e.g.,
  acquisition of a new strategy for remembering)

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Information-Processing Account

• Children display greater competence when they
  have deep experience in a given domain
• Results in a rich knowledge base, which leads in
  turn to easier recall and more powerful ability
  to reason
• Yields islands of expertise

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Sieglers Overlapping WaveModel of
Developmental Change
Sieglers model shows changes as slow and even,
depending upon the strategies used by the child
Stage models, in contrast, see development as
divided into discontinuous stages
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Focusing on Domain-Specific Approaches to
Cognitive Change

• Privileged Domains
• Explaining Domain-Specific Development

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Privileged Domain Physics

• Even quite young children know that larger
  objects are composed of smaller pieces and these
  pieces, even if invisible, have enduring physical
  existence and properties. (Wellman Gelman,
  1998)
• Between the ages of 2 and 6, children display
  increasing understanding of inertia and gravity

Kim Spelke, 1999
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Privileged Domain Psychology
Developing Theory of Mind
Age Evidence
End of first year Children possess at least an intuitive understanding that other peoples actions are caused by their goals and intentions.
1824 months Children engage in pretend play, indicating onset of symbolic capacity needed to understand mental states of others.
3 years Children generally distinguish mental and physical states, perceptions and desires.
45 years Children are able to think about the relation between their own beliefs and those of others.
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Privileged Domain Biology

• Findings 3- to 4-year-olds can make correct
  generalizations concerning animate and inanimate
  things
• Can make the distinction between self-initiated
  and externally initiated movements
• A know that living objects grow and change their
  appearance in contrast to artifacts, which may
  be scuffed up or broken but do not grow

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Explanation Biological Account

• Option 1 Mental modules (modularity theory)
• Cognitive processes consist of separate
  biological subsystems, hardwired at birth and
  that do not need special tutoring in order to
  develop
• Prodigies Islands of brilliance in an overall
  normal level of development (e.g., Mozart)
• Option 2 Skeletal principles
• Provide domain-specific support for development
• Get a cognitive process started and provide some
  initial direction, but subsequent experience is
  needed to realize the potential

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ExplanationCultural-Context Account

• Developmental niches Contexts in which society
  makes available essential cultural resources for
  development (e.g., language)
• Scripts Event schemas (e.g., taking a bath,
  going to a restaurant ) that function as guides
  to action and specify
• Who participates in an event
• What social roles they play
• What objects they are to use during the event
• The sequence of actions that make up an event
• Serve to coordinate actions with others and
  abstract concepts that apply to many kinds of
  events

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ExplanationCultural-Context Account

• Culture influences developmental unevenness
• Arranging occurrence and frequency of activities
• Relating various activities in patterns
• Regulating childs role in the activity
• Guided participation ? zone of proximal
  development (Vygotsky)
• Example Sociodramatic play (pretend play in
  which 2 participants enact a variety of
  social roles)

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Development of Drawing

• Stages of Drawing
• Information-Processing Account
• Drawing as a Mental Module
• Cultural-Context Account

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Stages of Drawing Human Figure
Tadpole figures
Figures with separate body
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Stages of Drawing

• Early childhood Draw what they know about an
  object rather than what they see
• 6-year-olds drawing of a cup Handle is included
  although the child was shown the cup without the
  handle being visible
• Between ages 6-12 they draw what they actually
  see and with perspective

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Carrie Age 2½
Lines of different colors
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Carrie Age 3½
Global representations of a person
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Carrie Age 5
Set main figures in a scene
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Carrie Age 7½
Motion, rhythm, and greater realism
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Carrie Age 12
Cartoon of a realistic scene
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Information-Processing Account

• Increasing sophistication of childrens drawings
  arises from a combination of
• Improved motor skills
• Increased knowledge of rules and conventions of
  drawing
• Increased ability to keep in mind several aspects
  of task

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Drawing as a Mental Module

• Cases of children whose language ability/general
  mental functioning are quite low, but whose
  ability to create graphic images is exceptionally
  high
• Nadia, an autistic preschooler with only minimal
  exposure to models, displays an uncanny ability
  to capture form and movement in her drawings

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Cultural-Context Account

• Adult interactions (i.e., scripted routines and
  guided participation) facilitate drawing
  development
• What are you drawing?
• Tell me about your picture.
• Affirmation that they can see an object in the
  drawing that the child has mentioned
• The ways in which adults organize instruction
  provide essential opportunities for modular
  potential to be triggered and stages constructed

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Applying the Theories
Using different theories of learning how to draw
as a foundation, how would you design an
instructional program to teach drawing?