Explain Development in Early Childhood

1
Explain Development in Early Childhood

• Review information sheet 1.

2
Explain Development in Early Childhood

• SLO 2 Discuss Cognitive Development
• SLO 3 Observe Cognitive Development

3
Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

• Three theories of cognitive development will be
  reviewed including
• Piagets preoperational theory
• Vygotskys sociocultural theory
• Information Processing theory
• Factors that contribute to individual differences
  in mental development
• Language development

4
Review Piagets Theory

• Children around the age of two move from the
  Sensorimotor to the
• PROPERATIONAL STAGE.
• This stage lasts from about 2 7 yrs.
• (Berk, 4th ed. p. 324)
• (Berk, 5th ed. p. 316) See video

5
Characteristics of the Preoperational Stage

• The most obvious change is an extraordinary
  increase in mental representation.
• However, Piagets theory emphasizes preschool
  childrens deficits rather than strengths.
• (Berk, 5th ed. p. 316)

6
Examples of deficits in logic

• Preschoolers have some difficulty with dual
  representation---Viewing a symbolic object as
  both an object in its own right and a symbol.
• (Berk, 4th ed., pp. 326 327)
• (Berk, 5th ed., pp. 318 319)

7
Examples of deficits in logic

• Young children are not capable of
  operations---mental representations of actions
  that obey logical rules.
• (Berk, 4th ed., p. 327)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 319)

8
Examples of deficits in logic

• Egocentrism ---- failure to distinguish the
  symbolic viewpoints of others from ones own.
• Preschoolers often assume that others perceive,
  think and feel the same way they do.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 319)

9
Examples of deficits in logic

• Egocentrism is responsible for preoperational
  childrens animistic thinking --- the belief
  that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities,
  such as thoughts, wishes, feelings, and
  intentions.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 319)

10
Examples of deficits in logic

• Conservation --- the idea that certain physical
  characteristics of objects remain the same, even
  when their outward appearance changes.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 320)

11
Examples of deficits in logic

• Preschoolers inability to conserve is caused by
• Centration Focusing on one aspect of a
  situation while neglecting other features
• Irreversibility An inability to mentally go
  through a series of steps in a problem and then
  reverse direction, returning to a starting point.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 320)

12
Examples of deficits in logic

• Preschoolers have difficulty with hierarchical
  classification --- the organization of objects
  into classes and subclasses on the basis of
  similarities and differences.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 321)

13
Challenges to Piagets Theory

• Problems are presented in a way that are
  confusing to preschoolers.
• (Berk, 4th ed., pp. 329 332)

14
Challenges to Piagets Theory

• New evidence shows preschoolers do have an
  awareness of others vantage points.
• (E.g. Language adapted to suit younger
  siblings.)
• (Berk, 4th ed., pp. 329 332)

15
Challenges to Piagets Theory

• Animistic and magical thinking may have more to
  do with an incomplete knowledge about objects,
  not from a rigid belief that inanimate objects
  are alive.
• (Berk, 4th ed., pp. 329 332)

16
Challenges to Piagets Theory

• Preschoolers can perform some tasks that require
  conservation when the problem is simplified.
• (Berk, 4th ed., pp. 329 332)

17
Challenges to Piagets Theory

• Young preschoolers do categorize or classify
  their everyday knowledge.
• (Berk, 4th ed., pp. 329 332)

18
Evaluation of the Preoperational Stage

• Evidence suggests Piaget was partly wrong and
  partly right about preschoolers cognitive
  abilities.
• Preschoolers attain logical operations gradually.
  Over time they will rely more on mental
  approaches to solving problems than on perceptual
  methods.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 366)

19
Evaluation of the Preoperational Stage

• You may ask if a preoperational stage actually
  exists.
• Other theories suggest the thought processes are
  the same at all ages, just to a greater of lesser
  extent.

20
Piaget and Early Childhood Education

• Three educational principles derived from his
  theory continue to have widespread influence
• An emphasis on discovery learning.
• Sensitivity to childrens readiness to learn.
• Acceptance of individual differences.
• (Berk,5th ed., pp. 327 - 328)

21
Vygotskys Sociocultural Theory

• Vygotsky stresses the importance of language as a
  source for cognitive development.
• Rapid growth in language broadens preschoolers
  ability to participate in social dialogues while
  engaged in culturally important tasks.
• (Berk, 4th ed., p. 336)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 328) See video

22
Piaget vs. VygotskyWhen children talk to
themselves

• Piaget called this egocentric speech.
• Young childrens talk is often talk for self
  in which they run off thoughts in whatever form
  they happen to occur, regardless of whether a
  listener can understand.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 329)

23
Piaget vs. VygotskyWhen children talk to
themselves

• Vygotsky called this private speech.Children
  speak to themselves for self-guidance and
  self-directionAs children get older and tasks
  become easier, their self-directed speechis
  internalized a silent, inner speech the verbal
  dialogues we carry on with ourselves while
  thinking and acting in everyday situations.
• (Vygotsky viewed language development as the
  foundation for all complex mental activities.)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 329)

24
Piaget vs. VygotskyWhen children talk to
themselves

• Research shows that children use more of it
  (private speech) when tasks are difficult, after
  they make errors, or when they are confused about
  how to proceed.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 329)

25
Where does PRIVATE SPEECH come from?

• As a child participates within the zone of
  proximal development they require the assistance
  of another, more skilled person to achieve
  success at a task.
• As this person uses language to guide the child
  to success, the child begins to make it part of
  their private speech.
• This speech then is used to organize the childs
  independent efforts.
• (Berk, 4th ed., p. 338)

26
More on Vygotskys theory

• Vygotsky suggested that to promote cognitive
  development, social interaction must have two
  vital features.
• INTERSUBJECTIVITY
• SCAFFOLDING
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 330)

27
INTERSUBJECTIVITY

• The process whereby participants who begin a
  task with different understandings arrive at a
  shared understanding.
• See next
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 330)

28
INTERSUBJECTIVITY

• Adults try to promote it when they translate
  their own insights in ways that are within the
  childs grasp. As the child stretches to
  understand the adult, she is drawn into a more
  mature approach to the situation.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 330)
• See next

29
INTERSUBJECTIVITY

• Children strive for intersubjectivity in
  dialogue with peers, as when they affirm a
  playmates message, add new ideas, and make
  contributions to ongoing play to sustain it.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 330)
• See next

30
INTERSUBJECTIVITY

• The process of intersubjectivity assists the
  creation of zones of proximal development.
• Back to Vygotsky

31
SCAFFOLDING

• Adjusting the support offered during a teaching
  session to fit the childs current level of
  performance.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 330)
• See next

32
SCAFFOLDING

• The adult uses direct instruction when the child
  has little notion of how to proceed.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 330)
• See next

33
SCAFFOLDING

• As the childs competence increases, effective
  scaffolders gradually withdraw support and the
  child will make the language of these dialogues
  part of their private speech.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 330)
• See next

34
SCAFFOLDING and GUIDED PARTICIPATION

• Barbara Rogoff suggested the term guided
  participation to reflect play or everyday
  activities where adults support childrens
  efforts without deliberately teaching.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 330)

35
Information Processing Theory

• Focuses on mental strategies that children use
  to operate on stimuli flowing into their mental
  systems.
• These strategies include, attention, memory,
  problem solving, metacognition, and literacy and
  mathematical skills.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 333) See video

36
Attention

• During the preschool years attention involves
  more planning than at the toddler level ---
  thinking out a sequence of acts ahead of time
  and allocating attention accordingly to reach a
  goal.
• However, this ability still has a way to go and
  will continue to develop.
• (Berk, 4th ed., p. 341)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 333)

37
Memory

• Preschoolers have the language skills to
  describe what they remember, and they can follow
  directions on simple memory tasks.
• Some tasks mentioned in your text include
  recognition and recall.
• (Berk, 4th ed., pp. 341 342)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 334)

38
Memory Strategies

• Deliberate mental activities that improve our
  chances of remembering.
• Some examples include
• Rehearsing
• Organizing
• (Berk, 4th ed., p. 342)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 334)

39
Episodic Memory

• Memory for everyday experiences.
• There are two forms of episodic memory
• Scripts
• Autobiographical Memory
• (Berk, p. 343)

40
Scripts

• General descriptions of what occurs and when it
  occurs in a particular situation.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 334)

41
Autobiographical Memory

• Representations of particularly meaningful
  one-time events.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 335)

42
Ways adults can stimulate narratives in children?

• Elaborative Style --- Adults ask many, varied
  questions add information to childrens
  statements and volunteer their own recollections
  and evaluations of events.

-Using this style with children assists them to
learn to produce more coherent and detailed
personal stories. (Berk, 4th ed., p. 343)
43
Early Literacy

• Childrens active efforts to construct literacy
  knowledge through informal experiences are called
  emergent literacy.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 339)

44
Early Literacy

• Literacy development builds on a broad
  foundation of spoken language and knowledge about
  the world.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 339)

45
Mathematical Reasoning

• Builds on informal knowledge.
• -By the age of 3 4 children establish an
  accurate one-to-one correspondence between number
  words and objects they represent.
• -By the age of 4 5 children grasp the
  principle of cardinality Where the last
  number in a counting sequence indicates the
  quantity of items in a set.
• (Berk, 4th ed., pp. 348 349)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 342) See video on language
  and mathematical development

46
Information from Beaty 6th ed. Chapter 5

• Describes how ECEs can promote childrens
  cognitive development by involving them in
  exploring their world.
• This is achieved by
• Developing childrens curiosity through sensory
  exploration.
• Developing basic concepts by classifying,
  comparing and counting.
• Developing basic concepts through hands-on
  experiences with living things.
• (Beaty, p. 111)

47
Language Development

• At age 2, Sammy had a vocabulary of 200 words.
  By age 6, he will have acquired around 10,000
  words.
• (Berk, 4th ed., p. 356)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 348)
• How do preschoolers achieve this impressive
  increase in language?

48
Fast Mapping

• Connecting a new word with an underlying concept
  after only a brief encounter.
• Western preschoolers learn labels for objects
  easily. Later they learn action words and
  modifiers.
• If modifiers are related (big/tall) they are more
  difficult to learn.
• (Berk, 4th ed., p. 357)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 349)

49
Principle of Mutual Exclusivity

• When children assume that words refer to
  entirely separate (nonoverlapping) categories.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 349)

50
Syntactic Bootstrapping

• Figuring out word meanings by observing how
  words are used in syntax, or the structure of
  sentences.
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 349)

51
Grammatical Development

• Grammar refers to the way we combine words into
  meaningful phrases and sentences.
• (Berk, 4th ed., p. 357)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 350)

52
Overregularization

• By age 3 ½ , children have acquired many rules
  about grammar, but may overregularize. That is,
  overextend rules to words that are exceptions.
• (Berk, p. 358)

53
One theory of how children learn grammar

• SEMANTIC BOOTSTRAPPING
• Figuring out grammatical rules by relying on
  word meanings.
• (Berk, 4th ed., p. 358)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 351)

54
Pragmatics

• The practical side of language that allow a
  conversation to go well. Includes taking turns,
  staying on topic, stating messages clearly, and
  conforming to cultural rules about social
  interaction.
• (Berk, 4th ed., p. 359)
• (Berk, 5th ed., p. 351)

55
What can ECEs do to support Language Development?

• Provide subtle, indirect feedback about grammar
  using expansions and recasts.
• Expansions --- Adult responses that elaborate on
  childrens statements.
• Recasts --- Adult responses that restate
  incorrect speech into a more appropriate form.
• (Berk, p. 360)

56
Information from Beaty 6th ed. Chapter 6

• Describes how ECEs can promote childrens
  communication skills through listening, speaking,
  emergent reading, and emergent writing.
• This is achieved by
• Talking with children to encourage listening and
  speaking.
• Using books and stories to motivate listening,
  speaking, and emergent reading.
• Providing materials and activities to support
  emergent writing.
• (Beaty, p. 141)

57

• Homework
• Begin Cognitive and Language observation
  assignment.
• Study for test 1.