The document summarizes key aspects of cognitive development in preschool-aged children according to Piaget and Vygotsky. It discusses Piaget's concepts of preoperational thinking, symbolic function, egocentrism, intuitive thought, and lack of conservation skills. It also covers Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective on cognitive development and the importance of scaffolding. Finally, it provides an overview of language development milestones, private speech, media influences, and varieties of early education programs and childcare.

1. Chapter 3: The
Preschool Years
Module 3.2
Cognitive Development in
the Preschool Years

2. Piaget - Preoperational Thinking
• Preoperational Stage-2-7 years
• Preschool years time of stability and change - lack
use of operations and organized, formal mental
processes
• Characterized by symbolic thinking; mental reasoning
and use of concepts increase
• Still not capable of operations: organized, formal,
logical mental processes that characterize school age
children. It is only at the end of preoperational stage
that the ability to carry out operations comes into play.

3. Piaget - Preoperational Thinking
• Symbolic function:
– Ability to use symbols, words, or object to
represent something that is not physically
present
• Language allows preschoolers to:
– Represent actions symbolically
– Think beyond present to future
– Consider several possibilities at same time

4. Centration
Which row has more buttons?
• Centration is the process of
concentrating on one limited aspect of a
stimulus and ignoring other aspects.
• Preschoolers are unable to consider all
available information about a stimulus. Instead,
they focus on superficial, obvious elements that
are within their sight. These external elements
come to dominate preschoolers’ thinking,
leading to inaccuracy in thought.

5. Conservation
(Click on the link to see the same video if you are unable to watch it in
the slideshow)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B65EJ6gMmA4

6. Conservation
• Conservation is the knowledge that quantity is unrelated to the arrangement and
physical appearance of objects.
• Because they are unable to conserve, preschoolers can’t understand that changes in
one dimension (such as a change in appearance) does not necessarily mean that
other dimensions (such as quantity) change.
• Children who do not yet understand the principle of conservation feel quite
comfortable in asserting that the amount of liquid changes as it is poured between
glasses of different sizes.
• They simply are unable to realize that the transformation in appearance does not
imply a transformation in quantity.
• The main reason is that their tendency toward conservation prevents them from
focusing on the relevant features of the situation. They cannot follow the sequence of
transformations that accompanies changes in the appearance of a situation.
• Piaget regarded children’s development of conservation as a skill that marks the
transition from the preoperational period to the next stage, concrete operations.

7. Transformation
• Transformation is the process in which one state is changed into another.
• Adults know that if a pencil that is held upright is allowed to fall down, it
passes through a series of successive stages until it reaches its final,
horizontal resting spot.
• In contrast, children in the preoperational period are unable to envision or
recall the successive transformations that the pencil followed in moving from
the upright to the horizontal position. If asked to reproduce the sequence in
a drawing, they draw the pencil upright and lying down, with nothing in
between. Basically, they ignore the intermediate steps.

8. Egocentrism
• Preschoolers do not understand that others have different perspectives from
their own
• Egocentric thought takes two forms:
– Lack of awareness that others see things from a different physical perspective
– Failure to realize that others may hold thoughts, feelings, and points of view that
differ from their own
• Egocentrism lies at heart of several types of behavior during the
preoperational period.
• Preschoolers may talk to themselves, even in the presence of others, and at
times they simply ignore what others are telling them. Rather than being a sign of
eccentricity, such behavior illustrates the egocentric nature of preoperational
children’s thinking: the lack of awareness that their behavior acts as a trigger to
others’ reactions and responses.
• Consequently, a considerable amount of verbal behavior on the part of
preschoolers has no social motivation behind it but is meant for the preschoolers’
own consumption.

9. Intuitive Thought
• Curiosity blossoms and answers to wide
variety of questions sought
• Often act as authorities on particular
topics
• Leads preschoolers to believe that they
know answers to all kinds of questions,
but there is little or no logical basis for this
confidence

10. Late Stages of Intuitive Thought
• Slowly certain qualities prepare children
for more sophisticated forms of reasoning
– Begin to understand the notion of functionality
(the idea that actions, events, and outcomes
are related to one another in fixed patterns.)
– Begin to show an awareness of the concept of
identity (the understanding that certain things
stay the same, regardless of changes in
shape, size, and appearance)

11. Information Processing Approach
• Changes in kinds of “mental programs”
that children use when approaching
problems
• Changes analogous to way computer
program becomes more sophisticated as a
programmer modifies it on basis of
experience

12. Two Approaches
• Understanding numbers
• Memory development

13. Understanding Numbers
• Preschoolers follow a number of principles in
their counting.
– They know they should assign just one number to
each item and that each item should be counted
only once.
– Preschoolers may demonstrate a surprisingly
sophisticated understanding of numbers,
although their understanding is not totally precise.
– By age 4, most are able to carry out simple
addition and subtraction problems by counting
and they are able to compare different quantities
quite successfully.

14. Memory
• Recollections of events are sometimes, but not
always, accurate
– Typically accurate in responses to open-ended questions
– Partly determined by how soon memories are assessed
– Affected by cultural factors
• Autobiographical memory
– Largely inaccurate before age 3
– Not all last into later life
– Memories are also affected by cultural factors. For example,
Chinese college students’ memories of early childhood are more
likely to be unemotional and reflect activities involving social roles,
such as working in their family’s store, whereas U.S. college
students’ earliest memories are more emotionally-elaborate and
focus on specific events such as the birth of a sibling.

15. Vygotsky’s View of Cognitive
Development
• Vygotsky saw children as apprentices, learning
cognitive strategies and other skills from adult and
peer mentors who not only present new ways of
doing things, but also provide assistance,
instruction, and motivation.
• Focused on the child’s social and cultural world as
the source of cognitive development.
• According to Vygotsky, children gradually grow
intellectually and begin to function on their own
because of the assistance that adult and peer
partners provide.

16. Culture and Society Influences
• Nature of the partnership between
developing children and adults and peers
determined largely by cultural and societal
factors

17. Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
• The level at which a child can almost, but not fully,
perform a task independently, but can do so with the
assistance of someone more competent.
• When appropriate instruction is offered within the zone
of proximal development, children are able to increase
their understanding and master new tasks.
• Cognition increases through exposure to information
that is new enough to be intriguing, but not too difficult
• Greater improvement with help = greater increases in
zone of proximal development

18. One More Look at the ZPD

19. Scaffolding
• Support for learning and problem solving
that encourages independence and
growth
• Aids in development of overall cognitive
abilities

20. So how does scaffolding look in
action?

21. Cultural Tools
• Actual, physical items or intellectual and
conceptual framework for solving
problems
– Language
– Alphabetical and numbering schemes
– Mathematical and scientific systems
– Religious systems
– The nature of the tools available to children to
solve problems and perform tasks is highly
dependent on the culture in which they live.

22. Language Development
During preschool years:
• Sentence length increases at a steady pace
• Syntax is ways in which children at this age
combine words and phrases to form sentences -
doubles each month
• Enormous leaps in number of words used
through fast mapping
• Language blooms so rapidly between the late
twos and the mid-threes that researchers have
yet to understand the exact pattern.

23. Fast Mapping
• New words are associated with their
meaning after only brief encounter
– By age 6, the average child has a vocabulary
of around 14,000 words
– Vocabulary acquired at rate of nearly one new
word every 2 hours, 24 hours a day

24. Language Development
• Use plurals and possessive forms of nouns
(such as “boys” and “boy’s”),
• Employ the past tense (adding “-ed” at the
end of words, although not always correctly,
as in “I goed to the store with daddy.”)
• Use articles (“the” and “a”).
• Ask, and answer, complex questions
(“Where did you say my book is?” and “Those
are trucks, aren’t they?”).
• Extend appropriate formation of words to new
words

25. Language Developemnt
• Preschoolers also learn what cannot be
said as they acquire principles of grammar
• Although they still make frequent
mistakes, 3-year-olds
– Follow principles of grammar most of time
– Are correct in their grammatical constructions
more than 90 percent of time

26. Private Speech
• Private speech, originally termed egocentric speech (Vygotsky, 1962/ 1934),
is speech that is self-directed and used for the purpose of emotional,
psychological, and behavioral regulation.
• It is traditionally studied in children because private speech is externally
voiced until around age 8, after which point it becomes internalized (Diaz &
Lowe, 1987).
• However, people continue to use private speech through adolescence and
into adulthood as a means of self-regulation (John-Steiner, 1992).
• Researchers have distinguished between three kinds of private speech
(Berk, 1986): task-irrelevant (e.g., thinking about what to cook for dinner);
task-relevant, non-facilitative (e.g., thinking about how frustrating the task at
hand is); and task-relevant, facilitative (e.g., figuring out how to best solve a
problem). In children, these different kinds of private speech predict
performance on tasks, emotional adjustment, and reactions to challenging
situations (Manning, White, & Daugherty, 1994).

27. Private Speech of Children
• Speech by children that is spoken and
directed to themselves
– Performs important function.
– Serves to try out ideas, acting as sounding
board
– Facilitates children’s thinking and helps them
control their behavior
– Serves an important social function

28. Practical Communication
• Pragmatics is the aspect of language relating to
communicating effectively and appropriately with
others
• Helps children to understand the basics of
conversations
– Turn-taking
– Sticking to a topic
– What should and should not be said, according to the
conventions of society
– Use of different language in various settings

29. Social Speech
• Before the age of 3:
– Speak only for their own entertainment
– Apparently unaware if anyone else can understand
• During preschool years:
– Begin to direct their speech to others
– Want others to listen
– Become frustrated when they cannot make themselves
understood
– Begin to adapt their speech to others through pragmatics
– Piaget contended that most speech during the preoperational
period was egocentric: Preschoolers were seen as taking little
account of the effect their speech was having on others.
However, more recent experimental evidence suggests that
children are somewhat more adept in taking others into account
than Piaget initially suggested.

30. Learning from the Media
What do children learn from What do children learn from
television? computers?
• Potent and widespread • Becoming influential in lives of
stimuli preschoolers
• Average preschooler • Seventy percent of preschoolers
watching more than 21 between the ages of four and six
hours of TV a week have used a computer
• A quarter of them use one every
• More than third of day for an average of an hour a
households with children 2 day, and the majority use it by
to 7 years of age say that themselves.
television is on “most of the • With help from their parents,
time” in their homes almost one-fifth have sent e-mail
• Too early to know effects of
• Preschoolers spend three- computer usage—and other new
quarters of an hour reading media such as video games—on
on the average day preschoolers

31. Television Watching
American Academy of Pediatrics
– Recommends that exposure to television
should be limited
– Suggests that until age of 2, children watch no
television, and after that age, no more than 1
to 2 hours of quality programming each day

32. Television Watching
Preschool children
• Often do not fully understand plots
• Unable to recall significant story details
• Make limited and often erroneous inferences
about motivations
• Difficulty separating fantasy from reality
• Not able to critically understand and evaluate
advertising messages

33. Who cares for our children?

34. Out-of-home Care
• Increasing number of children in out-of-
home care
• Some benefits to educational activities
before formal schooling
– Cognitive and social benefits from high
quality preschool experiences

35. Varieties of Early Education
• Child care centers - typically provide care for children outside the home, while their
parents are at work. (Child-care centers were previously referred to as day-care centers.
However, because a significant number of parents work nonstandard schedules and
therefore require care for their children at times other than the day, the preferred label has
changed to child-care centers.)
– Although many child-care centers were first established as safe, warm environments where
children could be cared for and could interact with other children, today their purpose tends
to be broader, aimed at providing some form of intellectual stimulation. Still, their primary
purpose tends to be more social and emotional than cognitive.
• Family child care programs - Some child care is provided in family child-care centers,
small operations run in private homes. Because centers in some areas are unlicensed, the
quality of care can be uneven, and parents should consider whether a family child-care
center is licensed before enrolling their children. In contrast, providers of center-based
care, which is offered in institutions such as school classrooms, community centers, and
churches and synagogues, are typically licensed and regulated by governmental
authorities. Because teachers in such programs are more often trained professionals than
those who provide family child care, the quality of care is often higher.
• Preschools - Preschools are explicitly designed to provide intellectual and social
experiences for children. They tend to be more limited in their schedules than family care
centers, typically providing care for only 3 to 5 hours per day. Because of this limitation,
preschools mainly serve children from middle and higher socioeconomic levels, in cases
where parents don’t need to work full time.
– Montessori
– Reggio Emilia
• School-age child care

36. Early Education (EE) Programs
Children in EE programs:
• Are more verbally fluent, show memory and
comprehension advantages, and achieve higher IQ
scores than at-home children
• Are more self-confident, independent, and
knowledgeable about social world in which they live
than those who do not participate
• Other studies find that early and long-term
participation in child care is particularly
helpful for children from impoverished home
environments or who are otherwise at risk.

37. Early Education Programs (cont.)
However, Children in EE programs also:
– Are found to be less polite, less compliant,
less respectful of adults, and sometimes more
competitive and aggressive than their peers
– Have a slightly higher likelihood of being
disruptive in class extending through the sixth
grade (when spending 10+ weeks)
– Poor programs actually may harm children

38. Characteristics of Quality Child Care
• Providers are well trained
• Appropriate overall size and ratio of care providers to children
- Single groups should not have many more than 14 to 20
children, and there should be no more than five to ten 3-year-
olds per caregiver, or seven to ten 4- or 5-year-olds per
caregiver.
• Curriculum is carefully planned and coordinated among
teachers
• Language environment is rich, with a great deal of
conversation
• Caregivers are sensitive to children’s emotional and social
needs, and they know when and when not to intervene
• Materials and activities are age appropriate
• Basic health and safety standards are followed

39. Preschool in the United States
• No coordinated national policy on
preschool education
– Decisions about education have traditionally
been left to states and local school districts
– No tradition of teaching preschoolers
– Status of preschools in United States is
traditionally low

40. Head Start
• In the United States, the best-known program designed to promote
future academic success is Head Start. Born in the 1960s when the
United States declared a War on Poverty, the program has served
over 13 million children and their families. The program, which
stresses parental involvement, was designed to serve the “whole
child,” including children’s physical health, self-confidence, social
responsibility, and social and emotional development.
• Whether Head Start is seen as successful or not depends on the
lens through which one is looking.
• Although graduates of Head Start programs tend to show immediate IQ
gains, these increases do not last. On the other hand, it is clear that
Head Start is meeting its goal of getting preschoolers ready for school.
Preschoolers who participate in Head Start are better prepared for
future schooling than those who do not. Furthermore, graduates of
Head Start programs have better future school adjustment than their
peers, and they are less likely to be in special education classes or to
be retained in grade. Finally, some research suggests that Head Start
graduates even show higher academic performance at the end of high
school, although the gains are modest.

41. The Purpose of Preschool: An
International View

42. Early Education Programs -
Conclusions
• Studies show that those who participate and
graduate from such preschool programs are less
likely to repeat grades, and they complete
school more frequently than those who are not in
the programs.
• For every dollar spent on program, taxpayers
saved seven dollars by time graduates reached
age of 27