Chapter 9: Cognition in Early Childhood

1. Piaget: the preoperational period

2. Egocentrism

3. Appearance/reality

4. Precausal reasoning

5. Problems with Piaget

6. Theory of mind

1. Piaget’s Account

• Preoperational period– Operation– Centration

• Beaker task

• Class inclusion

1. Piaget’s Account

Preoperational period, cont’d.

• Symbolic thought

• Symbolic play

• Imaginary friends

2. Egocentrism

• Egocentrism• Lack of spatial perspective

taking• Three-mountains task

Egocentrism, cont’d.

•Egocentric speech

•Krauss & Glucksberg, 1969

3. Confusing Appearance and Reality

• Piaget: children in this age group are fooled by appearances.

4. Precausal Reasoning

• Boiling stones

• “Why does it get dark outside?”

• Animism– “Why is the moon gone during the day?”

5. The Problem of Uneven Levels of Performance: horizontal décalage

• Horizontal decalage– unexpected differences in problem-solving

• Nonegocentric reasoning about spatial perspectives

• The Grover study

Some other findings that contradict Piaget

•Distinguishing appearance from reality•Sponges that look like rocks (John Flavell finds better performance by age 6)•Rice et al. Find that 3-4 year olds can do it when given help

•Effective causal reasoning•The Snoopy task

6. Theory of mind

• What is a theory of mind?• Knowing that one has a mind, that other

people have minds, and that minds do certain kinds of things.

• What kinds of things do minds do?• How do we measure theory of mind?• The false-belief paradigm

• Smarties task• Sally/Ann task

• Deception