Early Childhood Thought:

Islands of Competence

The Development of Children (5th ed.)

Cole, Cole & Lightfoot

Chapter 9

Early Childhood (age 2-6)

Typical pattern of thinking in preschool years

Mixture of sound logic and magical thinking

The reasoned and the unreasonable

A patchwork of competence and incompetence

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

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

Physiological Growth

After third birthday, rate of growth slows to about 2½ to 3 inches per year

Walking is distinctly adult-like, and children hold their hands at their sides

Improvement in fine motor skills Zip and unzip clothes and unbutton a jacket String smaller beads Better control of crayons and eating utensils Pours water more reliably

Brain Maturation

Age 2 50% adult weight; Age 6 90% weight

Results from increasing myelination

Rapid increase in frequency & size of brain waves when children are engaged in cognitive tasks

Focusing on General Processes

of Cognitive Change

Piaget’s Account of Early Childhood Thinking

The Problem of Uneven Levels of Performance

Information-Processing Approaches

Piaget’s 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

Preoperational Limitations

1. Egocentrism

2. Confusion of appearance and reality

3. Precausal reasoning

Limitation 1: Egocentrism

Tendency to consider the world entirely in terms of one’s own point of view Preschoolers cannot “decenter”

(i.e., see things from another’s perspective)

Illustrated in Lack of spatial perspective

taking… Egocentric speech… Failure to understand other

minds…

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

Failure to Understand Other Minds

Inability to engage in mental perspective taking (can’t think about other people’s mental states)

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 the closed box will think that it has a pencil

Form of moral reasoning that does not take intentions into account

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…

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 (from one case to another) “I haven’t had a nap, so it

isn’t afternoon.” Since graveyards are places

where dead people are found, graveyards must be the cause of death

Problem of Uneven Performance

Example: Spatial Perspectives Can take

another’s spatial perspective when the task involves familiar, easily differentiated objects, such as a farm

Problem of Uneven Performance

Example: Distinguishing Appearance/Reality When the child is asked to try to fool another adult

with a fake object (a “sponge rock”), a 3-year-old child correctly answers what the object really is, what it looks like, and what the adult will think it is

Children seem to have a conceptual grasp of the difference between reality and appearance, but to be able to use it, they must make the knowledge part of an ongoing activity they understand

Problem of Uneven Performance

Example: Causal Reasoning

How a bicycle worksHow a bicycle works

5-year-old

(typically developed)

5-year-old

(typically developed)

9-year-old(developmentally

delayed)

9-year-old(developmentally

delayed)

8-year-old(typically

developed)

8-year-old(typically

developed)

Information-Processing Theory

Computer analogy Hardware (myelination of a particular brain region), Software (learning a new

strategy for remembering)

Information-Processing Theory

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”

Focusing on Domain-Specific Approaches to

Cognitive Change

Privileged Domains

Explaining Domain-Specific Development

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

Privileged Domain: Psychology

Age EvidenceEnd of first year

Children possess at least an intuitive understanding that other people’s actions are caused by their goals and intentions.

18–24 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.

4–5 years

Children are able to think about the relation between their own beliefs and those of others.

Developing Theory of Mind

Privileged Domain: Biology

Findings: 3- to 4-year-olds can make correct generalizations concerning animate and inanimate things Children make a distinction

between self-initiated and externally initiated movements

They know that living objects grow and change their appearance in contrast to artifacts, which may be scuffed up or broken but do not grow

Biological Explanation

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 (Mozart)

Cultural-Context Explanation

Developmental niches: Contexts in which society makes available essential cultural resources for development (language)

Scripts: Event schemas (taking a bath, going to a restaurant ) 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

Serves to coordinate actions with others and concepts that apply to many kinds of events

Cultural-Context Explanation Culture influences development

Arranging occurrence and frequency of activities Relating various activities in patterns

Guided participation zone of proximal development (Vygotsky) Sociodramatic

play is pretend play in which 2 or more participants act out a variety of social roles

Development of Drawing

Stages of Drawing

Information-Processing Account

Drawing as a Mental Module

Cultural-Context Account

Stages of Drawing: Human Figure

Tadpole figures

Figures with separate body

Stages of Drawing Early childhood:

Draw what they know about an object rather than what they see 6-year-old’s

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

Carrie: Age 2½

Lines of different colorsLines of different colors

Carrie: Age 3½

Global representations of a personGlobal representations of a person

Carrie: Age 5

Set main figures in a sceneSet main figures in a scene

Carrie: Age 7½

Motion, rhythm, and greater realismMotion, rhythm, and greater realism

Carrie: Age 12

Cartoon of a realistic sceneCartoon of a realistic scene

Information-Processing Account

Increasing sophistication of children’s 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

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

Cultural-Context Account

Adult interactions facilitate drawing development “What are you drawing?” “Tell me the story of your

picture.” Affirm what that 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