The Development of Children, Seventh Edition Cynthia Lightfoot, Michael Cole, and Sheila R. Cole Chapter 8: Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Chapter Overview Physical and Motor Development Preoperational Development Information-Processing Approaches to Cognitive Development Cognitive Development in Privileged Domains Cognitive Development and Culture Reconciling Alternative Approaches

I. Physical and Motor Development Gains in both gross and fine motor development Health Common problems with getting enough sleep and meeting nutritional needs Brain Development Changes in myelination, neuron connections, and unevenness of growth

Brain Development Variability in developing different areas of the brain May contribute to unevenness of early childhood cognition Scale errors

I. Apply – Connect – Discuss Armed with the information in Table 8.1, and your understanding of motor drive, visit a playground where you can observe young children engaged in motor play. What examples of motor skills and motor drive can you identify? Focusing on one or two children, can you guess their ages based on the motor skills they exhibit?

II. Preoperational Development The preoperational stage From Piaget’s theory Cannot perform mental operations Mental operations: The mental process of combining, separating, or transforming information logically.

Centration The tendency to focus on only one feature of an object to the exclusion of all others. According to Piaget, the greatest limitation of young children’s thinking

Centration Gives rise to three common early childhood errors: Egocentrism Confusion of appearance and reality Precausal reasoning

Egocentrism Egocentrism: The tendency to be captive to one’s own perspective and unable to take that of another

Confusing Appearance and Reality Young children may often confuse appearance and reality Again, influence of context and familiarity Verbal vs. nonverbal distinctions

Precausal Reasoning The tendency to reason from one particular to another, rather than engaging in cause-and-effect reasoning Challenges

II. Apply – Connect – Discuss When young children are asked where they live, they often confuse the name of the city with the name of the state. How is this confusion an example of preoperational thinking?

III. Information-Processing Approaches to Cognitive Development The working of the mind as analogous to the digital computer

Information-Processing Input from the environment goes to the sensory register and may be read into short-term (working) memory, where it may combine with information from long-term memory Coordinated by control processes, including attention, rehearsal, and decision making

III. Apply – Connect – Discuss Suppose that two children are presented with the same set of unrelated pictures and told to remember the pictures because they will be given a memory test shortly. According to materials presented in this section, why is child 2 likely to out-perform child 1 on the memory test? Picture Child 1 says: Child 2 says: Cat Cat, cat, cat Cat, cat Shoe Shoe, shoe, shoe Cat, shoe, cat, shoe Truck Truck, truck, truck Cat, shoe, truck Pen Pen, pen, pen Cat, shoe, truck, pen

IV. Cognitive Development in Privileged Domains Cognitive domains that call on specialized kinds of information, require specifically designated forms of reasoning, and appear to be of evolutionary importance to the human species.

Privileged Domains Domain of Physics Naïve physics Everyday ideas about physical world Laws of gravity and inertia Properties of objects

Privileged Domains Domain of Psychology Naïve psychology Theory of mind: The ability to think about other people’s mental states and form theories of how they think. False-belief tasks

Privileged Domains Domain of Biology Understanding differences between living things and inanimate objects Naïve biology Uncertainty among developmentalists as to when and how it originates.

Explaining Domain-Specific Cognitive Development Modularity theory Theory theory The Special Role of Language and Culture

Explaining Domain-Specific Cognitive Development Modularity Theory Distinct and separate mental modules are dedicated to the different privileged domains For example, children with Autism Score poorly on false-belief tasks

Explaining Domain-Specific Cognitive Development Theory theory Young children have primitive theories about how the world works, which influence how they think and act within specific domains.

Explaining Domain-Specific Cognitive Development Influence of language and culture Enormous variety across cultures in the extent and ways that mental states and actions are conceived Are compartmentalized domains of knowledge a Western construct?

IV. Apply – Connect – Discuss Of modularity theory and theory theory, which is most consistent with Piaget’s understanding of development? Why?

V. Cognitive Development and Culture The importance of routine events Scripts: event schemas that specify who participates, what social roles they play, what objects they are to use, and the sequence of actions that make up the event.

Cultural Context Unevenness of development Cultural influences Availability of specific activities Frequency of basic activities Relating different activities to each other Regulation of children’s role in the activity

V. Apply – Connect – Discuss In arguing against the notion that knowledge can be compartmentalized into separate domains, Bame Nsamenang asserts that, according to African beliefs, knowledge is integrated into social life and daily routines. To what extent is this consistent with Katherine Nelson’s theory of cultural scripts?

VI. Reconciling Alternative Approaches The complex and uneven picture of cognition in early childhood cannot be explained by any single approach.