Piaget Preoperational Stage & Vygotsky’s Views Chapter 9 Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Preoperational Stage (2-7 years) Pre= before Operations= logical thinking Preoperational thinking= thinking without logical rules Thinking becomes representational Children have mental pictures in their minds, they don’t use sensorimotor input Use language to represent the world symbolically symbolic thought: thinking in which symbols/internal images are used to represent objects, persons, and events that are not present. Examples: dog (pet dog, plastic dog, imagined dog flag (symbolizes a country)

Symbols Extraordinary increase in representational (symbolic) activity.

Limitations in Preoperational thought Conservation Egocentrism Classification These are mistakes children make when thinking

PIAGET: PREOPERATIONAL THOUGHT Conservation Principle that the amount of a substance remains the same (i.e., is conserved) when its appearance changes. First, she examines both short glasses to be sure they contain the same amount of milk. Then, after the contents of one are poured into the tall glass and she is asked which has more, she points to the tall glass, just as Piaget would have expected. Later she added, “It looks like it has more because it's taller,” indicating that some direct instruction might change her mind. WORTH PUBLISHERS Demonstration of Conservation. Sarah, here at age 5., demonstrates Piaget's conservation-of-liquids experiment. You Tube Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtLEWVu815o&index=3&list=WL

Let’s Watch – Conservation of Liquid 5.5 years old

Let’s Watch – Conservation of Liquid 7.5 years old

Let’s Watch – Conservation of number 4.5 years old

Let’s Watch – Conservation of number 5.5 years old

Why don’t children understand Conservation? 1. centration: thinking is focused on one aspect of the cognitive problem and excludes other important aspects. 2. focus on what is visible: what you see s what you get 3. static reasoning: things in the world are only one way and don’t change Example: children can’t imagine that their parents were children once. Example: My teacher is a mother Example: She is not Ivet, she is my mother 4. irreversibility: not able to reverse an action mentally

Egocentrism Failure to distinguish others’ views from one’s own Let's Watch

Animism Belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities Ex: thunder is angry Moon is following me… This is egocentric because children attribute thoughts/feelings they have to inanimate things.

Classification One object can be part of more than a cognitive group Piaget would ask children, “Are there more orange flowers or more flowers?” Child “ More orange flowers.”

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT Language continues to progress at a rapid pace Fast mapping Grammar continues to develop; by age 4 about 90% of children use correct grammar

PRAGMATICS: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RULES OF LANGUAGE Pragmatics -the social rules of language ex: saying “please” ,“thank you” “Mr./Ms.” Understanding begins through gestures By age two some understanding of basic conversation By age 4 more sensitive to partners in conversation