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