1. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CHAPTER 9: PGS. 317-322, 328-338, 341-361 (Infants & Children)

2. Lecture Supplements  Lehigh Valley Hospital article: His Brain & Her Brain  The Nothing Box comedy act  Partner Activity: work in partners to complete lecture notes worksheets

3. Piaget’s Theory: The Preoperational Stage (pg 318)  2 nd stage  ages 2 to 7 yrs  extraordinary increase in mental representation  Make-believe play  Dual representation- a symbolic object is viewed as both an object & a symbol (symbol-real world relations; a banana can be used as a banana in the kitchen or it can be used as a telephone at the office)

4. Make-Believe Play (pg 318)  Development of make-believe play:  with age, make-believe gradually becomes: more detached from real-life conditions-pretend with less realistic toys (block as a phone) less self-centered-direct pretend play toward objects (feeds a doll) more complex combinations of schemes-sociodramatic play (make- believe play with others)-role relationships, story lines  Benefits of make-believe play:  interactions last longer, show more involvement, and draw more children into the activity in a more cooperative manner (Creasey, Jarvis, & Berk, 1998)  strengthens a variety of mental abilities, including sustained attention, logic, memory, reasoning, and creativity (Bergen & Mauer, 2000; Berk, 2006a;Elias & Berk, 2002; Kavanaugh & Engel, 1998; Lindsey & Colwell, 2003; Ruff & Capozzoli, 2003)

5. Enhancing Make-Believe Play (pg 320) Provide sufficient space and play materials Supervise and encourage children’s play without controlling it Offer a variety of both realistic materials and materials without clear functions Ensure that children have many rich, real- world experiences to inspire positive fantasy play Help children solve social conflicts constructively

6. According to Piaget, Some Things Preschoolers Do Not Yet Understand… (pg 321)  Egocentrism  tend to focus on their own viewpoint & think others think & feel the same way they do  Animistic thinking  belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities such as thoughts, wishes, & feelings  Inability to conserve  refers to the idea that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes  I/C DVD Segment #12: Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory (conservation) (stop @ 11:28)  Over the past 2 decades, researchers have challenged these thoughts, showing that preschoolers DO have some of these skills already in place or emerging

7. Some Cognitive Attainments of the Preschool Years (Table 9.1, pg 328) (Allyn & Bacon, 2008)

8. Lecture Supplements  Handout: Profile 3-4 yrs (cog/lang)  Article: Why We Play

9. Piaget & Education (pg 328)  3 educational principles that continue to have major influences on today’s teacher training & classroom practices:  Discovery learning-children are encouraged to discover for themselves through spontaneous interaction w/the environment  Sensitivity to children’s readiness to learn-teachers introduce activities that build on children’s current thinking Developmentally appropriate practice  Acceptance of individual differences-Piaget assumes that all children go through the same sequence of development, but just at different rates

10. Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (pg 329)  Stresses the social context of cognitive development  A rapid growth in language broadens preschoolers’ ability to participate in social dialogues w/more knowledgeable individuals (Berk, 2008)  Private speech-self-directed speech that children use to plan & guide their own behavior

11. Effective Social Interaction (pg 331) adjusting the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child’s current level of performance adult provides less and less support as the child becomes more capable Scaffolding shared endeavors between more expert & less expert participants (Rogoff, 1998, 2003) Guided participation

12. Vygotsky & Early Childhood Education (pg 332) Classroomprovides opportunities for active participation & promotes acceptance of individual differences Promotes assisted discovery teachers guide children’s learning w/explanations, demonstrations, verbal prompts, and being acutely aware of each child’s zone of proximal development Use of peer collaboration children w/varying abilities work in groups, teaching & helping one another Make-believe playis the ideal social context for fostering cognitive development in early childhood

13. Information Processing…focuses on several mental strategies: (pg 334)  Attending Sustained attention increases sharply between 2-3 ½ years  Memory Recognition (ability to tell whether a stimulus is the same or as similar to one they have seen before) Recall (remembering in the absence of perceptual support )-much poorer than recognition Memory strategies (deliberate mental activities that improve the likelihood of remembering) Episodic memory-memory for everyday experiences Memory for familiar events (repeated, routine events=getting ready for bed) Memory for unique events (descriptions of special events)

14. Early Literacy in Early Childhood (pg 341)  emergent literacy-active efforts to construct literacy knowledge through informal experiences  5-7 yrs old=invented spelling  phonological awareness-ability to reflect on & manipulate the sound structure of spoken language (rhyming games) low SES families have fewer home & preschool language & literacy learning opportunities; therefore, they are behind in emergent literacy skills & reading achievement throughout the school yrs (Foster et al., 2005; Serpell et al., 2002) middle-SES neighborhoods average 13 books per child; low-SES neighborhoods just 1 book per 300 children!! (Neuman & Celano, 2001) on average, a low-SES child is read to for a total of 25 hours during preschool years, while a high-SES child for 1,000 hours!!

15. Supporting Emergent Literacy in Early Childhood (Applying What We Know, pg 345) Provide literacy-rich homes and preschool environments Engage in interactive book reading Provide outings to libraries, museums, parks, zoos, and other community settings Point out letter-sound correspondences, play rhyming and other language-sound games, and read rhyming poems and stories Support children’s efforts at writing, especially narrative products Model literacy activities Sources: Dickinson & McCabe, 2001; McGee & Richgels, 2004

16. Lecture Supplements  Hand out- The Child Responds to Literature (cognitive)  Hand out- Get Ready to Read! (Home Literacy Environment Checklist)  Children’s Literature…share examples

17. Mathematical Development in Early Childhood (pg 344)  Ordinality-  Relationships between quantities (more or less than)  14-16 months  Cardinality-  Last number when counting is the total  3 ½ -4 yrs old math proficiency at kindergarten entry strongly predicts math achievement years later, in elementary & secondary school (Duncan et al., 2007; Geary, 2006a) as with emergent literacy, children from low-SES families begin kindergarten with considerably less math knowledge than their higher-SES agemates—a gap due to differences in environmental support (Berk, 2012) just a few sessions devoted to playing a number board game with an adult led to dramatic improvement in low-SES 4-year olds’ number concepts and proficiency at counting 1-10 (Siegler, 2009)

18. Types of Care (pg 348)  Child care includes a variety of arrangements for supervising children of employed parents, ranging from care in the caregiver’s or child’s home to some type of center-based program high quality child care for all SES groups enhances cognitive, language, and social development  Preschool a program with planned educational experiences aimed at enhancing the development of 2-5 yr olds child-centered programs-teachers provide activities from which children select, for most of the day is play academic programs-teacher structures children’s learning, teaching academic skills through formal lesson

19. Types of Care (pg 348)  Early Intervention  for “at-risk” preschoolers and/or with developmental delays  Project Head Start (1965) 10% of children in Head Start must have qualifying delays  Intermediate Unit classrooms/IU coming into child’s current program

20. Educational Media Facts… (pg 351)  Television  most dominant form of youth media 40% of 3 month olds watch TV; 90% by age 2 the average U.S. 2-6 yr old watches TV/videos from 1 ½-2 ½ hrs/day; middle childhood=3 ½ hrs/day (Rideout & Hamel, 2006) low SES children watch more TV (fewer alternative forms of entertainment are available/affordable)  children’s educational programs are associated with gains in early literacy & math skills and academic progress in elementary school (Ennemoser & Schneider, 2007) one study reported a link between PS viewing of Sesame Street and other similar educational programs and getting higher grades, reading more books, & placing more value on achievement in high school (Anderson et al., 2001)

21. Educational Media Facts…cont’d  Computers  70% of 4-6 yr olds have used a computer at one time or another; spend an average of an hour/day on it  more boys than girls are on the computer  many classrooms offer computer learning centers, computer storybooks & other literacy programs (ComputerTots in child care centers)  children spend more time using computers for game-playing video games designed for young children generally have specific educational goals, including literacy, math, science, colors, and other concepts (Garrison & Christakis, 2005)

22. Language Development in Early Childhood (pg 354)  Vocabulary  Using different types of words Verbs-go, run, broke Modifiers-red, round, sad  Grammar  2-3 yrs=simple sentence (sub-verb-obj order)  3 ½-4 yrs=use sub-verb-obj sentences, but with newly acquired verbs  Add –s for plurals, use prepositions, & form various tenses of the verb to be  Conversation  Pragmatics-the practical, social side of language begin to take turns, stay on the same topic, state their message clearly, & conform to cultural rules for social interaction 4 yrs=adjust speech to fit the age, sex, & social status of the listener (esp. in dramatic play) 3-6 yrs=begin to talk on the telephone

23. What Can I do to Facilitate Language?? (pg 359) Interaction with more skilled speakers Conversational give- and-takes w/adults Increased literacy exposure & development Give helpful, explicit feedback Use recasts- restructuring incorrect speech into the correct form Use expansions- elaborating on children’s speech, increasing its complexity Supporting Language Learning in Early Childhood:

24. Lecture Supplements  Handout- Easy Things You Can Do at Home to Raise Readers…Writers  Homework: Read article What Kids Don’t Get to do Anymore and Why and be able to comment, debate, discuss, etc.