1. PSYC 206: Life-Span Development Lecture 9
Early Childhood
PSYC 206: Life-Span Development
Lecture 9

2. Brain Maturation Preschoolers
Age 2  50% adult weight; Age 6  90% weight
Results from increasing myelination (low level in hippocampus may account for short-term working memory deficiencies, in frontal cortex may explain failures to consider someone else’s point of view)
Rapid increase in frequency & size of brain waves when children are engaged in cognitive tasks

3. Preschool Years: Piaget
sm substage 6: developmental of mental representations; the symbolic function…
mental representations replace overt actions
now: preoperational stage
where children fail to take into account others’ point of view (“egocentrism”)
cannot separate reality from appearances-- surface appearances = reality
are easily confused by causal relations
egocentrism: not being able to consider more than one perspective simultaneously
can not “decenter” from their own perspective

4. Egocentrism of preoperations
tendency to ¨center¨
volume conservation tasks
class inclusions tasks
lack of spatial perspective taking
3 mountains task
egocentric speech-- not listener oriented
collective monologues
lack of theory of mind: can not reason about how other people think
false belief tasks

5. Volume conservation tasks
Present 2 beakers of identical shape, each filled with the same amount of water
ask 3 and 4-year olds to judge whether the amounts are same or different
Pour the contents of one into a taller, but narrower beaker
so that the level of water in this beaker is higher
ask ask 3 and 4-year olds to judge whether the amounts are same or different
3- and 4-year-olds will insist that the amount of water has increased
cannot consider the two dimensions (height and width simultaneously)

6. Spatial egocentrism: the three-mountain task
preschool children are asked to walk around and play with a model of 3 distinctly shaped mountains
once familiar, they were made to sit on one side of the model and shown a doll who had a “different view” of the “landscape”
children were asked to identify the picture (among many) that corresponded to the doll’s perspective
almost always picked the picture that represented their own point of view

7. 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

8. Cannot consider the two levels simultaneously
Class inclusion tasks
8 beads: 5 black, 3 white
Are there more black beads or white beads? Black...
Are there more black beads or beads? Preschoolers say black beads
According to Piaget, because they center on only one level of categorization, either on the two subclasses or on the united common class
Cannot consider the two levels simultaneously

9. Speech egocentrism
children separated by a screen from peers were asked to describe the blocks on their side of the screen to the listener so that she/he can manipulate the blocks similarly
most 4- and 5-year-olds use many egocentric terms such as put this one first
Piaget emphasizes the egocentric nature of preschoolers’s speech-- collective monologues
where no actual communication takes place

10. Lack of Theory of Mind
Candy/Pencils Task: Box of candies that contains pencils
Asked to predict what it contains, will say candy.
Shown the pencils inside
Asked to predict, what someone else will say.
3-Year-Old will suggest pencils
4-Year-Old Child correctly predicts Candy
3-year-old wrongly predicts:
What others will say, for children, adults, puppets, and hypothetical story characters
Hiding the Chocolate task
where do you think the little boy will look?

11. Appearance-reality tasks
CAT-DOG task: De Vries showed children a picture of a cat wearing a dog mask
most of the 3-year-olds believed that the cat had become a dog
6-year-olds were more confident that such a transformation was impossible
SPONGE-ROCK task: showed a sponge which looked like a rock
3-year-olds insisted it is a rock although they were asked to handle it

12. Growth of the ability to understand (a) a masked cat remains a cat (b) a sponge is not a rock, though it looks like one
Age (years)

13. Precausal reasoning
Transductive reasoning: reasoning from one particular to another
why do people die? Because there are graveyards…
why do I take a nap? Because it is afternoon…
what makes the sun shine? Because the sky is blue…
indifference to cause-and-effect relations

14. Neo-Piagetian work
Preschool children have more advanced reasoning capabilities than Piaget’s methods give them credit for
horizontal decalage: variations in children’s performance from one task to another, where the tasks presume similar types of cognitive competence
a range of studies that showed how preschool children are not so limited in their ability to decenter
some examples to follow; more examples in text

15. Problem of Uneven Performance
Example: Spatial Perspectives
Can take another’s spatial perspective when task involves familiar, easily differentiated objects (e.g., farm, Grover)

16. Modified 3-mountain perspective taking task
Children were presented with a more familiar scene than the three mountains-- a farm scene that has a building, a lake with with a boat in it, and a horse and a cow
were asked to describe how Grover’s view of the scene looked like as he drove around the farm
3 yrs-- 80% correct
4 yrs-- 93% correct
vs. 42% correct for 3 year olds and 67% correct for the three mountains task
what does Grover see?
When the objects are easily differentiable, young prechool children can display nonegocentric spatial taking

17. Early understanding of others’ mental states
Chandler created a treasure hunt game, where a treasure was hidden in a container by a doll who left a trail of footprints to the treasure
the child was asked to make it difficult for people to find the treasure
most 2.5 and 3 year olds erased the footprints in order to conceal the route to the treasure
deception is a process of instilling a false belief in the other
early use of deception indicates that they can reason about other people’s beliefs

18. Neo-Piagetian theories (I)
Refine Piaget’s theory to account for new new evidence and within-stage variability in two ways
keep the theory in its original form and identify different levels of performance for different tasks
e.g., level 1 vs. level 2 perspective taking
if an experimenter shows a picture of a turtle vertically to the child, can the child say that the experimenter can not see the turtle? If yes, passed level 1 perspective taking
if the picture is laid flat on the table so that the experimenter and the child see it from opposite positions, the same child might not know that the picture is upside down for the experimenter… then, fail level 2

20. Neo-Piagetian Theories
Retain the idea that acquisition of knowledge passes through stages, but believe that it occurs at different rates in different domains
The information processing account is one of these alternative explanations…

21. Information-Processing Account
Computer analogy Hardware (e.g., myelination of a particular brain region), Software (e.g., acquisition of a new strategy for remembering)

22. Information-Processing Account
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”

23. Siegler’s “Overlapping Wave” Model of Developmental Change
Siegler’s model shows changes as slow and even, depending upon the strategies used by the child
Stage models, in contrast, see development as divided into discontinuous stages

24. Neo-Piagetian theories (II)
Stages in the acquisition of knowledge are confined to specific domains such as physics, language, music, social reasoning, etc.
domain-specific knowledge
can explain a child who can do spatial perspective taking, but still engage in egocentric speech in referential communication tasks
these tasks might both be measuring egocentrism, but concern two different domains of physics and language

25. Modularity theory
Highly specialized (domain-specific) mental faculties, tuned to particular types of input
inspired by Chomsky’s theory of LAD
Leslie has applied it to the perception of causality and theory of mind
autism and theory of mind

26. Info-processing theories
Young children’s cognitive difficulties are caused by limitations on their ability to process information
such as distractibility, incomplete examination of stimuli, inability to hold several items in mind at once
when tasks are arranged to reduce the load on children’s information-processing systems, their cognitive performance is enhanced

27. Cultural context theories
Agrees with Piaget that children are active agents in development
but also emphasizes the role of social interactions in shaping the environments of children
social co-construction: both the child and the environment are active in constructing the child’s development
agrees with neo-Piagetian and modularity theory approaches by focusing on specific domains of behavior
domains are determined by specific cultural meaning systems