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

2. 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)

3. Symbols
Extraordinary increase in representational (symbolic) activity.

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

7. 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

8. Let’s Watch – Conservation of Liquid 5.5 years old

9. Let’s Watch – Conservation of Liquid 7.5 years old

10. Let’s Watch – Conservation of number 4.5 years old

11. Let’s Watch – Conservation of number 5.5 years old

12. 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

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

14. 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.

15. 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.”

16. 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

17. 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