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Cognitive Development
• As children progress through childhood period, their thinking becomes more
sophisticated + organised
• More elaborated thinking and less vague
• Constantly expanding their knowledge about the physical & social world
during preschool
Theories of Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Theory: the preoperational stage
• Term operation used to indicate an action or mental representation carried out
through logical thinking
• Term preoperational thinking = illogical thinking , which implies not being
ready to engage in logical mental operations
• This stage lasts from 2-7 and divided into SYMBOLIC or PRECONCEPTUAL
period (2-4 yrs) and the INTUITIVE period (4-7 yrs)
• Symbolic period characterised by increasingly use of symbols or mental
representations (words/numbers/images) to which child attaches meaning.
• During intuitive period = children begin to use primitive reasoning + want
answers to all types of questions e.g. BUT WHY?????
• Piaget calls this substage intuitive because young children seem sure about
their knowledge & understanding, yet are unaware of how they know and
what they know.
• Knowing something without rational thinking
Advances of Preoperational Thought
1. Deferred imitation: ability to repeat behaviour that is no longer present
2. Symbolic or Pretend Play: substituting imaginary situations for real ones,
having a tea party with a tea set
3. Spoken Language: with the development of language, thinking occurs through
the representation of actions instead if actions alone. Ability to use new words
gives significance to child’s world.
Immature Aspects of Preoperational Thought
1. Perceptual Centration: tendency to attend only one attribute of what one
observes and ignores the rest. Preoperational thinkers are unable to explore
all aspects of a stimulus (centre attention on what seems more salient). As a
result of not being able to process multiple characteristics = make perceptual
errors (thinking tall thin glass has more water) NO UNDERSTANDING OF
CONSERVATION.
, 2. Irreversibility: refers to inability to reverse an operation (not being able to do
mental maths)
3. Egocentrism: tendency of young children to view the world from their own
perspective. They fail to recognise that others may have different points of
view and think that the universe centres around them. They think they can
control the world around them.
4. Animistic Thinking: assuming that non-living objects such as the
sun/moon/dolls have thoughts and feelings
5. Transductive Reasoning: refers to preoperational thinkers’ tendency to reason
from one particular instance to another, linking two events in a cause-effect
fashion whether its logical or not
Further limitations in pre-operational thought concern categorising and concept of
numbers. At the end of the pre-operational period, children are able to classify +
categorise objects on the basis of dimension such as colour or shape.
They are uncapable of multiple classification with no number concept. Therefore the
do not have ordinality (comparing qualities such a less or bigger than), cardinality
(absolute numerical number of size), number transformations (simple + -) and
estimation (guessing)
Thinking patterns description example
Perception- bound thinking Preschoolers solve problems based on Cuts food into pieces= more food
what stands out.
Perceptual centration Preoperational thinkers only perceive Volume level line of liquid but
and reason about 1 dimension at a time don’t take into consideration the
shape and size
Egocentrism Preschoolers believe that others think Ask if mom likes drawing while
and feel the same as they do she is in a different room
Animism Believe inanimate objects have feelings Announces that doll is sleepy and
need to go to bed
Transductive reasoning Reason from event to event rather than Why does it rain?
a logical fashion So we can use an umbrella?
Evaluation of Piaget’s view
• Only very young children have uncertainty about the property of many objects
• Children less egocentric than Piaget’s believed
• Other research shows that many preschoolers are able to display empathy
and awareness of how people feel.
• Preschooling experience affects how children develop these views.
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