The Life Span - Human Development for Helping Professionals

Week 3, Chapter 3 - Cognitive Development in Early Years

Piaget’s Constructivist Theory

Piaget saw children as active learners,
intrinsically motivated to seek out and understand new
information. At any age their knowledge is organized or
structured, and that organization changes over time as
adaptation occurs. Adaptation is adjustment to change,
and the cognitive level is the combination of
assimilation (fitting new information to existing
knowledge structures) and accommodation (changing
knowledge structures to fit what is new). Children’s understandings change only a little at a time,
and the child may distort new information as she tries to assimilate it to her current knowledge
structures. The idea that knowledge is constructed is now foundational both in developmental
science and in educational practice.
According to Piaget, children progress through a
series of cognitive stages. Within a stage, children
organize their thinking across a variety of concepts in
similar ways. Modern research indicates that
cognitive development is often domain specific, so
that understandings in different domains of
knowledge are not always organized in similar ways.
Although the idea of cognitive stages may not be
strictly accurate, Piaget’s stage divisions are broadly
useful for organizing our thinking about children,
their understandings, and their limitations at different
ages.

Infant Cognition: The Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget studied infants’ cognition in the sensorimotor
stage (ages birth to 2) by making inferences from
babies’ motor interactions with the environment.
Today’s researchers use additional tools, such as the habituation and preferential response
paradigms. Modern research techniques produce findings that challenge some of Piaget’s ideas
about infants.
 The object concept requires knowing that objects can stimulate multiple senses and that
objects are permanent. Piaget assumed that infants develop the first understanding at about 2 to 4
months, as they coordinate their reflexive motor responses to stimulation. The second
understanding requires representational
thought, and Piaget assumed it began between
8 and 12 months, when babies will search for
a hidden object. Newer research indicates
earlier understandings of both aspects of the
object concept. Intersensory integration is
apparently possible in the first weeks of life,
and some early signs of object permanence
have been observed in 4-month-olds.
Despite these findings, most memory research indicates that representational thought in
infants begins in earnest in the last part of the first year. Recognition ability, which requires only
that a stimulus can be identified as familiar, is present by birth. However, the earliest indicator of
recall, which requires representational thought, occurs at about 8 or 9 months. Two indicators of
recall are deferred imitation and separation anxiety.
Intentional or planful action has precursors in early infancy, but means–end behavior, which
seems to require some degree of representational thought, begins in the last part of the first year,
when babies’ communicative
behaviors also begin to appear. At
the same time, intentional infants
begin to attribute agency to others
and to understand that other people
have intentions. These emerging
skills mark the beginning of a child’s
“theory of mind” (ToM): an
understanding of the mental
underpinnings of human behavior.

Preschoolers’ Cognition: The Preoperational Stage

By age 2, children are in Piaget’s stage of preoperational (meaning prelogical) thought.
By studying early cognitive abilities, such as number understanding and perspective-taking skill,
Piaget identified apparent limitations on children’s early representational thought. Preoperational
thought tends to be centered in Piaget’s terminology, focused on one salient experience or event
at a time. Because they cannot keep in mind all the relevant facts in a situation at one time,
young children have trouble identifying the underlying logical relationships among such facts.
Developmental scientists have reframed some of Piaget’s ideas in information processing
terms, emphasizing the importance of executive functions (EFs). During the preschool years,
working memory grows (more and more information can be held in mind at one time),
comparable to Piaget’s notion of decentration, children’s self-regulatory skills improve, and they
become more cognitively flexible.
Improvements in EFs support the development of logical thinking, ToM, language, and
other skills, but these skills in turn contribute reciprocally to better EFs.
Preschoolers tend to fail Piaget’s number conservation task. Modern researchers use
simpler tasks and have identified some early number skills that children do have. For example,
they can adhere to the one-to one principle and to the order-irrelevance principle in counting, and
in very simple situations they can even recognize that a number stays the same when objects are
rearranged. Modern theorists tend to view skills like number understanding as emerging
gradually, with increasing breadth and depth. Researchers seek to identify the sequence of skill
levels and the experiences that facilitate acquisition. Practice through play is clearly an important
kind of experience.
Piaget pioneered the study of preschoolers’ theory of mind with his perspective-taking
tasks. Young children often assume that others have the same perspective that they do. Piaget
argued that young children are egocentric, centered on their own perspective and therefore
unaware of the possibility of another perspective. Newer work supports this idea but identifies a
gradual progression of perspective-taking skill in early childhood, such that even 2-year-olds
realize that others do not always see what they can see. By age 3, children can sometimes
attribute a different visual perspective on the same object to another viewer. Between ages 4 and
5, children begin to realize that others sometimes know or believe different things. These
understandings are fragile, and when a situation is emotionally charged, even older children
often fall back on the assumption that another’s perspective must be like their own. Advances in
perspective taking depend in part on experience with social interaction.
Children begin to learn the
phonology of their native language even
before birth. By 6 months, babies
demonstrate perceptual narrowing: They
have begun to lose the ability to
discriminate sounds that are not
important in their native language. By 9
months, they show productive
narrowing: Their babbling is limited to
only the sounds of their native language.
Learning how, when, and where to use
those sounds can take several years.
The semantic system includes
the words and word parts that carry
meaning. First words appear by the end of the first year, and a vocabulary spurt begins by 18 to
24 months. Typically, preschoolers learn new words at a rapid pace, fast mapping 9 or 10 new
words a day. Working out a detailed understanding of word meanings is a slow mapping process.
 Learning the syntactic system of a language requires learning the rules for creating
meaningful sentences. Children begin to produce two-word utterances about the time of the
vocabulary spurt and can produce most sentence structures by the time they are 5.
Pragmatics involves using language effectively to communicate learning to construct
well-organized, clear narratives; code switching; and learning to distinguish actual meaning from
literal meaning.
Bilingual upbringing does not impede children’s language learning in either language.
Because of “splitting their time,” bilingual preschoolers may know fewer words in each
language, but they learn as many words as monolingual children if we sum across languages.
They also tend to catch up to monolinguals in each language by middle childhood, and they
show some cognitive advantages, such as greater cognitive flexibility.
Because of the complexity of language learning, some theorists argue language is learned
by special innate procedures unique to language. Others claim that general analytic and learning
skills explain language learning without special procedures. But no one denies the importance of
language experience for learning. For example, both the quantity and quality of adults’ speech to
children are related to children’s vocabulary growth and narrative skill. Cross-cultural
differences in adults’ language and language use affect progress of language acquisition, such as
the types of words (e.g., nouns vs. verbs) children learn first.

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development is focused on the role of culture and society
in children’s intellectual growth. One theme is that novice learners grasp a concept or perform a
skill only when others provide scaffolding. When understanding or performance requires
scaffolding, it is said to be in the child’s zone of proximal development.
Vygotsky especially emphasized language as a tool through which others convey formal
knowledge, that is, scientific concepts. Language mediates learning in Cognitive Development in
the Early Years children and is one of the primary means by which culture and society help
children’s thinking to advance. Preschool children eventually come to use language as a way to
mediate their own thinking. The private speech of 3-year-olds eventually becomes the inner
speech of 8-year-olds. Internalization of speech is linked to the development of attentional and
behavioral control, working memory, and autobiographical memory.

Bibliography
Broderick, P. C., & Blewitt, P. (2019). The life span: Human development for helping
professionals. (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Allyn & Bacon.
Piaget saw children as

active learners

Adaptation

is the combination of assimilation and accommodation

Assimilation

fitting new information to existing knowledge

Accommodation

changing knowledge structures to fit what is new

Observational Methods

habituation and preferential resposne

Infant Object concept requires

intersensory integration, representational thought, both aspects possible in the first weeks of life

Infant Remembering

Recognition ability present at birth

Recall at about 8 or 9 months

Infant Having and inferring intentions

Precursors in early infancy

Means-end behavior begins near end of 1st year

Preschooler Understanding numbers

Can adhere to one-to-one principle and order-irrelevance principle in counting

Skills emerge gradually, increase breadth and depth; exploration and practice is critical

Preschooler Understanding the mind, perspective-taking

Young children centered on own perspective

Gradual progression in perspective-taking skill

Preschooler Understanding symbolic artifacts

Can use and understand symbolic objects

Use of words as symbols is less difficult

Phonology

the sound system of the language

Semantics

words and word parts that express meanings

Syntax or grammar
rules for linking words into meaningful sentences

Pragmatics

how to use language effectively to communicate

How does preschool help:

Building skills supportive of later academic success

- Cognitive skills and executive functions

- Understanding of self, physical and social world

- Skills in controlling emotions and behavior

Providing essential building blocks for literacy

- Growing a good vocabulary

- Narrative or story telling skills

- Extensive and positive experience with books

- Phonological awareness

What Makes a Preschool Program

"High Quality"?

Suggested key features of quality preschool programs (consistent with NAEYC and NIEER)

- Teachers with appropriate education, e.g., bachelors' degrees, preparation in early childhood
education

- Reasonable teacher-child ratios for age group

- Equipment and materials offering choice and variety

- General positive atmosphere, safe space where children are comfortable and engaged
Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory

Emphasis on role of culture, society in transmitting knowledge, studying the "child-in-context"

Mediated learning

adults proved novice learners with scaffolding

Zone of proximal development

learning is possible only with support or scaffolding by others with more experience

In Vygotsky's theory language played

a central role in mediating thinking in learning (private and inner speech)

Guidelines for working with the youngest clients

- Be attentive and get out of the way

- Maintain cooperation over time

- Watch your language, keep it simple and concrete

- Don't be afraid of problems or conflicts

- Don't jump to conclusions

Autism Spectrum

Causes and prevalence

- No clear understanding of causes despite extensive research

- Possible contributors include individual differences in the timing of brain development, genetic
variation, metabolic influences, and environmental (teratogenic) factors
- Affecting 1 in 110 individuals

- Some show early indications from birth, in other cases regressions can occur

Autism Spectrum

Diagnostic issues

- Five disorders constituted the spectrum

- New DSM-V groups all categories into autism spectrum disorder (ASD) because of overlapping
symptoms and presumably related etiologies

- Broad variation in impairments

Prominent features of autism specttrum

- difficulties in social development

- impairment in communication

- 2/3 meet criteria for mental retardation

Guidelines for effective intervention for autism spectrum

1. Early entry into intervention program

2. Intensive, year-round, treatment

3. Small group teacher-student ratio

4. Parent training and support

5. Opportunities to interact with neurotypical peers

6. Ongoing assessment of progress

7. Address communication, social, adaptive, and school readiness skills, decrease disruptive behavior