Infants, Children, and Adolescents
Laura E. Berk 6th edition
Chapter 9
Cognitive
Development
in Early
Childhood
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Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
Ages 2 to 7
Gains in mental representation
– Make-believe play
– Dual representation
Sensorimotor activity leads to internal
images of experience, which children then
label with words.
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Development of
Make-Believe Play
With age, make-believe
gradually becomes:
More detached from
real-life conditions
Less self-centered
More complex
– sociodramatic play
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Benefits of Make-Believe Play
During social pretend,
interactions last longer,
show more involvement,
and draw more children
into the activity in a more
cooperative manner.
Many studies show that
make-believe strengthens
a variety of mental
abilities, including
sustained attention, logic,
memory, reasoning, and
creativity.
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Enhancing Make-Believe Play in
Early Childhood
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.
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Dual Representation
Viewing a symbolic object as both
an object and a symbol
Mastered around age 3
Adult teaching can help
– Provide lots of maps,
photos, drawings,
make-believe playthings,
etc.
– Point out similarities
to real world
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Egocentrism
Failure to
distinguish
others’ views
from one’s
own.
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Animistic Thinking
Belief that
inanimate objects
have lifelike
qualities such as
thoughts or
wishes.
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Limits on Conservation
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Piagetian
Class Inclusion Problem
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Follow-Up Research on
Preoperational Thought
Can adjust language to others and
Egocentric,
take others’ perspectives in simple
Animistic, and situations.
Magical
Animistic thinking comes from
Thinking
incomplete knowledge of objects.
Can do simplified conservation
Illogical
Can reason by analogy
Thought
Use causal expressions
Everyday knowledge is categorized.
Categorization
Appearance
versus reality
Make-believe helps children tell the
difference.
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Categories of Imaginary Animals
Shown to Preschoolers
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Some Cognitive Attainments of the
Preschool Years
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Educational Principles
Derived from Piaget’s Theory
Discovery learning
Sensitivity to children’s
readiness to learn
– Developmentally
appropriate practice
Acceptance of
individual differences
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Children’s Private Speech
Piaget called “egocentric speech”
Vygotsky viewed as foundation for all
higher cognitive processes
Helps guide behavior
– Used more when tasks are difficult,
after errors, or when confused
Gradually becomes more silent
– Children with learning and behavior
problems use for longer
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Relationship of Private Speech to
Task Difficulty Among
5- and 6-Year-Olds
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Social Origins of
Early Childhood Cognition
Intersubjectivity
Scaffolding
Guided
participation
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Vygotsky’s Theory and Early
Childhood Education
A Vygotskyan classroom promotes assisted
discovery, with teachers guiding children’s
learning with explanations and verbal prompts.
Peer collaboration is also emphasized.
Vygotsky’s theory has been challenged on the
grounds that verbal communication is not the
only way new information is mastered and
because the theory says little about how basic
motor, perception, attention, memory, and
problem-solving skills contribute to higher
cognitive processes.
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Gains Between Ages 3 and 7 in Performance on
Tasks Requiring Children to Inhibit an Impulse and
Focus on a Competing Goal
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Improvements in Attention
Sustained attention
increases sharply between
2 and 3 1/2 years
– Frontal lobe growth
– Increasingly complex play
goals
– Adult scaffolding
Planning improves
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Memory in Early Childhood
Recognition better than recall
Beginnings of memory strategies
– Limited by working memory

Familiar events remembered as
scripts
More

elaborate with age
Adults help with autobiographical
memories
Elaborative
style best
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Problem Solving in
Early Childhood
Overlapping Waves Theory
– Try variety of strategies
– Observe how well they work
– Gradually select those leading
to rapid, accurate answers
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Overlapping-Waves Pattern of
Strategy Use in Problem Solving
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Development of Theory of Mind
Awareness of Mental Life: infancy – age 3
Mastery of False Beliefs: around age 4
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Factors Contributing to
Preschoolers’ Theory of Mind
Language and
cognitive skills
Make-believe play
Social interaction
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Fostering Emergent Literacy
Spoken language skills
– Phonological awareness
– Adult conversations
Informal literacy experiences
– Interactive reading
– Games
– Writing
Training, books for low SES
families
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Supporting Emergent Literacy in
Early Childhood
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.
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Early Childhood
Mathematical Reasoning
Ordinality
Relationships between quantities
Cardinality
Last number when counting is the
total
Arithmetic Strategies
– Min strategy
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Individual Differences in Early
Childhood Mental Development
Factors Contributing to
Individual Differences:
Home environment
Quality of child care, preschool,
or kindergarten
– Child-centered versus academic
– Early intervention programs
Television
– Educational TV
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Who’s Minding North American
Children?
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Types of Preschool and
Kindergarten
Child-centered programs: teachers provide
activities from which the children select and
most of the day is devoted to play.
Academic programs: teachers structure
children’s learning through formal lessons, often
using repetitive drills. This approach can
undermine motivation and well-being, especially
for children who are low-SES.
Montessori education: child-centered approach
with equal emphasis on academic and social
development.
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Early Intervention for At-Risk
Preschoolers
Project Head Start
Canada’s Aboriginal Head Start
Long-term benefits
– Better early school achievement
– Less special ed
– More high school graduation,
college enrollment
Advantages still evident at age
40
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Some Outcomes of the High/Scope
Perry Preschool Project
on Follow-Up at Age 27
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Child Care
Center-based care has a greater association
with cognitive gains than other child-care
arrangements.
In another investigation of 2- to 4-year-olds from
very-low income families, the more time spent in
high-quality child-care centers, the less likely
children were to display emotional and
behavioral problems, even after many family
characteristics were controlled.
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Signs of Developmentally Appropriate
Early Childhood Programs
Physical setting
Group size
Caregiver – child ratio
Daily activities
Interactions between adults and children
Teacher qualifications
Relationships with parents
Licensing and accreditation
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Educational Media
Educational television: the more children watch
Sesame Street, the higher they score on tests
that measure the program’s academic goals.
Learning with computers: 70% of
4 to 6-year-olds have used a computer, and
more than one-fourth use one regularly.
Children spend more time using computers for
game-playing.
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Vocabulary Development in
Early Childhood
Fast-mapping
Mutual exclusivity
bias
Syntactic
bootstrapping
Inventing own words
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Grammar Development
in Early Childhood
Basic Rules
– Overregulation: applying rules
without appropriate
exceptions
Complex Structures
Explaining Grammatical
Development
– Semantic bootstrapping
– Relying on word meanings to
figure out grammatical rules
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Percentage of Children in Different Studies
Who Could Use a New Verb
in the Subject-Verb-Object Form
After Hearing It in Another Construction
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Supporting Language Learning
in Early Childhood
Recasts
Restructuring incorrect
speech into correct form
Expansions
Elaborating on children’s
speech
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