Introduction to Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

What is the cognitive development in early childhood?

Cognitive development in early childhood means how children think, explore and figure things out. It is
the development of knowledge, skills, problem solving and dispositions, which help children to think
about and understand the world around them.

Early childhood is a time of pretending, blending fact and fiction, and learning to think of the world
using language. As young children move away from needing to touch, feel, and hear about the world
toward learning basic principles about how the world works, they hold some pretty interesting initial
ideas.

Cognitive development refers to a set of intellectual abilities that researchers consider to be ‘normal’
for an infant, toddler, pre-schooler or kindergartener. In other words, it’s the quantification, or
systematisation of how much a child should be able to do or understand by a certain age.

Some of the most important cognitive skills for a child are:

 Attention and response

 Language learning

 Memory

 Thinking

 Information processing

 Problem-solving

 Simple reasoning

 Understanding cause and effect

 Pattern recognition

Why is cognitive development important in early childhood?

Children should be able to improve their ability to focus, to remember information and think more
critically as they age. Cognitive skills allow children to understand the relationships between ideas, to
grasp the process of cause and effect and to improve their analytical skills

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget came up with the theory of cognitive development in 1952. According
to Piaget, the environment does not shape the child’s behaviour; rather, children and adults actively
seek to understand their environment and adapt.

Piaget’s theory is the most comprehensive theory of cognitive development in children. The theory
propagated that we can learn as much about children’s intellectual development from their incorrect
answers to test questions as we can from their correct answers

Piaget’s Second Stage: The Preoperational Stage

preoperational stage- Piaget’s second stage of cognitive development is called

the preoperational stage and coincides with ages 2-7 (following the sensorimotor stage). The
word operation refers to the use of logical rules, so sometimes this stage is misinterpreted as implying
that children are illogical.( During the preoperational stage, many of the child’s existing schemas will
be challenged, expanded, and rearranged. Their whole view of the world may shift. beginning of the
preoperational stage tend to answer questions intuitively as opposed to logically, children in this
stage are learning to use language and how to think about the world symbolically. These skills help
children develop the foundations they will need to consistently use operations in the next stage. Let’s
examine some of Piaget’s assertions about children’s cognition

Pretend Play

Pretending is a favorite activity at this time. For a child in the preoperational stage, a toy has qualities
beyond the way it was designed to function and can now be used to stand for a character or object
unlike anything originally intended. A teddy bear, for example, can be a baby or the queen of a faraway
land!( Piaget believed that children’s pretend play and experimentation helped them solidify the new
schemas they were developing cognitively. This involves both assimilation and accommodation, which
results in changes in their conceptions or thoughts. As children progress through the preoperational
stage, they are developing the knowledge they will need to begin to use logical operations in the next
stage.

In this picture Young children enjoy pretending to “play school.”

Egocentrism in early childhood refers to the tendency of young children to think that everyone sees
things in the same way as the child.

Egocentrism refers to the child's inability to see a situation from another person's point of view or
their perspectiveThe egocentric child assumes that other people see, hear, and feel exactly the same
as the child does. In the developmental theory of Jean Piaget, this is a feature of the preoperational
child.
What is an example of egocentrism in early childhood?

Playing hide-and-seek is a great example of egocentrism. A preschool-aged child will “hide” from you –
but sometimes not very effectively. For example, you might see them cowered down in a corner with
their eyes covered, or under a bed with most of their body sticking out!

That’s because in a preschooler, what THEY see is what they think YOU see.  

Precausal thinking describes the way in which children in this stage use their own existing ideas or views
to explain cause-and-effect relationships based on their limited view of the world.

precausal thinking” to describe the way in which preoperational children use their own existing ideas
or views, like in egocentrism, to explain cause-and-effect relationships.

Three main concepts of causality, as displayed by children in the preoperational stage, include animism,
artificialism, and transductive reasoning.

animism:

the belief that inanimate objects are capable of actions and have lifelike qualities

Animinism thinking refers to the tendency. of children to ascribe life to inanimate objects An example
could be a child believing that the stars twinkle in the sky because they are happy or like the toys
need to stay home because they are tired. Young children do seem to think that objects that move
may be alive, but after age three, they seldom refer to objects as being alive (Berk, 2007). Many
children’s stories and movies capitalize on animistic thinking. Do you guys remember some of the
classic stories that make use of the idea of objects being alive and engaging in lifelike actions?

artificialism:

the belief that environmental characteristics can be attributed to human actions or interventions

Artificialism is a term coined by Jean Piaget that refers to the religiously-oriented perspective that all
things were created by an intelligent entity that has complete control over their qualities,
movements, and behaviors. For example, a child might say that it is windy outside because someone
is blowing very hard, or the clouds are white because someone painted them that color.
transductive reasoning: a failure in understanding cause and effect relationships which happens when a
child reasons from specific to specific; drawing a relationship between two separate events that are
otherwise unrelated

Transductive reasoning is when a child fails to understand the true relationships between cause and
effect.

Here's an example: A child hears a dog bark and then sees a train arrive. He concludes that the train
comes because the dog barks.

syncretism: the tendency to think that if two events occur simultaneously, one caused the other

 closely Related to this is syncretism, which refers to a tendency to think that if two events occur
simultaneously, one caused the other. An example of this might be a child asking the question, “if I
put on my bathing suit will it turn to summer?”

Cognition Errors

Between about the ages of four and seven, children tend to become very curious and ask many
questions, beginning the use of primitive reasoning.

There is an increase in curiosity in the interest of reasoning and wanting to know why things are the
way they are. Piaget called it the “intuitive substage” because children realize they have a vast
amount of knowledge, but they are unaware of how they acquired it.

centration: the act of focusing all attention on one characteristic or dimension of a situation, while
disregarding all others

Centration is one of the reasons that young children have difficulty understanding the concept of
conservation.An example of centration is a child focusing on the number of pieces of cake that each
person has, regardless of the size of the pieces

Conservation is the awareness that altering a substance’s appearance does not change its basic
properties

Children at this stage are unaware of conservation and exhibit centration. Imagine a 2-year-old and 4-
year-old eating lunch. The 4-year-old has a whole peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He notices,
however, that his younger sister’s sandwich is cut in half and protests.He is exhibiting centration by
focusing on the number of pieces, which results in a conservation error.

irreversibility:

when a person is unable to mentally reverse a sequence of events

Irreversibility is a stage in early child development in which a child falsely believes that actions cannot
be reversed or undone more likely their conclusion. For example, if a three-year-old boy sees
someone flatten a ball of play dough, he will not understand that the dough can easily be reformed
into a ball. So we see that Centration, conservation errors, and irreversibility are indications that
young children are reliant on visual representations

Was Piaget Right?

the term used by Piaget to mean the logical rules that children develop with time

It certainly seems that children in the preoperational stage make the mistakes in logic that Piaget
suggests that they will make. That said, it is important to remember that there is variability in terms of
the ages at which children reach and exit each stage. Further, there is some evidence that children can
be taught to think in more logical ways far before the end of the preoperational period. For example, as
soon as a child can reliably count they may be able to learn conservation of number. For many children,
this is around age five. More complex conservation tasks, however, may not be mastered until closer to
the end of the stage around age seven. As the child’s vocabulary improves and more schemes are
developed, they are more able to think logically, demonstrate an understanding of conservation, and
classify objects.

Theory of Mind

theory of mind-the understanding that the mind holds people’s beliefs, desires, emotions, and
intentions. One component of this is understanding that the mind can be tricked or that the mind is not
always accurate

How do we come to understand how our mind works?

 their theory of the mind allows them to understand that people think differently, have different
preferences, and even mask their true feelings by putting on a different face that differs from how they
truly feel inside. We use theory of mind to explain our own behaviour to others, by telling them what
we think and want, and we interpret other people’s talk and behaviour by considering their thoughts
and wants

this is an example A two-year-old child does not understand very much about how their mind works.
They can learn by imitating others, they are starting to understand that people do not always agree on
things they like, and they have a rudimentary understanding of cause and effect (although they often fall
prey to transitive reasoning).

Before about four years of age, a child does not recognize that the mind can hold ideas that are not
accurate.By the time a child is four their theory of the mind allows them to understand that people
think differently, have different preferences, and even mask their true feelings by putting on a
different face that differs from how they truly feel inside

The most important development in early childhood social cognition is the development of theory of
mind.Its development during the first five years of life

How Theory of Mind Develops in Typical Children

During infancy and early childhood, children learn the early skills that they’ll need to develop their
theory of mind later on. These skills include the ability to
  pay attention to people and copy them

 recognize others’ emotions and use words to express them (“happy”, “sad”, “mad”)

 know that they are different from other people and have different likes/dislikes from others

 know that people act according to the things they want

 understand the causes and consequences of emotions (If I throw my toy, Mom will be mad)

 pretend to be someone else (like a doctor or a cashier) when they play

Between ages 4-5, children really start to think about others’ thoughts and feelings, and this is when
true theory of mind emerges. Children develop theory of mind skills in the following order [1, 4, 5]:

 Understanding “wanting” – Different people want different things, and to get what they want,
people act in different ways.

 Understanding “thinking” – Different people have different, but potentially true, beliefs about
the same thing. People’s actions are based on what they think is going to happen.

 Understanding that “seeing leads to knowing” – If you haven’t seen something, you don’t
necessarily know about it (like the Dad in the example above on the telephone). If someone
hasn’t seen something, they will need extra information to understand.

 Understanding “false beliefs” – Sometimes people believe things that are not true, and they act
according to their beliefs, not according to what is really true.

 Understanding “hidden feelings” – People can feel a different emotion from the one they
display.

Children’s theory of mind continues to develop after age five. For the next several years they learn to
predict what one person thinks or feels about what another person is thinking or feeling [4]. They also
begin to understand complex language that relies on theory of mind, such as lies, sarcasm, and
figurative language (like “it’s raining cats and dogs”) [4]. Some experts argue that theory of mind
development continues over a lifetime as one has more opportunities to experience people and their
behaviour

autism:

- a developmental disorder affecting communication and behavior

- People with autism or an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) typically show an impaired ability to
recognize other people’s minds. Under the DSM-5, autism is characterized by persistent deficits in
social communication and interaction across multiple contexts, as well as restricted, repetitive patterns
of behavior, interests, or activities.

These deficits are present in early childhood, typically before age three, and lead to clinically
significant functional impairment. Symptoms may include lack of social or emotional reciprocity,
stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language, and persistent preoccupation
with unusual objects.
About half of parents of children with ASD notice their child’s unusual behaviors by age 18 months,
and about four-fifths notice by age 24 months, but often a diagnoses comes later, and individual cases
vary significantly. Typical early signs of autism include:

Children with ASD experience difficulties with explaining and predicting other people’s behavior,
which leads to problems in social communication and interaction. Children who are diagnosed with an
autistic spectrum disorder usually develop the theory of mind more slowly than other children and
continue to have difficulties with it throughout their lives.

Language Development

Reading to young children helps them develop language skills by hearing and using new vocabulary
words.A child’s vocabulary expands between the ages of two to six from about 200 words to over
10,000 words through a process called fast-mapping.

fast-mapping:

a word-learning process in which new words are rapidly learned by making connections between new
words and concepts already known

Children are very creative in creating their own words Children can repeat words and phrases after
having heard them only once or twice, but they do not always understand the meaning of the words
or phrases. This is especially true of expressions or figures of speech which are taken literally. 

overregularization: a process in learning a language in which children overgeneralize rules to words

where the rule is not applicable

Children learn the rules of grammar as they learn the language. Some of these rules are not taught
explicitly, and others are. Often when learning language intuitively children apply rules

inappropriately at first. Children can overregulate grammar rules because they intuitively discover a
rule then overgeneralize it when they are taught to do something in school

zone of proximal development (ZPD). The ZPD is the range of material that a child is ready to learn if
proper support and guidance are given from either a peer who understands the material or by an adult.
We can see the benefit of this sort of guidance when we think about the acquisition of language.

Children can be assisted in learning language by others who listen attentively, model more accurate
pronunciations and encourage elaboration.

Scaffolding (Chomsky) is a process in which the guide provides needed assistance to the child as a new
skill is learned
Children may be hard-wired for language development, as Noam Chomsky suggested in his theory of
universal grammar, but active participation is also important for language development.The theory is
that when students are given the support they need while learning something new, they stand a
better chance of using that knowledge independently

Private Speech-According to Vygotsky, private speech is indicative of early cognitive processing and
allows us to hear how children think about their own behavior and select courses of action.

-spontaneous self-directed talk in which a person “thinks aloud,” particularly as a means of

regulating cognitive processes and guiding behavior.

Do you ever talk to yourself? Why? Chances are, this occurs when you are struggling with a problem,
trying to remember something or feel very emotional about a situation. Children talk to themselves
too. Piaget interpreted this as egocentric speech or a practice engaged in because of a child’s inability
to see things from other points of view. Vygotsky, however, believed that children talk to themselves
in order to solve problems or clarify thoughts.

Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development represents what a student can learn with the proper support.

Vygotsky’s theory applies to learning in early childhood: Vygotsky’s theories do not just apply to
language development but have been extremely influential for education in general. Although
Vygotsky himself never mentioned the term scaffolding, it is often credited to him as a continuation of
his ideas pertaining to the way adults or other children can use guidance in order for a child to work
within their ZPD

Research by Hart and Risley found that children from less advantaged backgrounds are exposed to
millions fewer words in their first 3 years than those from higher socioeconomic groups

While there have been critics of Hart and Risley’s research, a replication of the original study found a
word gap that was closer to 4 million words than the previously proposed 30 million

To accomplish the tremendous rate of word learning that needs to occur during early childhood, it is
important that children are learning new words each day. Research by Betty Hart and Todd Risley in
the late 1990s and early 2000s indicated that children from less advantaged backgrounds are exposed
to millions of fewer words in their first three years of life than children who come from more
privileged socioeconomic backgrounds.