Cognitive Development in

Preschool and Late Childhood

 Cognition refers to mental activity and behaviour through
which knowledge of the world is attained and processed
including learning, perception, memory and thinking
(Hetherington & Parke 1979)
Importance of cognition
1. Helps us to understand child’s level of thinking and what is to
be expected of them – their behaviour or discipline.
2. A concept of child’s understanding level helps us formulate
appropriate content, and approach for education.
3. Help child to adjust to changes in personal and environmental
situations /conditions.
4. Help to adjust to all developments.
Cognitive development is the construction of thought
processes, including remembering, problem solving
and decision making from childhood through
adolescent to adulthood.
Jean Piaget, a well known psychologist, proposed a
cognitive theory and he found that, a child’s
knowledge is composed of ‘schema’s, units of
knowledge used to organize past experiences and
serves as a basis for understanding new ones.
 According to Jean Piaget, cognitive ability develops
in two periods
1.The period of sensory motor intelligence
2.The period of conceptual intelligence

The first period is largely dominated by sensory

motor processes and the second by more abstract
processes of reasoning and problem solving in which
child is capable of using language and symbols.
The period of sensory motor intelligence involves
a). The sensory motor stage (in fancy)
b). The Pre operational stage (Toddlerhood and early
childhood)

The period of conceptual intelligence

a). Concrete operational stage (elementary and early
adolescence)
b). Formal operational stage (adolescence and
adulthood)
 Pre operational stage (Toddlerhood and early childhood)
 This stage extends from 2-6 years of age.
 They are capable of using language and symbolic thinking.
 They are using their imaginary and memory skills, which is
apparent in their imaginative play.
 Their view of world is normally very self centered and are
unable to take the views of others.
 Their thinking is done in a non-logical, non-reversible manner.
 They are unable to solve problems involving number concepts
and actions, such as, talking back to adults, lying and bullying.
 Other cognitive development in preschoolers are developing
structured routines such as, doing household works.
Two stages can be formed from Pre-operative thought.
a). The symbolic function sub stage: Occurs between 2-4 years.
The child is able to formulate designs of objects that are not
present. They are characterized by Egocentrism and Animism.

 Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable to distinguish

between their perspective and that of another person’s.
Children tend to pick their own view of what they see rather
than actual view shown to others.

 Animism is the belief that inanimate objects are capable of

actions and have life like qualities
b). The intuitive thought sub stage: Immediate
application of mind without reasoning. This occurs
between 4-7 years of life. Begin to use primitive
thinking- Children tend to become very curious and
ask many questions.
Centration and Conservation are both involved in
intuitive thought.
Centration: is the act of focusing all the attention on
one characteristic compared to the others. This is
noticed in conservation.
Conservation: is awareness that altering a substance appearance does not
change its basic properties. Children at this stage are unaware of conservation.

Ex: Child is represented with two identical beakers, containing the same
amount of water. When water from one beaker poured in to a taller and
thinner beaker, The child would say that now beakers have contain different
amount of water.
•The child simply focuses on the height and width of the beaker than the
amount of water. – child fails in understanding conservation of water task.
So, conservation concept can be taught to the child and training can improve
the child’s understanding.
 Concrete Operational Period (Elementary and Early adolescence)
Between the age of 7 – 11 years children move into Piaget’s third
stage of concrete operation. Dramatic changes in child’s thinking
occur during this stage. Several new features will be learn by the
child. The child is able to:
 They can Add, Subtract, multiply, divide and follow serial
ordering(Seriation) – big to small or tall – short.
 They understands that operations are reversible –
Steam Water Ice. 4+3=7 3+4=7
 Understands that adding and subtracting are opposite.
 Their thinking is less egocentric they think from others
point of view.
 Are able to solve problems considering more than one aspect
3 plastic beads- blue, 4 plastic beads- green, 7 wooden beads-
red
Which are more? Plastic beads ? or wooden beads ?
Ans: both are same
 Children begin to think deductively
Jimmy is a dog all dogs are animals So, all Jimmy’s are?
 Children are able to conserve quantity, number, volume and
space, length, height etc.
 Children are able to classify, reverse thought, understand class
inclusion, go from centration to decentration and develop the
skill of conservation of thought.
Classification: is the centre the development of
concrete operations. The ability to group objects
according to common attributes allows children to put
their world in order and simplify it. It appears to be
ordering and organizing what is immediately present.
Ex: classify the things according to colour, size, shape,
number etc,.
Reversibility: According to Piaget, children in middle
childhood do processes reversible intellectual operations or
reversibility. The older child can exhibit reversible mental
operations in two distinct ways Negation (Inversion) and
Compensation (Reciprocity).
The negation rules states that as operation can be negated or
inverted Ex: 1+2+3+4=10, 4+3+2+1=10
Compensation states that, for any operation there exists
another operation that compensates for the effects of first one
In arithmetic, for eg, subtraction is compensation of
addition and division is compensation of multiplication)
5 + 2 = 7, 7–2=5 4 ÷ 2=2 2x2=4
Centration to decentration: Pre-schooler is more prone to
concentrate or center his attention exclusively on single feature
that is particularity interesting to him (centration). They are
neglecting other relevant tasks. In school age children,
decentration allows them to focus on several aspects of the
problem all at once and relate them (beaker problem).

Class inclusion: The child’s knowledge that a super ordinate

class is always larger than any of its subordinate classes, is known
as class inclusion, is considered as a concrete operational thought.
Ex. If a child is given 5 roses and 3 tulips, and asked whether
roses are more or flowers are more, the child answers ‘flowers’.
Conservation: Children in the concrete operation stage,
understand that quantity remains same inspite of change in its
appearance. This skill of conservation enables concrete thinkers
to easily solve the problems.
1.Conservation of Length
2.Conservation of Weight
3.Conservation of Volume
4.Conservation of Weight & Volume
Horizontal declage – gradual understanding of conservation
beginning with number, substance length, area, weight and
later volume.
Attention: The amount and type of information to which they
attend. One important aspect of attention is selectivity, which
refers to the ability to screen out distractions and concentrate on
a particular stimulus while ignoring others.
Ex. Painting task or finding the difference
Older children are more flexible than younger children in
modifying their attention in accordance with the task
requirements.
- Doing a task considering two aspects
Perception: is the primary source of knowledge, it can be
referred to as detection, recognition and interpretation of
sensory stimuli. It is the process by which children extract
meaningful information from physical stimuli. Young children
need to have a lot of information presented before they are able
to interpret perceptually an object or event in contrast, older
children can recognize events with incomplete information.
Perception also becomes more differentiated as children get
older. Practice or prior experiences teach children which
patterns of features are distinctive and critical for
identification.
 Ex. b,d, p, q – Child think that the line and loop are distinctive
features. Young children are enable to discriminate the position. For old
children, these 4 letters become distinguishable.
Perceptual processes do not function in isolation from other thought
processes. Perceptions are stored in memory, where information is recalled
to interpret incoming perceptions.

Seriation: The ability to order items along a quantitative dimensions,

such as length, weight is called seriation.
Ex. Arrangement of sticks of different lengths from shortest to longest.
Transitive inference: The ability to seriate or order items along a
quantitative dimension mentally.
Spatial Reasoning: School age children have a more accurate
understanding of space, than they did in early childhood. They
will have an understanding of distance and ability to give
directions.

Distance: Comprehension of distance improves in middle

childhood, as a special conservation on task reveals. How far,
along with angle they are able to judge the distance. Children can
understand units of measurements- cm, inch, mts, kmts etc,.

Directions: Children are more advanced in understanding and

give directions- left, right, east or west etc. They also have the
capacity for operational thinking they use a mental walk is which
they imagine another person’s movements along a route.
Memory – is the fundamental aspect of cognitive development. It refers
to ability to remember. It allows a person to perceive, classify, reason and to
form more complex concepts.
Memory has three parts
a. A sensory memory
b. A short term memory
c. A long term memory
The Sensory memory records sensory information and is very brief.
The information is not stored, vanishes with in a second.
The short term memory holds, what mind is conscious of at the
moment. In this – information is available for a maximum of about 30
seconds. It is the working memory. If the information is not repeated or
stored, It will be forgotten.
The long term memory refers to knowledge that is available for a long
time perhaps forever.
 Another aspect of Cognitive Development is creativity is the ability to think
about something in a new way and generate new responses and unique solutions.
Process of creativity involves two types of thoughts –
a. Convergent thinking and b. Divergent thinking

Convergent thinking: It involves trying to find the correct solution to a

problem.
Ex. Missing number is the series of number
1, 3, 5, 7, _, _, _,15
- Problem has only one solution or correct answer. Intelligence tests tend to
measure convergent thinking.
Divergent thinking: Generates multiple solutions to a problem by
expanding upon a basic idea or concept. It assumes that a question can
have several equally good answers among them choose the one which
seems most appropriate.
Creative children have the ability to look beyond the obvious to see
relationship in unusual and new ways. Creativity not only demands
divergent thinking processes, it also involves the ability to translate
ideas in to a given medium such as writing or drawing.
Than-Q
 ?
Moral Development
 Moral development has both an intellectual and an
impulsive aspect.
 Children must learn what is right and what is wrong.
 As soon as they grow old, they must be given
explanations of why this is right and why that is wrong.
 They must also have opportunities to take part in group
activities so that they can learn what the group expects.
 Learning to behave in a socially approved manner is a
long, slow process which extends to adolescence.
 This lays the foundation for the development of a
conscience.
Moral behavior: Moral behavior means behavior in
conformity with the moral code of the social group.
‘Moral’ comes from the Latin word ‘mores’ meaning
manners, customs and folkways.
Moral behavior is controlled by moral concepts- rules of
behavior to which the members of a culture have become
accustomed.
Immoral behavior: Behavior that fails to conform
to social expectation such behavior is not due to
ignorance but due to disapproval of social standards-
lack of obligation to confirm to rules.

Unmoral behavior: is due to ignorance of what

the social expects rather than intentional violation of
group standards. Some of the misbehaviors of young
children are unmoral rather than immoral.
In learning to be moral, 4 essential elements are
needed

1. Learning what the social group excepts as in

laws, customs and rules
2. Developing conscience
3. Learning to experience guilt and shame
4. Having opportunities for social interactions to
learn
1. Role of Laws, Customs & Rules
The first essential in learning to be a moral person
in learning what the social group excepts of its
members. These expectations may be in the forms of
laws, customs and rules.
Parents, teachers and others who are responsible for
the guidance of children must help them to learn to
conform the approved pattern this is done by setting up
of rules.
Rules are the prescribed patterns for conduct as guidelines.
 Difference between Rules & Laws

Rules Laws
Rules are set by those Set by the elected or
who are responsible for appointed law makers of
the child’s care state or country

Breaking a rule is Laws have set penalties for

punished according to their infringement
the wish or the whim of
the person in charge of
child
 Rules Laws
Few children are aware When people learn the
that if they break a rule laws, they also learn
they will be punished specific punishments for
breaking each law

Severity of punishment Severity of punishment

is often unrelated to the depends on seriousness of
seriousness of the act the act

Rules are not consistent, Laws are more uniform

They often vary within and consistent-
every family or group Same for all
2. Role of conscience
The second essential is learning to be a moral person is the
development of conscience to act as an internal control over the
individual’s behaviour. According to tradition, children are
born with conscience or the ability to know what is ‘right’ or
what is ‘wrong’.
Today it is widely accepted that conscience is not inborn and
every child not only learns what is right and wrong but also use
conscience as a control over the behaviour.
Conscience is also called as inner light, superego and
internalized policeman.
3. Role of Guilt and shame
After children develop a conscience, they carry it with
them use it as a guideline for their behavior. If their
behaviour does not come up to the standard set by their
conscience, they feel guilty, ashamed or both.
Guilt is a “special kind of negative self evaluation”.
Shame has been defined as “an unpleasant emotional
reaction of as is an actual or presumed negative
judgment of himself” by others resulting in self
depreciation to the group.
4. Role of Social Interactions: Social interactions play an
important role in moral development
1.Providing children with standards of socially approved
behaviour
2.Providing them a source of motivation
Without interaction with others, children would not knew
what socially approved behaviour is not would they have a
source of motivation to behave is any way except as they
wished.
Early social interaction occur with in the family, children
learn from parents, siblings and other members.
As the social horizon broaden to include the neighborhood,
school age child discover that some of the behaviour they learnt
in home are different what their peers are behaving. When peer
influences increases, child accepts the standards of the peer and
rejects the family standards when they entry school, they
discover that their behaviour and conduct is controlled by
school rules. Failure to conforms to these rules brings
punishments.
Social interaction help the children to learn moral codes and
also they learn and how others evaluate their behaviour.
 Pattern of moral development
Moral development is dependent upon intellectual
development. It occurs in two stages according Piaget
and in three stages according to Kohlberg. Both have
shown that, how children at different ages, make
moral judgments and behave in a socially approved
ways, follow a predictable pattern related to the a
sequence of stages in intellectual development.
Piaget’s stages in moral development
According to Piaget, moral development occurs in two stages

1. Stage of moral realism or morality by constraint: In this

stage, children’s behavior is characterized by automatic obedience to
rules and regulations without reasoning or judgment.

2. Stage of autonomous morality or morality by

cooperation or reciprocity: In this, children judge behavior in
terms of its underlying intention. This stage usually begins between
7-8 years of age. Between the age of 5 and 7-8 years, children’s
concepts of justice begin to change. As a result they begin to take
into consideration the specific circumstance related to moral
violation.
Kohlberg’s stages in moral Development:
Kohlberg has extended Piaget’s research and concluded
with three stage and each consisting of two sub stages.
1. Pre conventional Morality: In this, the child’s behavior is
subject to external controls.
a) the child is obedient and punishment oriented and the
morality of an act is judged in terms of physical
consequences.
b) Children confirm to social expectation to gain rewards.
There is some evidence of reciprocity and sharing, but it is
based on bartering rather than on a real sense of justice.
2. Conventional morality or morality of conventional
rules and conformity:
a) ‘good boy morality’: the child confirms to rules to win
the approval of others and to maintain good relations
with them.
b) In this children believe that if the social group accepts
rules as appropriate for all group members, they should
confirm to them to avoid social disapproval.
3. Post conventional morality or morality of self
accepted principles:
a) Child behaves that there should be a flexibility in moral
believes that makes it possible to modify and change
moral standards if this will prove to be advantageous to
group members as a whole.
b) In this stage, people confirm to both social standards
and to internalized ideas to avoid self-condemnation
rather than to avoid social censure. It is a morally based
on respect for others rather than on personal desire.
 Discipline
The concept ‘discipline’ is synonymous with
‘punishment’. According to this concept, discipline is used
only when the child violates the rules set by the parents,
teachers or adults.
Discipline comes from the word ‘disciple’- meaning, one
who learn from or voluntarily follow a leader. The parents
and teachers are the leaders, and the child is disciple, who
learns from them.
Discipline is thus society’s way of teaching the child the
moral behaviors approved by the group.
Need for discipline:
Discipline is essential to children’s development because
it fulfills their needs. By doing so it adds to their happiness
and to their personal and social adjustments.
Discipline gives children feeling of security by telling them
what they may and may not do.
Help children to avoid frequent feelings of guilt and
shame for misbehavior- which leads to unhappiness and
poor adjustment
Discipline enables children to live according to standards
approved by the social group and thus win social
 Through discipline, children learn to behave in a way
that leads to praise- indicates love and acceptance
which are very much essential to successful
adjustment and happiness.
 Appropriate discipline serves as motivation, which
encourages children to accomplish what is required of
them.
 Discipline helps children to develop a conscience. The
‘internalized voice’ that guides them in making their
own decisions and controlling their own behavior.
Essentials in Discipline:
Discipline has 4 essential elements. Omission of any of
these, will result in unfavorable attitudes on the part of the
children.
1. Rules: Rules are prescribed patterns for conduct. They
may be set by parents, teachers or playmates.
Rules serve two very important functions in helping children
to become moral.
They have an educational value- they teach how to behave.
Rules helps to restrain undesirable behaviors.
If it is a family rules that no child can take toys of others, without their
consent or knowledge; children soon learn that this is regarded as
2. Punishment: It comes from the Latin verb ‘Punire’
meaning, to impose a penalty on a person for a fault,
offense or violation of rules.
Punishment plays 3 important functions in the moral
development of children.
•Restrictive: when children discover that certain acts will
lead to punishment, they usually not repeat such acts
because of the memories of the punishments they have
received in the past for these acts.
•Education: by receiving punishment, children will
understand the rules.
•Motivation: to avoid socially disapproved behaviors.
Recognitions of the possible consequences of a wrong
act are essential to motivation to avoid this act.
3. Rewards: The term ‘reward’ means, any form of
appreciation for an attainment. It does not have to be in the
form of material (gifts), instead, it can be a word of approval,
praising, a smile, or a pat on the back, social recognition and
special treats.
Rewards play 3 important functions.
• Rewards have an educational value- children come to
understand that if they are punished. It is bad, if they get
rewards, the act is good.
• Motivation to repeat socially approved behavior.
• Reinforce socially approved behavior- absence of rewards
weakens the desire to repeat the behavior.
4. Consistency: means a degree of uniformity or stability (it
is different from constancy- there is no change) consistency is
tendency towards sameness.
Consistency in discipline play 3 important functions.
•Educational value: when rules are consistent it speeds up the
learning process.
•Motivational value: children discover that, rewards always
follows approved behavior but punishments always follow
forbidden behavior- have a strong motivation to engage in
approved acts.
•Fosters respect for rules and for people in authority: even
children have less respect for those who cannot punish them for
Techniques of discipline:
In early days there was only one approved technique
of discipline- i.e. ‘authoritarian discipline’- Training the
children to behave in a socially approved way was the
responsibility of those in authority- parent’s teachers or
others. During this era, new techniques of discipline were
widely accepted- i.e. permissive discipline and democratic
discipline.
1. Authoritarian Disciplinary technique:
 Strict rules and regulations to enforce the desired behavior
 Includes severe punishment for failure to come up to the
expected standards, no or little recognition, praise or other
signs of approval when the child meets the expected standards.
 This discipline always means control through external force in
the form of punishment especially corporal punishment.
 Even as children grow older, they use rigid punishment and
they do not encourage children to make decisions regarding
their acts instead they tell them what to do?
 Thus children are deprived of opportunities to learn how to
control their own behavior.
2. Permissive Disciplinary technique:
 In this type, there is little or no discipline.
 It does not usually grade the child into socially approved
patterns to behavior and does not employ punishment.
 For many parents permissive discipline is a protest
against harsh and rigid discipline under which they were
brought up.
 In such cases, children often do not have limits or
boundaries set on what they may do.
 They are permitted to make their own decisions and act
on them in practically any way they wish.
3. Democratic Disciplinary technique:
1. This type of discipline employ explanation, discussion and
reasoning to help children understand why they are
expected to behave in a certain way, they emphasize
educational aspects of discipline rather than punitive.
2. Here, parents uses more of rewards than punishments.
3. Punishment is never harsh and it is used only when there is
evidence that children have willfully refused to do what
was expected of them.
 Democratic discipline teaches children, educate children
to develop control over their behavior so that they will do
what is right even there is no one standing over them to
direct.
Democratic discipline leads to good personal and social
adjustments. It results in independence in thinking, initiative
in action and a healthy, positive, confident self concept which
is reflected in active, out going and spontaneous behavior.
 Hazards in Moral Development
The common hazards in moral developments includes.
• Belief that discipline and punishment are
synonymous: People believe that a good disciplinarian is
one who uses punishment for misbehaviors and to teach
children what the social group will and will not tolerate
and also believes that punishment can fulfill all the
functions of discipline. Which ignores the roles played by
rules and rewards.
• Difficulties in learning moral concepts: Due to low
level of intelligence, way of parental teaching, changes in
social values, variations with the different situation,
conflicts with social pressures learning specific moral
concepts becomes difficult.
• In consistency in discipline: Unless discipline is
consistent, children are at loss to know what to do and
whom to obey.
• Use of bribes: use of bribe is very bad due to 3 reasons
 They motivate children to behave in a social approved
way only when they are paid to do so.
 Lack of educational value.
 They give children the choice of not behaving in a good
way it they feel they are not being paid.
• Discrepancies between moral concepts and moral
behavior: these discrepancies are hazardous to good
personal and social adjustment and also this leads to feeling
of guilt and shame.
Misdemeanors: A misdemeanor is mischievousness,
disobedience or willful badness of a minor sort. Dishonesty is
very common among preschool children, who have been
subjected to strict discipline. To escape from the punishment
these misdemeanors exists in children which affects child’s
good personal and social adjustments.
Common childhood misdemeanors includes, lying,
cheating, stealing, destructiveness and truancy (dislike of
school).
When these are not treated or guided properly they may also
observed in case of school age period.
Common misdemeanors of late child hood

Home misdemeanors:
• Fighting with siblings
• Breaking possessions of other family members
• Escape from routine activities
• Being rude to other family members
• Neglecting home activities
• Lying
• Being sneaky (escaping)
• Pilfering thing belonging to other family members.
• Spilling things intentionally.
School misdemeanors:
• Stealing
• Cheating
• Lying
• Using vulgar and obscene language
• Destroying school property and materials
• Being truant
• Creating disturbance, teasing, bulling other children.
• Reading comic books or chewing gum during school
hours
• Fighting with classmates
• Use of drugs during school times