How Preschoolers Think

Week 6

Overview of Chapter 8

! Physical & Motor Development

! Preoperational Development

! Information-Processing Approaches

! Privileged Domains! Cognitive Development &

Culture! Reconciling Alternative

Approaches

! Bio-Behavioral Foundations

! The Play-Doh Task

! Piaget’s Account of Early Childhood

Thinking

Overview of this week

Early Childhood (age 2-6)

Typical pattern of thinking

in preschool years

! Mixture of sound logic and

magical thinking

! Insight and ignorance

! The reasonable and

the irrational

The Play-Doh Task…

! a Piagetian task

! a window into the mind of the preschooler

! a “conservation” task

! “failure to conserve”

! how do you know it is the same?

The two pieces are the same

because…

You understand:

Piaget: Failure

to Conserve

Piaget: Conservation of Number

Children below the age of 6 or 7 rarely

display conservation of number, and will

say that the elongated row has more.

video: failure to conserve

video: failure to conserve

BBC NEWS | Health | Glass shape 'affects drink size' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4552668.stm

1 of 2 12/23/05 5:55 PM

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Whisky was one of the drinks people were asked to pour

The real problem is that people just do not known what constitutes a unit of alcohol

Moira Plant, professor of alcohol studies

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Glass shape 'affects drink size'

People are more likely to

pour extra alcohol into

short, wide glasses than

tall, narrow glasses, a study

says.

The US researchers from

Cornell University asked 198

students and 86 bartenders

to pour a shot of alcohol.

They found students poured 30% more into the short

glasses, while bar workers faired only slightly better at 20%,

the British Medical Journal said.

The groups poured more than a standard shot measure into

both types of glasses.

Students also said they thought the tall glasses held more,

suggesting they were trying to compensate for size when

pouring into the short, wide glasses.

The people participating in

the study were asked to pour

four different types of drinks -

vodka tonic, rum and cola,

whisky and gin and tonic.

Practise led students to pour less into tall glasses, but did

not affect the amount put in the short ones, while bar staff

poured less in each.

Lead researcher Brian Wansink said the findings suggested

people should think more carefully about the measures they

pour and it might be useful to mark on glasses to signify

what equates to a shot.

And he added: "If short tumblers lead even bartenders to

pour more alcohol than tall highball glasses the way to

better control alcohol consumption is to use tall glasses or to

use glasses with the alcohol level marked on them - and to

realise that, when alcoholic drinks are served in a short wide

glass, two drinks are actually equal to two and a half."

Moira Plant, professor of alcohol studies at the University of

the West of England, said: "The real problem is that people

just do not known what constitutes a unit of alcohol.

"Evidence suggests that at home, people will pour

themselves larger measures than those served at pubs.

SEE ALSO:

UK alcohol sales 'buck the trend' 24 Aug 05 | Health

Surge in alcohol-related deaths 15 Aug 05 | England

Hospitals see child drinking rise 01 Aug 05 | Health

Alcohol 'as harmful as smoking' 04 Feb 05 | Health

RELATED INTERNET LINKS:

University of the West of England

British Medical Journal

The BBC is not responsible for thecontent of external internet sites

TOP HEALTH STORIES NOW

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Glass shape 'affects drink size'

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Piaget’s Account of Early

Childhood Thinking

Piaget’s Stages of Thinking

Infancy (Birth-2): Sensorimotor ! Intelligence based on overtly physical acts

Early childhood (2-6): Preoperational! Intelligence based on mental representations

! But this intelligence show severe limitations

Middle childhood (6-12): Concrete Operational! Manipulation of symbols and internalized mental operations

that combine, separate, and transform information logically

Adolescence (12-19): Formal Operational! Thinking systematically about all logical relations within a

problem; keen interest in abstract ideas and thinking itself

The Limitations of

Preoperational Intelligence

1. Egocentrism

2. Confusion of

appearance

and reality

3. Precausal

reasoning

Limitation 1: Egocentrism

! Tendency to consider the world entirely in terms of one’s own point of view

! Preschoolers cannot “decenter” (i.e., see things from another’s perspective)

! Illustrated in

! Lack of spatial perspective taking…

! Egocentric speech…

! Failure to understand other minds…

Lack of Spatial Perspective Taking

! Allowed to view diorama (3 mountain experiment) from all sides

! Seated on one side; doll on opposite side

! Shown pictures from various perspectives and asked to identify how things would look to doll

! Almost always chose view corresponding to their own point of view

Egocentric Speech

Egocentric Speech

! Tendency to engage in “collective monologues”

! Speaker gave too little information

(e.g., “Take this one”)

! Listener

asked

too few

questions

Failure to Understand Other Minds

Failure to Understand Other Minds

! Inability to engage in mental perspective taking (i.e., think about other people’s mental states – “theory of mind”)

! When the child corrects a false believe, they think others will too! Discover that a box with a

picture of candy on the outside has only a pencil inside

! Believe that a friend who has not yet seen what is in the box will think that it has a pencil

! Form of moral reasoning that does not take intentions into account, only consequences of actions

The Limitations of

Preoperational Intelligence

1. Egocentrism

2. Confusion of

appearance

and reality

3. Precausal

reasoning

Limitation 2: Confusing

Appearance and Reality

! Tendency to focus exclusively

on the most striking aspects of

an object (i.e., surface

appearance)

! A stick placed in water has really

bent

! Become frightened when

someone puts on a mask

! Believe that a cat with a dog

mask actually turns into a dog…

Confusing Appearance and

Reality

The Limitations of

Preoperational Intelligence

1. Egocentrism

2. Confusion of

appearance

and reality

3. Precausal

reasoning

Limitation 3: Precausal Reasoning

! Instead of reasoning from general premises to

particular cases (deduction) or from specific

cases to a more general premise (induction),

preschoolers tend to think

transductively (i.e., from

one particular to another)

! “I haven’t had a nap, so it

isn’t afternoon.”

! Since graveyards are places

where dead people are found,

graveyards must be the cause of death

Piaget’s explanation of these

limitations

Piaget sees the glass as half

empty

! We must remember that the child is only

beginning to use mental representations

! mental actions are now possible, but not

mental operations

! that’s why this is pre-operational intelligence

! But it’s still pretty amazing!

! The infant cannot think; the preschool-age

child can, albeit with limitations

There are Various Explanations

of Children’s Uneven Cognition

1. Information-Processing Explanation

2. Domain-Specific Knowledge

! privileged domains: physics, biology, social

! Biologically-based mental modules

! Plus culturally-provided experience

How is a person like a

computer?

2: Information-Processing

Explanation ! Computer analogy

Hardware (e.g., myelination

of a particular brain region), Software (e.g., acquisition

of a new strategy for

remembering)

! The ‘magic number’ 7 (plus/minus 2)

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In this Information-Processing

model:

! Cognitive difficulties may be due to:

! poor attention

! small working memory

! slow transfer to long term memory! few strategies for memorization

! Performance improves as children grow

because:! the ‘hardware’ matures! the ‘software’ improves! ‘storage’ gets larger

What’s your favorite bedtime

story?

! On Sundays Maurice Sendak and his brother and sister

were dressed up and had to sit in the living room with

their adult relatives.

! Looking up, he saw “the

most gruesome things, such

as moles on noses and

extra-long hairs coming out

of noses . . . the bloodshot

eyes, and . . . the very bad

teeth”

Where the Wild Things Are

! Oral language provides a new way of

understanding the world

! analogous to ancient mythology

! in an oral culture, you know only what you

can remember

! with stories, metaphors, rhythm & rhyme

! drama & roleplay

! abstract binary oppositions:

! good/evil, love/hate, rich/poor

! a poetic world

Mythic understanding

What Piaget ignored:

! Children can now represent the world around them,

with images, words, and gestures.

! Mental actions are now possible - but not yet mental

operations

! Representations are simple, ego-centered, and static

! So children can’t identify cause & effect, tell

appearance from reality, or take another’s perspective

! They show lack of conservation

! But Piaget failed to see that fantasy in oral language

is an important way of understanding the world

Main Points: Cognition in Early

Childhood