Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

8 CHAPTER Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood I. Chapter Overview 1. Physical and Motor Development The Changing Body Motor Development Health Brain Development 2. Preoperational Development Centration The Problem of Uneven Levels of Performance 3. Information Processing Approaches to Cognitive Development 4. Cognitive Development in Privileged Domains The Domain of Physics The Domain of Psychology The Domain of Biology Explaining Domain-Specific Cognitive Development 5. Cognitive Development and Culture Cultural Scripts Cultural Context and the Unevenness of Development 6. Reconciling Alternative Perspectives II. Key Concepts to Emphasize III. Connections to Text: Central Issues and Theories IV. Guide to the Supplements V. Activities to Enhance Learning (homework, in-class activities, discussion questions) VI. Handouts 185

186 Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood I. Chapter Overview 1. PHYSICAL AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT The Changing Body Figures: 8.1 Growth plates Physical and Motor Development Early childhood is marked by impressive gains in both gross and fine motor skills. Tables: 8.1 Major milestones Health Young children s sleep needs often are not adequately met. Nutrition is also a common problem, with undernourishment and obesity both causes for concern. Figures: 8.2 Percent of food secure and insecure households Tables: 8.2 Food security of children Brain Development Brain development, although slower than in infancy, includes myelination of the frontal cortex as well as increases in the length and branching of neurons connecting different areas of the brain. Variability in the development of different areas may contribute to the unevenness of early childhood cognition. Figures: 8.3 Scale errors Apply, Connect, Discuss Armed with the information in Table 8.1, and your understanding of motor drive, visit a playground where you can observe young children engaged in motor play. What examples of motor skills and motor drive can you identify? Focusing on one or two children, can you guess their ages based on the motor skills they exhibit? 2. PREOPERATIONAL DEVELOPMENT Centration According to Piaget, children in the preoperational stage are in the process of overcoming limitations that stand in the way of their attaining mental operations, (that is) the ability to perform logical transformations of information. He considered the greatest limitation to be centration, in which the child focuses on one aspect of an object or problem to the exclusion of others. Centration explains three common early childhood errors:

Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood 187 Egocentrism, the tendency to be captive to one s own perspective and unable to take that of another. The tendency to confuse appearance and reality. Precausal reasoning, the tendency to reason from one particular to another, rather than engaging in cause-and-effect reasoning. Tables: 8.3 Piaget s stages of cognitive development: Preoperational Figures: 8.4 Perspective taking example 8.5 Familiar perspective taking example 8.6 Cat with dog mask 8.7 Cause and effect experiment 8.8 Test trials A and B The Problem of Uneven Levels of Performance Contemporary research suggests that under certain circumstances for example, with tasks involving familiar objects children do not commit these errors, showing evidence of cognitive abilities well before Piaget thought possible and hence more unevenness of cognitive development. Apply, Connect, Discuss When young children are asked where they live, they often confuse the name of the city with the name of the state. How is this confusion an example of preoperational thinking? 3. INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACHES TO COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Information processing approaches explore the workings of the mind through analogy to the digital computer, with the brain s neural features being like a computer s hardware and the practices that people engage in to process information like its software. Figures: 8.9 Information processing Boxes: Bearing witness: Can young children tell the truth? Input from the environment goes to the sensory register and may be read into short-term (working) memory, where it may combine with information from long-term memory. The flow of information among these components is coordinated by control processes, which include attention, rehearsal, and decision making. As children grow older, their cognitive performance improves, as a result of both the maturation of their brains and the development of more effective information-processing strategies. Prior knowledge and caregivers elaborative style in interactions with children can help children encode and store memories. Apply, Connect, Discuss Suppose that two children are presented with the same set of unrelated pictures and told to remember the pictures because they will be given a memory test shortly.

188 Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood Picture presented Child 1 says Child 2 says Cat cat, cat, cat cat, cat Shoe shoe, shoe, shoe cat, shoe, cat, shoe Truck truck, truck, truck cat, shoe, truck Pen pen, pen, pen cat, shoe, truck, pen According to material presented in this section, why is child 2 likely to outperform child 1 on the memory test? 4. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN PRIVILEGED DOMAINS Another approach to early childhood cognitive development focuses on changes within privileged domains, specific areas of knowledge that may have evolutionary significance. Domain of Physics: Naïve physics traces to infancy and in early childhood it extends to an understanding of laws such as gravity and inertia and of properties of objects. Domain of Psychology: Within naive psychology, young children develop a theory of mind, as is reflected by their improving performance on false-belief tasks. Domain of Biology Naive biology includes an understanding of differences between living things and inanimate objects. Figures: 8.10 Knowledge of gravity 8.11 Animate and inanimate objects 8.12 Attribution of humanlike properties Several approaches seek to explain domain-specific cognitive development. Modularity theory holds that distinct and separate mental modules mental processes present from birth are dedicated to the different privileged domains. Autistic children s having difficulties in the psychological domain while being normal or even exceptional in some others is seen as support for this approach. Theory theory holds that from birth or shortly thereafter, children have primitive theories about how the world works. Theories that direct their attention to domainspecifc features of the environment and that they modify over time in light of their experience. A third approach focuses on the influence of language and other aspects of culture on the emergence and development of domains. The idea of domains of knowledge may itself be a Western construct. Figures: 8.13 Stimuli used to assess the ability of children with autism to think about mental states

Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood 189 8.14 Level of performance of normal children and children with autism and mental retardation Boxes: In the field: Supporting brothers and sisters of children with autism Apply, Connect, Discuss Of modularity theory and theory theory, which is more consistent with Piaget s understanding of development? Why? 5. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT AND CULTURE Cultural Scripts As children participate in routine events of their culture, they acquire increasingly accurate scripts, or generalized representations, of these events. Cultural Context and the Unevenness of Development Cultures influence cognitive development by determining the frequency of basic activities, the specific activities that are available, and children s roles in activities. Apply, Connect, Discuss In arguing against the notion that knowledge can be compartmentalized into separate domains, Bame Nsamenang asserts that, according to African beliefs, knowledge is integrated into social life and daily routines. To what extent is this consistent with Katherine Nelson s theory of cultural scripts? 6. RECONCILING ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES Studies of cognition in early childhood yield a picture, not of a homogeneous stage, but of complexity and unevenness. More inclusive theories are probably needed in order to account for processes that are both domain-specific and general, and for developmental changes that are both continuous and discontinuous (stagelike). II. Key Concepts to Emphasize In the following section, key concepts are described for each major section of this chapter. These concepts are key aspects of development during the age period covered in this chapter or are introduced in this chapter and then returned to later. 1. PHYSICAL AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT The shift from being a toddler to being considered in the early childhood stage can be nicely emphasized by showing the physical section of the tape on early childhood found in the Journey through Childhood supplemental video. It clearly shows the physical changes described in the text. 2. PREOPERATIONAL DEVELOPMENT Table 8.3 summarizes the main characteristics of the preoperational stage of development: centration, confusion of appearance and reality, and precausal reasoning. Emphasizing the material in this table will help students have an overall understanding of Piaget s views on early childhood thinking.

190 Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood This material can be emphasized by asking students to attempt these tasks with preschool children. Individually or in small groups, students can observe children engaging in collective monologues or explaining a task to another child. They can try a conservation task as described in the chapter. Individuals and/or groups can then tell the entire group what the children did when presented with the tasks. The second section of this chapter covers a good deal of information. One way to help students sort their way through the material is to discuss the competing evidence on children s abilities in the main areas Piaget studied: egocentrism, confusing appearance and reality, and precausal reasoning. Lecture, discussion, or small group activities using Handout 8.10 can help students determine which evidence is the most convincing. Because the preoperational stage is characterized by the absence of operational thinking, students may understand it better if some time is spent reviewing the next stage of development, concrete operations. One way to do this is to compare the performance of a child who does not use mental operations such as conservation with the performance of one who does. 3. INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACHES TO COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT The information processing approach can be emphasized by discussing Figure 8.9. To help further emphasize the material on information processing approaches, the claims of Piaget can be compared with information processing and the upcoming materials on domain specific accounts, and finally, cultural accounts of developmental change. These competing accounts can be emphasized in lecture, discussion, or a small group activity using Handout 8.11. 4. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN PRIVILEGED DOMAINS Here the instructor can review young children s understandings of each of the privileged domains: physics, psychology, and biology. This can be compared and contrasted with Piaget s focus on basic psychological processes. Finally, the discussion can move to a comparison of modular explanations focusing on innate processes. 5. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT AND CULTURE The role of scripts can also be emphasized as a way to characterize the role of culture in a child s daily life and development. Handout 8.9 can be used as an in-class activity or homework activity on this topic. The supplemental reading on Personal Storytelling by Miller, Wiley, Fung, and Liang presents a somewhat different perspective on scripts by showing how personal storytelling functions as a socializing practice by examining the different ways in which parents describe children s early experiences for entertainment or teaching moral standards. The material on pages 298 301 can be used to help emphasize the role of culture in cognitive development by giving examples of how culture influences the unevenness of children s development. The four main points presented should be discussed. 6. RECONCILING ALTERNATE PERSPECTIVES For this section, an instructor may choose to review material in Chapter 1 on theories. By comparing and contrasting the theoretical perspectives that resonate best with the instructor s viewpoints, students may be able to see the benefits and complications involved in developing theories and in using theories to help explain development in all domains (but for emphasis here, cognitive development).

III. Connections to Text: Central Issues and Theories CONTINUITY VS. DISCONTINUITY Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood 191 Remind students to review the section on continuity and discontinuity in Chapter 1 before participating in discussions or completing these activities. This chapter emphasizes the competing evidence on whether children s cognitive development occurs through a series of stagelike changes or through a gradual transformation of abilities. This emphasis provides a unique opportunity to highlight the distinction between qualitative and quantitative changes as described in Chapter 1. A return to Figure 1.3 may help students better understand the importance of this distinction. It may be helpful to also have students discuss the implications of each view. NATURE VS. NURTURE This chapter provides opportunities to discuss the complex interplay between nature and nurture as they impact development. Remind students to review the section on nature and nurture in Chapter 1 prior to discussion. This chapter includes a good deal of information that relates back to the nature versus nurture theme. On the nature side, brain changes, modules, and skeletal principles are described. On the nurture side, scripts, experience, and knowledge base are described. If students in the class filled out a personal analysis of nature versus nurture while covering Chapter 1 (Handout 1.12), this theme can be reinforced again by having students review their lists. PLASTICITY Understanding of cognitive development can be deepened by discussing the information on the abilities and disabilities of children with autism as presented in this chapter. A review of the role of intervention with this group of children can be linked to plasticity. In particular, some of the current controversies on appropriate interventions in terms of predicting outcomes for this population may be of interest. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES This chapter focuses on disagreements on the degree of variability in young children s thinking. In Chapter 1, the discussion of individual differences focused on variability between individuals and possible reasons for that variability. Variability in cognition and processing add a new dimension to the discussion of individual differences. With the problem of uneven levels of performance and competing views about the degree of those levels, identification of ways and reasons why, and to what degree individuals are alike becomes complicated. If an individual s performance is variable then how can we isolate ways in which that individual varies from others? Siegler s supplemental reading on cognitive variability can be used to elaborate upon this discussion. THEORIES As was noted previously, Handout 8.11 can assist an instructor in emphasizing the differing contributions of various theoretical perspectives to our understanding of cognitive development in early childhood.

192 Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood IV. Guide to the Supplements Much supporting material for the instructor can be found on the text Web site and also in the supplemental transparencies. The Tool Kit also provides a multitude of resources for an instructor. This chapter is supported by the supplemental readings available for the text (Readings of the Development of Children, Fifth Edition, by Mary Gauvain and Michael Cole). These readings can be used directly by the instructor to support a presentation of the material or may be assigned to students to broaden their understanding of the material. Chapter 3 is a paper by Piaget. This paper may assist students in understanding Piaget s ideas on preoperational cognitive development. The supplemental reading on Personal storytelling by Miller, Wiley, Fung, and Liang presents a somewhat different perspective on scripts by showing how personal storytelling functions as a socializing practice by examining the different ways in which parents describe children s early experiences for entertainment or teaching moral standards. Chapter 3 of the supplemental readings is a paper by DeLoache, Miller, and Rosengren on the Credible shrinking room: Very young children s performance with symbolic and nonsymbolic relations. Their research shows the unique thinking that is characteristic of early childhood. In the Tool Kit is a section on preoperational thought and conservation tasks. This segment nicely shows two preoperational boys failing a water conservation task presented as a test with rocket fuel. On the video supplements are segments on children performing the theory of mind task as well as a segment on magical thinking. Since the theory of mind task can be a bit hard to understand, these video clips can be very helpful. Segment 27 of the Scientific American Frontiers Video Collection is entitled A Change of Mind. It includes several examples of preoperational thinking. A great example is of two children playing a card game and a shape game. Their centered thinking leads them to stick to one set of rules even when the game changes. Students are typically surprised by these children s responses. The segment also includes a rather lengthy segment on a deception task. It again shows characteristic preoperational thinking but both this clip and the one on the card game also provide a great opportunity to discuss the linguistic load of both tasks. Ask students to watch the clips and look for examples of how children might be giving the wrong responses to the questions asked, simply based on the linguistic input provided to them. They can be asked to look at the way questions are asked and the length of the input provided to the children. V. Activities to Enhance Learning (homework, in-class activities, discussion questions) The preface introduced a variety of activities that an instructor can use to enhance learning. These include homework which a student can complete outside class and then turn in for grading or review. The results of these homework activities can also be reviewed during a class session. The activities found on the Tool Kit lend themselves to review and discussion in class. Also, the Apply, Connect, Discuss sections of this chapter lend themselves well to in-class activities. A few examples of activities will be presented here specific for this chapter, but we also give you a reminder to review the activities described in the preface for other activities that you can use to enhance the learning of the material in this chapter. In-

Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood 193 class activities are also emphasized in the sections on Key Concepts to Emphasize and the Connections section of this IRM chapter. HOMEWORK Select one of the studies described in the text and review the original report on the study. Summarize the hypothesis, methods, results, and conclusions for this study. Do you agree with or disagree with the summary of the study as presented in the text? What is the basis for your position? Use Handout 8.3 to guide an observation of a preschool-aged child. What difficulties are involved in observing the cognitive processes listed on the handout? Interview the parent of a young child and ask for examples of precausal reasoning in their child. Provide the graveyard story found in the text on page 283 as an example. Interview the parent of a 3- to 4-year-old child. First, ask about the scripts the parents use to help their child participate in daily routines. Second, ask how the parent thinks these scripts help the child and the parent in their daily activities. How are these scripts and the functions the parent describes the same as or different from the material presented in the text (see Handout 8.4)? Observe children in a preschool classroom during a series of daily scripted transitions. Make a running log of the steps children take as they move from one activity to the next. How do the children respond to the scripted transition? Do all children respond the same? Are there differences in age, gender, and temperaments? Talk with a children s attorney. Ask how the attorney addresses the difficulties described in the box on young children s appearances as witnesses in a legal proceeding. Talk with several preschool teachers and ask them to describe their beliefs about young children s cognitive abilities. Ask them how they translate those beliefs into activities for the children they teach. What framework do their beliefs and activities best reflect? IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES Ask students to think about their own daily routine. In pairs or small groups, ask them to discuss which activities they have scripts that guide them through the activity. What function do these scripts play for them? How are the functions similar to or different from the scripts of young children? Bring measuring cups to class and appropriate food portions as indicated on the FDA s Web site. Also, bring in children s fast food meals for comparison. Have students chart how well the fast food meal matches the FDA requirements. For the section on cognitive development in privileged domains, instructors are encouraged to use the Jigsaw approach for supporting student s understanding of the three domains. In small groups, ask students to create a table of the explanations for the source and development of privileged domains. They can identify the theory, explain the theories claim, summarize a supporting study, and provide an example. These can be placed on the board and shared among the class members. In small groups, ask students to share scripts for events like going out to dinner or attending family holiday get-togethers. Have the students write the script and then discuss how culture has influenced these scripts.

194 Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood DISCUSSION QUESTIONS The following questions require students to summarize, analyze, and evaluate material from the text. Summarize the competing evidence on whether children s cognitive development occurs through a series of stagelike changes or through a gradual transformation of abilities. What is the importance of this distinction? To extend the discussion, show students the following YouTube video regarding Piaget s stages of cognitive development http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trf27f2bn-a. Instructors can share this video again when discussing Piaget s Concrete Operation stage in Chapter 11. What claims does the information-processing approach make about continuity and discontinuity in cognitive development? Summarize the function of scripts. Review the observation checklist in Handout 8.3. What difficulties would be involved in observing the cognitive processes identified in the handout? Explain theory of mind and false-belief tasks. What is domain-specific development? What does this tell us about children s cognitive development? What are cultural scripts? List three cultural scripts that you use in your daily life. How does the following quote inform our understanding of children s development: Fischer has demonstrated that under conditions of optimal support from the context, increases in the level of children s performance go through a series of stagelike changes. But when support is low (and a child has many distracting problems to deal with simultaneously), change is continuous. VI. Handouts The handouts and activity forms for this chapter are listed below. 8.1 Advance Organizer 8.2 Key Terms 8.3 Observation Guide 8.4 Interview Guide 8.5 Apply, Connect, Discuss: Playground Observation 8.6 Apply, Connect, Discuss: Preoperational Thinking 8.7 Apply, Connect, Discuss: Memory Test 8.8 Apply, Connect, Discuss: Modularity Theory and Theory Theory 8.9 Apply, Connect Discuss: Cultural Scripts 8.10 Competing Evidence on Young Children s Abilities 8.11 Competing Accounts for Mental Development in Early Childhood

Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood 195 Handout 8.1 Chapter outline Chapter Advance Organizer Key points and questions 1. Physical and Motor Development The Changing Body Motor Development Health Brain Development 2. Preoperational Development Centration The Problem of Uneven Levels of Performance 3. Information Processing Approaches to Cognitive Development 4. Cognitive Development in Privileged Domains The Domain of Physics The Domain of Psychology The Domain of Biology Explaining Domain-Specific Cognitive Development 5. Cognitive Development and Culture Cultural Scripts Cultural Context and the Unevenness of Development 6. Reconciling Alternative Perspectives IRM to Lightfoot, Cole and Cole: The Development of Children, 7e 2013, 2009 Worth Publishers

196 Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood Handout 8.2 Key terms Understanding the Key Terms Define in your own words here motor drive food insecure scale errors mental operations centration decentration objectivity egocentrism precausal thinking elaborative style privileged domains theory of mind false-belief task mental modules autism theory theory scripts IRM to Lightfoot, Cole and Cole: The Development of Children, 7e 2013, 2009 Worth Publishers

Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood 197 Handout 8.3 Observation Guide Piaget s preoperational stage egocentrism lack of spatial perspective taking egocentric speech failure to understand others minds confusing appearance and reality precausal reasoning Information-processing approaches limitations in knowledge limited strategies for acquiring and using information immature hardware Domain specific views privileged domains (physics, psychology, biology, and social) modularity theory (innate mental modules) cultural scripts guides to action coordinate actions of a social group means by which abstract concepts are acquired and organized IRM to Lightfoot, Cole and Cole: The Development of Children, 7e 2013, 2009 Worth Publishers

198 Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood Handout 8.4 Interview Guide Interview the parent of a 3- to 4-year-old child. First, ask about the scripts the parents use to help their child participate in daily routines. List the steps of the scripts below. Taking a bath script: Going to bed script: Getting ready for day care/school script: Second, ask how the parent thinks these scripts help the child and the parent in their daily activities. How are these scripts and the functions the parent describes the same as or different from the material presented in the text? IRM to Lightfoot, Cole and Cole: The Development of Children, 7e 2013, 2009 Worth Publishers

Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood 199 Handout 8.5 Apply, Connect, Discuss Armed with the information in Table 8.1 (p. 273), and your understanding of motor drive, visit a playground where you can observe young children engaged in motor play. What examples of motor skills and motor drive can you identify? Focusing on one or two children, can you guess their ages based on the motor skills they exhibit? IRM to Lightfoot, Cole and Cole: The Development of Children, 7e 2013, 2009 Worth Publishers

200 Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood Handout 8.6 Apply, Connect, Discuss When young children are asked where they live they often confuse the name of the city with the name of the state. How is this confusion an example of preoperational thinking? IRM to Lightfoot, Cole and Cole: The Development of Children, 7e 2013, 2009 Worth Publishers

Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood 201 Handout 8.7 Apply, Connect, Discuss Suppose that two children are presented with the same set of unrelated pictures and told to remember the pictures because they will be given a memory test shortly. Picture presented Child 1 says Child 2 says Cat cat, cat, cat cat, cat Shoe shoe, shoe, shoe cat, shoe, cat, shoe Truck truck, truck, truck cat, shoe, truck Pen pen, pen, pen cat, shoe, truck, pen According to material presented in this section, why is child 2 likely to outperform child 1 on the memory test? IRM to Lightfoot, Cole and Cole: The Development of Children, 7e 2013, 2009 Worth Publishers

202 Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood Handout 8.8 Apply, Connect, Discuss Of modularity theory and theory theory, which is more consistent with Piaget s understanding of development? Why? IRM to Lightfoot, Cole and Cole: The Development of Children, 7e 2013, 2009 Worth Publishers

Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood 203 Handout 8.9 Apply, Connect, Discuss In arguing against the notion that knowledge can be compartmentalized into separate domains, Bame Nsamenang asserts that, according to African beliefs, knowledge is integrated into social life and daily routines. To what extent is this consistent with Katherine Nelson s theory of cultural scripts? IRM to Lightfoot, Cole and Cole: The Development of Children, 7e 2013, 2009 Worth Publishers

204 Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood Handout 8.10 Competing Evidence on Young Children s Abilities In the spaces provided, summarize the competing evidence in the chapter on young children s cognitive abilities. Describe the types of tasks used and the children s general level of functioning on the tasks. Task Piagetian evidence Competing evidence Reasoning about spatial perspective Egocentrism/nonegocentric speech Distinguishing appearance from reality Causal reasoning Which of the evidence is most convincing to you? Why? IRM to Lightfoot, Cole and Cole: The Development of Children, 7e 2013, 2009 Worth Publishers

Chapter 8 Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood 205 Handout 8.11 Competing Accounts for Mental Development in Early Childhood The section ends with a discussion of differences of opinion on whether cognition develops through a series of stagelike changes or through a gradual transformation of abilities. Summarize the main claims of each perspective here and then describe the main strengths and weaknesses of each account. Perspective Main claims Strengths and weaknesses Information processing Piagetian Privileged domains Cultural context IRM to Lightfoot, Cole and Cole: The Development of Children, 7e 2013, 2009 Worth Publishers