1. Review the Brief Chapter Summary.
2. Answer and submit the Learning Objectives. Write the question and then the answer.
3. Complete and submit the Learning Activity. Write the question and then the answer.
BRIEF CHAPTER SUMMARY
Early childhood brings dramatic advances in mental representation. Piaget believed that children's cognitive change
resulted primarily from sensorimotor activity. But other theorists disagree with Piaget and put more emphasis on the
link between language and thought. Make-believe play during the preschool years reflects the child's growing
symbolic mastery and eventually includes sociodramatic play - make-believe with others, which begins by age 2?.
Play, especially sociodramatic play, not only reflects but also contributes to children's cognitive and social skills.
Before age 3, most children have trouble with dual representation - viewing a symbolic object as both an object
in its own right and a symbol. Adults can help promote their gradual understanding of symbol-real world
relationships by exposing them to diverse symbols.
Aside from gains in representation, Piaget described preschool children in terms of their cognitive limitations, as
his term preoperational suggests. He identified egocentrism, animistic thinking, inability to conserve, and
irreversibility as illogical features of preoperational thought. But newer research reveals that Piaget overestimated
these deficiencies and that, when tasks are simplified and made relevant to their everyday experiences, preschoolers
show the beginnings of logical, reflective thought, including reasoning about transformation, understanding of causeand-
effect relationships, and organization of everyday knowledge into nested categories. During the third year, they
also show some ability to distinguish appearance from reality. All this evidence suggests that operational thought
develops gradually, not abruptly, as Piaget had thought. But despite its limitations, Piaget's theory has had a powerful
influence on education, promoting child-oriented approaches to teaching and learning.
Whereas Piaget believed that language is of little importance in cognitive development, Vygotsky, who
emphasized the social context of cognitive development, regarded language as the foundation for all higher cognitive
processes. Social interaction promotes cognitive development through intersubjectivity and scaffolding or, more
broadly, guided participation. As adults and more skilled peers provide children with verbal guidance on challenging
tasks, children incorporate these dialogues into their private, or self-directed, speech and use them to regulate their
own behavior. A Vygotskian classroom emphasizes not just independent discovery but also assisted discovery,
including verbal support from teachers and peer collaboration.
A variety of information-processing skills improve during early childhood, including sustained attention,
planning, and memory. Recognition memory becomes highly accurate, while recall develops more slowly because
preschoolers are not yet effective users of memory strategies. Like adults, young children remember familiar,
repeated events in terms of scripts. Between ages 3 and 6, they develop increasingly well-organized, detailed
autobiographical memory, or memory for unique, meaningful events. Adults who use an elaborative, rather than a
repetitive, conversational style with children promote the development of the childÕs autobiographical narratives.
Preschoolers make great strides in problem-solving skills. Overlapping-waves theory describes how young
children experiment with diverse problem-solving strategies, eventually selecting the best ones on the basis of two
criteria: accuracy and speed. Around the same time, children begin to develop a theory of mind, or metacognitionÑa
coherent set of ideas about mental activities. Language, cognitive abilities, make-believe play, and social experiences
promote understanding of the mind. Preschoolers also develop a basic understanding of written symbols and
mathematical concepts, which is best promoted through informal literacy and mathematical experiences rather than
through formal instruction.
A stimulating home environment, warm parenting, and reasonable demands for mature behavior continue to
predict gains in mental development in early childhood. Formal academic training in early childhood undermines
motivation and other aspects of emotional well-being. Although test score gains resulting from early intervention
such as Head Start eventually decline, at-risk children show broader long-term benefits in school adjustment. Highquality
child care can serve as effective intervention, whereas poor-quality child care undermines children's
development regardless of SES background.
Educational media, including television, computers, and the Internet, are features of most children's lives in
industrialized nations. Educational TV can promote literacy and number concepts, as well as general knowledge and
social skills, but heavy viewing of entertainment TV detracts from children's school success and social experiences.
While computer programming promotes both problem solving and social interaction, computer game playing often
introduces children to content that is full of violence and gender stereotypes.
Language development proceeds rapidly during early childhood. By the end of the preschool years, children have
an extensive vocabulary, use most of the grammatical constructions of their language competently, and are effective
conversationalists. Opportunities for conversational give-and-take with adults enhance these skills.
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
9.1 Describe advances in mental representation during the preschool years, including changes in make-believe
play. (pp. 322-323)
9.2 Describe what Piaget regarded as deficiencies of preoperational thought. (pp. 323-326)
9.3 Discuss recent research on preoperational thought, and note the implications of such findings for the accuracy
of PiagetÕs preoperational stage. (pp. 326-332)
9.4 Describe the educational principles derived from PiagetÕs theory. (pp. 332-333)
9.5 Describe VygotskyÕs perspective on the social origins and significance of childrenÕs private speech, and
contrast PiagetÕs view of childrenÕs private speech with that of Vygotsky. (pp. 333-336)
9.6 Discuss applications of VygotskyÕs theory to education. (p. 336)
9.7 Summarize recent challenges to VygotskyÕs theory, and evaluate his major ideas. (pp. 336-337)
9.8 Describe advances in attention, memory, and problem solving during early childhood. (pp. 338-342)
9.9 Discuss preschoolersÕ understanding of mental activities, noting factors that contribute to early metacognition,
as well as limitations of the young childÕs theory of mind. (pp. 342-344)
9.10 Describe early literacy and mathematical development during the preschool years, and discuss appropriate
ways to enhance childrenÕs development in these areas. (pp. 344-348)
9.11 Summarize the content of early childhood intelligence tests, and explain the impact of home, preschool and
kindergarten programs, child care, and educational media on mental development. (pp. 349-355)
9.12 Trace the development of vocabulary, grammar, and conversational skills in early childhood. (pp. 355-360)
9.13 Cite factors that support language learning in early childhood. (pp. 360-361)
LEARNING ACTIVITY 9.1: Observing Young ChildrenÕs Make-Believe Play (pp. 322-323)
Arrange to visit a child-care center or the home of a friend or family member with young children. Briefly describe the setting, age(s) of the children, and play behaviors. In addition, classify the childrenÕs make-believe play based on observations of symbolic mastery:
(1) Play detaches from the real-life conditions associated with it. In early pretending, toddlers use only realistic
objectsÑfor example, a toy telephone to talk into or a cup to drink from. Gradually, children can flexibly
imagine objects and events, without any support from the real world.
(2) Play becomes less self-centered. At first, make-believe is directed toward the selfÑfor example, children
pretend to feed or wash only themselves. A short time later, pretend actions are directed toward other
objects, as when the child feeds a doll. And early in the third year, children become detached participants
who make a doll feed itself or a parent doll feed a baby doll.
(3) Play includes more complex combinations of schemes. The toddler can pretend to drink from a cup but does
not yet combine pouring and drinking. Later, children combine schemes with those of peers, especially in
sociodramatic play, the make-believe play with others that is under way by age 2? and increases rapidly
during the next few years.