Early Childhood

• Immature aspect of Preoperational Thought:

  • Centration
  • Irreversibility
  • Transductive reasoning
  • Egocentrism
  • Focus on states rather than transformations
  • Animism
  • Inability to distinguish appearance from reality
• Preoperational stage is a stage of cognitive development that is characterized by expansion in the use of symbolic thought 
• Theory of mind is the understanding that others have their own thoughts, beliefs, desires, and intentions
• Steps in Storing Memory

  • Encoding
  • Storage
  • Retrieval
  • Recognition ability to identify something encountered before
  • Recall ability to reproduce knowledge from memory (ex. when answering identification test)
• THREE TYPES OF MEMORY STORAGE

  • Sensory Memory TEMPORARY storehouse for incoming sensory information.
  • Working Memory short-term storehouse for information a PERSON IS ACTIVELY WORKING ON, trying to understand, remember, or think about.
  • Long-Term Memory storehouse of virtually unlimited capacity that holds information for LONG PERIODS of time.
• Metacognition refers to thinking about thinking, or awareness of one’s own mental processes (MENTAL PROCESSES AS A WHOLE)

  • Knowing when you know, knowing when you don’t know
• Generic Memory is memory that produces scripts of familiar routines to guide behavior.

  • Script is General remembered outline of a familiar, repeated event, used to guide behavior
• Episodic Memory a Long-term memory of specific experiences or events, linked to time and place.
• Autobiographical Memory memories of distinctive experiences that form a person’s life history.
• Influence in memory retention:

  • Rare or unusual events
  • Events with emotional Impact
  • Children’s Active Participation
• Nouns seem to be EASIER TO FAST MAP than names of actions (verbs), even across different languages.
• Pragmatics refers to social context of language and practical knowledge needed to use language for communicative purposes
• 3 years of age child knows and can use 900 to 1,000 words
• 6 years of age 2,600 expressive (speaking) vocabulary, and understands more than 20,000. ○ Rapid expansion of vocabulary occurs through fast mapping
• Emergent Literacy Preschoolers’ development of skills, knowledge, and attitudes that underlie reading and writing
• FACTORS THAT PROMOTES EMERGENT LITERACY

  • Social Interaction parents provide appropriate conversational challenges
  • Reading to Children most effective paths to literacy
  • Increasing use of Technology and Media Devices high quality, interactive apps are used and when parents scaffold child’s learning
• Montessori Method

  • Stresses the importance of CHILDREN LEARNING INDEPENDENTLY at their own pace in multiage classrooms as they work with developmentally appropriate materials and self-chosen tasks
  • based on the belief that children’s natural intelligence involves rational, spiritual, and empirical aspects.
  • Teachers serve as guides, and older children help younger ones
• REGGIO EMILIA APPROACH

  • Teachers follow children’s interests and support them in exploring and investigating ideas and feelings through words, movement, dramatic play, and music
  • Teachers ask questions that draw out children’s ideas and then create flexible plans to explore these ideas with the children
• COGNITIVE ADVANCES IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

  • Use of Symbols do not need to be in sensorimotor contact with an object, person, or event in order to think about it
  • Understanding cause and effect Children realize that events have causes
  • Understanding of Identities Children are aware that people and many things are basically the same even if they change in outward form, size, or appearance
  • Ability to classify
  • Understanding Number
  • Empathy
  • TOM