Between the ages of 2 and 5 years, children become quite sophisticated in their thinking. This chapter will explore these cognitive advancements in the preschool years.

Preschoolers' thinking is more internal and sophisticated than in earlier years, but is still very much tied to concrete objects in the real, observable world.

1. Piaget's theory of Preschool Cognition

1. Young children gradually leave behind the very early thought processes of infancy, which were tied to the concrete world.
2. They can now think beyond objects or people that are immediately before them and are able to reflect on things they cannot see, hear, touch, or act upon
3. On the other hand, preschoolers do not use logic as adults do
4. They still rely too heavily on their senses in their thinking
5. Because preschoolers' thinking is still based so much on perception and action, Piaget argued that learning at this age requires an environment that is rich in sensory experience and provides much activity with objects.
6. Through active manipulation of play materials, preschoolers gradually construct an understanding of the world
7. Characteristics of Preoperational Thought

1. Preschoolers' thinking according to Piaget is preoperational thought
2. Perception-Based Thinking

1. Often young children are fooled by what things look or sound like
2. To a preschooler, "what you see is what you get"

1. Unidimensional Thought

1. Preschoolers tend to focus on only one characteristic of an object or one feature of a problem at a time.
2. They are said to center on a single phenomenon and have difficulty coordinating more than one idea or activity
3. This is called unidimensional thought

1. Irreversibility

1. Children have difficulty reversing the direction of their thinking
2. This is called irreversibility

1. Transductive Reasoning

1. Preschool-age children are much better able to sort out cause and effect than are infants
2. However, they are still limited in their causal thinking
3. They tend to put one immediate event into relationship with another immediate event and leap to an assumption that one causes the other
4. Adults must be very careful to clarify for preschoolers the nature of relationships between negative life events

1. Egocentrism

1. Preschoolers continue to have difficulty understanding others' perspectives

1. Symbolic Thought

1. This is a form of thinking in which symbols are used to stand for things that are not present

1. Piagetian Tasks

1. Conservation

1. Piaget proposed that preschoolers lack conservation, an understanding that properties and amounts stay the same even when physical appearances are changed

1. Categorization

1. In an experiment, Piaget demonstrated unidimensional thinking by asking children to categorize objects
2. In this categorization task, children wee presented with items of different colors and shapes and asked to "put the things that are alike together"
3. Preschoolers would often sort by color, by shape, or by size
4. Rarely did they rely on two or more dimensions at the same time

1. Criticisms of Piagetian Theory

1. He may have underestimated preschoolers' intellectual abilities
2. There are several major reasons for Piaget's misjudgment about preschoolers' cognitive abilities

1. cultural variations
2. faulty research methods
3. the role of language and social interaction in learning

1. Cultural Variations

1. Children of all cultures show fundamental characteristics of preoperational thought

1. Vygotsky's Perspective: the role of language and social interaction

1. Vygotsky has argued that children's thinking is highly influenced by interactions and conversation with other people
2. Vygotsky has argued that young children cannot show their highest levels of thinking when they are alone
3. He suggests that when children get support from a more competent peer or an adult, they are far better at solving problems
4. Vygotsky proposed that language plays a particularly critical role in learning
5. He noted that preschooler's self-directed speech-the inner-directed language-helps children to guide their own attention and to organize ideas internally

1. Culture and Social and Language interactions

1. Children of Euro-American cultures have been described as field independent' that is , they have a unique cognitive style that allows them to solve problems without much outside assistance
2. They can focus on the specific steps of a task without being distracted by the full external environment, or the field
3. Children in other cultures tend to be field sensitive
4. This means that they rely on the entire environment and everything and everyone within it to solve problems
5. The most important characteristic of field-sensitive children is a need for social interaction and language in order to learn
6. An implication of this research for teachers of young children is that classroom environments should be created to allow extensive social interaction and conversation
7. Cooperative projects and play activities must be designed to meet the needs of preschoolers with diverse cognitive styles

1. Cognitive Development and Preschoolers with Special Needs

1. A variety of challenging conditions can affect cognitive development
2. Preschoolers with mental retardation, for example, will not solve problems or learn concepts as typically developing children do
3. Mental retardation is defined as a condition leading to general intellectual impairment
4. Children with mental retardation progress through the same stages of cognitive development, but significantly more slowly than others
5. They may never reach the highest levels of cognitive development in adulthood

1. Theories of the Mind

1. One of the most remarkable cognitive advancements in the preschool years is an early formation of a theory of the mind
2. At a surprisingly young age, children begin to understand-or form a theory about-what the mind is, how it works, and how it might be controlled

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3. Where is evidence of a theory of the mind in this story?
4. The young girl's language gives one clue
5. She uses words such as know, think, and mean to-terms that describe internal mental states
6. She demonstrates a grasp of inner motives with the statement, "He didn't mean to knock over the berries"
7. The utterance "He doesn't know I'm in here" displays an awareness that the mind can understand or know about something
8. This preschooler can comprehend not only her own thinking processes but those of another person
9. She can guess, and quite accurately, what her brother knows, thinks, or intends
10. It is one thing to just think; doing so enables us to learn, solve problems, or make decisions
11. It is quite another to think about how we think
12. In doing so, we attend to our inner mental processes
13. We can reflect on the steps our minds go through in learning something, or can contemplate the source of our feelings or attitudes
14. When we are aware of our own thought processes, we are able to control or modify them
15. When we can contemplate the feelings or thinking of others, we can interact with them more effectively
16. At least three distinct types of theories of the mind have been found to emerge in early childhood

1. Theories about internal emotional states

1. Children who can read emotions are better able to decide how to interact with adults and peers

1. Theories of motives and intentions

1. Preschool children are able to interpret, to some degree, their own motives as well as others'
2. They might report that a peer knocked down a block structure because she was being mean, or that another shared a snack because he was being nice
3. By the end of the preschool years, they can even identify whether behaviors are intentional or unintentional

1. Theories of knowing and remembering

1. preschoolers reveal theories of knowing and remembering when they play
2. When a child announces, "We're the police, remember?" or "I know who you're pretending to be", he or she is showing a knowledge of these thinking processes
3. They understand the know, remember, and pay attention involve doing something special in the mind

1. Variations in theories of the mind

1. Children begin to formulate theories of the mind at about the same time and in similar ways across cultures or ability levels
2. Challenging Conditions

1. Even challenging condition may not significantly impede theories of the mind from being formed
2. Autism is the one significant exception
3. Autism is a condition characterized by a lack of awareness of others, a preference for objects to people, and an intense desire for sameness

1. Theories of the mind and play

1. Where do theories of the mind originate?
2. Most researchers believe that interactions with others, particularly other children, enhance these understandings
3. When children play together, they sometimes argue
4. As they do, they are likely to reflect on intentions, motives, feelings, and thought processes