COGNITIVE

DEVELOPMENT
OF THE
PRESCHOOLERS
PRAYER
LEARNING OUTCOMES
In this module, you should be able to:
describe the cognitive development that
takes place among preschoolers.
apply concepts on preschoolers' cognitive
development in preschool teaching and
in child care.
take an informed stand/position on
current preschool teaching practices.
 Do you remember how
you were as a
preschooler? What do you
remember most as a
preschooler? What did
you enjoy doing?
PRESCHOOLER'S
SYMBOLIC AND
INTUITIVE
THINKING
in this stage, preschool children
show progress in their cognitive
abilities by being able to draw
objects that are not present, by their
dramatic increase in their language
and make-believe play.

 Symbolic thought - shown in

preschool children's ability to
represent an object that is not present.
They do not need to be in
sensorimotor contact with an object,
person or event in order to think about
it.
- Moreover, they can imagine that
objects or people have properties
other than those they actually have.
 Example 1. Johann asks his
mom about the giraffe they
saw in the zoo five months
ago.
Example 2. Children uses
wooden block used as a
microphone in a magic sing.
preschool children begin to use
primitive reasoning and ask a litany of
questions.
The development in their language
ability facilitates their endless asking
of questions.
While preschool children exhibit
considerable cognitive development,
their improved cognitive processes
still show some aspects of immaturity
or limitations.
 Animism - preschool children
believe that inanimate objects
have 'lifelike' qualities and are
capable of action.
- fail to distinguish the
appropriate occasions for using
human and nonhuman
perspectives.
 Egocentrism - the inability to
distinguish between one's own
perspective and someone else's
perspective.
- assume that everyone also has
the same point of view.
 Conservation - the
awareness that the basic
property of an object or a
substance is conserved (is not
changed or altered) even if its
appearance is changed.
 Irreversibility - Piaget's term
for a preoperational child's
directions.
- inability to reverse their thinking
or working backwards.
Transductive Reasoning
- preschool children do not use
deductive or inductive reasoning;
instead they jump from one
particular to another and see
cause where none exists,
 BRAIN
CONNECTIONS IN
THE PRESCHOOL
YEARS
- Brain research findings point us to
more the effective ways to care for
and teach preschoolers.
- Our brain is composed of
numerous cells called neurons that
connect to each other to function.
- Cell connections are what we call
synapses, sometimes also referred
to as synaptic connections.
Did you know that:
- the human brain contains some 50
billion neurons at birth?
- by age 2, children have developed
half of the brain cell connections that
will be made during one's lifetime?
- around 6 years of age the brain
develops for more sophisticated
thinking patterns?
 All of these facts point to the enormous
potential that the preschooler's brain has.
The child's billion cells have the ability to
make almost countless connections that
prepare the child for intricate pathways to
learn language, acquire logical-
mathematical skills, interact with people,
grow in his feelings and emotions, and
even express himself in art. As such, a
preschool teacher would often observe
how a child now has transformed from a
dependent toddler into a proud and
independent preschooler
- Brain research has also pointed out the crucial
role of the environment. The brain forms specific
connections (synapses) that are different for
each person. The quality of these connections
depends on the quality of stimulation and
exposure provided by the environment.
- In the preschool years, a supportive and
stimulating environment that offers many
experiences involving the different senses and
allows the child to think, imagine and create is
best. This environment can be provided by a
good combination of a healthy and functional
family environment and a quality preschool
program.
- Highly stressful environments marred by
trauma and chaos affect the cognitive
development of preschoolers. High levels of
stress hormones such as cortisol may lead to
diminished brain growth in areas needed for
memory, learning and emotional attachment.
It may also lead to anxiety and, hyperactivity
and impulsive behavior.
- Preschools who make children work with
nothing but work sheets and pictures instead
of real life, hands-on experiences do more
harm than good.
 LANGUAGE
DEVELOPMENT
- Throughout the pre-school years, children's
language development becomes increasingly
complex in the four main areas: phonology
(speech sounds), seman- ties (word meaning),
syntax (sentence construction), and pragmatics
(conversation or social uses of language).
- As they advance in age and as they
continuously interact with people, preschool
children expand rapidly in their vocabulary
through fast mapping, a process by which
children absorb the meaning of a new word
after hearing it once or twice in conversation.
- Many of the oddities of young children's
language sound like mistakes to adult
listeners, but from the children's
perspective, they are not.
- In asking questions, preschoolers tend to
cling to a consistent word order and so
they form questions not by following the
pattern "subject-verb-object" order but by
simply saying with a rising intonation.
- From an expanded vocabulary and
improved grammar, preschool
children learn to use language
successfully in social contexts
(pragmatics). With an expanded
vocabulary and improved grammar,
preschool children become skilled
conversationalists and often initiate
conversation.
- Parents, teachers, and caregivers
can monitor a child's language
development in these four areas to
identify where some children may
struggle. Children with mild to severe
speech difficulties can be referred to
a specially trained professional called
a speech pathologist.
LANGUAGE AND
SOCIAL
INTERACTION
- Vygotsky believed that young
children use language both in
communicating socially and having
inner speech or private speech.
Children must use language to
communicate with others before
they can focus on their own thoughts
(Santrock, 2002). This implies the
importance of interaction of
preschoolers with caregivers for
language development.
- Preschool children are unable to achieve
their highest cognitive development on their
own and that they can improve their
cognitive development through use of
scaffolding from more-skilled children and
adults. He introduced the term Zone of
Proximal Development (ZPD) to refer to tasks
too difficult for a child to master alone but
can be mastered with the guidance and
assistance of adults or more skilled children.
ZPD captures the preschool childrens'
cognitive skills that are in the process of
maturing.
- Closely linked to the idea of ZPD in
cognitive and language development is
the concept of scaffolding, a term that
refers to the "changing support over the
course of a teaching session, with the
more skilled person adjusting guidance
to fit the child's current performance
level". The more skilled person is also
called More Knowledgeable Other (MKO).
 INFORMATION
PROCESSING
THEORY-
ATTENTION AND
MEMORY
 Information Processing model

- is another way of examining and

understanding how children develop
cognitively. This model conceptualizes
children's mental processes through the
metaphor of a computer processing,
encoding, storing, and decoding data.
- The preschoolers' attention span lasts
longer than that of toddlers. The child's
ability to pay attention changes
significantly during the preschool years.
-attention during preschool years is
focused only on aspects that stand out at
the expense of those that are relevant to
solving a problem to performing well on a
task. Preschool children recognize
previously encountered information,
recall old information, and reconstruct it
in the present.
 Among the interesting questions about
memory in the preschool years are those
involving short-term memory.

Short-term memory (STM) retain

information for up to 15-30 seconds,
assuming there is no rehearsal, which can
help keep information in STM for a much
longer period (Santrock, 2002).
 Differences in memory span occur
across the ages due to:

a) rehearsal
b) speed and efficiency of processing
information
 Between the ages of 2 and 5

-long-term memory also begins to form

- Part of long-term memory involves storing
information about the sequence of events
during familiar situations as "scripts" it
helps children understand, interpret, and
predict what will happen in future
scenarios.


-also start to recognize that there are

often multiple ways to solve a
problem and can brainstorm different
(though sometimes primitive)
solutions.


Between the ages of 5 and 7

-children learn how to focus and use their

cognitive abilities for specific purposes.

-children of this age have also developed a

larger overall capacity to process
information. This expanding information
processing capacity allows young children
to make connections between old and new
information.
- as information processing increases in
speed, memory becomes increasingly
longer. Young children can remember a
great deal of information if they are
given appropriate cues and prompts.
Rehearsal and organizing information
are deliberate mental activities that can
be employed to improve the processing
of information.
 THE YOUNG
CHILDREN'S
THEORY OF MIND
 Theory of mind refers to
individuals' thoughts about how
mental processes work (Santrock,
2002).
 By the age of 2 or 3
- children become aware that the
mind exists. They refer to needs,
emotions, and mental states.
- Cognitive terms such as know,
remember, and think usually appear
after perceptual and emotional
terms, but are used by age 3
(Santrock, 2002).
 As their representation of the world and ability
to remember and solve problems improve,
children start to reflect on their own thought
processes. They begin to construct a theory of
mind or a set of ideas about mental activities
(Preschoolers Cognitive Development, 2007). This
develops markedly between the ages of three and
five. It includes awareness of one's own thought
processes, social cognition, understanding that
people can hold false beliefs, ability to deceive,
ability to distinguish appearance from reality and
ability to distinguish fantasy from reality
(Preschoolers Cognitive Development, 2007).
 How do children manage to develop a theory
of mind at such a young age? Various speculations
and research findings suggest that social
experience is very important. Social experience
includes 1) carly forms of communication, 2)
imitation, 3) make-believe play, 4) language, and 5)
social interaction. (Preschoolers Cognitive
Development, 2007).
RECEPTIVE
LANGUAGE
 THE ROLE OF
CAREGIVERS IN
THE COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT OF
PRESCHOOLERS
- Parents and teachers can do a lot either to
help preschoolers develop their cognitive skills
or impede them. With the best of intentions,
one can do more harm than good if the
approach to teaching preschoolers is not
appropriate. Some adults that the role of
preschools is to prepare the children to pass the
entrance examinations of elementary schools,
and so they "harsh" preschoolers to master
academic skills. This leads the preschoolers be
stressed and to have a negative disposition
about school and about learning.
 The following are some appropriate
practices that help develop the cognitive
skills of preschoolers, adapted from a list
of tips for caregivers and teachers.
 For Three Year Olds:
- Have frequent conversations with children
- Add new information to your children’s
sentences
- Teach children to memorize first and last
names
- Provide children with books to read
- Encourage interest in reading and writing
- Count objects of interest
- Explain why and how things happen with
the help of a reference book
- Provide sets
- Sing simple songs
 For Four Year Olds:
- Read aloud each day and encourage
children to look at books by themselves
- Say nursery rhymes
- Encourage interest in writing and words.
- Teach important number and space
concepts.
- Teach children how to use a telephone.
- Encourage children to help plan and
plant a garden.
 For Five Year Olds:
- Add drama to your reading sessions by
using different voices for various characters.
- Ask a 5 year old to tell you a story.
- Ask what if questions
- Involve children in writing thank you notes
- Sort, group, match, count and sequence
- Take questions seriously
- Encourage them to count anything
- Encourage interest in jokes, nonsense and
riddles
- Give opportunities to express dramatic
and creative interest.
CONCLUSIONS /
REFLECTIONS
THANK YOU
FOR
LISTENING!