Cognitive Development

Toddlerhood

As children reach the age of 18 to 24 months, they begin to show the ability to use mental representation in many ways. They begin to engage in simple symbolic play, usually of domestic mimicry such as pretending to feed a baby doll and put it to bed. They show that they can use simple trial and error to solve simple problems. Observe a 2-year-old completing a three-piece form puzzle. After she has completed it, an adult can turn it so that the forms are not lined up with the holes. Most likely, the child can see this and will adapt the fitting of the forms to the changed position of the board. Children of this age also engage in something that Piaget called deferred imitation. The example often cited is that of children who imitate a tantrum they may have witnessed another child having in day care. This kind of behavior indicates that children of this age have the capacity to store mental images.

Preschool Children

Children move out of the sensiormotor stage into the preoperational stage of cognitive development (Piaget, 1952) around the age of 2. This phase of cognitive development lasts until about 6 or 7 years of age and is the phase of focus of this book. Children of this age can engage in symbolic thought but it is very inflexible. They can engage in elaborate symbolic play enacting complicated storylines, but they are often inflexible in the roles they assign: "No, David, you cannot wear the dress because boys don't wear dresses." or "No, you can't be the baby in the game because you don't have a baby at your house." Children are also very egocentric in their thinking. They know that things happen for reasons, but those reasons often have a very egocentric quality. For example, a child may say, "It's time for you to get off the swing now." This indicates that this child has a concept of turn-taking and that a turn on a swing is measured by the passing of time. However, when the child on the swing asks why, the child responds, "Because I want you to," and this indicates that although the child understands turn-taking, the reason he thinks it is his turn is very egocentric. Children in the preoperational stage of cognitive development have precausal ideas about causality. For instance, they say something such as, "It's raining because the grass needs water." They may also attribute animate qualities to inanimate objects. Consider 4-year-old Robert, when asked to describe his house drawing. "My house looks just like any kind of house. The color of it is kind of gray. It never falls down because it's too strong. It's strong enough to stay still." Children of this age often become confused between symbols and the objects they represent. Young children may become afraid of toy animals that look real and ferocious and will often avoid playing with them. They may approach the toy animal in a cautious way that looks like they think the toy animal will bite them. Thus, children in the preoperational phase of cognitive development will often appear frightened of something that is harmless. It is important for adults to understand these limitations in young children's thinking, especially if they are going to be helpful in talking with them about fears. In order to talk with a child and to get that child to talk back, an adult must be able to understand a situation from that child's point of view.

Finally, young children are able to focus on only one dimension at a time. They cannot conserve number, mass, and other variables. Their thinking is also not reversible. Therefore, they often are not able to understand and accept simple concepts, for example, that a child can be angry with a friend but still remain friends with that child. We often hear young children say to one another after they have had an argument, "I'm not your friend anymore and you cannot come to my birthday party." Adults certainly cannot change the way young children think, but they can introduce enough disequilibria in the child's thinking to encourage the use of more flexibility. It does not help for an adult to say, "That's not nice. Of course you will still be friends and she will come to your birthday party." Rather, it is more useful to begin to help the child to see more than one way to react when she is angry with her friend. An adult may say, "Oh, you are angry at her right now because she would not share her beenie babies with you. You really did have a good time with her earlier this morning. I'm sure you will feel better about it later, but right now you are angry and don't feel like being with her. It is better to tell her that you are angry at her because she did not share than to say she cannot come to your birthday party." These are just some comments to make. Certainly, one would not make all of these comments to a child at any one time.

Thus, it is important to understand the qualities of preoperational thinking in order to be able to talk with a young child in a meaningful way, and in order to encourage a child's verbalizations. It is important to talk with a child in a manner that is not condescending and that communicates to the child, "I am listening and I am interested in what you have to tell me." Children readily pick out adults who talk with them and not at them and know which ones will listen to them.