Chapter 9: Early Childhood: Cognitive Development

Culture matters

-Culture matters. In some families and cultures, book-reading is a time for conversation and questions; in others, it is a time for telling the child to be quiet and listen. Parents scaffold whatever they deem important. ^One study of parents in the United States found that many book-reading parents of Chinese descent pointed out problems that misbehavior caused for the book's characters, while many Mexican Americans highlighted the emotions of the characters

The vocab explosion

-The average child knows about 500 words at age 2 and more than 10,000 at age 6 (Herschensohn, 2007). That's more than six new words a day. These are averages: Estimates of vocabulary size at age 6 vary from 5,000 to 30,000. -Comprehension is always greater than production, but language proficiency is difficult to measure. Tests vary (Hoffman et al., 2014). ex./ For example, after children listened to a book about a raccoon that saw its reflection in the water, they were asked what reflection means.

Homes and schools

-Young children learn in a variety of settings, and a close relationship to their mothers is maintained whether or not they are in day care full-time. However, developmental theories and understanding of children can inspire educators, suggest hypotheses, and advance ideas. Home: If the home learning environment is poor, a good preschool program aids health, cognition, and social skills. If, instead, a family provides excellent learning, children still benefit from attending a high-quality preschool, but they do not benefit as much as less fortunate children. Schools: Educational institutions for 3- to 5-year-olds are called preschools, nursery schools, day-care centers, pre-primary programs, pre-K classes, and kindergartens. -Sponsors can be public (federal, state, or city), private, religious, or corporate. Further, children, parents, and cultures differ, so an excellent program for one child might be less effective for another. -However, one aspect—child-teacher interaction—does correlate with more learning. A bad sign is a teacher who sits and watches; look for teachers who talk, laugh, guide, and play with the children. Goal:One broad distinction concerns the program goals. Is the goal to encourage each child's creative individuality (child-centered) or to prepare the child for formal education (teacher-directed), or is it to prepare low-SES children for school (intervention, such as Head Start)?

Theory of Mind experiment

1. In one experiment, 247 children, aged 3 to 5, were left alone at a table that had an upside-down cup covering dozens of candies ( Evans et al., 2011). The children were told not to peek, and the experimenter left the room. For 142 children (57 percent), curiosity overcame obedience. They peeked, spilling so many candies onto the table that they could not put them back under the cup. The examiner returned, asking how the candies got on the table. Only one-fourth of the participants (more often the younger ones) told the truth. The rest lied, and their skill increased with their age. The 3-year-olds typically told hopeless lies (e.g., "The candies got out by themselves"); the 4-year-olds told unlikely lies (e.g., "Other children came in and knocked over the cup"). Some of the 5-year-olds, however, told plausible lies (e.g., "My elbow knocked over the cup accidentally"). 2. This particular study was done in Beijing, China, but the results seem universal: Older children are better liars (see Figure 9.2). -Beyond the age differences, the experimenters found that the more logical liars were also more advanced in theory of mind and executive functioning ^ That finding occurs in many studies: Both theory of mind and executive function advance as memory improves, experience builds, and the prefrontal cortex matures

irreversibility

A characteristic of preoperational thought in which a young child thinks that nothing can be undone. A thing cannot be restored to the way it was before a change occurred. -Preoperational thinkers fail to recognize that reversing a process sometimes restores whatever existed before. ex./ A young girl might cry because her mother put lettuce on her sandwich. She might reject the food even after the lettuce is removed because she believes that what is done cannot be undone.

static reasoning

A characteristic of preoperational thought in which a young child thinks that nothing changes. Whatever is now has always been and always will be. -They believe that the world is stable, unchanging, always in the state in which they currently encounter it. Many children cannot imagine that their own parents were ever children.

Reggio Emilia

A program of early-childhood education that originated in the town of Reggio Emilia, Italy, and that encourages each child's creativity in a carefully designed setting. -. In Reggio Emilia, children are encouraged to master skills that are not usually taught in North American schools until age 7 or so, such as writing and using tools. ^Reggio schools do not provide large-group instruction, with lessons in, say, forming letters or cutting paper. Instead, hands-on activities chosen by individual children, such as drawing, cooking, and gardening, are stressed. -Each child's learning is documented via scrapbooks, photos, and daily notes—not to measure progress but to help the child and the parent take pride in accomplishments -Often those group projects include exploring some aspect of the natural world. One analysis of Reggio Emilia in the United States found "a science-rich context that triggered and supported preschoolers' inquiries and effectively engaged preschoolers' hands, heads, and hearts with science"

Language in Early Childhood

Approximate Age Characteristic or Achievement in First Language A. 2 years Vocabulary: 100-2,000 words Sentence length: 2-6 words Grammar: Plurals; pronouns; many nouns, verbs, adjectives Questions: Many "What's that?" questions B. 3 years Vocabulary: 1,000-5,000 words Sentence length: 3-8 words Grammar: Conjunctions, adverbs, articles Questions: Many "Why?" questions C. 4 years Vocabulary: 3,000-10,000 words Sentence length: 5-20 words Grammar: Dependent clauses, tags at sentence end (". . . didn't I?" ". . . won't you?") Questions: Peak of "Why?" questions; many "How?" and "When?" questions D. 6 years and up Vocabulary: 5,000-30,000 words Sentence length: Some seem unending (". . . and . . . who . . . and . . . that . . . and . . .") Grammar: Complex, depending on what the child has heard, with some children correctly using the passive voice ("Man bitten by dog") and subjunctive ("If I were . . .") Questions: Some about social differences (male-female, old-young, rich-poor) and many other issues

A sensitive time

Brain maturation, myelination, scaffolding, and social interaction make early childhood ideal for learning language. -scientists once thought that early childhood was a critical period for language learning—the only time when a first language could be mastered and the best time to learn a second or third one. -Instead, early childhood is a sensitive period for language learning—for rapidly and easily mastering vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Young children are language sponges; they soak up every verbal drop they encounter ^One of the valuable (and sometimes frustrating) traits of young children is that they talk about many things to adults, to each other, to themselves, to their toys—unfazed by misuse, mispronunciation, ignorance, stuttering, and so on >Language comes easily partly because preoperational children are not self-critical about what they say. Egocentrism has advantages; this is one of them.

Early childhood schooling and different cultures

In France, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, more than 95 percent of all 3- to 5-year-olds are enrolled in government-sponsored schools. Norway also pays for education for 1- and 2-year-olds, and 80 percent of them attend -The reasons for the international variations are historical, economic, and political, but one message from child development research has reached almost every parent and politician worldwide—young children are amazingly capable and eager to learn.

Children's Theories

Piaget and Vygotsky both recognized that children work to understand their world. No contemporary developmental scientist doubts that.

Brain and Context of theory of mind

-Children who are slow in language development are also slow in theory of mind, a finding that makes developmentalists suggest that underlying deficits—genetic or neurological—may be crucial for both. -Developmentalists suggest that, in addition to specific efforts to improve language skills, therapists need to consider ways to advance executive function -Social interactions with other children advance theory of mind and executive function. This is especially evident when the other children are siblings of about the same age -Indeed, many studies have found that a child's ability to develop theories correlates with neurological maturation, which also correlates with advances in executive processing—the reflective, anticipatory capacity of the mind ^Detailed studies find that theory of mind activates several brain regions (Koster-Hale & Saxe, 2013). This makes sense, as theory of mind is a complex ability that humans develop in social contexts, so it is not likely to reside in just one neurological region. - Nurture is always important. The reason that formal education traditionally began at about age 6 is that at that point maturation of the prefrontal cortex naturally allows sustained attention, but many experiences before age 6 can advance brain development and thus ready a child for learning

centration

A characteristic of preoperational thought in which a young child focuses (centers) on one idea, excluding all others. -Piaget described symbolic thought as characteristic of preoperational thought. He noted four limitations that make logic difficult until about age 6: centration, focus on appearance, static reasoning, and irreversibility.

focus on appearance

A characteristic of preoperational thought in which a young child ignores all attributes that are not apparent. ex./ a girl given a short haircut might worry that she has turned into a boy. - In preoperational thought, a thing is whatever it appears to be—evident in the joy young children have in wearing the hats or shoes of a grown-up, clomping noisily and unsteadily around the living room.

head start

A federally funded early-childhood intervention program for low-income children of preschool age. -The goals for Head Start have changed over the decades, from lifting families out of poverty to promoting literacy, from providing dental care and immunizations to teaching Standard English, from focusing on 4-year-olds to including 2- and 3-year-olds. ^Although initially most Head Start programs were child-centered, they have become increasingly teacher-directed as waves of legislators have approved and shaped them. -A 2007 congressional reauthorization of funding for Head Start included a requirement for extensive evaluation ^Head Start improved literacy and math skills, oral health, and parental responsiveness during early childhood. >One explanation is that, unlike when Head Start began, many children in the comparison group were enrolled in other early-childhood programs—sometimes excellent ones, sometimes not. >Another explanation is that the elementary schools for low-SES children were of low quality, so the Head Start children sank back to the norm. ^The research found that benefits were strongest for children in poverty, or in rural areas, or with disabilities -Head start advances students in many ways including: 1. social skills 2. vocab 3. language development 4. math -but, compared to similar children who had only their mother's care, they had more behavior problems, according to their teachers ^one interpretation of that result is that the teachers reacted negatively to the self-assertion of the Head Start children, rating the children's attitude a problem when really it was the teachers who needed attitude adjustment.

Symbolic thought

A major accomplishment of preoperational intelligence that allows a child to think symbolically, including understanding that words can refer to things not seen and that an item, such as a flag, can symbolize something else (in this case, a country). -However, although vocabulary and imagination soar in early childhood, logical connections between ideas are not yet operational, which means that young children cannot yet apply their impressive new linguistic ability to comprehend reality. - Symbolic thought allows for the language explosion (detailed later in this chapter), which enables children to talk about thoughts and memories.

Theory of mind

A person's theory of what other people might be thinking. In order to have a theory of mind, children must realize that other people are not necessarily thinking the same thoughts that they themselves are. That realization seldom occurs before age 4. AKA Folk psychology -Mental processes—thoughts, emotions, beliefs, motives, and intentions—are among the most complicated and puzzling phenomena that humans encounter every day. -Some aspects include develop sooner, and some later. Longitudinal research finds that the preschool years typically begin with 2-year-olds not knowing that other people think differently than they do but end with 6-year-olds having a well developed theory of mind ex./ Part of theory of mind is understanding that someone else might have a mistaken belief. For example, a child watches a puppet named Max put a toy dog into a red box. Then Max leaves and the child sees the dog taken out of the red box and put in a blue box. -Theory of mind actually develops gradually, progressing from knowing that someone else might have different desires (at about age 3) to knowing that someone might hide their true feelings (about age 6). -culture matters. Even within one nation, regional differences appear, not in the universal progression but in specific examples (Duh et al., 2016). The most notable variations, however, are neurological, not cultural: Children who are deaf or have autism are remarkably slow to develop theory of mind

Listening, Talking and reading

Because understanding the printed word is crucial, a meta-analysis of about 300 studies analyzed which activities in early childhood aided reading later on. -Both vocabulary and phonics (precise awareness of the sounds of words) predicted literacy Five specific strategies and experiences were particularly effective for children of all income levels, languages, and ethnicities. 1. Code-focused teaching. In order for children to read, they must "break the code" from spoken to written words. It helps if they learn the letters and sounds of the alphabet (e.g., "A, alligators all around" or, conventionally, "B is for baby"). 2. Book-reading. Vocabulary as well as familiarity with pages and print will increase when adults read to children, allowing questions and conversation. 3. Parent education. When parents know how to stimulate cognition (as in book-reading), children become better readers. Adults need to use words to expand vocabulary. 4. Language enhancement. Within each child's zone of proximal development, mentors can expand vocabulary and grammar, based on the child's knowledge and experience. 5. Preschool programs. Children learn from teachers, songs, excursions, and other children. (We discuss variations of early education next, but every study finds that preschools advance language acquisition.)

Comparing child-centered and Teacher directed learning

Child-centered: Most developmentalists advocate child-centered programs. They fear that the child's joy and creativity will be squashed if there are specific goals set for all children. On the other hand, many parents and legislators want proof that children are learning things that will help them read, add, and so on. Teacher-directed: Many developmentalists resist legislative standards and academic tests for young children, arguing that social skills and creative play are essential for healthy development but difficult to measure. - A truly brilliant child is characterized by all the complex skills of executive function, not the easy-to-measure skills of letter recognition *Finding the right balance between formal and informal assessment, and between child-centered and teacher-directed learning, is a goal of many educators who hope each child has the education that works best for him or her

Logical Extension

Closely related to fast-mapping is a phenomenon called logical extension: After learning a word, children use it to describe other objects in the same category. ex./ Bilingual children who don't know a word in the language they are speaking often insert a word from the other language, code-switching in the middle of a sentence. That mid-sentence switch may be considered wrong, but actually that is evidence of the child's drive to communicate. ^Soon, children realize who understands which language, and they avoid substitutions when speaking to a monolingual person. That illustrates theory of mind. -Every language has difficult concepts that are expressed in words; children everywhere learn them eventually. ^Abstractions are particularly difficult; actions are easier to understand. A hole is to dig; love is hugging; hearts beat.

STEM

Developmentalists find that a person's interest in such vocations begins with learning about numbers and science (counting, shapes, fractions, molecular structure, the laws of motion) in early childhood. An understanding of math develops month by month, before age 6, as children learn to: Count objects, with one number per item (called one-to-one correspondence). Remember times and ages (bedtime at 8 P.M., a child is 4 years old, and so on). Understand sequence (first child wins, last child loses). Know which numbers are greater than others (e.g., that 7 is greater than 4). Understand how to make things move, from toy cars to soccer balls. Appreciate temperature effects, from ice to steam. -Especially in math, computers can promote learning. Educational software becomes "a conduit for collaborative learning" as Web 2.0 (interactive) programs respond to the particular abilities and needs of each child.

Acquiring Grammar

Grammar: Includes structures, techniques, and rules that communicate meaning. Knowledge of grammar is essential for learning to speak, read, and write. -Children apply rules of grammar as soon as they figure them out, using their own theories about how language works and their experience regarding when and how often various rules apply ex./ English-speaking children quickly learn to add an s to form the plural: Toddlers follow that rule when they ask for two cookies or more blocks.

social mediation

Human interaction that expands and advances understanding, often through words that one person uses to explain something to another. -Second, language advances thinking by facilitating the social interaction that is vital to learning (Vygotsky, 2012). ^This social mediation function of speech occurs as mentors guide mentees in their zone of proximal development, learning numbers, recalling memories, and following routines.

Language shift

Language-minority parents fear that their children will make a language shift, becoming more fluent in the school language than in their home language. ^Language shift occurs everywhere when theory-theory leads children to conclude that their first language is inferior to another one -Remember that young children are preoperational: They center on the immediate status of their language (not on future usefulness or past glory), on appearance more than substance.

Learning two languages

Language-minority people (those who speak a language that is not their nation's dominant one) suffer if they do not also speak the majority language -In the United States, those who are not proficient in English have lower school achievement, diminished self-esteem, and inadequate employment, as well as many other problems. ^Fluency in English erases these liabilities; fluency in another language then becomes an asset. -Early childhood is the best time to learn languages. Neuroscience finds that if adults mastered two languages when they were young, both languages are located in the same areas of the brain with no detriment to the cortex structure ^Being bilingual seems to benefit the brain lifelong, further evidence for plasticity. -Adults can also master the grammar and vocabulary of an unfamiliar language, but pronunciation, idioms, and exceptions to the rules are rarely mastered after puberty. Do not equate pronunciation and spoken fluency with comprehension and reading ability.

Language Learning

Learning language is the premier cognitive accomplishment of early childhood. Two-year-olds use short, telegraphic sentences ("Want cookie," "Where Daddy go?"), omitting adjectives, adverbs, and articles. -By contrast, 5-year-olds seem to be able to say almost anything (see At About This Time) using every part of speech.

Child-centered programs

Many programs are called child-centered, or developmental, because they stress each child's development and growth. Teachers in such programs believe children need to follow their own interests rather than adult directions. -Most child-centered programs encourage artistic expression. Some educators argue that young children are gifted in seeing the world more imaginatively than older people do. ^According to advocates of child-centered programs, this peak of creative vision should be encouraged; children need many opportunities to tell stories, draw pictures, dance, and make music for their own delight. >academics are still incorporated -Child-centered programs are often influenced by Piaget, who emphasized that each child will discover new ideas if given a chance, or by Vygotsky, who thought that children learn from playing, especially with other children, with adult guidance.

egocentrism

Piaget's term for children's tendency to think about the world entirely from their own personal perspective. -Egocentrism is not selfishness. One 3-year-old chose to buy a model car as a birthday present for his mother: His "behavior was not selfish or greedy; he carefully wrapped the present and gave it to his mother with an expression that clearly showed that he expected her to love it"

preoperational intelligence

Piaget's term for cognitive development between the ages of about 2 and 6; it includes language and imagination (which involve symbolic thought), but logical, operational thinking is not yet possible at this stage. - Piaget called early-childhood thinking preoperational because children do not yet use logical operations (reasoning processes) -All four characteristics of preoperational thought are evident in this mistake. Young children fail to understand conservation because they focus (center) on what they see (appearance), noticing only the immediate (static) condition. It does not occur to them that they could reverse the process and re-create the level of a moment earlier (irreversibility).

Montessori schools

Schools that offer early-childhood education based on the philosophy of Maria Montessori, which emphasizes careful work and tasks that each young child can do. Background: One type of child-centered school began in the slums of Rome in 1907, when Maria Montessori opened a nursery school that she believes children needed structured, individualized projects to give them a sense of accomplishment. -emphasize individual pride and achievement, presenting many literacy-related tasks (e.g., outlining letters and looking at books) to young children. ^Specific materials differ from those that Montessori developed, but the underlying philosophy is the same. ^Children seek out learning tasks; they do not sit quietly in groups while a teacher instructs them. That makes Montessori programs child-centered

Intervention Programs

Several programs designed for children from low-SES families were established in the United States decades ago. Some solid research on the results of these programs is now available.

Long term gains of intensive programs

Specifics are debatable, but empirical evidence and longitudinal evaluation find that preschool education advances learning. Ideally, each program has a curriculum that guides practice, all the adults collaborate, and experienced teachers respond to each child. - Early education has substantial long-term benefits that become most apparent when children are in the third grade or later. ^By age 10, children who had been enrolled in any one of these three programs scored higher on math and reading achievement tests than did other children from the same backgrounds, schools, and neighborhoods. > They were less likely to be placed in classes for children with special needs, or to repeat a year of school, or to drop out of high school before graduation. -In adolescence, the children who had undergone intensive preschool education had higher aspirations, possessed a greater sense of achievement, and were less likely to have been abused. ^As young adults, they were more likely to attend college and less likely to go to jail. As middle-aged adults, they were more often employed, paying taxes, healthy, and not needing government subsidies -This combined child-centered and teacher-directed programs, with all the teachers working together on the same goals, so children were not confused. The parents reinforced what the children learned. In all three, teachers deliberately involved parents, and each program included strategies to enhance the home-school connection. ^These programs are expensive, ranging from $6-8 thousand a year; however, the decreased need for special education and other social services later on made early education a "wise investment". Additional benefits to society over the child's lifetime, including increased employment and tax revenues, as well as reduced crime, are worth much more than the cost of the programs. -Most state programs pay only for children living in poverty, but some wealthy families pay tuition for preschool education. ^In inflation-adjusted dollars, per-pupil spending by states was $5,129 per child in 2002 and $4,121 in 2014 (Barnett et al., 2015). That means less child-centered learning (which is more expensive) and more teacher-directed education.

Teacher-directed programs

Teacher-directed preschools stress academics, often taught by one adult to the entire group. -The goal of teacher-directed programs is to make all children "ready to learn" when they enter elementary school. For that reason, basic skills are stressed, including precursors to reading, writing, and arithmetic, perhaps through teachers asking questions that children answer together in unison. -The curriculum includes learning the names of letters, numbers, shapes, and colors according to a set timetable; every child naps, snacks, and goes to the bathroom on schedule as well. ^For that reason, basic skills are stressed, including precursors to reading, writing, and arithmetic, perhaps through teachers asking questions that children answer together in unison. Behavior is also taught, as children learn to respect adults, to follow schedules, to hold hands when they go on outings, and so on. >Children practice forming letters, sounding out words, counting objects, and writing their names. If a 4-year-old learns to read, that is success. (In a child-centered program, that might arouse suspicion that there was too little time to play or socialize.) -Many teacher-directed programs were inspired by behaviorism, which emphasizes step-by-step learning and repetition, with reinforcement (praise, gold stars, prizes) for accomplishment. ^Another inspiration for teacher-directed programs comes from information-processing research indicating that children who have not learned basic vocabulary and listening skills by kindergarten often fall behind in primary school.

scaffolding

Temporary support that is tailored to a learner's needs and abilities and aimed at helping the learner master the next task in a given learning process. -Learning depends, in part, on the wisdom and willingness of mentors to provide scaffolding ^Good mentors provide plenty of scaffolding, encouraging children to look both ways before crossing the street (pointing out speeding trucks, cars, and buses while holding the child's hand) or letting them stir the cake batter (perhaps covering the child's hand on the spoon handle, in guided participation).

overregularization

The application of rules of grammar even when exceptions occur, making the language seem more "regular" than it actually is.

animism

The belief that natural objects and phenomena are alive, moving around, and having sensations and abilities that are human-like. - Preoperational thought is symbolic and magical, not logical and realistic. ^Childish animism gradually disappears as the mind becomes more mature

executive function

The cognitive ability to organize and prioritize the many thoughts that arise from the various parts of the brain, allowing the person to anticipate, strategize, and plan behavior. -the ability to use the mind to plan, remember, inhibit some impulses, and execute others. This is an ability that develops throughout life, allowing students of all ages to learn from experience, but it first is evident and measured during early childhood ^Usually these three components comprise executive function: working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control—which is the ability to focus on a task and ignore distractions. ex./one test of executive function during the preschool years is to ask a child to say "night" when seeing a picture of the sun and to say "day" when seeing a picture of the moon. Children who are able to do this are flexible, able to stop their initial impulse. During the preschool years, various programs inspired by Vygotsky (e.g., Tools of the Mind) promote executive function

Theory-theory

The idea that children attempt to explain everything they see and hear by constructing theories. -According to theory-theory, the best explanation for cognition is that humans seek reasons, causes, and underlying principles to make sense of their experience. ^That requires curiosity and thought, connecting bits of knowledge and observations, which is what young children do. ^Children follow the same processes that scientists do: asking questions, developing hypotheses, gathering data, and drawing conclusions. ex./ One common theory-theory is that everyone intends to do things correctly. For that reason, when asked to repeat something ungrammatical that an adult says, children often correct the grammar. ^They theorize that the adult intended to speak grammatically but failed to do so

Private speech

The internal dialogue that occurs when people talk to themselves (either silently or out loud). -is evident when young children talk aloud to review, decide, and explain events to themselves (and, incidentally, to anyone else within earshot). ^Older preschoolers are more circumspect, sometimes whispering. >Audible or not, private speech aids cognition and self-reflection; adults should encourage it

Pragmatics

The practical use of language that includes the ability to adjust language communication according to audience and context. -knowing which words, tones, and grammatical forms to use with whom -In some languages, it is essential to know which set of words to use when a person is older, or when someone is not a close friend, or when grandparents are on the mother's side or the father's. -English does not make those distinctions, but pragmatics is important for early-childhood learning nonetheless. ^Children learn variations in vocabulary and tone depending on the context, and once theory of mind is established, on the audience. >Knowledge of pragmatics is evident when a 4-year-old pretends to be a doctor, a teacher, or a parent. Each role requires different speech. -The pragmatics of polite speech require more social understanding than many young children possess

conservation

The principle that the amount of a substance remains the same (i.e., is conserved) even when its appearance changes. ex./Suppose two identical glasses contain the same amount of pink lemonade, and the liquid from one of these glasses is poured into a taller, narrower glass. When young children are asked whether one glass contains more or, alternatively, if both glasses contain the same amount, those younger than 6 answer that the narrower glass (with the higher level) has more. - Further, conservation and many more logical ideas are understood bit by bit, with active, guided experience. Glimmers of understanding may be apparent as young as age 4

fast-mapping

The speedy and sometimes imprecise way in which children learn new words by tentatively placing them in mental categories according to their perceived meaning. ex./ Picture books offer many opportunities to advance vocabulary through scaffolding and fast-mapping. -This process explains children's learning of colors. Generally, 2-year-olds fast-map color names ex./ For instance, "blue" is used for some greens or grays. It is not that children cannot see the hues. ^Instead, they apply words they know to broad categories and have not yet learned the boundaries that adults use, or specifics such as chartreuse, turquoise, olive, navy. -As one team of scientists explains, adults' color words are the result of slow-mapping (K. Wagner et al., 2013), which is not what young children do.

Vygotsky: Social Learning

Vygotsky emphasized another side of early cognition—that each person's thinking is shaped by other people's wishes and goals. His focus on the sociocultural aspects of development contrasted with Piaget's emphasis on the individual. -Vygotsky believed that cognitive development is embedded in the social context at every age (Vygotsky, 1987). ^He stressed that children are curious and observant of everything in their world. ^They ask questions—about how machines work, why weather changes, where the sky ends—and seek answers from more knowledgeable mentors, who might be their parents, teachers, older siblings, or just a stranger. >The answers they get are affected by the mentors' perceptions and assumptions—that is, their culture—which shapes their thought.

zone of proximal development (ZPD)

Vygotsky's term for the skills—cognitive as well as physical—that a person can exercise only with assistance, not yet independently. -Proximal means "near," so the ZPD includes the ideas and skills children are close to mastering but cannot yet demonstrate independently.

overimitation

When a person imitates an action that is not a relevant part of the behavior to be learned. Overimitation is common among 2- to 6-year-olds when they imitate adult actions that are irrelevant and inefficient. -Children are eager to learn from mentors, allowing "rapid, high-fidelity intergenerational transmission of tool-use skills and for the perpetuation and generation of cultural forms" ex./ Overimitation was demonstrated in a series of experiments with 3- to 6-year-olds, 64 of them from San communities (pejoratively called Bushmen) in South Africa and Botswana, and, for comparison, 64 from cities in Australia and 19 from aboriginal communities within Australia. ^Australian middle-class adults often scaffold for children with words and actions, but San adults rarely do. -Overimitation is part of a universal trait of young children to follow what adults do. ^They are "socially motivated" by nature, and that impulse makes them ready to learn as long as the adults structure and guide that learning. ^Adults do exactly that, using eye contact and facial expressions to facilitate learning

Guided participation

children learn through guided participation, as mentors teach them. Parents are their first guides, although children are guided by many others, too. According to Vygotsky, children learn because their mentors do the following: Present challenges. Offer assistance (without taking over). Add crucial information. Encourage motivation.