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When trying to understand young children (between age 2-6) there…
When trying to understand young children (between age 2-6) there are a few things to know about the ways that they think. Young children often making what are called scale errors, this means they fail to think about the size of an object and how that might influence how they use it. Often times little kids making scale errors will try to get into a tiny car or sit on a dollhouse chair. Because of their current level of brain development, they struggle with problem solving, holding multiple things in mind at once (they have a hard time with lists of more than 2 or 3 things) and they struggle with planning and controlling their behavior. They also confuse appearance and reality, which is why my younger brother was so terrified of the easter bunny, santa clause, and anything in a costume. When he was a little kid, he thought they were real… this is due to centration.
Children in this age group also struggle with centration.This means young children have a tendency to focus on only one feature of an object at a time (my brother could only focus on the fact that it looked like a scary bunny. he wasn’t able to realize that it was a person, in a costume..he could only focus on the mask). For example, if I gave everyone 1 piece of cake, a young child would be more focused on the number of pieces of cake each person has, regardless of the size of these pieces. A young child might get upset that their older sibling’s toast is cut into two pieces and their piece is still whole. This is because the young child is focused more on the number of pieces that their older sibling has (2) rather than the size of each piece. So even though they have the same amount, to that young child it looks like their older sibling has more. It’s not until they get a little older (around 6 or 7) that they can focus on multiple features (like the size of the toast pieces, the number of toast pieces..or that the easter bunny is just a person inside of a costume) this is known as decentration. This is similar to how children understand conservation which is things like the number/amount, length, liquid, mass, area, weight, and volume.
Watch this video https://youtu.be/gnArvcWaH6I
of a young child exploring this idea. Answer these questions: What did you notice about this child’s line of thinking? What mistakes did he make in each section?
Children in this age group have a tendency to consider everything in the world entirely from their own point of view, this is known as egocentrism. If you ask a three year old what daddy wants for his birthday, they might say a teddy bear. Because that is what that three year old wants, they can’t put themselves in their dad’s shoes and think “hmm..dad is a 40 year old man.. he probably wants new golf clubs for his birthday.” Piaget developed the “three mountain problem” to test this in children. For part of your assignment,
watch this video https://youtu.be/RDJ0qJTLohM
demonstrating two children doing the three mountain task (the first child is younger, the second one is older). Answer these questions:What differences did you notice between the younger child and the older child? How is this a demonstration of the younger child struggling with egocentrism?
Theory of mind is how someone’s beliefs, desires, and mental states combine and shape their actions. It requires some level of understanding of what other people might be thinking, or knowledge that they already have. This is something young children tend to struggle to understand. For example, if Aunt Kate calls little Lucy on the phone and she says to Lucy “What are you doing?” Lucy might respond “I’m playing with this!” Because Lucy fails to realize that Aunt Kate can’t see what she is holding, since she is on the other end of the phone rather than in the room. The False-Belief task was developed to assess children’s theory of mind.
Watch this video https://youtu.be/RUpxZksAMPw
of a young child failing the false belief task and one child passing. And answer these questions:What did the young child do to demonstrate “failing” this task? What did the older child do to demonstrate “passing” this task? What did the younger child believe about the dolls? What might be some other explanations as to why the younger child failed this task? (You can reference your book or the slides for this question if you can’t think of anything).
One final question: How do you think knowledge grows in the mind of a child? How do children start to master some of the tasks above? (there is no correct answer for this, I just want to know what you think).
