In an article about cognitive development, we cannot fully talk about cognitive development without sharing Piaget's research and findings.
Piaget followed children, especially his own children, in an extremely systematic and disciplined manner and brought his findings to the field of child development. Now, let's examine the cognitive development processes in early childhood according to Paiget. Between the ages of 2 and 6, children are in a stage Paiget calls "preoperative." At this stage, children do the following:
❏ They begin to express external reality using mental images, words, gestures, facial expressions and symbols.
❏ They can think about objects and events that are not actually there.
❏ They have difficulty and struggle to separate their own point of view from others. ❏ They get confused because they cannot yet understand the cause and effect relationship and they try to understand causality.
The main feature of this period is the tendency to focus on a single feature of a situation or object and ignore other features, called "centration". You can show a child two different balls, both with red stripes but the other color being different. The child will randomly choose one of the two and will seem quite confident in his choice. From this stage to a state called "decentralization" and the ability to focus on and take into account the different features of the object is like a homework of this period. When the child achieves this, he/she completes an important cognitive development step.
Understanding that someone else's perspective is different:
Egocentrism is thinking that the way one sees objects and situations through one's own eyes is seen in the same way by everyone else. Seeing oneself at the center is a feature of this period. In the “false belief test” study, researchers showed that between the ages of 3 and 5, children actually experience a shift from egocentrism to understanding that others' perspectives may be different. We can summarize this study as follows:
It was stated that the boy named Ahmet put his toy car under his bed before going out with his mother that day. Let's count. His mother takes the toy and puts it in the closet without him seeing it, thus changing its location. Let's imagine that Ahmet wants to buy his toy car after going out. Now, let the 3-year-old and 5-year-old children watch the video of this story and ask, "Where do you think Ahmet will look for his toy?" If you ask, how do you think the answers of 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds will differ?
Researchers, who created a story exactly like this one, found that children go through a developmental stage related to understanding the perspective of others. Three-year-old children said that they would look for Ahmet's toy in the closet. Because from their perspective, the toy was in the cabinet last and they cannot evaluate the incident from Ahmet's perspective. But 5-year-olds will most likely give you the correct answer. Because, unlike him, a 5-year-old child is aware that Ahmet does not see the toy's location changing, and can evaluate the situation from his perspective.
Learning the difference between appearance and reality
Children younger than three may be afraid of someone wearing a witch or dragon mask. Because they have difficulty distinguishing between appearance and reality. Understanding that reality and appearance are different is a stage of cognitive development.
In a study, children were presented with some objects whose appearance was deceptive. For example; They showed the children a sponge that looked like a stone, a stone that looked like an egg, and a soap that looked like a block. Objects were given names before touching them. The children were then allowed to touch the objects to explore, allowing them to discover what the object actually was. Finally, the children were asked what the objects looked like. Three-year-old children said that the stone-like sponge looked like a sponge, and the egg-like stone looked like a stone, and the block-like soap looked like soap. However, five-year-old children did not make this mistake because they could distinguish between appearance and reality. Because five-year-old children have acquired the ability to distinguish between reality and appearance.
Cause and effect relationship Learning the two
At this stage of development, children learn more about causality. They look more carefully at situations where they cannot establish a cause and effect relationship, become curious and start looking for new explanations. This is a period when endless questions are asked to adults by children. “Why is the sky blue?” “What are clouds made of?” “What happens when people die?” “Where do babies come from?” Endless questions such as these are a distinctive feature of this developmental period. Relationships between objects and events are established and investigated; in cases of unanswered and inconsistent situations, their attention to that situation increases and they continue to search for answers.
Distinguishing between living and nonliving things
Understanding the difference between living and nonliving things is quite a complicated task. It contains an abstractness and complexity that young children have difficulty fully understanding. Separating the growing, independently moving, having thoughts and feelings as living beings and the others as non-living is a complex stage of cognitive development that children in this period try to understand. It is a very important milestone.
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