Unit 2 Case Study

Unit 2 Project: Katy

By

Nikki Since

The Pre-operational Cognitive Stage is the second stage on Piaget’s Cognitive learning model. It extends from about 2 to 7 years of age, in which rapid growth in representation takes place but thought is not yet logical (Berk, 2008). The most obvious change is an extraordinary increase in the child’s mental representation. In Piaget’s model he has acknowledged that language is our most flexible means of mental representation. For example when we think of words, we can deal with the past, present, and future all at once, this helps to combine concepts in unique ways.

Piaget pre-operational model did not regard language as the primary ingredient in childhood cognitive change. Toddlers use a remarkable array of cognitive categories long before they are able to use words to label them (Berk, 2008). Young children learn language at a very fast pace. Although, it has long been clear that language learning depends on social interactions (Mundy, Seibert, Hogan, Fagan, 1983), as well as phonological and lexical coding, more recently, it has been suggested that language all depends on domain-general cognitive processes (Bloom, 1993; Hollich, Hirsch-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2000).

Work on infant cognition has begun to show that information processing abilities can be isolated in the first years of life and they are connected to the future general cognitive outcomes. For example; when using a battery measure on infants tasks assessing their performance in four specific areas—memory, processing, speed, attention and representational competence –Rose and her colleagues identified basic abilities in the first year of life that are structurally distinct (Rose, Feldman, Jankowski, 2004, ,2005b), sensitive to deficits associated with preterm birth, a risk factor for later cognitive deficits (Rose, Feldman, Jankowski, 2001a, 2002, 2005a), and related to later mental ability (Rose, Feldman, Jankowski, & Van Rossem, 2005, 2007)....