What is Cognitive Development and how does it help us educate our children? After all, as parents, it is really obvious that children at different ages, have capabilities that are roughly commensurate with their age. 6-month-olds cannot walk, toddlers do not present their ideas in the same manner as a 10-year-old, and teenagers are closer to adults than children. So, how does developmental science help a parent when they have a “case study” right there, in front of them, every day?  How can developmental science give a parent, who is constructing a curriculum, real help?

The reader may have heard of Piaget and knows what Developmental Psychology is. That alone alerts one that there are developmental differences that may be hiding or not readily apparent to a child’s parent. However, if one steps back for a moment and thinks about the differences between a child who is nearly 5 and a child who is about 7, the differences are really marked. That’s why Cognitive Science is interested in this time period between 5 and 7. It is the time when children are in Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten, as well as being able to participate in several other outside activities that were not available to the child even at age 4. In short, since the child, between the ages of 5 and 7 is very “educable,” it follows that the more we know how to approach that child, the more effective we can be, and the more interested the child will be.

Piaget tells us that children's intelligence develops over time, with each stage building on prior, successful stages. As children consolidate earlier processes they grow, but this happens across many domains. Children do not change their thinking across all domains and competencies all at once. During the time period between 5 and 7, these processes change quickly and drastically.

Theory of Mind (ToM)

How do we all understand one other? Like other processes, we are rarely aware of our own ToM. We all utilize intangible but necessary entities such as intentions, desires, beliefs, and knowledge to make the behavior of other understandable and predictable. If you have ever been with an autistic individual, one of the most salient components of the problem is the lack of a ToM. Theory of mind is the ability to mentally represent and interpret (make a mental “model”) cognition and emotion, regardless of reality. The development of children's ToM is currently receiving a great deal of study and focuses on mental states, such as beliefs, knowledge, desires, emotions, and intentions. There have been many studies of young children's developing understanding of false beliefs. Theory of Mind (ToM) involves False Belief Understanding (recognition that others can have wrong beliefs), and interacts with the child’s personal and social domains. The ToM research exemplifies Developmental Psychology’s emphasis on finding how higher cognitive functions develop.

One such cognitive function is making predictions about what people will do in situations where their desires conflict with rules: Is desire more important than rules, or are rules more important than desire? Studies show that there are no significant age differences between 4 and 7 years in predicting that people would comply with rules that intruded on the personal domain (such as what to play with, what clothes the child likes and dislikes). However, in situations involving moral rules, predictions of compliance with those rules significantly nearly doubles from age 4 to 7. 7-year-olds are twice as likely to follow rules for morally essential situations than 4-year-olds (a situation may be taking a toy away from a child who is threatening another child with that toy). Another related finding is that older (7 & older) children tend to judge that the characters in the stories presented to them would comply with rules significantly more often for moral-essential than for personal-essential trials.

Your children will have their theories of mind, which will be apparent to you in their descriptions of everyday events involving other people. As their theories of mind grow, integrate it into reading comprehension. Ask them about what the characters in the stories are thinking, feeling, etc. Be interested in these stories yourself. Talk about the books they are reading at the dinner table and in the car. As their abilities come “on line,” you will know it via how their conceptions change and become richer.

Children’s Reasoning About Attentional Focus

Attentional focus is an often-discussed topic among most parents and educators today. Many parents I meet are worried that their child does not have adequate “focus” to do well in school. Looking at attention from a child’s point of view, research indicates that children can believe that attentional focus can be divided among several tasks at once, while others know that it is possible to focus on only one thing at a time. Basically, the division is within the 5-7 year shift. Around age 4-5, children have no idea that attention must be focused, while 6-7 year olds understand the concept of focus and know how distractions disrupt the focus. What a large body of research tells us is that children acquire a basic understanding of attention during the late preschool and early elementary school years.

Attentional focus is largely mediated by the child’s neurological abilities. The brain takes nearly 30 years to develop, so what is not developed at age 5? Age 7? The answer is, a lot. Attentional focus is one excellent place to observe brain development taking place. How old does a child have to be to respond to a parental command to “Leave the cookies alone?” Most parents know that they cannot rely on their children to inhibit their cookie-taking behavior. That is a good example of immaturity (an immature brain). Attentional “focus” takes a lot of time, and involves many sub-processes in the brain. Here is a short list of some facts that may help you.

• The two brain sites that mediate “focus” are not working at age 5. One of them begins to work about age 7, and the other “joins in” about age 10 or 11. However, they are not fully developed for many more years. Therefore, your child will have a limited “attention span.” Most parents have a hard time accepting this fact, probably because they fear the child has “ADHD” or a related disorder. If you want to help your child increase his or her span to the limits of her physical ability, use effective reward systems. Explaining these systems is beyond the scope of this article, but know that rewards and incentives not only work but, if used correctly, result in a natural love of the thing the child is being rewarded for.

• The younger the child, the less ability that child has to filter out environmental happenings. Immature brains do not accommodate well. Accommodation is the brain’s ability to filter out irrelevant stimuli. This process takes time, and is not fully operational until the individual’s late 20’s. Attentional focus is affected greatly by other children in the environment, the T.V. going, extraneous noise, etc. Create a noise-free work environment for your child, and give your child multiple breaks.

• Attention and focus is not just the two brain areas I talked about above (the lateral prefrontal cortex); it is the final common result of several processes all working in concert. Visual attention requires excellent lighting. A comfortable work environment evokes positive emotions. All of these things are important.

Memory in 5-7 Year Old Children

Parents typically are in awe of their young child’s memory. Most parents believe their young preschool children have better memories than they do. The error that parents are making (understandably) is that they are not looking at all aspects of the child’s memory. They are only viewing the portion that they witness when a child recalls something that happened long ago. Memory is not one entity, but many different processes. Many of those processes are developmental in nature.

Generally, preschoolers generally overestimate their own and other people's mental abilities and fail to identify their and others’ limitations. With regards to memory itself, preschoolers regularly overestimate their memory span, which appears to be part of a general insensitivity to cognitive limitations.

What about actual measures of how 5-year-olds remember? Research indicates that young children use free recall for recall; they do not engage in memory strategies, such as mnemonics or categorization. They do not recognize categories and do not use categorical understanding even when category are pointed out to them; 7-year-olds recognize and use categories. The findings show that the young children’s knowledge base is largely made up of scripts for familiar events, especially when memories are about scenes, events and other items presented to them for remembering. Children through age 5 also do not utilize metamemory (know that they know).

It appears that the changes in memory functioning between 5-7 is mediated by several functions. One such function is the increased use of language. Language makes it possible to gain a large knowledge fund. This fund goes to create schema (overlearned beliefs, etc.), which then allows the individual to integrate greater and greater sources of information. Metamemory requires reflection, which relies on a child’s growing ability to benefit from direction from others.

Memory exemplifies a new level of thinking present in 7-year-olds that was not present in 5- year-olds. Until about age 5, language and memory merely represent concrete happenings in the environment and largely exist as tools of communication only. However, after age 5, the child quickly learns to organize learned material that is not immediately present, and by manipulating those representations, language, at age 7, is now a tool of cognition.

Knowing how memory functions is crucial for parents. As an example, piano instruction is largely done by rote (rote memorization of notes), which children, starting about age 6, are quite adept at doing. By age 7, their rote memory skills are superior. However, when taught by rote, the child does not develop understanding, which means the child will either never develop higher cognitive functions or the child will have to somehow figure it out on his own & teach himself, or find someone who recognizes it. Rote memorization, while tempting, is a really bad idea. Beginning at age 5, children are able to recognize categories (concepts) and organize their thinking in these categories. By learning “how to” as much as possible, children then can go beyond what their lessons have taught them, applying what they know to related problems and instances.

Self-Understanding in the 5-7-year-shift

There are definite qualitative differences in terms of viewing the 'self' between children just before age 5 and children older than 7. This difference can be seen in noticing the difference in self-attributes between the two age groups. Younger (before 5) children have concrete descriptions of behaviors; they tend to define themselves by what they do ("I can climb to the top of the monkey bars!" or "I can count to 100!—listen!” (then recites alphabet). In addition to these concrete behavioral descriptions, young children define themselves in terms of preferences (I like peanut butter), and possessions (I have a green bicycle). These representations of the self are all about behavior, not higher order concepts as in older children.

Beginning around age 7, children tend to describe themselves in terms of higher concepts, such as being smart with some things, dumb with others, popular at school. They now compare themselves to other children; their speech bears out these comparisons; "I am smart in math and reading, but dumb in social studies." The cognition behind these beliefs comes from a combination of many experiences, not just one point in time (like the younger children). The older the children become, the more they can generalize over many experiences.

Age 4-5: The child observes others but is not aware that the others are observing the child.

Age 5-6: The child is aware that others are watching; the child inhibits behavior in response to anticipated criticism.

Ages 7-8: The child internalizes opinions of others & self-evaluates.

Another domain of vast difference is opposite attributes and feelings. Small children cannot say that they have two feelings or two attributes at once. They will say they are either happy or scared, but cannot be both at once. Older children acknowledge the ability to be in both states at once.

Of course, their cognition affects the development of the self, self-esteem and understanding of individual differences. During the five-to-seven year shift, development is fragmented and uneven; one day a child may demonstrate an advanced ToM (for example), while the next day the very same child may have abandoned that viewpoint and returned to earlier years. Around age 7 the attributes of an older child appear to be more set and less amenable to stress and environmental influences.

Understanding and using the understanding during contact with children at this age-range is crucial for any educator. Knowing 'what to do when' is the key to education of children in the late preschool and early school years. Parents can learn to spot the differences in their own children if they understand what to look for. MZ

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