Knowing Children: Experiments in Conversation and Cognition (Essays in Developmental Psychology) - Hardcover

Siegal, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0863777678 ISBN 13: 9780863777677

Publisher: Psychology Press, 1997

Synopsis

It has often been maintained that young children's knowledge is limited to perceptual appearances. In this "preoperational" stage of development, there are profound conceptual limitations in that they have little understanding of numerical and causal relations and are incapable of insight into the minds of others. Their apparent inability to perform well on traditional developmental measures has led researchers to accept a model of the young child as plagued by conceptual deficits. These ideas have had a major impact on educational programs. Many have accepted the view that the young are not ready for instruction and that their memory and understanding is vulnerable to distortion, especially in subjects such as mathematics and science. However, the second edition of this book provides further evidence that children's stage-like performance can frequently be reinterpreted in terms of a clash between the conversational worlds of adults and children. In many settings, children may not share an adult's well-meaning purpose or use of words in questioning. Under these conditions, they do not disclose the depth of their memory and understanding and may respond incorrectly even when they are certain of the right answer.
In this light, a different model of development emerges with significant implications for instruction in educational, health, and legal settings. It attributes more competence to young children than is frequently recognized and reflects the position that development in evolutionarily important domains is guided by implicit constraints on learning. It proposes that attention to young children's conversational experience is a powerful means to illustrate what they know.

About this title

Synopsis:

Concerned with conversation and cognition in young children, this text assesses their profound conceptual limitations, that is, that they have little understanding of numerical and causal relations and are incapable of insight into the minds of others. The text considers how this inability has led researchers to accept a model of the young child as plagued by conceptual deficits. With this in mind, the text assesses how a greater degree of competence should be attributed to children to reflect the position that development in evolutionary important domains is guided by implicit constraints on learning.

About this edition

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0863777678
• ISBN 13: 9780863777677
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208