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15: Cognitive Development in Early Childhood
Opening the book…
Early childhood is a time of pretending, blending fact and fiction, and learning to think of the world using language. As young children transition from needing to touch, feel, and hear about the world to learning basic principles about how it works, they hold some interesting initial ideas. For example, while adults have no concerns with taking a bath, a child of three might genuinely worry about being sucked down the drain. 1
A child might protest if told that something will happen “tomorrow,” but be willing to accept an explanation that an event will occur “today after we sleep.” Or the young child may ask, “How long are we staying? From here to here?” while pointing to two points on a table. Concepts such as tomorrow, time, size, and distance are not easy to grasp at this young age. Understanding size, time, distance, fact, and fiction are all tasks that are part of cognitive development in the preschool years. 3