Cognitive and Language Development

Social Welfare Department
Clinical Psychological Service Branch
Central Psychological Support Service
Staff Training for ICCC
Topic: Training Strategies (2)
Content
Promoting Cognitive Skills

Application of Cognitive Theories
 Piaget
 Vygotsky
 Information Processing
Promoting Language & Communication
Skills
Promoting Social & Emotional Skills
Promoting Cognitive Skills
兩歲九個月
三歲八個月
四歲八個月
Piaget
 Searched for a systematic pattern in the
production of children’s errors and worked
towards logically, internally consistent
explanation of children’s errors
Studied thought and language in preschoolers
and early school-age children. Believed that
intelligence arises progressively in the baby’s
repetitive activities
Described how concepts of space, time, causes,
and physical objects arise in development
Investigated the beginnings of fantasy and
symbolism in infancy
“Stages” in theories of development
Piaget’s stages of development
Mechanism of change: adaptation (Assimilation + Accommodation)
Educational Implication
 Provide preschoolers with problem-solving
activities in classrooms. Puzzles, simple scientific
experiments, quantifying and counting games,
blocks & cooking etc.
 Create elaborate dramatic play centers in
classrooms and include realistic and nonrealistic
props that allow children to play out real
experiences in their lives.
 Ask distancing questions—questions that
encourage children to think about persons,
objects, or events that are not immediately
present.
Educational Implication
 Provide sensory experiences include touch,
examine, and experiment with concrete objects
 Abstract learning experiences, such as rote-
memory math or reading exercises or "sit still and
listen" instruction, should be avoided.
 Errors and misinterpretations of the world should
be accepted.
 Take great care in explaining phenomena to
children through engage children in discussions.
Opportunities to observe natural phenomena
should be provided.
Educational Implication
 Simple problems should be posed to help
preschoolers think about more than one object,
event, or person at a time.
 Ask questions or make comments that induce
children to think about more than one attribute at
a time.
 Provide activities that prompt children to reverse
their activities.
 Provide activities that allow them to act upon
objects and observe results such as blowing balls
through a maze, rolling toy cars down a ramp…
Educational Implication
 Ask causal questions: "What happened when
you? . . ." "What would happen if you? . . ." "What
can you do to make . . . happen?"
 Plan classroom experiences in which preschoolers
take the perspectives of others such as guessing
games that require children to give clues to help
other players guess an object or person promote
perspective-taking.
 Provide dramatic play, in which children must
assume the roles of others.
Educational Implication
 Assist preschool children in reflecting on their
own feelings and those of others particularly in
real social problems
 Help children think about intentions and
motives in real-life conflicts
 Provide activities that encourage children to
remember objects or events.
Educational Implication
(children with special needs)
 Provide simpler materials—basic pounding, noisemaking, or causality activities—that are designed
for much younger children.
 Place simple play props (零碎物件)—dolls, dishes,
and toy telephones—near more complex thematic
play materials in classrooms to engage children
with cognitive impairment.
 Moderately stimulating toys—those that are
colorful, make noise, and are textured—can be
provided to capture and hold the interest of
children with mental retardation.
 Novel (新奇) objects can be provided when this
interest in more familiar materials wanes.
Vygotsky
 Social and cultural factors are important in the
development of intelligence
 Close link between the acquisition of language
and development of thinking. Language is a “tool”
for thought and problem solving.
 Gave prominence to the importance of social
interaction in development as it influences
language and thought
 Does not deal with fixed stages of development
but describes “leading activities” typical of
certain age periods around which intellectual
development is organised
Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal
Development
 Refers to the distance between the
child’s actual point of development
and what the child can achieve with
assistance.
 Assistance occurs through
 Parents
 Teachers
 Capable peers
 Play
Educational Implication
 Provide assistance of learning through
 Prompts
 Clues
 Modeling
 Explanation
 Leading questions
 Encouragement
 Joint participation
 Scaffolding
Information Processing
Attention
Information Processing
 Limited capacity of the mental system poses
restrictions in the flow and processing of information.
 A control mechanism is required to oversee
encoding, processing, storage and retrieval of info.
 Two-way flow of information - use information from
both gathering through the senses (bottom-up
processing) & storing in memory (top-down processing) .
 Human organism has been genetically prepared to
process and organize information in specific ways.
e.g. infant is more likely to look at a human face than
any other stimulus and the field of focus is 12 to 18
inches.
Educational Implication
Gain attention of children
 Use cues to signal when you are ready to begin.
 Highlight interesting feature or known pattern
learnt before.
 Make eye contact with each student and use voice
inflections.
Bring to mind relevant prior learning.
 Have a discussion about previously covered
content.
 Review previous day's lesson.
Educational Implication
Point out important information.
 Write on the board.
 Provide handouts
Present information in an organized manner
 Show a logical sequence to concepts and skills.
 Go from simple to complex when presenting new
material.
Show students how to categorize
 Present information in categories, sequence
(chronological; cause/effect; building to climax)
and with relevance to life experience
Educational Implication
Provide opportunities to elaborate on new info
 Connect new info to something already known.
 Look for similarities & differences among concepts
Provide for repetition of learning.
 State important principles several times in different
ways
 Have items on lesson from previous one
 Schedule periodic reviews of previously learned
concepts & skills
Provide opportunity for overlearning of concepts & skills.
 Use daily drills for arithmetic facts.
Educational Implication
Use different memory tactics to facilitate recall
 imaging -- creating a mental picture;
 method of loci --ideas or things to be remembered
are connected to objects located in a familiar location;
 pegword method (number, rhyming schemes)--ideas
or things to be remembered are connected to specific
words (e.g., one-bun, two-shoe, three-tree, etc.)
 Rhyming (songs, phrases)--information to be
remembered is arranged in a rhyme (e.g., 30 days have
September, April, June, and November, etc.)
 Initial letter--the first letter of each word in a list is
used to make a sentence (the sillier, the better).
Promoting Language and
Communication Skills
Naturalistic Teaching

Naturalistic teaching is language instruction
that occurs in informal settings such as in the
home or classroom.

This instruction takes place in daily routines
and activities
Characteristics
1) topics of conversation are child initiated and
follow the child’s interests.
2) continuation of the child-initiated activity and
the topic of interest are the natural
reinforcements for communication.
Milieu teaching (環境教學)
 a strategy in which adults such as
parents and teachers deliberately
arrange the environment to
encourage a child’s language and
development
 adult follows the child’s interest &
teaches lang. by providing specific
prompts, corrections, &
reinforcements for the child’s
responses..
Milieu teaching
1) Attend to child’s choice of a toy or activity,
request a response from the child about the
activity, provide a model to imitate, and give
the child the toy or material of interest.
2) Constant Time Delay
 Use a time delay & look at he child expectantly
or questioningly for 5 seconds.

The delay gives child time to respond before
adult provides a model of appropriate lang.

May repeat the model twice, each time waiting
for the child to talk before giving child what
he/she wants.
Milieu teaching
3) Incidental teaching:
 procedure requires that child initiate a
topic of conversation & adult converse
about the topic.
 Adult follows child’s lead & only stays
with the topic as long as the child is
attentive.
 By talking in short, simple sentences and
by repeating often, adults can stimulate
the language development of the child
during daily routines.
Naturalistic Teaching
 Responsive Interaction (回應式互動)
 Corrective echoing (糾正式回饋)
 Expansion (延伸)
 Expatiation (詳述)
 Parallel Talk (平衡講話)
 Self-talk(自述)
Other Language Intervention
 Behavioral Techniques for Language
Development
 Classroom Interventions
 Activity-Based Intervention
 Peer-Mediated Intervention
 Parents as Language Trainers
情緒社交技巧訓練
基本理念
教師在課室的角色
家長的參與
同輩輔導
情緒社交訓練要素

學習階段

鞏固階段
學習階段
守紀生活知識傳授重覆練習示範
鞏固階段
鼓勵強化同輩協助提示回饋課堂活動
情緒意識
故事及日常生活的談話
正面反映情緒
假想遊戲及角色扮演
情緒紀錄
情緒海報或情緒咭的運用
教導意識身體反應
表達感受
與訓練情緒意識的活動配合
各種藝術活動都能協助表達感受
多培養對繪畫，閱讀及音樂的興趣
照顧者在日常生活中的自然流露及示範
善用教材及校內的環境佈置
正面思維
培養正視問題的習慣
協助視問題為外在困難而非個人不足表現
教導正面內心對話, 在內心重覆背誦句子
教導分辨善惡是非及養成有關的生活習慣
培養「日行一善」的意識
正視及了解說謊行為
身心鬆弛
意象訓練或肌肉鬆弛方法
示範及講解處理問題的方法
以幽默方式提供對事物的不同看法
故事時間選擇一些針對特別情境的故事
若有重大生活壓力事件發生，便須要約見
家長了解更多有關情況，商討轉介兒童接
受專業服務的需要
人際關係
安排當領袖的機會
給予機會去解決友伴間的糾紛
安排及設計遊戲活動時，考慮兼收組兒
童能否有相近的參加機會或競爭能力
建立自閉症狀兒童社交認知能力，化思
考層次
遊戲技能
給與自由度，尊重自發性
鼓勵投入活動，協助擴展內容
安排不同玩伴及物件
訂定簡單而清楚的遊戲規則
選擇同伴作為輔助者
問題解決
示範解決問題的步驟
生活情境的具體例子
循序漸進，按步就班
重覆練習及應用
激烈情緒的情境
產生同感
關懷和稱許，取代物質的獎勵
鼓勵兒童彼此表達及接納對方感受
運用圖畫或故事解釋人在特定情境中反應
把握日常生活的機會回應別人的情緒反應
選擇適當讀物或影帶，培養良好閱讀及投
入角色習慣
自我瞭解
身體認知
對外表，行為及態度作適當正面回應
協助認識及評估現有的能力
訂合適的期望及行為規範
培養自主能力
尊重私有權
自我激勵
培養不同活動嗜好
讓兒童為自己定目標，減少與人比較
培養生活自理的習慣
自我肯定
認同兒童是自己的好主人
日常生活例子說明自我肯定的具體行為
教導保護自己身體的隱私處
協助分辨碰觸的感覺
訓練拒絕別人及處理衝突的技巧
自我控制
接納及了解兒童的限制
足夠的自由時間
照顧者將自己的行為控制思考過程說出來，
讓兒童能將說話內化
堅持及實事求事的態度設限

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