Developmental Psychology
Demonstration Lecture

Preschoolers: Motor & Cognitive Skills

Presented on August 3, 2001
SouthArk Community College
El Dorado, Arkansas
by Edward P. Kardas

Last Modified: August 2, 2001

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• Motor Skills
  • Gross Motor Skills--preschoolers develop the ability to control large groups of muscles simultaneously. Their bones become stronger too.
    • Running-running is an early-developing gross motor skill
      • Running (high quality-slower loading, 1,800kb). Cara (aged 4) is urged to run as fast as she can, and she does. Movie is in slow motion. 17.01/no audio
    • Jumping-preschoolers jump often
      • Jumping Jacks (high quality-slower loading, 1,000kb, low quality-faster loading, 592kb). Cara (aged 4) demonstrates the gross motor skill of jumping jacks. 23.26/audio
    • Swimming-a few preschoolers are taught to swim
      • Front Crawl (high quality-slower loading, 4,200kb). Cara (aged 4) swims a few yards in the front crawl stroke. Movie is in slow motion and has classic music soundtrack. 23.18/music soundtrack
      • Backstroke (high quality-slower loading, 4,000kb). Cara (aged 4) swims the backstroke. 15.01/audio
    • Heel to Toe, Jumping, Scooter, Kicking, Throwing, Catching, and Balancing-common and not-so-common gross motor skills
      • Assorted Motor Skills (high quality-slower loading, 6,200kb, low quality-faster loading, 1,016kb). Cara (aged 4) performs an assortment of gross motor skills. 56.13/no audio
  • Fine Motor Skills--preschoolers hand-eye coordination improves. They also begin to dress and feed themselves successfully and routinely.
    • Hand-eye coordination-preschoolers hand-eye coordination improves
      • Make Bridge (high quality-slower loading, 4,700kb, low quality-faster loading, 892kb). Cara (aged 4) successfully replicates the making of a three-block bridge. 42.15/audio
    • Drawing-drawing is a commonly practiced fine motor skill
      • Draw Dad, Draw Self (high quality-slower loading, 1,500kb, low quality-faster loading, 908kb). Cara (aged 4) demonstrates the fine motor skill of drawing and completes a brief Draw-a-Person test. 1:04.21/audio
    • Copying-developmental tests for children often feature the copying of geometric figures, copying a diamond is usually not seen until around age seven
      • Draw--Copy (high quality-slower loading, 5,800kb, low quality-faster loading, 980kb). Cara (aged 4) draws simple geometric figures and then fails to copy a diamond. 55.08/audio
• Cognitive Skills
  • Piaget's Preoperational Stage (ages 2-7, approximately)--preschoolers emerge from the sensorimotor period and develop a more cognitively sophisticated approach to the world.
    • Improved use of symbols--preschoolers recognize symbols like signs and letters. They also initiate action in the absence of obvious stimuli.
      • Letters (high quality-slower loading, 3,900kb, low quality-faster loading, 772kb). Cara (aged 4) successfully identifies a few letters of the alphabet. 33.01/audio
    • Understand identities--preschoolers understand that the world exhibits a certain constancy. They recognize individuals in different settings and when their appearance has changed.
      • Boy or Girl? (high quality-slower loading, 4,500kb, low quality-faster loading, 824kb. Cara (aged 4) answers questions about gender and gender roles. 40.11/audio
    • Improved spatial skills--Preschoolers begin to understand maps and other simple representations.
    • Primitive and rigid view of causality--Preschoolers start to understand analogies, but apply them broadly and uninhibitedly.
      • Deep end of pool and jumping out of windows (high quality-slower loading, 4,300kb), low quality-faster loading, 812kb). Cara (aged 4) discusses swimming in the deep end and disbelieves talk about jumping out of second-story windows. 36.12/audio
    • Understand number and counting--Preschoolers learn to count and to make sense of numbers and numerical quantities.
      • Counting (high quality-slower loading, 16,600kb, low quality-faster loading, 2,500kb). Cara (aged 4) sorts and counts coins. She names quarters as "pennies" and pennies as "quarters." Near the end of the clip, she uses counting, not the length of row of coins, to determine which row has more. 2:08.13/audio
    • Conservation--Preschoolers fail to consider or fail to understand equivalences that are presented to them.
      • Liquid-they pick the taller glass of liquid
        • Piaget's Water Conservation Task (high quality-slow loading, 2,700kb, low quality-faster loading, 1,200kb) Cara (aged 4) believes the tall glass holds more. 57.00/audio 
      • Matter-they pick the longer piece of clay
        • Ball or Snake? (high quality-slower loading, 3,100kb, low quality-faster loading, 644kb). Cara (aged 4) judges a thin cylinder of Play Doh as containing more mass than it did when it was shaped as a ball. 26.17/audio
      • Weight-they say long piece of clay weighs more than when it was shaped as a ball
      • Area-uncluttered areas are perceived as larger than cluttered areas of same size
      • Volume-they say more water will be displaced by long piece of clay than by ball of same volume
      • Length-they say that when one identical stick of a pair is moved, it is longer
• Pedagogy
  • Pictorial material has intrinsic appeal.
  • Presented in discrete, short, and repeatable units
  • Preserves classroom demonstrations indefinitely
  • Amenable to conversion to distance education
• Preparation
  • Fairly simple to prepare and serve QuickTime movies
  • Editing the raw footage is the most time-consuming part
  • Two versions, high quality and low quality, of most clips were created. Purpose was to accomodate students with slower connections to Internet.
  • Audio can be kept, dropped, or added
  • Quality of unserved (i.e., local to hard drive or other local volume) clips can be very high
  • Copyright issues are avoided. Creator owns copyright.
• Future Plans
  • Use on-line database to help students search and find clips of interest.
  • Expand number and scope of clips.
  • Create distance education courses using QuickTime materials.
  • Burn CD-ROMs for distribution to students.

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