Preschoolers memories of familiar events are often organized in terms of scripts

By ages 2 to 5 years, most children have developed the skills to focus attention for extended periods, recognize previously encountered information, recall old information, and reconstruct it in the present. For example, a 4-year-old can remember what she did at Christmas and tell her friend about it when she returns to preschool after the holiday. Between the ages of 2 and 5, long-term memory also begins to form, which is why most people cannot remember anything in their childhood prior to age 2 or 3.

Part of long-term memory involves storing information about the sequence of events during familiar situations as "scripts". Scripts help children understand, interpret, and predict what will happen in future scenarios. For example, children understand that a visit to the grocery store involves a specific sequences of steps: Dad walks into the store, gets a grocery cart, selects items from the shelves, waits in the check-out line, pays for the groceries, and then loads them into the car. Children ages 2 through 5 also start to recognize that are often multiple ways to solve a problem and can brainstorm different (though sometimes primitive) solutions.

Between the ages of 5 and 7, children learn how to focus and use their cognitive abilities for specific purposes. For example, children can learn to pay attention to and memorize lists of words or facts. This skill is obviously crucial for children starting school who need to learn new information, retain it and produce it for tests and other academic activities. Children this age have also developed a larger overall capacity to process information. This expanding information processing capacity allows young children to make connections between old and new information. For example, children can use their knowledge of the alphabet and letter sounds (phonics) to start sounding out and reading words. During this age, children's knowledge base also continues to grow and become better organized.

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Metacognition, "the ability to think about thinking", is another important cognitive skill that develops during early childhood. Between ages 2 and 5 years, young children realize that they use their brains to think. However, their understanding of how a brain works is rather simplistic; a brain is a simply a container (much like a toy box) where thoughts and memories are stored. By ages 5 to 7 years, children realize they can actively control their brains, and influence their ability to process and to accomplish mental tasks. As a result, school-age children start to develop and choose specific strategies for approaching a given learning task, monitor their comprehension of information, and evaluate their progress toward completing a learning task. For example, first graders learn to use a number line (or counting on their fingers) when they realize that they forgot the answer to an addition or subtraction problem. Similarly, children who are learning to read can start to identify words (i.e., "sight words") that cannot be sounded out using phonics (e.g, connecting sounds with letters), and must be memorized.

What is the term for a memory of particular events?

Episodic memory refers to memory for particular events situated in space and time, as well as the underlying cognitive processes and neural mechanisms involved in remembering those events.

During what age range are children typically in the stage of preoperational thought?

When does the preoperational stage occur? This stage lasts from around age 2 until about age 7. Your toddler hits the preoperational stage between 18 to 24 months when they start to talk.

What term refers to the way in which an individual combines words and phrases to form sentences?

In linguistics, "syntax" refers to the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. The term "syntax" comes from the Greek, meaning "arrange together." The term is also used to mean the study of the syntactic properties of a language.

What term refers to the way in which an individual combines words and phrases to form sentences quizlet?

What term refers to the way in which an individual combines words and phrases to form sentences? syntax.