Unlike primary school kids, 4-year-old children use limited and simple methods of reasoning. 4-year-olds will use intuitive thinking to try predict the outcome of events or situations, even if they do not possess enough information. At this age, the child’s mind is not mature enough to realize that events can have different outcomes. Since children acquire inductively (through looking at patterns, from specific to general) and deductive (through relying on facts and rules, from general to specific) reasoning skills later, at this age they cannot generalise when establishing a relationship between two situations or events. They may make logical mistakes by seeing cause and effect relationships in unrelated events that occur simultaneously. For example, children may think that the actor on the screen is really present in the television set and go looking for them.
4-year-old may have trouble focusing on more than one object at the same time. They usually focus their attention on one thing (events, people or objects) and ignore the rest. For example, they may focus on the most attractive part or feature of a specific toy. They may have difficulty categorising objects according to both colour and shape. They can understand the concepts of “longest” and “shortest,” “narrowest” and “widest,” but have difficulty recognizing that there is anything between those two extremes. Therefore, they are usually unable to sort objects from long to short.
How to Support their Cognitive Development?
- We shouldn’t expect complex logical thinking from children at this age. Considering that their focus is limited, you can opt for plain educational and play materials without too many details.
- Exposing your child to a wide variety of experiences and focused activities stimulates their cognitive development. Children establish new mental connections and develop problem-solving skills with each new situation or object they encounter.
- Playing board games with 4-year-old children supports their ability to develop different strategies and to solve problems in more ways than one.
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