Transcript Chapter 7

Chapter 7
Physical & Cognitive Development
in Early Childhood
Bodily Growth and Change
• Around age 3, children lose ‘baby
roundness’
– Limbs lengthen, height increases
• Cartilage turns to bone faster
• Rapid growth between 3-6
Nutrition
• Obesity, malnutrition, oral health
Sleep
• Approximately 11 hours
• Nightmares: approximately 60% will experience
at some point. Usually due to staying up too late,
eating heavily before bedtime, overexcitement (tv
program)
Sleep disturbances (nightmares/terrors, sleep
walking) may be caused by:
• accidental activation of the brain’s motor
control system
• Incomplete arousal from deep sleep
• Disordered breathing
• Restless leg syndrome
• Heredity
Bed wetting
Ends when 3-5
Enuresis: repeated urination in clothing or
bed, usually at night.
Motor skills
Gross motor skills: running, jumping, involve large
muscles.
Development of the sensory and motor areas of the
cerebral cortex help with coordination between
what they want to do and what they can do
Fine motor skills: buttoning a shirt, drawing, involve
eye-hand coordination and small-muscle
coordination
All development may be positively or negatively
impacted by the environment and by toxic agents.
Cognitive Development- Piaget
Preoperational Stage (ages 2 to 7; 18 months to 8
years old)
• The intuitive child
• Children can use symbols and words to think
• Intuitive problem solving, but thinking limited
by rigidity, centrism, and egocentrism
Understand that things have identities that are
stable, unchanging
• Understanding of cause and effect
• Ability to classify
• Understanding of numbers
• Empathy
• Theory of mind (aware of mental activity)
Two stages of the Preoperational Stage:
1. Preconceptual Stage (2-4 years)
Begins to symbolize and develop ability to
internalize objects and events, develop
preconcepts. (e.g., the Santa they saw is
the one and only Santa; recognize birds,
but not types of birds)
Two types of reasoning: syncratic and
transductive.
Syncratic: how preschoolers tend to sort and
classify objects; according to a limited set
of criteria. (e.g., the boat goes with other
boats because they are boats; this glove
goes with the boats because they are both
green; this block goes with the boat
because they are blocks and fit onto the
deck of the boat).
Two types of reasoning: syncratic and transductive.
Transductive reasoning: involves drawing a
reference about the relationship between two
objects based on a single attribute. Generally
leads to wrong conclusions. (e.g., if A has four
legs and B has four legs, then A must be B and
vice versa).
Animism: the magical belief that inanimate objects
have thoughts, feelings, and motives. Magical
thinking: take rhymes/stories seriously (Rain,
rain, go away; Step on a crack and break your
mother’s back).
2. Intuitive stage (4-7 years); centers on one
aspect at a time, egocentrism.
Beliefs are generally based on what they sense
to be true rather than on what logic or
rational thought would dictate. (e.g.,
recalling what color bead was first and last
in a tube, even if reversing the tube.
Unable at this stage to use logical operations
(e.g., if tube turned 29 ½ times, which
bead on top? Must be able to count
number of times tube turned with recalling
what color was on top, etc.). Unable to
understand concept of reversibility.
From action to symbol. Can use images and
symbols, but lacks logical abilities.
Object permanence.
Deferred imitation occurs. Better grasp of
symbols.
Acquisition of language is a major
achievement here. Another major
achievement is Intuition. Can look at a
problem and quickly deduce the solution.
Applies trial and error, applying one
scheme after another until one works.
Egocentrism: unable to take role of another person
or view the world from other vantage points.
Does not know yet that others have different
wants, needs, and perspectives.
Precausal reasoning: the inability to distinguish
between psychological and physical causes,
between subjective experiences and objective
events. E.g., convinced that dreams are real.
Centering: inability to consider more than one
dimension at a time. Also, seeing is believing:
appearance vs. reality. Only focus on one aspect
at a time.
SUMMARY
• Beginning of organized language and symbolic
thought
• Child begins to perceive language as a tool to
get needs met
• Much of child’s language is egocentric-they talk
to self and do not listen to other children
• Child does not use logical thinking; as a result,
cannot reason by implication
• Child’s reasoning is transductive reasoning:
reasoning from a particular idea to a particular
idea without logically connecting them
Pretend Play
Deferred imitation: based on mental
representation of previously viewed event
Pretend play: fantasy/imaginary play, make object
represent or symbolize something else.
Language: uses system of symbols to
communicate
Conservation
Cannot yet grasp this concept (Two things remain
equal even if appearance changes)
Distinguishing between Appearance and Reality
Age 5-6
What seems to be and what is (e.g., is the cookie
monster (costumed person) really the cookie
monster?
Distinguishing between Fantasy & Reality
18 months-3, distinguish between real and imagined
events
magical or wishful thinking of age 3 and older does
not seem to stem from confusion between
fantasy and reality
Influencing individual differences in cognitive
development
• Rating children high on social skills/attitude
• Talk the child hears: about other’s mental states
• Encourage pretend play helps assume other’s
perspectives
• Talk about how others feel in a story: earlier
empathy development
• Bilingual children, speak/hear more than one
language at home, do better on theory of the
mind activities/ understand that different people
have different perspectives/more aware of others
mental states as trying to match their language
with anothers’/better attentional control
Memory development
• Encoding: putting information into folder;
attaches code or label
• Storage: putting the folder into a file cabinet
• Retrieval: accessing the information when
needed
• Sensory memory: temp holding tank; without
processing, will loose information
• Working memory: when information being
encoded or retrieved, in working memory; trying
to remember, understand, think about. Partly in
prefrontal cortex.
Memory development
• Central executive: helps encode and store
information into long-term memory.
•
Recognition: ability to identify something
previously encountered
•
Recall: ability to reproduce knowledge
from memory
Forming childhood memories
Generic memory: begins approximately age
2; produces script, repeated event without
time or place.
Episodic memory: awareness of having
experienced a particular event that
occurred at a specific time and place. For
the young, these are temporary unless
recalls numerous times to place into longterm memory.
Autobiographical memory: long-term recall about
personal facts and events
Intelligence
Assess by intelligence tests:
Stanford-Binet (ages 2+): Provides full scale IQ,
Verbal and nonverbal IQ, on five cognitive
dimensions
Wechsler tests: 2½+; measures verbal and nonverbal
fluid reasoning, receptive versus expressive
vocabulary, processing speed. Best for special
populations.
IQ Impacted by Factors
• Primarily genetic
• Temperament
• Social and emotional maturity
• Ease of testing situation
• Preliteracy and literacy skills
• Socioeconomic status
• Ethnicity and culture
• Match between cognitive style and tasks
Vygotsky
Children learned by internalizing the results of
interactions with adults
Zone of proximal development (ZPD)- gap between
what they are already able to do and what they
are not quite ready to accomplish alone
Scaffolding: temporary support that adults give to
do a task until child can do it alone. Helps guide
cognitive processes. Help children take
responsibility for learning.
Guided Participation: helping child do somethingdoing with the child.
Language
At age 3= 1,000 words
At age 6= 2,600 words and comprehends
20,000+
Fast mapping: ability to pick up the
approximately meaning of a new word
after hearing it once/twice.
Pragmatics and social speech
Pragmatics: practical knowledge of how to use
language to communicate
Social speech: speech intended to be understood by
a listener
Private speech: talking aloud to oneself with no
intent to communicate with others
Common in childhood
20-50% of what a 4-10y/o says falls here
Piaget: sign of emotional immaturity; egocentric; do
not distinguish between words and the actions
they symbolize
Vygotsky: not egocentric; special form of
communication with the self; important
function between social speech and inner
speech; increases during preschool and
decreases early elementary school
Some evidence that private speech aids in
child’s self regulation- efforts to control
their behavior