Unit 3: Early and Middle Childhood Development

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering physical, cognitive, linguistic, moral, and socioemotional development across early and middle childhood.

Lateralization

The specialization of the two hemispheres of the brain, which begins before birth and is influenced by both genes and early experiences.

Hemispheric Dominance

A pattern typically favoring the left hemisphere that develops at $2\text{--}5$ years of age and predicts language skills and right-handedness.

Corpus Callosum

A thick band of nerve fibers connecting the hemispheres that coordinates both sides of the body, which is important for activities such as catching a ball or tying shoelaces.

Plasticity

The brain's capacity to change its organization and function in response to experience, which is greatest in early life when neurons actively form synapses.

Prefrontal Cortex

The forward area of the frontal lobe that increases in volume during middle childhood, driving advances in executive function behaviors.

Grey Matter

Brain tissue consisting of unmyelinated neurons resulting from synaptogenesis; unused neurons within it are pruned to produce more focused cognitive brain activity.

White Matter

Brain tissue composed of myelinated neurons that increases across childhood to improve performance on cognitive tasks.

Cerebellum

A brain structure whose growth and myelination facilitate better balance, motor coordination, and some reasoning and emotional functions.

Childhood Obesity

A health condition defined as having a body mass index (BMI) at or above the $95\text{th}$ percentile for age and height according to CDC growth charts.

Preoperational Stage

Piaget's second cognitive stage (ages $2\text{--}6$) characterized by representational thinking and symbolic function, but constrained by centration and logical errors.

Symbolic Function

A cognitive advance in the preoperational stage where symbols become meaningful, enabling pretend play and language use.

Transduction

A preoperational causal reasoning error where a child assumes that if two events occur close in time, one must have caused the other.

Centration

The cognitive limitation of focusing on only one aspect of a stimulus while excluding all other parts, causing children to fail conservation tasks.

Irreversibility

The failure of preoperational thinkers to understand that reversing a process can undo an action and restore the original state of an object.

Animism

The belief common in early childhood that inanimate objects are alive and possess lifelike feelings, intentions, and thoughts.

Egocentrism

The inability to take another person's perspective, characterized by the belief that other people share the child's own thoughts and feelings.

Concrete Operational Thinking

Piaget's stage beginning at age $6$ or $7$ in which children can apply logical operations to concrete, tangible tasks, but not hypothetical situations.

Seriation

A concrete operational ability that allows a child to systematically order stimuli along a quantitative dimension, such as length or weight.

Class Inclusion

The logical ability to consider and compare the relations between a broad, general category and its more specific subcategories.

Transitive Inference

The ability to logically combine relationships between items to understand certain conclusions without directly observing every comparison.

Conservation

The understanding that a physical quantity (such as number, mass, or volume) remains unchanged even when its outward appearance changes.

Scaffolding

Temporary support provided by an adult or more skilled peer that bridges the gap between a child's current competence level and a challenging task.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Vygotsky's term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for a child to complete alone, but can be learned through guidance and assistance.

Private Speech

Self-directed speech that a child speaks out loud to themselves to guide behavior and drive cognitive development.

Executive Function

A set of cognitive processes that involves controlling attention, coordinating working memory, and inhibiting impulses.

Sustained Attention

The ability to remain focused on a specific stimulus or activity for an extended period of time, such as building a block tower.

Selective Attention

The ability to attend to relevant stimuli while ignoring distractions, such as carrying on a conversation in a noisy room.

Planfulness

The ability to use systematic strategies when comparing visual details, such as analyzing 'spot the difference' images.

Working Memory

The cognitive structure where all conscious thinking, active problem-solving, and immediate information processing take place.

Episodic Memory

The memory system responsible for retaining everyday personal experiences and events.

Autobiographical Memory

The recollection of personally meaningful life events that occurred at a specific time and location in one's personal past.

Theory of Mind

Children's awareness of their own and other people's mental states, including the realization that others hold different beliefs, thoughts, and desires.

False Belief Task

An experimental test (such as the Sally-Anne test) evaluating whether a child understands that another person can hold an inaccurate or mistaken belief.

Metacognition

The ability to think about one's own thinking and understand how the mind works and processes information.

Metamemory

An understanding of one's own memory capabilities and the deliberate use of strategies to improve retrieval and storage.

Overregularization Errors

Grammatical mistakes that occur when children extend morphological rules to irregular words (for example, saying 'gooses' instead of 'geese').

Pragmatics

The social rules governing the practical use of language, including adapting speech styles for different audiences and settings.

Sternberg's Triarchic Theory

A model of intelligence proposing three distinct components: analytical intelligence (information processing), creative intelligence (dealing with novelty), and applied intelligence (practical street smarts).

Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory

A developmental theory defining intelligence as the ability to solve problems or create culturally valued products across eight distinct domains.

Phonics

A reading instruction approach that emphasizes learning and memorizing letter-sound correspondences to sound out unfamiliar words.

Whole-Language Approach

A reading instruction philosophy where children learn literacy naturally through immersion and trial-and-error discovery rather than explicit drills.

Individualized Education Plan (IEP)

A legally mandated written plan tailored specifically to accommodate the educational needs of a child eligible for special education.

Least Restrictive Environment (LRE)

The educational setting that is as similar as possible to the general classroom setting in which typically developing children learn.

Inclusion

The practice of educating children with special educational needs full-time in regular, general education classrooms.

Initiative vs. Guilt

Erikson's third psychosocial stage ($3\text{--}6$ years) where children develop a sense of purpose by planning and tackling new tasks, but may feel guilt if they fail or break rules.

Instrumental Aggression

Aggressive behavior used as a means to achieve a concrete goal, such as seizing a toy, which is most common in early childhood.

Relational Aggression

Non-physical harm intended to damage an individual's social relationships or standing through exclusion, rumors, or verbal insults.

Authoritative Parenting

A parenting style characterized by high warmth, high sensitivity, firm expectations, open verbal discussion of rules, and developmentally appropriate punishments.

Authoritarian Parenting

A parenting style that emphasizes strict behavioral control, unquestioned obedience, and rigid punishment, with low warmth and limited autonomy.

Indulgent/Permissive Parenting

A parenting style characterized by warmth and acceptance with few rules, minimal behavioral demands, and an absence of structured boundaries.

Uninvolved/Neglectful Parenting

A parenting style that combines low parental warmth with low behavioral control, often failing to recognize or respond to the child's basic needs for affection.

Inductive Discipline

A disciplinary approach focusing on verbal reasoning, explaining the consequences of actions, encouraging emotional expression, and teaching conflict resolution.

Heteronomous Morality

Piaget's first stage of moral development (around age $6$) where children perceive rules as permanent, unalterable dictates handed down by authority figures.

Autonomous Morality

Piaget's second stage of moral development (beginning around age $7$) where rules are understood to be flexible agreements made through social consensus.

Preconventional Reasoning

Kohlberg's lowest level of moral reasoning, in which moral judgments are governed strictly by external self-interest, such as gaining rewards or avoiding punishment.

Conventional Moral Reasoning

Kohlberg's intermediate moral reasoning level, where individuals judge actions based on social approval, reciprocity, and the maintenance of societal rules and order.

Postconventional Moral Reasoning

Kohlberg's most advanced level of moral reasoning, centered on abstract principles of justice, individual rights, and universal ethical standards.

Distributive Justice

Reasoning about how to divide resources fairly, which progresses from raw self-interest ($4\text{--}5$ years) to strict equality ($7\text{--}8$ years) to merit and need ($8\text{--}10$ years).

Gender Constancy

A child's understanding (acquired by about age $7$) that biological gender is permanent and remains invariant despite changes in outward appearance, hair, or clothing.

Gender Schema Theory

A cognitive model proposing that children develop organized mental frameworks regarding gender-appropriate activities, which become more flexible with age.

Sociodramatic Play

Collaborative make-believe play seen in children aged $3\text{--}6$ that involves taking on social roles, following shared plotlines, and acting out stories.

Rough-and-Tumble Play

Vigorous, active physical play characterized by wrestling and chasing, which is distinguished from real aggression by the presence of a 'play face.'

Industry vs. Inferiority

Erikson's psychosocial crisis of middle childhood, focused on developing a sense of academic and social competence versus feeling inadequate or lacking self-confidence.

Mastery Orientation

An achievement mindset that attributes successes to internal factors and couples with a growth mindset to maintain persistence and resilience when faced with challenges.