dev midterm

2½ inches

The average child grows __ in height a year during early childhood

5 and 7 pounds

The average child gains between ___ a year during early childhood

1. increase

2. decreases

As the preschool child grows older, the percentage of___ in height and weight __with each additional year

trunks of their bodies lengthen

During the preschool years, both boys and girls slim down as the ___

1. fatty tissue

2. muscle tissue

Girls have more ___than boys; boys have more __

1. ethnic origin

2. nutrition

the two most important contributors to height differences are

infancy

Although the brain continues to grow in early childhood, it does not grow as rapidly as in ___

three-quarters

By the time children reach 3 years of age, the brain is ___ of its adult size.

95 percent

By age 6, the brain has reached about ___ of its adult size

myelination

The process by which the nerve cells are covered and insulated with a layer of fat cells, which increases the speed at which information travels through the nervous system.

3 and 15

Researchers also have discovered that children’s brains undergo dramatic anatomical changes between the ages of __

frontal lobe areas

Researchers have found that in children from 3 to 6 years of age the most rapid growth takes place in the ____ involved in planning and organizing new actions, and in maintaining attention to tasks

Gross Motor Skills

• At 3 years of age, children enjoy simple movements, such as hopping, jumping, and running back and forth, just for the sheer delight of performing these activities.

• At 4 years of age, children are still enjoying the same kind of activities, but they have become more adventurous. They scramble over low jungle gyms as they display their athletic prowess.

• At 5 years of age, children are even more adventuresome than when they were 4. It is not unusual for self-assured 5-year-olds to perform hair-raising stunts on practically any climbing object. Five-year-olds run hard and enjoy races with each other and their parents.

run-and-jump

The ___ will win no Olympic gold medals, but for the 3-year-old the activity is a source of considerable pride and accomplishment.

Fine Motor Skills

• At 3 years of age, although children have had the ability to pick up the tiniest objects between their thumb and forefinger for some time, they are still somewhat clumsy at it.

• By 4 years of age, children’s__ coordination has improved substantially and become much more precise. Sometimes 4-year-old children have trouble building high towers with blocks because, in their desire to place each of the blocks perfectly, they may upset those already stacked.

• By age 5, children’s ___coordination has improved further. Hand, arm, and body all move together under better command of the eye.

11 to 13 hours

Experts recommend that young children get ___ of sleep each night

1. narcolepsy

2. insomia

3. nightmares

Children can experience a number of sleep problems, including

narcolepsy

extreme daytime sleepiness

insomia

difficulty going to sleep or staying asleep

40 percent

One estimate indicates that more than ___ of children experience a sleep problem at some point in their development

depression and anxiety

Researchers have found children who have sleep problems are more likely to show ___ than children who do not have sleep problems

overweight

research indicates that short sleep duration in children is linked with being ___

overweight

Being ___ has become a serious health problem in early childhood

caregivers’ behavior

Young children’s eating behavior is strongly influenced by their __

sensitive/responsive caregiver feeding style

A ___, in which the caregiver is nurturant, provides clear information about what is expected, and appropriately responds to children’s cues, is recommended

body mass index (BMI)

computed by a formula that takes into account height and weight

obese

Only children and adolescents at or above the 97th percentile are classified as ___

overweight

Only children and adolescents are classified those at or above the 95th percentile as ___

at risk for being overweight

Only children and adolescents are classified as __ those at or above the 85th percentile

United States

___ had the second highest rate of child obesity

type 2 diabetes

physicians are now seeing __ in children as young as 5 years of age

1. two hours of physical activity

2. one hour of structured activity

3. one hour of unstructured free play

Guidelines recommend that preschool children engage in _ per day, divided into _ and

_

Malnutrition

___is a problem for many U.S. children, with approximately 11 million preschool children experiencing ___ that places their health at risk.

iron deficiency anemia

• One of the most common nutritional problems in early childhood is __ , which results in chronic fatigue

• This problem results from the failure to eat adequate amounts of quality meats and dark green vegetables

low-income families

Young children from __ are the most likely to develop iron deficiency anemia

motor vehicle accidents

In the United States, __ are the leading cause of death in young children, followed by cancer and cardiovascular disease

drowning, falls, burns, and poisoning

In addition to motor vehicle accidents, other accidental deaths in children involve __

wheezing symptoms and asthma

Children exposed to tobacco smoke in the home are more likely to develop __ than children in nonsmoking homes

secondhand smoke

A recent study revealed that exposure to __ was related to young children’s sleep problems, including sleep-disordered breathing

• lower intelligence

• lower achievement

• attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

• elevated blood pressure

The negative effects of high lead levels in children’s blood include

The State of the World’s Children

Each year UNICEF produces a report entitled

preoperational stage

Piaget’s second stage, lasting from about 2 to 7 years of age, during which children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings, and symbolic thought goes beyond simple connections of sensory information and physical action; stable concepts are formed, mental reasoning emerges, egocentrism is present, and magical beliefs are constructed.

2 to 7 years of age

preoperational age lasts from about

preoperational

emphasizes that the child does not yet perform operations

operations

• these are reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what they formerly did physically.

• Adding and subtracting numbers mentally are examples of __

Preoperational thought

is the beginning of the ability to reconstruct in thought what has been established in behavior

1. the symbolic function substage

2. the intuitive thought substage

Preoperational thought can be divided into two substages:

symbolic function substage

• is the first substage of preoperational thought, occurring roughly between the ages of 2 and 4.

• In this substage, the young child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present.

• This ability vastly expands the child’s mental world.

• Young children use scribble designs to represent people, houses, cars, clouds, and so on; they begin to use language and engage in pretend play

Egocentrism

• is the inability to distinguish between one’s own perspective and someone else’s perspective.

• Children in the preoperational stage often pick their own view rather than the doll’s view. Preschool children frequently show the ability to take another’s perspective on some tasks but not others.

Animism

• is the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action.

• A young child who uses __ fails to distinguish the appropriate occasions for using human and nonhuman perspectives.

intuitive thought substage

is the second substage of preoperational thought, occurring between approximately 4 and 7 years of age. In this substage, children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions.

centration

The focusing of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others.

conservation

• the awareness that altering an object’s or a substance’s appearance does not change its basic properties.

• For example, to adults, it is obvious that a certain amount of liquid stays the same, regardless of a container’s shape. But this is not at all obvious to young children. Instead, they are struck by the height of the liquid in the container; they focus on that characteristic to the exclusion of others.

Rochel Gelman

• Some developmentalists disagree with Piaget’s estimate of when children’s conservation skills emerge.

• For example, __ showed that when the child’s attention to relevant aspects of the conservation task is improved, the child is more likely to conserve

• argues that conservation appears earlier than Piaget thought and that attention is especially important in explaining conservation.

Vygotsky’s theory

• Another developmental theory that focuses on children’s cognition

• emphasized that children actively construct their knowledge and understanding

• children are more often described as social creatures

Piaget’s theory

children develop ways of thinking and understanding by their actions and interactions with the physical world (theory)

Zone of proximal development

Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to master alone but that can be learned with guidance and assistance of adults or more-skilled children

the lower limit of the ZPD

is the level of skill reached by the child working independently

upper limit of the ZPD

is the level of additional responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor

Scaffolding

• Closely linked to the idea of the ZPD is the concept of ___.

• ___means changing the level of support.

• Over the course of a teaching session, a more-skilled person (a teacher or advanced peer) adjusts the amount of guidance to fi t the child’s current performance (Daniels, 2007).

• When the student is learning a new task, the skilled person may use direct instruction. As the student’s competence increases, less guidance is given\

• also is an eff ective strategy for parents to adopt in interacting with their infants

dialogue

The use of ___ as a tool for scaffolding is only one example of the important role of language in a child’s development.

private speech

• This use of language for self-regulation is called___.

• For Piaget, __ is egocentric and immature, but for Vygotsky it is an important tool of thought during the early childhood years

• represents an early transition in becoming more socially communicative

language and thought

Vygotsky said that ___ initially develop independently of each other and then merge

inner speech

After a while, the self-talk becomes second nature to children, and they can act without verbalizing. When they gain this skill, children have internalized their egocentric speech in the form of ___, which becomes their thoughts.

social constructivist approach

An approach that emphasizes the social contexts of learning and that knowledge is mutually built and constructed. Vygotsky’s theory reflects this approach.

attention

• ___as the focusing of mental resources on select information.

• The child’s ability to pay ___ improves significantly during the preschool years

1. executive attention

2. sustained attention

Young children especially make advances in two aspects of attention

executive attention

involves action planning, allocating attention to goals, error detection and compensation, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances

sustained attention

is focused and extended engagement with an object, task, event, or other aspect of the environment

Mary Rothbart and Maria Gartstein

recently described why advances in executive and sustained attention are so important in early childhood:

• The development of the . . . executive attention system supports the rapid increases in effortful control in the toddler and preschool years.

• Increases in attention are due, in part, to advances in comprehension and language development. As children are better able to understand their environment, this increased appreciation of their surroundings helps them to sustain attention for longer periods of time.

1. Salient versus relevant dimensions

2. Planfulness

In at least two ways, however, the preschool child’s control of attention is still deficient:

Salient versus relevant dimensions

• Preschool children are likely to pay attention to stimuli that stand out even when those stimuli are not relevant to solving a problem or performing a task.

• For example, if a flashy, attractive clown presents the directions for solving a problem, preschool children are likely to pay more attention to the clown than to the directions. After the age of 6 or 7, children attend more efficiently to the dimensions of the task that are relevant, such as the directions for solving a problem. This change reflects a shift to cognitive control of attention, so that children act less impulsively and reflect more.

Planfulness

When experimenters ask children to judge whether two complex pictures are the same, preschool children tend to use a haphazard comparison strategy, not examining all of the details before making a judgment. By comparison, elementary school age children are more likely to systematically compare the details across the pictures, one detail at a time

Computer exercises

__ recently have been developed to improve children’s attention

Memory

—the retention of information over time

—is a central process in children’s cognitive development

short-term memory

individuals retain information for up to 30 seconds if there is no rehearsal of the information

rehearsal

using __ we can keep information in short-term memory for a much longer period.

memory-span task

• One method of assessing short-term memory is the __

• You hear a short list of stimuli—usually digits—presented at a rapid pace (one per second, for example). Then you are asked to repeat the digits.

• There are age differences in children’s susceptibility to suggestion.

• There are individual differences in susceptibility

• Interviewing techniques can produce substantial distortions in children’s reports about highly salient events

Several factors can influence the accuracy of a young child’s memory:

Preschoolers

• ___are the most suggestible age group in comparison with older children and adults (Lehman & others, 2010; Pipe, 2008). For example,___ are more susceptible to believing misleading or incorrect information given after an event

stategies

• consist of deliberate mental activities to improve the processing of information.

rehearsal and organization

For the most part, young children do not use __ to remember

child’s theory of mind

• which refers to awareness of one’s own mental processes and the mental processes of others.

• Studies of __ view the child as “a thinker who is trying to explain, predict, and understand people’s thoughts, feelings, and utterances”

1. perceptions

2. emotions

3. desires

From 18 months to 3 years of age, children begin to understand three mental states

perceptions

By 2 years of age, a child recognizes that another person will see what’s in front of her own eyes instead of what’s in front of the child’s eyes and by 3 years of age, the child realizes that looking leads to knowing what’s inside a container

emotions

The child can distinguish between positive (for example, happy) and negative (sad, for example) emotions. A child might say, “Tommy feels bad.”

desires

Toddlers recognize ___ if people want something, they will try to get it. For instance, a child might say, “I want my mommy.

false beliefs

—beliefs that are not true—develops in a majority of children by the time they are 5 years old

Executive function (2)

which describes several functions (such as inhibition and planning) that are important for flexible, future-oriented behavior, also may be connected to theory of mind development

200

The average 2-year-old can speak about __words.

morphology rules

By the time children move beyond two-word utterances, they demonstrate a knowledge of __

Morphology

is the study of words and other meaningful units of language like suffixes and prefixes

Syntax

is the set of rules of a language by which we construct sentences.

Semantics

generally, is about the meaning of sentences.

Pragmatics

is an even broader field that studies how the context of a sentence contributes to meaning

1. Phonological awareness, letter name and sound knowledge

2. Children’s early home environment influenced their early language skills

3. The number of letters children knew in kindergarten was highly correlated with their reading achievement in high school

The following three longitudinal studies indicate the importance of early language skills and children’s school readiness

Nurturing

__ is a key aspect of the child-centered kindergarten

child-centered kindergarten

Education that involves the whole child by considering both the child’s physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development and the child’s needs, interests, and learning styles

1. Each child follows a unique developmental pattern

2. young children learn best through firsthand experiences with people and materials

3. play is extremely important in the child’s total development.

The child-centered kindergarten honors three principles:

• Experimenting

• exploring,

• discovering

• trying out

• restructuring

• speaking

• listening

are frequent activities in excellent kindergarten programs.