Chapter 7: Physical & Cognitive development in Early Childhood

Fine motor skills

3 years old:

• Hold with forefinger and thumb but still clumsy

4 years old:  Improve substantially and more precise

• Trouble building high towers with blocks because they might knock off existing stack when they reach for the top

5 years old: 

• Hand, arm, body move together under better command of eye

Gross motor skills

Moving around becomes more automatic not just about being able to stand upright

Milestones for GMS

3 years old

• Takes delight in simple movements (e.g., hopping and jumping approx 6 inches, running back and forth, source of pride in accomplishment, look i can do this)

4 years old

• More adventurous (low jungle gyms)

5 years old

• Even more adventurous; hair raising risks (climb higher heights, run hard, enjoy races)

Need for practice

If they do it once, then it wont be as effective

Long term negative effects for failing to develop GMS

• Not be able to join in group games or sports

• Lower self worth

• Higher motor proficiency= higher levels of physical activity in adolescence 

• Motor skills affect social skills

  • Do certain movements= sports/ physical= socialize

Piaget’s Preoperational stage

2 to 7 years of age

• Children begin to represent the world with words, images, drawings

• Form stable concepts and begin to reason

• Cognitive world dominated by egocentrism and magical beliefs

• E.g., santa claus, tooth fairy, easter bunny

Operations

Reversible mental actions allowing children to do mentally what before they could only do physically

• child cannot do this yet

Substages of preoperational stage

1. Symbolic function substage

2. Intuitive thought substage

Symbolic function substage

1st substage at around 2-4 years old

• Child gains ability to mentally represent an object that is not present

• Expands child’s mental world

Language in Symbolic funcion substage

Use language and engage in pretend play

Limitations in Symbolic function substage

1. Egocentrism

2. Animism

Egocentrism

Inability to distinguish between one’s own perspective and someone else’s 

• Preschool children frequently show the ability to take another’s perspective on some task but not others

• Logic; if they  cant see u, u cant see them

Three mountains task

Showed that children struggled taking perspective of other person

Aminism

Belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and capable of action

• E.g., that tree pushed leaf off and fell down, jolibee is alive 

• Fails to distinguish appropriate occasions for human and nonhuman perspectives 

• Symbolisms are simple but strong (e.g., fanciful and inventive drawings)

Intuitive thought substage

2nd substage around 4-7 years old

• Begin to  use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all questions 

  • Language is a tool for exploration 

• They seem so sure about their knowledge and understanding but are unaware of how they know what they know

• Difficulty understanding things they cannot see= results in why questions 

  • E.g., only a vague idea of what would happen if a car hit him

• When bringing them to theme parks, they think everything is real

Centration

Centering attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others

• Children at this stage do not have this yet

• Unable to consider the height and width of the glass at the same time

  • Fail to conserve number, matter, length, area

  • But they could be able to conserve volume not number

• E.g., shape doesn't matter bc water is the same

Conservation

Altering a substance’s appearance does not change its basic properties

Irreversibility of thought

cannot rewind what they saw

Conservation of liquid test

Children are presented with two identical beakers with same level of liquid 

• Children are asked if two beakers have the same amount of liquid → usually say yes.

• One beaker’s liquid is poured into a taller, thinner beaker.

• Younger children (under 7–8) say the amounts differ, focusing on height or width.

• Older children say the amount is the same, explaining it could be poured back

Vygotsky’s theory

Children actively construct their knowledge and understanding 

• Children are more social creatures

• Develop ways of thinking and understanding through social interaction

• Cognitive development depends on the tools provided by society and their minds are shaped by cultural contexts

• E.g., if existentialist thinking is not important in your society, then might not learn that

Zone of proximal development

Range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to master alone but can be learned with guidance and assistance from adults or more skilled children

[ZPD] Lower limit

What the child can do without help

[ZPD] Upper limit

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

[ZPD] Buds of flowers of development

emphasized how it is still developing

[ZPD] Fruits of development

when it is developed already

• e.g., autobiographical memory 

• mature to the lower limit

Scaffolding

Changing the level of support

• A more skilled person adjusts the amount of guidance of the child's current performance

• E.g., numbers

Language and thought

Children use speech not only to communicate socially but also to help them solve tasks

• Important tool for scaffolding

• Language and thought develops independently then merges together later on 

  • External origins at the beginning then it begins to be internal

• Similar to preoperational stage (3-7 years old)

Private speech

Use of language for self regulation, talking to oneself 

• Use language to plan, guide, monitor behavior

• Inner speech then becomes their thoughts

• More private speech means more social competence and manage emotions better 

• See self talk as a sign of maturity unlike Piaget who think it’s immature and egocentric

Teaching strategies

Vygotsky’s theory can be applied to education

• Assess the child’s ZPD (diagnostic test) 

• Uses the child’s ZPD in teaching

• Use more skilled peers as teachers

• Place instruction in meaningful context

• Transform classroom with vygotskian ideas

Piaget vs Vygotsky

• Endpoint for cognitive development

• Knowledge is constructed

• Implications for teaching

Endpoint for cognitive development

Piaget: formal operational thought

Vygotsky: depends on which skills are important in the person’s culture

Knowledge is constructed

Piaget: through transforming, organizing, reorganizing previous knowledge

Vygotsky: through social interaction

Implications for teaching

Piaget: need support to explore environment and discover knowledge

Vygotsky: need many opportunities to learn with teacher and more skilled peers

Both facilitators do not spoon feed

Criticisms of Vygotsky

• Not specific about age related changes

• Did not adequately describe how socioemotional changes contribute to cognitive development

• Overemphasized role of language in thinking

• Collaboration and guidance have pitfalls

• Too much help or control

Information processing

Attention, Memory, Executive functioning

Attention 

Focusing of mental resources on select information

• Ability to pay attention improves during preschool years (TV for 30 mins+)more as opposed to toddlers who would probably look at the television for a moment and then shift their attention to something else

• They understand their world better now, leading to better attention

Aspects of attention

• Executive attention

• Sustained/ vigilance attention

Executive attention

• Action planning

• Allocating attention to goals 

• Error detection and compensation 

• Monitoring progress on tasks

• Dealing with novel or difficult circumstances

Sustained/ vigilance attention

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

Deficiencies in attention

Salient vs relevant dimensions

Planfulness of attention

Salient vs relevant dimensions

They pay attention to salient stimuli (those that stand out)  even if they are not relevant to the problem at hand 

• E.g., if you ask them to raise their hand before opening the toy, they would be more attentive towards the toy than listening to your instructions

6 or 7 years of age: better at attending to relevant dimensions and can control their attention better

Planfulness of attention

Preschool children are not very systematic, they use a haphazard comparison strategy in attending to detail

• Preschool children → lack planfulness, make unsystematic judgments, scan haphazardly.

• Older children → more systematic and planful in attention.

• Vurpillot (1968) study → preschoolers scanned houses randomly; older children compared windows systematically.

Mary Rothbart and Maria Garstein

Children are able to understand their world better at this stage, which leads to better attention

Control and sustain attention would lead to

• More school readiness

• Higher level of school achievement

• Completing college at 25 years old

Memory

Retention of information over time which is important in cognitive development

• Infant’s memories are fragile and short-lived except for perceptual motor actions

Short term memory

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

• Increases during early childhood 

• Preschool children:  use rehearsal to keep info in short-term memory (STM)

• Older children: hold info longer due to more rehearsal, faster processing, and more myelinated neurons

Rehearsal

Repeating information after presentation to keep information in short term for a much longer period

Memory span test

Hear short list of stimuli (digits) presented at a rapid pace then repeat

Speed of processing explanation

Speed with which a child processes information is important

Long term memory

Relatively permanent type of memory that stores huge amounts of information for a long time

Different factors that influence accuracy

• Age differences in children’s susceptibility to suggestion

• Individual differences in susceptibility

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

Age differences in children’s susceptibility to suggestion

Preschoolers are more suggestible than older children, though susceptibility varies by individual

Individual differences in susceptibility

Interviewing techniques can distort reports, even about central events

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

Accuracy improves with neutral interviews, minimal misleading questions, and no pressure

E.g., did the nurse lick your knee?

Helpful: neutral tone, limited use of misleading questions, no motivation to make a false report

Autobiographical memory

Type of long term memory on significant events and experiences in own life

• E.g., name of teacher, traumatic event 

• 3-5 years old/ preschool years: memories increasingly take on more autobiographical characteristics

Executive function

Umbrella like concept that consists of a number of higher level cognitive processes linked to development of brain’s prefrontal cortex 

• Managing one’s thoughts to engage in goal directed behavior

Developmental advances

• Cognitive inhibition

• Cognitive flexibility

• Goal setting

• Gratification by walter mischel

Cognitive inhibition

Stop self from a tendency considered wrong

Cognitive flexibility

Shift their attention to another topic or thought. This can be important when you need them to start eating and stop playing, or when you want to change the topic of the conversation

Goal setting

Set a goal for themselves -quite an important skill since this can facilitate socio-emotional development and the learning of other skills

Delay of gratification (marshmallow experiment)

Those who could delay became more academically successful, higher SAT scores, higher GPAs and cope better with stress, made more money in career, law abiding, lower BMI, happier

Child theory of mind

Awareness of one’s own mental processes and mental process of others

• Child is a thinker trying to explain, predict, understand people’s thoughts, feelings, utterances

[Theory of mind] Developmental changes

• Perceptions

• Emotions

• Desires

Perceptions

By age 2, children understand others see what’s in front of them; by age 3, they realize looking leads to knowing

Emotions

Children distinguish positive (happy) and negative (sad) feelings

• e.g., “Tommy feels bad”

Desires

Toddlers recognize people act on what they want

• e.g., “I want my mommy.”

• Understand that desires are related to actions and to simple emotions 

Landmark development: recognize that someone else may have different desires from one’s own

Age milestones for theory of mind

18 months to 3 years: Children begin to understand perceptions, emotions, and desires

3 years to 5 years: understand false beliefs

5 years to 9 years: behaviors do not necessarily reflect their thoughts and feelings

7+ years: understand the beliefs and thoughts of others, multiple interpretations

False beliefs

Beliefs that are not true which develops in a majority by 3-5 years old 

• Recognize that beliefs are not just mapped directly into mind but that different people can also have different and incorrect belief

Classic false belief task

Young children were shown a band aid box which actually had pencils

When asked what another child would think was inside, 3-year-olds said “pencils.”

By age 4–5, children recognized the false belief and answered “Band-Aids.”

Deepening appreciation of mind

5-7 years only where they appreciate mind rather just understanding mental states

• In middle to late childhood, they see the mind as an active knowledge-builder and accept multiple interpretations of events

• Children with autism have difficulty developing theory of mind (makes sense with difficulty in interactions with others)

• E.g., shown an ambiguous drawing (duck or rabbit), children recognize different beliefs (one puppet sees a duck, another a rabbit).

• Before 7: they would say there's only one correct answer

Variations in early childhood education

• Child centered kindergarten

• Montessori approach

• Developmentally appropriate and inappropriate education

Child centered kindergarten

Emphasizes the education of the whole child and concern for his or her physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development

• Instruction is organized around the chi;d’s needs, interests, and learning styles

• Emphasis on the process of learning and not what is learned

[Child centered kindergarten] Principles

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 child’s total development

Frequent activities in excellent kindergarten programs

Experimenting, discovering, trying out, restructuring, speaking, listening

Maria montessori

Italian physician turned educator who created a revolutionary approach to young children’s education

Montessori approach

Philosophy of education where children are given considerable freedom and spontaneity in choosing activities

• Move from one activity to another as they desire

• Teacher acts as a facilitator

• Shows how to perform, demonstrate, offers help

Criticisms of Montessori approach

Neglects socioemotional development

• E.g., Montessori fosters independence and development of cognitive skills but deemphasizes verbal interaction fo child and teacher and peers 

Restricted imaginative play and heavy reliance on self corrective materials that may not allow creativity

Angeline lillard

Montessori is a positive alternative to other early childhood programs and effective in resolving dichotomy of work and play

Developmentally appropriate practice

Similar to child centered kindergarten: learning> content

• Young children learn best through active, hands-on teaching methods such as games and dramatic play

• Emphasizes importance of creating settings that encourage active learning and reflect children's interests and capabilities

[DAP] Benefits

Less stress, more motivated, more skilled socially, better work habits, more creative, better language skills, better math skills

[DAP] Age-appropriateness

Knowledge of typical development of children within an age span

[DAP] Individual appropriateness

Uniqueness of child