Physical & Cognitive Development in Early Childhood (Ages 2-6)

What is the average physical growth rate for children in early childhood (ages 2-6)?

2 to 3 inches and gain 6 pounds per year.

Physical growth is steady and much slower than in infancy.

What is the difference between gross motor skills and fine motor skills?

Gross motor skills involve large muscle groups (running, jumping, hopping). Fine motor skills involve small hand muscles used for precise tasks (cutting with scissors, holding a pencil, threading beads).

Why do 5- and 6-year-olds use their whole body when learning to write or draw?

Because isolated finger muscle control is still maturing, preschoolers recruit their whole body—moving their back muscles, shoulder, whole arm, and even sticking out or moving their tongue.

What are the gross motor milestones for 18-24 months?

Runs awkwardly

climbs stairs with both feet on each step

pushes and pulls large boxes or wheeled toys

What are the fine motor milestones for 18-24 months?

clear hand preference

stacks 4 to 6 blocks

turns pages one at a time

picks up items without overbalancing

unscrews jar lids.

What are the gross motor milestones for 2-3 years?

Runs easily

climbs on furniture unaided

hauls and shoves big toys around obstacles

What are the fine motor milestones for 2-3 years?

Picks up very small objects cleanly; throws a small ball while standing without losing balance.

What are the gross motor milestones for 3-4 years?

Walks up stairs one foot per step; skips on two feet; walks on tiptoe; pedals and steers a tricycle; walks in any direction pulling toys.

What are the fine motor milestones for 3-4 years?

Catches a large ball between outstretched arms; cuts paper with scissors; holds a pencil between thumb and fingers (pencil grip).

What are the gross motor milestones for 4-5 years?

Walks up and down stairs one foot per step; stands, runs, and walks on tiptoe cleanly.

What are the fine motor milestones for 4-5 years?

Strikes a ball with a bat; kicks and catches a ball; threads beads on a string; grasps a pencil properly.

What are the gross motor milestones for 5-6 years?

Skips on alternate feet; walks on a balance line; slides and swings independently.

What are the fine motor milestones for 5-6 years?

Plays ball games well; threads a needle and sews large stitches.

When should fine motor training begin, and who benefits most?

Training should begin at ages 3-4 to prepare for writing. Older preschoolers (past age 3) who understand geometric shapes benefit the most.

How do drawing stages progress between ages 2 and 7, and what sets the speed limit?

basic scribbles to complex pictures with multiple objects Practice accelerates progress, but neurological and wrist/hand muscle maturation set the ultimate limit.

What is lateralization, and what role does the corpus callosum play?

Lateralization is the specialization of the left and right cerebral hemispheres. The corpus callosum connects both sides; it grows and myelinizes faster during ages 2-6 than at any other time.

What specialized functions are handled by the left vs. right brain hemispheres?

Left

Language, logic, mathematical calculation, analysis.

Right

Intuition, creativity, art/music, spatial perception.

What percentage of people process language in the left hemisphere?

95% of people process sentence structure and word meanings in the left hemisphere, a pattern established before birth.

What are the functions of the reticular formation and the hippocampus?

The reticular formation regulates attention and concentration. The hippocampus transfers information into long-term memory; its myelination drives preschool memory gains.

What causes infantile amnesia and what are the global handedness statistics?

Infantile amnesia (inability to remember the first 3 years) is caused by immature connections between the hippocampus and cortex. Handedness is 83% right-handed, 14% left-handed, and 3% ambidextrous.

Why did 3-year-old Manny's night waking persist in his case study?

Getting into his parents' bed served as positive reinforcement delivered on a variable schedule (some nights but not others), making the habit highly resistant to stopping.

What are the 5 pediatrician sleep fixes (SBNRT)?

Schedule (consistent daytime routine),

Bedtime (fixed 8-10 hours before waking)

Naps (cut late naps if night sleep is delayed)

Routine (calming 20-30 min activity)

Toy (transitional object).

How much food do preschoolers eat compared to adults, and why?

Preschoolers eat only about half as much food as adults because their physical growth rate slows significantly compared to infancy.

What are food aversions, and when do they peak?

Suddenly refusing previously accepted foods (like green vegetables); it peaks naturally during the preschool years.

What guidelines should parents follow regarding preschool eating habits?

Do NOT cater to sweet cravings or use sweets as rewards.

DO keep a 1-week food record, offer varied nutritious foods, and let the child's appetite dictate portion size.

What are the U.S. preschool weight statistics?

26% overweight, 14% obesity, and 2% severe obesity. Rates rose sharply during COVID-19 pandemic closures due to reduced physical activity.

How many colds and stomach illnesses does an average preschooler get per year?

7 to 8 colds and 1 to 2 gastrointestinal (stomach) illnesses per year.

How does high stress affect a preschooler's physical health?

Major family stress (moving, bereavement, parental job loss) depresses immune function, making the child significantly more susceptible to illnesses.

What proportion of preschoolers have accidents requiring medical care yearly?

1 in 4 children under age 5.

What is the leading cause of accidental death for ages 1-4 vs. after age 5?

Ages 1-4: Drowning.

After age 5: Motor vehicle accidents.

Define child maltreatment, child abuse, and child neglect.

Maltreatment: Caregiver act/failure causing harm or risk of harm.

Abuse: Trauma inflicted physically, sexually, or emotionally. Neglect: Caregiver failure to provide physical/emotional necessities (most common).

What are the key U.S. child maltreatment statistics regarding mortality and age?

Over 1,700 children die annually (68% under age 3). Infants under 1 are 2x as likely to be maltreated and almost 4x as likely to die from it.

Who is the perpetrator in the vast majority of child maltreatment cases?

A parent is the perpetrator in nearly 80% of reported cases.

What are the 4 risk categories in the SCAF model of child abuse?

Sociocultural factors

(poverty, corporal punishment norms)

Characteristics of the child

(younger, disabled, difficult temperament)

Abuser characteristics

(depression, substance abuse) Family stresses.

How quickly do neglected children recover developmental gaps in quality foster care?

Physical, cognitive, and social developmental gaps typically disappear within 1 year.

If the environment supports that.

What is the E-I-P model for child abuse prevention?

Educate parents, Identify at-risk families early, Protect children through swift law enforcement.

Why are infants under 1 year old most vulnerable to severe abuse and death?

They are completely physically helpless, unable to speak or escape, and demanding care can trigger frustrated, unprepared caregivers.

What cultural factors increase the risk of physical child abuse?

High societal acceptance of corporal punishment and moral beliefs that parents have total ownership over children.

What child characteristics increase the likelihood of abuse?

Being under age 3, having a difficult temperament, or having physical/intellectual disabilities that increase caregiving demands.

What are the long-term cognitive and emotional consequences of unaddressed child abuse?

Lower IQ scores, brain growth disruptions, higher rates of depression, anxiety, school failure, and peer relationship problems

PTSD in severe cases

Higher likelihood of substance abuse later on in life

What is the semiotic function?

The mental capacity to understand that one object, word, or behavior can represent another (e.g., a broom stands for a horse).

What is the defining hallmark of Piaget's preoperational stage (ages 2-6)?

The explosive expansion of symbolic representation in language, pretend play, and internal thought.

When does pretend play emerge, and is it universal?

Pretend play with objects emerges at ages 2-3 and is universal across human cultures.

What is egocentrism?

Looking at the world entirely from your own physical or mental point of view and assuming everyone else experiences it identically.

How is egocentrism tested in Piaget's 3D Mountain Task?

A child looks at a 3D mountain model. When asked to pick a picture showing what a doll sitting across the table sees, preschoolers pick the photo showing their own view.

What is centration?

A child's tendency to focus their visual and mental attention on only one variable at a time.

What is animism, and what cognitive limitation causes it?

Believing non-living self-moving objects are alive and have feelings. It is caused by centration—focusing on motion while ignoring biological traits.

What is conservation?

Understanding that an object's physical quantity remains unchanged even when its outward visual appearance is reshaped.

Why do preschoolers fail conservation tasks before age 5?

Because centration traps their focus on visual appearance (e.g., height) and they lack mental reversibility.

What is irreversibility in preoperational logic?

The inability to mentally trace a physical transformation backward step-by-step to reconstruct the original state.

What are the two overarching themes of the preoperational stage?

(1) Rapid growth in symbolic skills (language, pretend play). (2) Limited logical thinking makes children dependent on adult guidance and protection.

What is Flavell's Level 1 perspective-taking?

Mastering at ages 2-3 the realization that other people experience things differently (e.g., adapting speech for a baby).

What is Flavell's Level 2 perspective-taking?

Unlocking at ages 4-5 complex rules to calculate exactly what another person sees from their position across a room.

How do 4- and 5-year-olds understand emotion gaps?

They realize unpleasant emotions happen when there is a gap between desires and reality, and use crying or smiling strategically to influence adults.

What happens in Flavell's sponge-rock procedure?

A sponge is painted to look like a rock. 3-year-olds say it looks like a rock and is a rock. 4- to 5-year-olds state it looks like a rock, but is actually a sponge.

Why do 3-year-olds fail the sponge-rock procedure?

They are trapped by surface appearance, unable to separate how an object looks from what it actually is.

How does Flavell's research challenge Piaget's view of egocentrism?

Flavell proved young kids are not completely egocentric; simplified tasks show perspective-taking begins as early as ages 2-3 (Level 1).

Give a real-world example of preschool egocentrism outside the laboratory.

A 3-year-old in a car backseat pointing out the window saying "Look at that!", unaware the driver in front cannot see behind them.

Give a real-world example of preschool animism.

A child fearing a wind-blown leaf is "chasing" them, or insisting a teddy bear feels sad when left in another room.

Why rarely pass conservation tasks before age 5?

Because visual appearance dominates their reasoning until brain maturation enables decentration and reversibility around ages 5-6.

What is Theory of Mind?

An integrated understanding of how the human mind works and how mental states (beliefs, desires, knowledge) dictate human actions.

What is the Theory of Mind milestone at 18 months?

Toddlers realize that people—unlike inanimate objects—act with specific goals and intentions in mind.

What is the Theory of Mind milestone at age 3?

Children understand that desires drive behavior (someone who wants a toy tries to get it), but assume everyone shares the exact same reality.

What is the false-belief principle (unlocked at age 4)?

Understanding that lets a child figure out what information will give another person a false belief.

How do 3-year-olds vs. 4-year-olds perform in the Candy Box study?

Shown a candy box containing crayons: 3-year-olds incorrectly guess a friend will expect "crayons"; 4-year-olds correctly predict "candy" because the box picture causes a false belief.

What is the Theory of Mind milestone at ages 5-7?

Children master reciprocal thought ("I know that you know"), which is essential for building true mutual friendships.

What happens in Pillow's (1999) toy container experiment on inference?

Toys are placed in opaque containers, and a puppet looks into one. When asked if the puppet knows the toy color in each container, only 6-year-olds answer yes, proving inference develops at age 6.

What were the cross-cultural findings of The Baka Study in Cameroon?

Baka hunter-gatherer children tested with hidden mango kernels failed false-belief tasks before age 4 but passed easily at ages 4-5, proving Theory of Mind timing is universal.

How does Robbie Case's Neo-Piagetian theory explain cognitive limits?

Case explains cognitive limits as constraints on working memory capacity (STSS) rather than missing logical structures.

What are Short-Term Storage Space (STSS) and operational efficiency?

STSS: Working memory capacity.

Operational Efficiency: Processing speed/ease; as brain maturation improves efficiency, it frees up STSS space.

Why do young preschoolers fail matrix classification tasks?

Sorting by shape AND color simultaneously requires holding two schemes in STSS. Young kids fail because their STSS has room for only one scheme at a time.

What are cognitive scripts?

Automated mental blueprints for repeated daily routines (e.g., tooth brushing) that reduce cognitive load and conserve working memory.

Define metamemory and metacognition.

Metamemory:

Knowledge about and control over memory processes.

Metacognition:

Knowledge about and control over thought processes.

What is Lev Vygotsky's central sociocultural principle?

Cognitive development is inherently social; problem-solving solutions are socially generated in group interactions before being internalized into individual thought.

What are Vygotsky's 4 speech stages (PNPI)?

(1) Primitive (conditioning), (2) Naive psychology (uses words without grammar understanding), (3) Private speech (self-talk guiding problem-solving), (4) Ingrowth (internalized silent thought).

How does vocabulary size grow at age 1, age 2½, and ages 5-6?

Age 1: ~12 words. Age 2½: ~600 words (1-2 new words/day). Ages 5-6: ~15,000 words (~10 new words/day).

What cognitive shift occurs around age 3 in word learning?

Children pay attention to words in whole category groups (dinosaurs, animals, fruits), creating mental "slots"in memory to fill rapidly.

What is fast-mapping?

Categorically linking a new word to an object by forming a rapid hypothesis about its meaning and testing it immediately in conversation.

What is the grammar explosion?

The period between ages 2 and 6 when speech rapidly transforms from two-word phrases into complex, adult-like sentences.

What is the first English inflection learned by children?

The verb ending -ing (e.g., "I playing"), learned at ages 2½-3.

What is the full 8-step sequence of English grammatical inflections (PPIP3RA)?

(1) -ing,

(2) Prepositions (in/on),

(3) Plural -s,

(4) Irregular past tenses (ran), (

5) Possessives

(6) Articles (a/the)

(7) Regular 3rd-person -s (runs)

(8) Regular past tenses (played).

What is overregularization, and at what age does it peak?

Applying regular grammar rules to irregular words (e.g., saying "goed", "teeths"); it peaks at ages 3-4.

What does overregularization prove about a child's brain?

It proves the child's brain is actively discovering underlying abstract rules rather than just imitating adults.

What is phonological awareness?

Knowledge of language sound patterns and its system for representing sounds with letters.

Why is phonological awareness important across world languages?

Greater phonological awareness before school directly predicts faster, more successful reading acquisition across all world languages.

What everyday activities build phonological awareness?

Reciting nursery rhymes, playing sound-matching games (like Japanese Shiritori), reading rhyming books, and using invented spelling.

What is invented spelling?

Preschoolers writing words using phonetic letter-sound guesses (e.g., writing "bvr" for beaver), which builds phonological awareness.

How do complex sentence structures emerge between ages 3 and 4?

Children begin using conjunctions (and, but, so), embedded clauses, and question words (who, what, where, why).

What was the original purpose of the Binet-Simon test (1905)?

The first modern intelligence test, created by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon to identify French children needing special academic support.

What was Lewis Terman's formula for calculating Stanford-Binet IQ?

\(\text{IQ} = (\text{Mental Age} / \text{Chronological Age}) \times 100\).

What are the normal bell curve percentages for IQ (Mean 100, SD 15)?

85-115: 68% (two-thirds). 70-130: 96%. Above 130: Gifted. Below 70: Intellectual disability (if daily adaptive behavior is also impaired).

What are the three Wechsler IQ tests (WAIS, WISC, WPPSI) by age group?

WAIS (Adults), WISC (Children), and WPPSI (Preschoolers younger than 6).

How well do IQ scores predict school grades, and how stable are they?

IQ correlates .50 to .60 with future grades. Score stability in middle childhood is ~.80, though major stress can cause rare 40-point swings.

What real-world abilities are NOT measured by standard IQ tests (CISSS)?

Creativity, Insight, Street smarts, Social cues reading, and Spatial relationships.

What did the French Adoption Study (Capron & Duyme) prove about IQ?

Children raised in upper-class homes scored 15-16 points higher in IQ regardless of biological parent class, proving environmental impact.

What 4 parent behaviors encourage higher child IQ (EWTZ)?

(1) Environment (complex physical setup with toys)

(2) Warmth (responding encouragingly)

(3) Talk (rich descriptive language)

(4) ZPD (scaffolding in Zone of Proximal Development).

What are the initial vs. lasting benefits of Head Start?

Produces an initial +10 IQ point gain that fades in elementary school, but delivers lasting benefits: less special education, less grade repetition, higher graduation rates, and better health.

What were the findings of the Abecedarian Project (starting at 6-12 weeks)?

Full-time day care enrichment from infancy led to higher IQs at every age; only 12.8% scored below IQ 85 (vs. 44% of controls) and kids were half as likely to repeat a grade at age 12.

What percentage of IQ variation is driven by heredity, and what is the Reaction Range?

Heredity accounts for ~40% of IQ variation. The Reaction Range is 20 to 25 IQ points—genes set the boundary fence, and environmental stimulation decides where the child lands inside it.

What is The Flynn Effect, and what are its three proposed cultural causes (NML)?

The generational rise in average IQ scores across industrialized nations. Driven by improved Nutrition, broader Media exposure, and universal Literacy.