Early Childhood

Growth hormone deficiency

absence or deficiency of growth hormone produced by the pituitary gland to stimulate the body to grow

myelination

nerve cells are covered and insulated with a layer of fat cells

symbolic function substage

the first sub stage of preoperational thought, occurring roughly between the ages of 2 and 4. During this substage, the young child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present.

Preoperational thought

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

symbolic function substage and intuitive thought substage

Preoperational thought can be divided into two substages:

symbolic function substage

occurring roughly between the ages of 2 and 4, the young child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present. Young children use scribble designs to represent people, houses, cars, clouds, and so on; they begin to use language and engage in pretend play. However, although young children make distinct progress during this substage, their thought still has important limitations, two of which are egocentrism and animism

Egocentrism

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

Animism

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

intuitive thought substage

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

centration

a centering of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others.

conservation

In Piaget’s theory, awareness that altering an object’s or a substance’s appearance does not change its basic properties.

Zone of proximal development (ZPD

the 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.

lower limit

the level of skill reached by the child working independently.

Upper limit

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

Scaffolding

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 fit the child’s current performance

private speech

use of language for self-regulation

Piaget

For _____, private speech is egocentric and immature, but for Vygotsky it is an important tool of thought during the early childhood years.

3 and 7

Children must communicate externally and use language for a long period of time before they can make the transition from external to internal speech. This transition period occurs between _____ years of age and involves talking to oneself.

private speech

Vygotsky reasoned that children who use a lot of _________ are more socially competent than those who don’t

social constructivist approach

emphasizes the social contexts of learning and the construc tion of knowledge through social interaction

Executive attention

nvolves action plan ning, 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.

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.

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.

short-term memory

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

fast mapping

involves children’s ability to make an initial connection between a word and its referent after only limited exposure to the word

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

Montessori approach

An educational philosophy in which children are given considerable freedom and spontaneity in choosing activities and are allowed to move from one activity to another as they desire

developmentally appropriate practice (DAP

Education that focuses on the typical developmental patterns of children (age appropriateness) and the uniqueness of each child (individual-appropriateness).

early childhood

during ______ they begin to discover what kind of person they will become

self-understanding

the representation of self, the substance and content of self-conceptions

Emotion-coaching parents

monitor their children’s emotions, view their children’s negative emotions as opportunities for teaching, assist them in labeling emotions, and coach them in how to deal effectively with emotions.

emotion-dismissing parents

view their role as to deny, ignore, or change negative emotions.

Moral development

involves thoughts, feelings, and behaviors regarding rules and conventions about what people should do in their interactions with other people.

superego

According to Freud, children attempt to reduce anxiety, avoid punishment, and maintain parental affection by identifying with parents and internalizing their standards of right and wrong, thus forming the

heteronomous morality

the first stage of moral development in Piaget’s theory. Children think of justice and rules as unchangeable properties of the world, removed from the control of people. 4 to 7 years of age,

autonomous morality

They become aware that rules and laws are created by people, and in judging an action they consider the actor’s intentions as well as the consequences.

immanent justice

The concept that if a rule is broken, punishment will be meted out immediately.

Conscience

refers to an internal regulation of standards of right and wrong that involves an integration of all three components of moral development we have described so far—moral thought, feeling, and behavior

Gender

refers to the characteristics of people as males and females

Gender identity

involves a sense of one’s own gender, including knowledge, understanding, and acceptance of being male or female, One aspect of gender identity involves knowing whether you are a girl or boy, an awareness that most children develop by about 2½ years of age

Gender roles

are sets of expectations that prescribe how females or males should think, act, and feel.

Gender typing

refers to acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role

Estrogens

such as estradiol, influence the develop ment of female physical sex characteristics

Androgens

such as testosterone, promote the development of male physical sex characteristics

social role theory

A theory that gender differences result from the contrasting roles of men and women

psychoanalytic theory of gender

A theory deriving from Freud’s view that the preschool child develops a sexual attraction to the opposite-sex parent, by approximately 5 or 6 years of age renounces this attraction because of anxious feelings, and subsequently identifies with the same-sex parent, unconsciously adopting the same-sex parent’s characteristics.

social cognitive theory of gender

A theory emphasizing that children’s gender development occurs through the observation and imitation of gender behavior and through the rewards and punishments children experience for gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate behavior.

3

Around the age of __, children already show a preference to spend time with same-sex playmates.

gender schema theory

gender typing emerges as children gradually develop gender schemas of what is gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate in their culture

gender schema

organizes the world in terms of female and male

Authoritarian parenting

a restrictive, punitive style in which parents exhort the child to follow their directions and respect their work and effort.

Authoritative parenting

encourages children to be independent but still places limits and controls on their actions. Extensive verbal give-and-take is allowed, and parents are warm and nurturing toward the child.

Neglectful parenting

is a style in which the parent is uninvolved in the child’s life.

Indulgent parenting

a style in which parents are highly involved with their children but place few demands or controls on them

coparenting

Support parents provide for each other in jointly raising their children

Physical abuse

characterized by the infliction of physical injury as a result of punch ing, beating, kicking, biting, burning, shaking, or otherwise harming a child

Child neglect

characterized by failure to provide for the child’s basic needs. Neglect can be physical (abandonment, for example), educational (allowing chronic truancy, for example), or emotional (marked inattention to the child’s needs)

Child neglect

is by far the most common form of child maltreatment

Sexual abuse

includes fondling a child’s genitals, intercourse, incest, rape, sodomy, exhi bitionism, and commercial exploitation through prostitution or the production of porno graphic materials

Emotional abuse

includes acts or omissions by parents or other caregivers that have caused, or could cause, serious behavioral, cognitive, or emotional problems

play

According to Freud and Erikson, ______ helps children master anxieties and conflicts (Demanchick, 2015). Because tensions are relieved in ______, children can cope more effectively with life’s problems.

Sensorimotor play

behavior by infants that lets them derive pleasure from exercising their sensorimotor schemes.

Practice play

involves the repetition of behavior when new skills are being learned or when physical or mental mastery and coordination of skills are required for games or sports.

Pretense/symbolic play

occurs when the child transforms the physical environment into a symbol (Taggart, Eisen, & Lillard, 2018). Between 9 and 30 months of age

preschool

Many experts on play consider the_____ years the “golden age” of symbolic/pretense play that is dramatic or sociodramatic in nature.

Social play

Play that involves social interactions with peers.

Constructive play

combines sensorimotor/practice play with symbolic representation. It occurs when children engage in the self-regulated creation of a product or a solution, Stacking blocks into a tower

Games

are activities that children engage in for pleasure and that have rules. Often they involve competition.