chapter 7: Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

night terror

- Abrupt awakening from a deep sleep in a state of agitation, generally occurs in young children.

- Abrupt awakening from a deep sleep

- The child may scream, cry, or thrash around but usually has no memory of it afterward.

- “I looked terrified, but I wasn't really awake.”

Example: A child suddenly sits up, screams, looks terrified, and pushes their parents away—but the next morning says, “I don't remember anything.” memory of it afterward.

sleepwalking

- Walking around and sometimes performing other functions while asleep.

example: A child walks around the house while still asleep and does not remember doing it the next morning.

sleeptalking

Talking while asleep.

nightmare

- “I had a scary dream.”

- The child wakes up and can usually tell you what happened.

- A bad dream, sometimes brought on by staying up too late, eating a heavy meal close to bedtime, or overexcitement

- A frightening dream that usually causes the child to wake up.

Example: “Mommy, I dreamed that a monster was chasing me!”

enuresis

- Repeated urination in clothing or in bed.

- involuntary urination during sleep

- Preschool children normally recognize the feeling of a full bladder while asleep and awaken to empty it.

gross motor skills

- Physical skills that involve the large muscles.

- Uses large muscles: arms, legs, whole body

- Requires balance, strength, and movement

EXAMPLE: jumping, running, climbing, throwing a ball

fine motor skills

- Physical skills that involve the small muscles and eye-hand coordination.

- Uses small muscles: Hands, fingers, wrists

- Requires precision and coordination

EXAMPLE: cutting with scissors, drawing, buttoning clothes, writing

systems of action

- Increasingly complex combinations of motor skills, which permit a wider or more precise range of movement and more control of the environment.

handedness

Preference for using a particular hand.

dental caries

Tooth decay, cavities.

preoperational stage

In Piaget's theory, the second major stage of cognitive development, in which symbolic thought expands but children cannot yet use logic effectively.

Use of symbols

Understanding of identities

understanding of cause and effect

ability to classify

understanding of number

empathy

theory of mind

6 Cognitive Advances during Early Childhood

Centration: inability to decenter

Irreversibility

Focus on states rather than transformations

Transductive reasoning

Egocentrism

Animism

Inability to distinguish appearance from reality

Immature Aspects of Preoperational Thought (According to Piaget)

Centration

- inability to decenter

- Children focus on one aspect of a situation and neglect others.

- The child focuses only on one part & ignores the rest

Irreversibility

- Children fail to understand that some operations or actions can be reversed, restoring the original situation.

- The child cannot mentally reverse an action

Focus on states rather than transformations

- Children fail to understand the significance of the transformation between states.

Transductive reasoning

- Children do not use deductive or inductive reasoning; instead, they see cause where none exists.

- Reasoning from one specific event to another specific event, often based on an incomplete connection

Egocentrism

- Children assume everyone else thinks, perceives, and feels as they do.

- The child has difficulty understanding that others may see things differently

Animism

- Children attribute life to objects not alive.

Inability to distinguish appearance from reality

- Children confuse what is real with outward appearance.

ex: Courtney believes that if she wears blue-tinted glasses, then everything she sees really did turn blue.

Conservation

- Understanding that quantity stays the same despite changes in appearance

Appearance vs. reality

Judging things based on how they look rather than what they really are

symbolic function & pretend play

- Piaget's term for the ability to use mental representations (words, numbers, or images) to which a child has attached meaning.

- Using an object, word, or idea to represent something else

pretend play

Play involving imaginary people and situations; also called fantasy play, dramatic play, or imaginative play.

Bilateral integration

Ability to use both sides of the body together effectively

sensory memory

Holds sensory information very briefly

Working memory

Holds information temporarily while we use or work with it

Long-term memory

Stores information for a long period

Autobiographical memory

Memories about your own life experiences

Pragmatics

How we use language appropriately in social situations

private speech

- Talking to yourself to guide your actions or thinking

- when children talk to themselves out loud to guide their own thinking or behavior.

Episodic memory

- Memory for personal experiences/events

- Personal experiences/events

Semantic memory

Facts and general knowledge

Generic memory

Memory for general/repeated events

Encoding

- Taking in and changing information into a form the brain can remember

example: The child sees and focuses on the picture of the dog.

Storage

- Keeping the information in memory

Example: The child retains what the picture looked like.

Retrieval

Bringing stored information back when needed

example: Later, the child remembers what the picture looked like.

CENTRAL EXECUTIVE

- Manages attention and coordinates mental processes while solving a problem.

METACOGNITION

Thinking about and monitoring your own thinking.

Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales

measures: Intelligence/cognitive abilities

- Broad age range, including children

- used for ages 2 and up and take 45 to 60 minutes.

- used to measure fluid reasoning, knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial processing, and working memory.

Wechsler Preschool and Primary

Scale of Intelligence, Revised (WPPSI-IV)

measures: Intelligence/cognitive abilities

- Young children/preschool-aged children

- An individual test that takes 30 to 60 minutes

- It yields separate verbal and performance scores as well as a combined score.