Human Development Exam 2

Plasticity

A characteristic of development refers to malleability or openness to change in response to experience

Myelination

-Neuron axons become coated with fatty myelin, neurons are better able to communicate, and children’s thinking becomes faster, more coordinated, and complex

-proceeds rapidly from birth-4 in the sensory and motor cortex and then continues to other cortical areas through childhood

Lateralization

The process of the hemispheres becoming specialized to carry out different functions

Language tends to be lateralized in which hemisphere?

Left tends to dominate over the right in most adults

Gross motor skills (2-3)

Walks more smoothly, runs but cannot turn or stop suddenly, jumps, throws a ball with a rigid body and catches by trapping ball against chest, rides push toys using feet

Gross motor skill (3-4)

Runs, ascends stairs alternating feet, jumps 15 to 24 inches, hops, pedals and steers a tricycle

Gross motor skill (4-5)

Runs more smoothly with control over stopping and turning, descends stairs alternating feet, jumps 24 to 33 inches, skips, throws ball by rotating the body and transferring weight to one foot, catches ball with hands, rides tricycle and steers effectively

Gross motor skill (5-6)

Runs more quickly, skips more effectively, throws and catches a ball like older children, makes a running jump of 28 to 36 inches, rides bicycle with training wheels

Fine motor skills (2-3)

Unzips large zippers, puts on and removes some clothing, uses a spoon

Fine motor skills (3-4)

Serves food, can work large buttons, copies vertical line and circle, uses scissors

Fine motor skills (4-5)

Uses scissors to cut along a line, uses fork effectively, copies simple shapes and some letters

Fine motor skills (5-6)

Ties shoes, uses knife to cut soft food, copies numbers and simple words

Preoperational reasoning

Piaget’s second stage of cognitive development, between ages 2-6, characterized by advances in symbolic thought, but thought is not yet logical

Egocentrism

Piaget’s term for children’s inability to take another person’s point of view or perspective and to assume that others share the same feelings, knowledge, and physical view of the world

Three-mountain task

A classic Piagetian task used to illustrate preoperational children’s egocentrism

Animism

The belief that inanimate objects are alive and have feelings and intentions; a characteristic of preoperational reasoning

Centration

The tendency to focus on one part of a stimulus, situation, or idea and exclude all others; a characteristic of preoperational reasoning

Appearance-reality distinction

The ability to distinguish between something appears to be and what it really is

Irreversibility

A characteristic of preoperational reasoning in which a child does not understand that reversing a process can often undo a process and restore the original state

Conservation

The principle that a physical quantity, such as number, mass, or volume, remains the same even when its appearance changes

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective

-We are embedded in a cultural context that shapes how we think and who we become

-Mental activity—cognition—is influenced by culture, specifically, the cultural tools that members of a cultures share

Guided Participation

Also known as apprenticeship in thinking; the process by which people learn from others who guide them, providing a scaffold to help them accomplish more than the child could do alone

Scaffolding

Temporary support that permits a child to bridge the gap between his or her current competence level and the task at hand

Dual encoding

The ability to mentally represent an object in more than one way at a time

Zone of proximal development

Vygotsky’s term for the tasks that children cannot do alone but can exercise with the aid of more skilled partners

Private Speech

-Self-directed speech that children use to guide their behavior

-accounts for 20-50% of the utterances of children 4-10

-plays a role in self-regulation, the ability to control one’s impulses and appropriately direct behavior

-use while working on challenging tasks and attempting to solve problems, especially when they encounter obstacles or do not have adult supervision

Inner speech

-word-based internal thought, a silent internal dialogue that individuals use every day to regulate and organize their behavior

-plays a role in cognitive processing, including short-term memory, planning, and executive function

-most likely to use inner speech when completing difficult problems and tasks

Sustained attention

The ability to remain focused on a stimulus for an extended period of time

Selective attention

The ability to focus on relevant stimuli and ignore others

Working Memory

Consists of a short-term store (short-term memory), a processor, and a control mechanism known as the central executive

Central executive

In information processing, the part of our mental system that directs the flow of information and regulates cognitive activities such as attention, action, and problem solving

Episodic memory

Memory for everyday experiences

Recognition memory

The ability to identify a previously encountered stimulus

Recall memory

The ability to generate a memory of a stimulus encountered before without seeing it again

Memory strategies

Deliberate cognitive activities that make an individual more likely to remember information

Autobiographical Memory

The recollection of a personally meaningful event that took place at a specific time and place

Theory of mind

-children’s awareness of their own and other people’s mental processes and realization that other people do not share their thoughts

-young children’s theory of mind grows and changes between 2-5

Metacognition

The ability to think about thinking; knowledge of how the mind works

False-belief tasks

-A task that requires children to understand that someone does not share their knowledge

-children’s performance on false-belief tasks is closely related to language development and competence in sustaining conversations

Logical extension

A strategy children use to increase their vocabulary in which they extend a new word to other objects in the same category

Mutual exclusivity assumption

-when learning new words, young children assume that objects have only one label or name

-a new word is assumed to be a label for an unfamiliar object, not a synonym or second label for a familiar object

Overregularization errors

Grammatical mistakes that children make because they apply grammatical rules too stringently to words that are exceptions

Academically centered preschool programs

An approach to early childhood education that emphasizes providing children with structured learning environments in which teachers deliver direct instruction on letters, numbers, shapes, and academic skills

Child-centered preschool

A constructivist approach to early childhood education that encourages children to actively build their own understanding of the world through observing, interacting, with objects and people, and engaging in a variety of activities that allow them to manipulate materials and interact with teachers and peers

Montessori schools

a child-centered educational approach, first created in the early 1900s by the Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori, in which children are viewed as active constructors of their own development and are given freedom in choosing their activities

Developmentally appropriate practice

An educational approach that tailors instruction to the age of the child, recognizing individual differences and the need for hands-on active teaching methods

Project Head Start

Early childhood intervention program funded by the U.S. federal government that provides low-income children with nutritional, health, and educational services, as well as helps parents become involved in their children’s development

Gross Motor Skills

• Less effort to stay upright and move 

• Allow increasing interaction with objects, their environment, and people

Fine Motor Skills

Improvement across this period

Leading Cause of Death in Young Children

Accidents (drowning, motor vehicle accidents)

Ways to Enhance Children’s Safety (individual characteristics)

• Social skills and emotion regulation 

• Impulse control 

• Use of personal protection 

Ways to Enhance Children’s Safety (family/home characteristics)

• Child management and parenting skills 

• Parent protective behaviors 

• Home safety equipment  

Ways to Enhance Children’s Safety (school/peer characteristics)

• Home/school partnerships 

• Absence of playground hazards 

• Injury prevention and safety promotion policies/programs 

Ways to Enhance Children’s Safety (community characteristics)

• Positive activities for families 

• Active surveillance of hazards  

• Effective prevention policies 

Piaget’s Preoperational Stage (symbolic function substage)

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

• 2-4 years of age

• egocentrism

• animism

Piaget’s Preoperational Stage (Intuitive thought substage)

• children use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to many questions 

• between 4-7 years of age

• limits of preoperational thought: centration, irreversibility, conservation

Vygostky’s Theory

• Social constructivist approach (active interaction with the world around us through culture, social interactions, language) 

• More-skilled other 

• Zone of proximal development (ZPD) 

• Scaffolding

Vygotsky’s Theory (language and thought)

• Social speech  

• Private speech

• self-regulation, inner speech, positive role in development

Vygostky’s Theory (teaching strategies)

• Assess and use the child’s ZPD 

• Use more skilled peers as teachers 

• Monitor and encourage children’s use of private speech 

• Place instruction in a meaningful context 

Criticisms of Vygotsky’s Theory

• Specific about age-related changes 

• Overemphasized the role of language in thinking 

• Potential pitfalls of collaboration 

Evaluating Vygotsky’s Theory

Important to evaluate contextual factors in learning

Phonology Advances

• Sensitive to the sounds of spoken words 

• Capable of producing all the sounds of their language 

Morphology Advances

• Plural and possessive forms of nouns 

• Appropriate verb endings 

• Prepositions, articles, and form of to be  

Syntax

Growing mastery of complex rules for how words should be ordered

Semantics

Vocabulary development is dramatic

Pragmatics

By 4-5 years children can change speech style to fit situation

The Links Between Language Development and Poverty

• Children from lower income families heard fewer words and have smaller cumulative vocab 

• Similar findings with audio recorder research  

• Deficit thinking  

Head Start

• Tend to show immediate IQ gains; increases do not last 

• Are better prepared for future schooling 

• Have better future school adjustment than peers

What should a literacy program look like for early childhood/preschool programs? 

• Build on oral language, reading, and writing skills 

• Language skills, phonological & syntactic knowledge, letter identification 

The Importance of Reading to Young Children

• Literacy skills are correlated with parents' literacy skills 

• Research suggests reading routine with children before age 2 builds language development groundwork 

• Use books to enhance children’s communication skills 

• Initiate conversations 

• What and why questions 

• Encourage children to ask questions 

• Books that play with language