Early Childhood: Body and Mind

Vocabulary flashcards covering physical growth, brain development, Piagetian obstacles to logic, Vygotsky's social learning, language acquisition, and early childhood education options.

Center of Gravity

The point in the body that moves down from the breastbone to the belly button during early childhood as the lower body lengthens.

Food Allergies

An estimated 10 percent of all young children have a food allergy, usually to common, healthy foods such as cow's milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, and shellfish.

Myelination

The process involving a fatty coating on axons that protects and speeds signals between neurons, organizing the structure of network connectivity.

Prefrontal Cortex Maturation

Development between ages 2 and 6 that results in more regular sleep, more nuanced emotions, fewer temper tantrums, and reduced uncontrollable laughter or tears.

Preoperational Thought

Piaget's term for cognitive development between ages 2 and 6, which includes language and imagination (symbolic thought), but where logical, operational thinking is not yet possible.

Animism

The belief that natural objects and phenomena are alive and have feelings or humanlike qualities.

Centration

A characteristic of preoperational thought whereby a young child focuses (centers) on one idea, excluding all others.

Egocentrism

Young children's tendency to think about the world entirely from their own personal perspective.

Focus on Appearance

A characteristic of preoperational thought whereby a young child ignores all attributes that are not apparent.

Static Reasoning

A characteristic of preoperational thought whereby a young child thinks that nothing changes; whatever is now has always been and always will be.

Irreversibility

A characteristic of preoperational thought whereby a young child thinks that nothing can be undone; a thing cannot be restored to the way it was before a change occurred.

Conservation

The principle stating that the amount of a substance remains the same (is conserved) even when its appearance changes.

Tests of Various Types of Conservation

Assessing preoperational thought through volume, number, matter, and length transformation tasks.

Guided Participation

Vygotsky's concept of learning through mentors who present challenges, offer assistance without taking over, provide information, and encourage motivation.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Vygotsky's term for the skills that a person can exercise only with assistance, not yet independently.

Scaffolding

Temporary support that is tailored to a learner's needs and abilities, aimed at helping the learner master the next task in a given learning process.

Overimitation

The universal tendency of 2- to 6-year-old children to copy an adult action that is not a relevant or efficient part of the behavior to be learned.

Private Speech

The internal dialogue that occurs when a person talks to themselves, which Vygotsky considered pivotal for cognitive development.

Social Mediation

Human interaction that advances and expands understanding through language and social context.

Theory of Mind

A person's theory about what other people might be thinking, which emerges alongside prefrontal cortex maturation and social experience.

Executive Function

The cognitive ability to organize and prioritize thoughts, comprised of working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, which allows a person to anticipate, strategize, and plan.

Fast-Mapping

The speedy and sometimes imprecise way in which children learn new words by tentatively placing them in mental categories according to their perceived meaning.

Logical Extension

A process closely related to fast-mapping that occurs when children use a newly learned word to describe other objects in the same category.

Overregularization

The application of rules of grammar even when exceptions occur, making language seem more regular than it actually is.

Pragmatics

The practical use of language, involving adjusting communication (words, tone, grammatical form) to the audience and context.

Language Shift

Becoming more fluent in the school language than in the home language during early childhood.

Fluent Bilingual

Being fluent in two languages without favoring one over the other.

Child-Centered Programs

Early-childhood educational programs (e.g., Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Waldorf) that emphasize children's natural inclination to learn through play, self-paced exploration, and artistic expression.

Teacher-Directed Programs

Early-childhood educational programs that stress academic subjects taught by a teacher to the entire class to prepare children for formal education.

Head Start

A federally funded early-childhood intervention program for low-income children aimed at promoting literacy, providing dental care and immunizations, and teaching Standard English.