PSYC 255: CH. 5 - PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

During early childhood, the growth rate what?

slows.

Changes in the brain during early childhood enable children to?

• Plan their actions.

• Attend to stimuli more effectively.

• Make considerable strides in language development. 

The size of the brain does not change dramatically, between ___ and ___ years of age.

3; 6.

While the size of the brain does not change dramatically, between 3 and 6 years of age what occurs?

• The amount of brain material in some areas can nearly double.

• There is a dramatic loss of tissue, due to pruning and reorganization. 

• Rapid growth of the prefrontal cortex.

While the size of the brain does not change dramatically, between 3 and 6 years of age, what happens to the amount of brain material in some areas?

The amount of brain material in some areas can nearly double.

What causes a dramatic loss of brain tissue between ages 3 and 6?

Pruning and reorganization.

What part of the brain experiences rapid growth between 3 and 6 years of age?

The prefrontal cortex.

What are two key functions of the prefrontal cortex during this period of rapid growth?

• Planning and organizing new actions.

• Maintaining attention to tasks.

What characterizes brain development in early childhood?

• An increase in the number and size of dendrites.

• Continuing myelination.

Myelination in the areas of the brain related to _______ is not complete until about age 4. 

Hand-eye coordination.

Myelination in the areas of the brain related to _______ is not complete until the end of middle or late childhood. 

Focusing attention.

Myelination of many aspects of the _____, especially those involving higher-level thinking skills such as ________, is not completed until late adolescence or emerging adulthood. 

Prefrontal cortex; self-control

Gross motor skill development in early childhood includes?

• At age 3, children enjoy and are proud of simple movements, such as hopping, jumping, and running back and forth.

• At age 4, they become adventurous.

At age 3, children enjoy and are proud of?

Simple movements, such as hopping, jumping, and running back and forth.

At age 4, children become?

Adventurous.

Advances in ________ provide children with new learning opportunities to interact with objects, their environment, and people, which leads to advances in _______.

Gross motor skills; language

Fine motor skill development in early childhood includes?

• By age 3, children still lack precision.

• By age 4, much more precise.

• By age 5, the hands, arms, and body all move together in coordination with the eyes.

By age __, children still lack precision.

3.

By age __, much more precise.

4.

By age __, the hands, arms, and body all move together in coordination with the eyes.

5.

The World Health Organization (WHO) concludes that 3- to 4-year-old children should have what?

10 to 13 hours of good quality sleep, which may include a nap with consistent sleep and wake-up times.

Eating behavior is strongly influenced by?

Caregiver behavior.

WHO recommended that 3- to 4-year-olds spend at least?

3 hours per day engaging in a variety of physical activities of any intensity, with at least 60 minutes consisting of moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity spread throughout the day. 

The ________, occurring between 2 and 7 years of age, is the second stage in Piaget’s theory.

Preoperational stage

The preoperational stage, occurring between 2 and 7 years of age, is the second stage in Piaget’s theory, in which children?

• Begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings.

• Form stable concepts.

• Begin to reason.

• Demonstrate egocentrism and magical beliefs.

Preoperational means that children cannot yet perform?

Operations, which are reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what before they could only do physically. 

Preoperational thought

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

The preoperational stage can be divided into two substages, which are?

• Symbolic function.

• Intuitive thought.

Symbolic function substage

Occurs between 2 and 4 years of age, is the preoperational substage in which children gain the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present.

What are the two important limitations to thinking in the symbolic function substage?

• Egocentrism.

• Animism.

Egocentrism

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

How has egocentrism been studied?

Using the three mountains task. 

Animism

The belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action, due to a failure to distinguish among appropriate and inappropriate occasions for using human perspectives.  

Intuitive thought substage

Occurs between 4 and 7 years of age, is when children begin to use primitive reasoning.

• Piaget called this substage intuitive because children seem so sure about their knowledge and understanding yet are unaware of how they know what they know. 

Children’s “whys,” especially at age 5, signal?

The emergence of interest in reasoning and in figuring out why things are the way they are. 

Centration

A limitation of preoperational thought that is a centering of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all other, which is most clearly evident in children’s lack of conservation, or the awareness that altering an object or substance’s appearance does not change its basic properties. 

Piaget designed the?

Conservation task to study conservation, which children younger than 7 or 8 years old usually fail. 

Failure at the conservation task demonstrates?

• Centration.

• The inability to mentally reverse actions.

Children fail to conserve?

• Volume.

• Number.

• Matter.

• Length.

• Area.

Vygotsky’s theory is a?

Social constructivist approach, emphasizing the social contexts of learning and the construction of knowledge through social interaction. 

Zone of proximal development (ZPD)

Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to master alone but can be learned with the guidance and assistance of adults or more-skilled children.  

The ________ of the ZPD is the level of skill reached by the child working independently. 

Lower limit.

The ________ of the ZPD is the level of additional responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor.  

Upper limit.

Scaffolding

Changing the level of support over the course of a teaching session. 

According to Vygotsky, children use language to?

Plan, guide, and monitor their behavior. 

The use of language for self-regulation is called?

Private or egocentric speech. 

Children must communicate externally and use language for a long time before they can make the transition from?

external to internal speech. 

The transition from external to internal speech occurs between?

3 and 7 years of age. 

When children can act without verbalizing, they have internalized their self-talk in the form of?

inner speech, which becomes their thoughts. 

In early childhood, children make advances in two aspects of attention, which are?

• Executive attention

• Sustained attention or vigilance

Executive attention

Involves planning actions, allocating attention to goals, detecting, and compensating for errors, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.

Sustained attention or vigilance

Focused and extended engagement with an object, task, event, or other aspect of the environment. 

Executive attention is a good predictor of?

self-regulation.

Individuals show the greatest increase in sustained attention in the?

preschool years, but we see increases in older children and adolescents too. 

In early childhood, control of attention is still deficient in the following ways, which are?

• Salient versus relevant dimensions

• Planfulness

Salient versus relevant dimensions

Preschool children are likely to pay attention to stimuli that stand out, or are salient, even when those stimuli are not relevant to solving a problem or performing a task.  

In early childhood, children make the advances in the following aspects of memory, which are?

• Short-term memory.

• Autobiographical memory. 

In short-term memory?

Individuals retain information for up to 30 seconds if there is no rehearsal or repeating of the information after it has been presented. 

Short-term memory is measured using the?

Memory-span task.

Memory-span task

In which a short list of stimuli are presented at a rapid pace and then the person is asked to repeat the digits.

• Using this task, it has been found that short-term memory increases during early childhood, from 2 digits at 2 to 3 years of age to 5 digits at 7 years of age. 

Autobiographical memory

Involves memory of significant events and experiences in one’s life. 

Children are really good at remembering stories, movies, songs, or an interesting event or experience because their memories are increasingly taking on more what?

Autobiographical characteristics. 

Executive function

An umbrella-like concept that encompasses a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the brain’s prefrontal cortex and involves managing one’s thoughts to engage in goal-directed behavior and exercise self-control. 

In early childhood, children advance in the following aspects of executive function, which are?

• Cognitive function.

• Cognitive flexibility.

• Goal setting.

• Delay of gratification.

Delay of gratification

The ability to forego an immediate pleasure or reward for a more desirable one later. 

Delay of gratification was studied by Walter Mischel and colleagues in the?

marshmallow test. 

Theory of mind

Refers to awareness of one’s own mental processes and those of others. 

Changes in theory of mind occur from 2 to 5 years of age, but changes continue beyond 5, which are?

• Ages 2-3: children begin to understand the following three mental states

• Ages 4-5: children come to understand that the mind can represent objects and events accurately or inaccurately. 

• Beyond age 5: a deepening appreciation for the mind itself rather than just an understanding of mental state. 

Ages 2-3: children begin to understand the following three mental states, which are?

• Perceptions

• Emotions

• Desires

Perceptions

Realize that other people see what is in front of their own eyes.

Emotions

can distinguish between positive and negative emotions.

Desires

understand that if someone wants something, they will try to get it.

The understanding of?

False beliefs is the realization that people can have beliefs that are not true, which develops by 5 years of age and is assessed with the false beliefs task. 

During early childhood, children advance in the following areas of language development, which are?

• Phonology.

• Morphology.

• Syntax.

• Semantics.

• Pragmatics.

Phonology

refers to the sound system of a language, includes the sounds used and how they may be combined.

Advances in phonology during early childhood include?

• Children gradually become more sensitive to the sounds of spoken words and increasingly capable of producing all the sounds of their language.  

• By age 3, children can produce all the vowel sounds and most of the consonant sounds.  

Children gradually become more sensitive to the?

sounds of spoken words and increasingly capable of producing all the sounds of their language.

By age 3?

Children can produce all the vowel sounds and most of the consonant sounds.

Morphology

refers to the units of meaning involved in word formation. 

Advances in morphology during early childhood include?

• Children move beyond two-word utterances. 

• Begin using the plural and possessive forms of nouns.

• Put appropriate endings on verbs.

• Use prepositions.

• Use various forms of the verb to be.

• Overgeneralize these rules. 

Children’s knowledge of morphological rules was studied by?

Jean Berko.

In early childhood, children learn and apply rules of?

Syntax which involves the way words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences.  

One specific advancement in syntax is the mastery of rules for how words should be?

ordered.

During early childhood, children make gains in?

Semantics, which is the aspect of language that refers to the meaning of words and sentences. 

Advances in semantics in early childhood include?

• Dramatic vocabulary development.

• Fast mapping.

Fast mapping

Children’s ability to make an initial connection between a word and its referent, or meaning, after only limited exposure to the word. 

Children learn words?

• They hear most often. 

• For things and events that interest them. 

• In responsive and interactive contexts, rather than passive contexts.

• In contexts that are meaningful. 

• When they access clear information about word meaning. 

• When grammar and vocabulary are considered. 

Pragmatics

The appropriate use of language in different contexts. 

Advances in pragmatics in early childhood include?

• Learning culturally specific rules of conversation and politeness. 

• Becoming sensitive to the need to adapt their speech to different settings. 

• An increasing ability to take the perspective of others. 

• Becoming better conversationalists. 

• Becoming better at talking about the past or the future. 

• The ability change their speech style to suit a situation.