Early childhood

true

Children grow rapidly between ages 3 and 6, but less quickly than before. At about 3, children normally begin to lose their babyish roundness and take on the slender, athletic appearance of childhood. As abdominal muscles develop, the toddler potbelly tightens. The trunk, arms, and legs grow longer. The head is still relatively large, but the other parts of the body continue to catch up as body proportions steadily become more adultlike.

Muscular and skeletal growth progresses, making children stronger. Cartilage turns to bone at a faster rate than before, and bones become harder, giving the child a firmer shape and protecting the internal organs. These changes, coordinated by the still- maturing brain and nervous system, promote the development of a wide range of motor skills.

true

Walking and talking during sleep are fairly common in early and middle childhood.

true

Nightmares are common during early childhood. The occurrence of nightmares has been related to difficult child temperament, high overall childhood anxiety, and bedtime parenting practices that promote dependency

enuresis

repeated, involuntary urination at night by children old enough to be expected to have bladder control, is not unusual

true

By age 3, the brain is approximately 90 percent of adult weight. From ages 3 to 6, the most rapid brain growth occurs in the frontal areas that regulate planning and goal setting, and the density of synapses in the prefrontal cortex peaks at age 4. This “exuberant connectivity” will gradually be pruned over time as a result of experience, a process that underlies the great plasticity of the human brain

corpus callosum

thick band of nerve fibers that connects both hemispheres of the brain and allows them to communicate more rapidly and effectively with each other allowing improved coordination of the senses, atten tion and arousal, and speech and hearing

continues to be myelinized throughout childhood and adolescence, with peak volume occurring later in boys than in girls

gross motor skills

Physical skills that involve the large muscles such as running and jumping, which involve the large muscles

fine motor skills

such as buttoning shirts and drawing pictures, involve eye-hand and small-muscle coordination. Gains in these skills allow young children to take more responsibility for their personal care.

systems of action

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

handedness

preference for using one hand over the other, is usually evident by about age 3

stunted children

Some children appear to be of normal weight but are shorter than they should be for their age and may have cognitive and physical deficiencies.

form of malnutrition is often the result of chronic, persistent hunger

True

An obese child might have trouble keeping up with peers—physically and socially. Obesity among young children has increased

Food insecurity

Occurs when families do not have de pendable access to adequate amounts of food to  support healthy living. An estimated 15.8 million households in the United States experienced food insecurity during a portion of 2015 (Coleman-Jensen,  Rabbit, Gregory, & Singh, 2016). Households with very low food security exhibit reduced food intake and dis rupted eating patterns, with at least one family mem ber periodically forgoing meals.

Children wasted

This form of malnutrition is often the result of chronic, persistent hunger. Other chil dren are an appropriate height for their age but are thinner than they should be.

Oral Health

An important component of overall health. It starts in childhood with two common areas of oral health of concern to parents: thumbsucking and tooth decay. By age 3, all the primary (baby) teeth are in place, and the permanent teeth, which will begin to appear at about age 6, are developing. Thus, parents usually can safely ignore the common habit of thumbsucking in children under age 4. If children stop sucking thumbs or fingers by that age, their permanent teeth are not likely to be affected (Ameri can Dental Association, 2007).

Tooth Decay

early childhood often stems from overconsumption of sweetened milk and juices in infancy together with a lack of regular dental care. Some of the worst effects have been found in children who take bottles to bed with them and bathe their teeth in sugar over the course of an afternoon or evening.

Flouride

A mineral essential for the maintenance and solidification of bones (Giri, 2016). At low levels, fluoride has been shown to reduce the incidence of dental caries—or cavities (dos Santos, Nadanovsky, & de Oliveira, 2013).

Accidents

Are the leading cause of death in the United States for young children (Heron, 2018). Most deaths from injuries among preschoolers occur in the home—often from fires, drowning in bathtubs, suffocation, poisoning, or falls (Nagaraja et al., 2005).

Car accidents

Are the most commonly reported cause of accidental death for children over the age of 4 (Durbin, 2011). All 50 states and the District of Columbia require young children to ride in specially designed car seats or wear seat belts.

“Mr. Yuk”

The typical symbol used for poison now —a grimacing, green cartoon face sticking his tongue out. This graphic was put into use when researchers and public health agencies realized the traditional skull and crossbones, rather than indicating danger to young children, intrigued and interested them in the contents of containers.

Homelessness

results from circumstances that force people to choose between food, shelter, and other basic needs. Since the 1980s, as affordable rental hous ing has become scarce and poverty has spread, homelessness has increased dramatically in the United States.

Exposure to Environmental Pollutants

Smoking is bad for everyone; however, children, with their still-developing lungs and faster rate of respiration, are particu larly sensitive to the damaging effects of exposure (Constant et al., 2011). Parental smoking is a preventable cause of childhood illness and death. Children exposed to parental smoke are at increased risk of respiratory infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia, ear problems, worsened asthma, and slowed lung growth.

Air pollution

Associated with increased risks of death and of chronic respiratory disease. Environmental contaminants also may play a role in certain childhood cancers, neurological disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and mental retardation (Woodruff et al., 2004).

Preoperational Child

Infants learn about the world via their senses and motor activity during the sensorimotor stage. Now, we turn our attention to Piaget’s second stage, the preoperational stage.

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

advances of preoperational thought

in symbolic thought are accompanied by a growing understanding of space, causality, identities, categorization, and number.

Symbolic Function

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

“I want ice cream!” announces Kerstin, age 4, trudging indoors from the hot, dusty backyard. She has not seen or smelled or tasted anything that trig gered this desire—no open freezer door, no television commercial, no bowl of sweet ice cream temptingly sitting on the counter waiting to be eaten. Rather, she has called up the concept from her memories.

Use of symbols

Children do not need to be in sensorimotor contact with an object,  person, or event in order to think about it.

Ex: Simon asks his mother about the elephants they saw on their trip to the circus several months earlier. Children can imagine that objects or  people have properties other than those they actually have. Rolf pretends that a slice of apple is a vacuum cleaner “vrooming” across the kitchen table.

Understanding of identities

Children are aware that superficial alterations do not change the nature of things.

Ex: Antonio knows that his teacher is dressed up as a pirate but is still his teacher underneath the costume

Understanding of cause and effect

Children realize that events have causes. Seeing a ball roll from behind a wall,

Ex: Aneko looks behind the wall for the person who kicked the ball.

Ability to classify

Children organize objects, people, and  events into meaningful categories.

Ex: Rosa sorts the pinecones she collected on a nature walk into two piles: “big” and “little.”

Understanding of number

Children can count and deal with quantities.

Ex: Lindsay shares some candy with her friends, counting to make sure that each gets the same amount.

Empathy

Children become more able to imagine how others might feel.

Ex:Emilio tries to comfort his friend when he sees that his friend is upset.

Theory of mind

Children become more aware of mental activity and the functioning of the mind.

ex: Blanca wants to save some cookies for herself, so she hides them in a pasta box because she knows her brother will not look in a place where he doesn’t expect  to find cookies.

Centration

inability to decenter

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

Ex: Jacob teases his younger sister that he has more juice because his juice box is in a tall, skinny glass,  but hers is in into a short, wide glass.

Irreversibility

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

Ex: Jacob does not realize that the juice in each  glass can be poured back into the juice box from  which it came, which means the amounts must be the same.

Focus on states rather than transformations

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

Ex: In the conservation task, Jacob does not understand that transforming the shape of a liquid  (pouring it from one container into another) does not change the amount.

Transductive reasoning

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

Ex: Luis was mean to his sister. Then she got sick.  Luis concludes that he made his sister sick.

Egocentrism

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

ex: Kara holds a book so only she can see the  picture she is asking her father to explain to her.

Animism

Children attribute life to objects not alive.

Ex: Amanda says the car is hungry and wants some gas to eat.

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

symbolic function

Piaget’s term for ability to use mental  representations (words, numbers, or images) to which a child has attached meaning. Being able to think about something in the absence of sensory or motor cues char acterizes.

Children who have attained symbolic function can use symbols, or mental representations, such as words, numbers, or images to which a person has attached meaning.

This is a vital achievement because without symbols peo ple could not communicate verbally, make change, read maps, or treasure photos of distant loved ones.

Pretend play

Play involving imaginary people and situations; also called fantasy play, dramatic play, or imaginative play. Preschool children show symbolic function in a variety of ways.

For example, deferred imitation, in which children imitate an action at some point after having observed it, becomes more robust after 18 months. Deferred imitation is related to symbolic function because it requires the child to have kept a mental representation of an observed action.

A child must pull a representation out of memory in order to repeat it. Another marker of symbolic function. In pretend play, also called fantasy play, dramatic play, or imaginary play, children use an object to represent something else. For example, a child may hold up a remote control to her ear while pretending to talk on a telephone.

transduction

Piaget’s term for a preoperational  child’s tendency to mentally link  particular phenomena, whether or not there is logically a causal relationship.

They mentally link two events, especially events close in time, whether or not there is logically a causal relationship.

For example, Luis may think that his “bad” thoughts or behavior caused his own or his sister’s illness or his parents’ divorce. Piaget was incorrect in believing that young children could not understand causality. When tested in situations that are appropriate to their overall level of cognitive development, young children do grasp cause and effect.

For example, naturalistic obser vations of 2½- to 5-year-olds’ everyday language showed flexible causal reasoning. Chil dren listed both physical (“The scissors have to be clean so I can cut better”) and social-conventional (“I have to stop now because you said to”) causes for their actions (Hickling & Wellman, 2001).

Animism

Tendency to attribute life to objects that are not alive. The world becomes more orderly and predictable as preschool children develop a better understanding of identities: the con cept that people and many things are basically the same even if they change in outward form, size, or appearance. For example, putting on a wig does not make a person a different person; rather, it is just a surface change in appearance.

This understanding underlies the emerging self-concept, and many of the processes involved in understand ing the identity of others are mirrored in the understanding of one’s own identity. Categorization, or classification, requires a child to identify similarities and differences.

By age 4, many children can classify by two criteria, such as color and shape. Children use this ability to order many aspects of their lives, categorizing people as “good,” “bad,” “nice,” “mean,” and so forth. One type of categorization is the ability to distinguish living from nonliving things. When Piaget asked young children whether the wind and the clouds were alive, their answers led him to think they were confused.

Centration

In Piaget’s theory, the tendency of  preoperational children to focus on one aspect of a situation and neglect others.

Decenter

In Piaget’s terminology, to think  simultaneously about several aspects of a situation

According to Piaget, preschoolers come to illogical conclusions because they cannot think about several aspects of a situation at one time. Centration can limit young children’s thinking about both social and physical relationships.

Egocentrism

Piaget’s term for inability to consider  another person’s point of view; a  characteristic of young children’s  thought.

is a form of centration. According to Piaget, young children center so much on their own point of view that they cannot take in another’s.

may help explain why young children sometimes have trouble separating reality from what goes on inside their own heads and why they may show confusion about what causes what. When Luis believes that his “bad thoughts” have made his sister sick, or that he caused his parents’ marital troubles, he is thinking egocentrically.

Conservation

Another classic example of centration is the failure to understand

The fact that two things that are equal remain so if their appearance is altered, as long as nothing is added or taken away. Piaget found that children do not fully grasp this principle until the stage of concrete operations and that they develop dif ferent kinds of conservation at different ages.

Piaget’s term for awareness that two  objects that are equal according to a  certain measure remain equal in the  face of perceptual alteration so long as nothing has been added to or taken away from either object

Number, Length, Liquid, Matter(mass), Weight

One of the tests of various kinds of conservation.

Number

Two equal, parallel  rows of candies.

Space the candies in one row farther apart.

“Are there the same  number of candies in each row or does one row have more?”

“The longer one has more.”

Length

Two parallel sticks of  the same length

Move one stick to the right.

“Are both sticks the  same size or is one longer?”

“The one on the right (or  left) is longer.”

Liquid

Two identical glasses  holding equal amounts  of liquid

Pour liquid from  one glass into a taller, narrower glass

“Do both glasses  have the same amount of liquid or  does one h

“The taller one has more.”

Matter (mass)

Two balls of clay of  the same size

Roll one ball into a sausage shape

“Do both pieces  have the same amount of clay or does one have more?”

“The sausage has more.”

Weight

Two balls of clay of  the same weight

Roll one ball into a sausage shape.

“Do both weigh the  same or does one weigh more?”

“The sausage weighs  more.

irreversibility

Piaget’s term for a preoperational child’s  failure to understand that an operation can go in two or more directions

Justin is now asked, “Do both glasses contain the same amount of water? Or does one contain more? Why?” In early childhood—even after watching the water being poured out of one of the short, fat glasses into a tall, thin glass or even after pouring it himself— Justin will say that either the taller glass or the wider one contains more water.

Why do children make this error? Their responses are influenced by two immature aspects of thought.

Centration involves focusing on one dimension while ignoring the other. Preoperational children cannot consider height and width at the same time as they cannot decenter, or consider multiple attributes of an object or situation. In addition, children are limited by irreversibility: failure to under stand that an action can go in two or more directions. Because their thinking is concrete, preoperational children cannot mentally reverse the action and realize that the original state of the water can be restored by pouring it back into the other glass, and thus it must be the same.

Preoperational children commonly think as if they were watching a slide show with a series of static frames: They focus on successive states, said Piaget, and do not recognize the transformation from one state to another.

Theory of Mind

Awareness and understanding of mental processes.

the awareness of the broad range of human mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, dreams, and so forth—and the understanding that others have their own distinctive beliefs, desires, and intentions. Having a theory of mind allows us to under stand and predict the behavior of others and makes the social world understandable.

Knowledge about Thinking and Mental States

Between ages 3 and 5, children come to understand that thinking goes on inside the mind, that it can deal with either real or imaginary things and that thinking is different from seeing, talking, touching, and know ing (Flavell, 2000).

False Beliefs and Deception

The understanding that people can hold false beliefs flows from the realization that people can hold incorrect mental representations of real ity. For example, if you see your mother searching for an umbrella, but you know it’s not raining outside, you can understand that she thinks it’s raining, even if it is not. This ability is generally tested with what is called a false belief task.

Distinguishing between Appearance and Reality

According to Piaget, not until about age 5 or 6 do children begin to understand the distinction between what seems to be and what is. Initial research seemed to support this view; however, more recent studies have found this ability emerging between 3 and 4 years of age.

Distinguishing between Fantasy and Reality

Sometime between 18 months and 3 years, children learn to distinguish between real and imagined events. Three-year olds know the difference between a real dog and a dog in a dream, and between something invisible (such as air) and something imaginary.

Individual Differences in Theory-of-Mind Development

Some children develop the ory-of-mind abilities earlier than others. In part, this development reflects brain maturation and general improvements in cognition.

Encoding, storage, retrieval, sensory memory, working memory, long-term memory

One of the Basic Processes and Capacities.

Encoding

Process by which information is prepared for long-term storage and  later retrieval.

is like putting information in a folder to be filed in memory; it attaches a “code” or “label” to the information so it will be easier to find when needed. For example, if you were asked to list “things that are red,” you might list apples, stop signs, and hearts. Presumably, all these items were tagged in memory with the concept “red” when they were originally encoded.

Storage

Retention of information in memory for future use

putting the folder away in the filing cabinet. It is where the information is kept.

Retrieval

Process by which information is accessed or recalled from memory storage.

orage is putting the folder away in the filing cabinet. It is where the information is kept. When the information is needed, you access storage, and through the process, you search for the file and take it out.

sensory memory

Initial, brief, temporary storage of sensory information

is a temporary storehouse for incoming sensory information. For example, the light trail that is visible when a sparkler is moved quickly on a dark night illustrates visual sensory memory. Sensory memory shows little change from infancy on (Siegler, 1998). However, without processing (encoding), sensory memories fade quickly.

working memory

Short-term storage of information being  actively processed.

Information being encoded or retrieved is kept

long-term memory

Storage of virtually unlimited capacity that holds information for long periods.

a storehouse of virtually unlimited capac ity that holds information for long periods of time. The central executive also retrieves information from long-term memory for further processing. It is assisted by two subsystems: the phonological loop, which aids in the processing of verbal information, and the visuo spatial sketchpad, which maintains and manipulates visual information.

Central executive

In Baddeley’s model, element of  working memory that controls the processing of information.

are found in a variety of regions in the frontal lobes and in some posterior, primarily pari etal, areas. Functions controlled by the phonological loop are found in the left hemi sphere in the inferior parietal areas and anterior temporal frontal areas, including Broca’s area, the premotor cortex, and the sensory motor association cortex.

Executive function

Conscious control of thoughts, emotions, and actions to accomplish goals or solve problems

the conscious control of thoughts, emotions, and actions to accomplish goals or to solve problems (McCabe, Roediger, McDaniel, Balota, & Hambrick, 2010). Executive function enables children to plan and carry out goal-directed mental activity (Zelazo & Carlson, 2012),

Recognition

Ability to identify a previously encountered stimulus.

is the ability to identify something encountered before; for example, picking out a missing mitten from a lost-and-found box.

recall

Ability to reproduce material from memory.

is the ability to reproduce knowledge from memory; for example, describing the mitten to someone.

Recognition

Ability to identify a previously encountered stimulus.

is the ability to identify something encountered before; for example, picking out a missing mitten from a lost-and-found box.

Recall

ability to reproduce knowledge from memory; for example, describing the mitten to someone.

Ability to reproduce material from memory

generic memory

Memory that produces scripts of familiar routines to guide behavior

script

General remembered outline of a familiar, repeated event, used to guide behavior.

ex: such as riding the bus to preschool or having lunch at Grandma’s house. It helps a child know what to expect and how to act.

Episodic memory

Long-term memory of specific  experiences or events, linked to time and place.

refers to awareness of having experienced a particular event at a specific time and place. Given a young child’s limited memory capacity, _______are temporary. Unless they recur several times (in which case they are transferred to generic memory), they last for a few weeks or months and then fade

For example, getting vaccinated at the pediatrician’s office might originally be an epi sodic memory—a child might remember the particular event. Over time and repeated visits, a child might form a generic memory of the doctor’s office being a place where shots are administered.

Autobiographical memory

type of episodic memory, refers to memories of distinctive experiences that form a person’s life history. Not everything in episodic memory becomes part of ____________only those memories that have a special, personal meaning to the child

social interaction mode

Model, based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural  theory, that proposes children construct autobiographical memories through conversation with adults about shared event

Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales

Individual intelligence tests for ages 2 and up used to measure fluid reasoning, knowledge, quantitative  reasoning, visual-spatial processing,  and working memory

The child is asked to define words, string beads, build with blocks, identify the missing parts of a picture, trace mazes, and show an understanding of numbers

fluid reasoning

the ability to solve abstract or novel problems

Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, Revised (WPPSI-IV)

Individual intelligence test for children ages 2½ to 7 that yields verbal and performance scores as well as a combined score.

It includes subtests designed to mea sure both verbal and nonverbal fluid reasoning, receptive versus expressive vocabulary, and processing speed.

zone of proximal development (ZPD)

imaginary psychological space between what children can do or know by themselves and what they could do or know with help.

scaffolding

Temporary support to help a child  master a task

true

Ideally, _______ lessened as children gain in skills. The less able a child is to do a task, the more scaffolding, or support, an adult must give. As the child can do more and more, the adult helps less and less. When the child can do the job alone, the adult takes away the scaffold that is no longer needed.

fast mapping

Process by which a child absorbs the meaning of a new word after hearing it once or twice in conversation

Syntax

rules for putting together sentences in a particular language.

true

By ages 5 to 7, children’s speech has become quite adultlike. They speak in longer and more complicated sentences. They use more conjunctions, prepositions, and arti cles. They use compound and complex sentences and can handle all parts of speech. Still, although children this age speak fluently, comprehensibly, and fairly grammatically,

pragmatics

The practical knowledge needed to use  language for communicative purposes

social speech

Speech intended to be understood by a listener.

private speech

Talking aloud to oneself with no intent  to communicate with others.

emergent literacy

Preschoolers’ development of skills,  knowledge, and attitudes that underlie reading and writing

true

Prereading skills can be divided into two types: (1) oral language skills, such as vocabulary, syntax, narrative structure, and the understanding that language is used to communicate; and (2) specific phonological skills (linking letters with sounds) that help in decoding the printed word

montessori method

based on the belief that children’s natural intelligence involves rational, spiritual, and empirical aspects

stresses the importance of children learning independently at their own pace, as they work with developmentally appropriate materials and self-chosen tasks. Teachers serve as guides, and older children help younger ones. The curriculum is individualized but has a definite scope and prescribed sequencing. Teachers provide an environment of calm produc tivity, and the classrooms are organized to be orderly, pleasing environments.

Reggio Emilia approach

is a less formal model than Montes sori. Teachers follow children’s interests and support them in exploring and investigat ing ideas and feelings through words, movement, dramatic play, and music.