Childhood Physical and Cognitive Development

basic skills that are learned before 5 or 6

• Walking, running, hopping, climbing, skipping, basic ball throwing, and riding bike

• Coordinated skills (hitting a ball, dribbling) need to wait until school age

  • Brain development is not there yetmyelinization and pruning needed to perform more precise skills

when are cognitive/physical abilities in place

8 or 9 years

how is BMI calculated

ratio of weight to height

BMI > 85th percentile

overweight

BMI > 95th percentile

obese

percentage of kids 2-19 that are obese

19.7%

percentage of kids 2-5 that are obese

12.7

percentage of kids 6-11 that are obese

20.7

percentage of kids 12-19 that are obese

22.2

kids that are at a high risk for obesity

kids, poor, race

behavior centered around obesity

• Eating habits:

• Lack of exercise (technology)

• Too much screen time

• Poor sleep

mental operations

• Mental manipulation/action of a process you cannot see (reversible); a type of logic

  • Doing something mentally that previously could have only been done physically

preoperational stage is what age

2-7

symbolic function substage

2-4 years

• Mental representation ability

  • Draw pictures of something from memory

  • Pretend play

quirks within the preoperational stage

animism, egocentrism, artificialism

animism

inanimate objects are alive

Artificialism

human beings make everything in nature

• Ex: My daughter wanted me to make the sun not so bright ☺

Egocentrism

inability to understand that people have different points of view from their own

preoperatinal substages

symbolic function substage and intuitive thought substage

Intuitive Thought Substage

(4-7  years):

• Primitive reasoning—based on intuition and immediate perceptions; use imagination to explain things; make quick judgments

• Still not able to answer “What if” questions

• Child knows many things but not sure how they know it

why cant preoperational kids conserve/use logic

irreversibility, centering, static reasoning

irreversibility

unable to see an operation can be repeated in opposite direction

Centering

inability to see things from a different point of view; fixate on most visually striking feature of substance and do not take other dimensions into account

ex. only consider the height of the water instead of the width

Static reasoning

nothing changes, whatever is now has always been and always will be (Ex: mom & dad used to be kids)

concrete operations

• 8-12 years

• Can reason conceptually about concrete objects (real objects)

  • But, no abstract thinking yet

    • Ex: swimming pool depth

• Pass conservation tasks

  • Grasp reversibility

  • Able to decenter—>look at an object/substance from more than one angle

• Able to understand classification; class inclusion

  • Ex: family tree; more skittles or candy?

when does seriation occur

in concrete operational stage

seriation

ordering stimuli along a quantitative dimension

ex. shortest to longest stick

what did vygotsky believe about cognitive development

does not occur naturally

others assist our understanding

endpoint of our understanding is contingent on whatever our culture deems important

zone of proximal development

Gap between a child’s ability to solve a problem totally on his own and his potential knowledge if taught by a more accomplished person

scaffolding

Teaching new skills by entering a child’s ZPD and tailoring one’s efforts to that person’s competence level

what did vygotsky believe about mentors

can help children develop to their fullest potential by encouraging and challenging them

how do mentors influence child learning

• Present challenges

• Offer assistance

• Add crucial information

• Encourage motivation

vgotskys opinion on language and thought

language allows one to scaffold

vgotsky and self-regulation

emotional and cognitive control begins in social interactions rather than individual minds

how do language and thought develop according to vgotsky

independently and then merge

how is language first used according to vgotsky

externally (communicate)

when is language used internally according to vgotsky

3-7 years

self-talk evolves to inner speech (thoughts)

working memory is a

Limited capacity gateway system, containing all the material that we can keep in awareness at a single time

how many chunks of info do we expand by from age 7

2 to 5

Executive function (EF):

Frontal lobe abilities related to managing our memory, controlling our thoughts, planning our behavior, and inhibiting our responses

Inhibitory control includes

Ability to demonstrate self-control in terms of attention, behavior, and emotions

examples of EF in older children

rehearsal and selective attention

rehearsal

repeat info to embed it in memory

selective attention

only attend to what is relevant and filter out unneeded info

social cognitive skills

the mental processes that let us perceive, interpret, and respond to social cues, emotions, and the intentions of others

information processing perspective

a cognitive framework in psychology that likens the human mind to a computer, viewing cognition as a sequence of steps where environmental data is received, transformed, stored, and later retrieved

theory of mind

• Understanding that other people have different beliefs and perspectives from one’s own

  • Lose egocentrism

• Develops around 4 to 5 years old

• False Belief Task

false belief task

considers the view of someone other than their own

measures theory of mind