Psych 223 midterm 2

Infancy growth

20 inches, 7 ½ lbs at birth
Triple weight by 1 year
½ adult height, 20% adult weight by age 2

Early childhood growth

growth slows, patters vary individually
Girls slightly smaller and lighter
Girls gain fat, boys gain muscle (most at 3 years old)
Girls exhibit more verbalization

Middle and late childhood growth

slower, consistent growth
Muscle mass and strength increase
Boys stronger, body proportions change

Nutrition optimal strategy - preschoolers

Have a variety of low-fat and high-nutrition foods available for preschoolers
High iron content is important
Expose children to new foods

Greatest risk to health in preschoolers

accidents
Injury is leading cause of death
55% = during sports or leisure activities
73% at home
Boys have higher rate of injuries

Early childhood education

More than 50% of Canadian children between 1-5 years are in some form of care outside of the home.
Child-care centres
Family-run child-care centres
Preschools

Characteristics of high-quality care for 1-5 year olds

Well trained care-providers
Appropriate ratio of providers for children
Carefully planned curriculum
Rich language environment

Brain develops in two ways

1) The number of interconnections increases:
Facilitates the acquisition of cognitive skills
2) The amount of myelin increases:
Facilitates the speed of neural processing

Brain lateralization

Each hemisphere develops specialized functions and corpus callosum becomes thicker. Functions localized in one hemisphere
Left: primary involved in verbal tasks. Positive emotions
Right primary involved in nonverbal tasks. Spatial relations, melodies. Negative emotions

Corpus callosum

Facilitates coordination between hemispheres

Left hemisphere

primary involved in verbal tasks. Positive emotions
Speaking, reading, thinking, reasoning
Sequential tasks (like language)

Right hemisphere

Spatial relationships, pattern recognition, music, emotion expression
primary involved in nonverbal tasks. Negative emotions
Simultaneous representation

Signs of readiness - toilet training

Staying dry 2+ hours throughout the day
Waking up dry after naps
Regular/predictable bowel movements
Children should be ready physically AND emotionally

Handedness

Preference for using one hand over another
90% right handed
More boys than girls are left handed
Can predict by 8 weeks gestation from thumb sucking

Piagets stages of cognitive development

Sensorimotor stage (0-2y.o) - sensory and motor themes on world
Preoperational stage (2-7y.o) - symbolic themes, language to think and communicate
Concrete operational stage (7-11y.o.) - logical thinking and problem solving
Formal operational stage (11+ y.o.) - abstract thinking and hypothetical situations

Piaget’s pre operational stage

Children acquire semiotic (symbolic) function:
Between the ages of 18-24 months
Once this occurs, children are in thepreoperational stage
During the preoperational stage
Children use symbols proficiently
Difficulty thinking logically
At 2 or 3 years, they begin to pretend in their play

Types of play

sensorimotor play (12 months)
Constructive play (2 years)
First pretend play (15-21 months)
substitute pretend play
Sociodramatic play
Rule governed play

Links between dissociation ad role play — preschool

roleplay association to dissociation at subclinical route

Egocentrism

a belief among young children that everyone sees and experiences the world the way they do.

Piaget’s Three-Mountain Task

Kids presented with 3 mountains and asked what they think the doll sees

• might fail due to ambiguity

Centration

a tendency among young children to think of the world in terms of one variable at a time.

• animism

Animism

Anything that moves is living

Conservation

Understanding that matter can change in appearance without changing in quantity. Demonstrate their understanding with 3 types of arguments

• identity

• Compensation

• Reversibility

Compensation (matter)

All relevant characteristics of a given quantity of matter must be taken into account before reaching conclusion. Taking into account multiple variables simultaneously

Reversibility (matter)

The awareness that conditions numbers or actions can be reversed to their original state

Identity (matter)

matter can change in appearance while retaining its quantity

Criticisms of piagets theory

argues that cognitive capabilities dont start till later in life but children as young as 14.5 have some ability to understand that other people experience things differently than they do

• By 2 or 3, they can adapt their speech or play to the demands of a companion

Preschoolers understanding of numbers

The average preschooler can count in a systematic (and fairly consistent) manner

Autobiographical memory

• becomes increasingly accurate throughout the preschool years.

• Accuracy is partly influenced by when the memories are assessed

• In order to be remembered, events must be particularly salient

• Memories are organized into scripts

• Difficult to assess because of source monitoring errors

Forensic developmental psychology

a field that focuses on the reliability of children’s autobiographical memories in a legal context

Scripts

• broad representations in memory of events and order in which they occur

• Based on expectations on how experiences will unfurl in a given situation

• Use them to organize information

• Based on schemes → more efficient

Long-term memory

Relatively permanent and unlimited type of memory

• increases during childhood

Short term memory

• Retention of information for up to 15-30 seconds without rehearsal of information

• Individuals can retain information longer using rehearsal

  • 5-9 is the adults range for short term memory

  • Increased in 2 digits from 2-3 year old and this increases to 5 in 7 year old children

  • Between 7-13 only increased Only 1 ½ digits?

  • 7 year old approximates memory span — not dramatic improvements

Working memory

mental “workbench” where individuals manipulate and assemble information when making decisions, problem solving, and comprehending written and spoken language

• More active in modifying information than short-term memory

• Tripartite model (phonological loop, central executive, visuospatial sketchpad [+episodic buffer])

Source monitoring

understanding of what memories are actually yours and what memories are things you see that you encode and dont know if their yours or other peoples

• developed between 4-5 years old

Recency effect

recent memories more easily remembered

Central executive

Active manipulating information as you remember information

Information processing pathway

When theres a stimuli in the environment → gives you sensory memory and you focus your attention on it → can maintain it in short term memory → if encode information deeply then processed into long term memory but have to continuously retrieve (apply it) it to keep it in long-term memory

Preschool children’s attention

ability to control and sustain attention related to school readiness

• Attention to relevant information increases through elementary and secondary school

• Older children and adolescents better at shifting attention from one activity to another as needed

• If task is complex and challenging, multitasking reduces attention to key task (correlation to multiple electronic media)

Stages of cognitive development (vygotsky)

1. Primitive stage

2. Naive psychology stage

3. Egocentric speech stage

4. Ingrowth stage

Primitive stage- Vygotsky

Learns primarily through conditioning until language develops

Naive psychology stage - Vygotsky

learns to use language to communicate, but still does not completely understand symbols

Egocentric speech stage - Vygotsky

Uses language as a guide to solving problems

Ingrowth stage - Vygotsky

Internalization of speech routines

Criticisms of vygotsky’s sociocultural theory

• Not enough evidence to support or contradict many of Vygotsky’s ideas

• Implications for research concerning children completing group work

• Theory may ignore important contributions of individuals to group interactions

Theory of mind

The ability to understand what others are thinking

• assessed with false belief tasks

Preschool language development

most children gradually become more sensitive to sounds of spoken words and more capable of producing all sounds of their language

• demonstrate knowledge of morphology rules

  • using plural and possessive of nouns

  • Appropriate endings on verbs

  • Use of prepositions, articles, and various forms of verb “to be”

• Learn and apply rules of syntax

• Vocab development

• Semantic development

• Pragmatic development

• Private and social development

Preschool motor skills

• can prit letters and invent spellings based on sounds of words they hear

• Writing skills develop as language and cognitive skills develop (need metacognitive skills)

Psychosocial development

development that captures the changes in the understanding that an individual has for themselves within the context of their society as well as the meaning that they ascribe to the behavior of others.

Main characteristics of self-understanding

• Confusion of self, mind, and body

• Concrete descriptions

• Physical descriptions

• Active descriptions

• Unrealistic positive overestimations