PSY210 Final Exam

Early childhood

2-6 years old

Growth during early childhood

Slows during early childhood

Genetics influence the rate of growth by stimulating the amount of hormones to release.

Growth hormone is secreted from birth and influences growth of nearly all parts of the body.

Ethnic difference attributable to geographic reasons like where you live and food availability. Differences within ethnic groups due to high and low altitude effects on height and weight.

Early Childhood Nutrition

Appetite declines from infancy to childhood.

Picky eating declines with time

Children eat same food as adults

Early Childhood Nutrition in Developed Countries

Don’t eat enough vitamins and minerals

Pre-packaged children’s food do not always meet children’s nutritional needs

Early childhood nutrition in developing countries

Suffer from malnutrition

Socioeconomic factors influence healthy eating.

Gross motor development in early childhood

Become physically stronger, with increases in bone and muscle strength and lung capacity

Practice skills such as jumping, running, and riding toys.

Influenced by context

Fine motor skills in early childhood

Increase in dexterity --- better able to manipulate objects

Better at buttoning shirts and grabbing utensils

Gross motor is still better than fine motor, but it’s improving.

Handedness in early childhood development

By age of five, non-preferred hand are only used when the preferred hand is occupied

Handedness is thought to be controlled by genetics and possibly by culture.

Handedness may be associated with other aspect of brain specialization such as lateralization.

No correlation was found between test anxiety and handedness in a Canadian experiment.

Lateralization in Early Childhood Development

Thinking becomes faster and more complex, and parts of the brain become more specialized for different functions (lateralization)

This starts from birth and is influenced by genes and environment but increases most during early childhood.

Hemispheric dominance

One hemisphere of the brain begins to dominate

Left hemisphere important in language and tends to have greater structural connectivity and efficiency than the right in newborns

Right hemisphere influenced spatial skills

Different from left handed people

Corpus callosum

Allows two hemisphere to interact, enabling us to think, move, create and exercise our senses

When split leads to split brain

Left hemisphere is dominant for verbal processing, the patient’s answer matches the word.

The right hemisphere cannot share information with the left, so the patient is unable to say what they say, but can draw it.

Piaget early childhood cognitive development

Pre-operational reasoning appears in children ages 2-6

Characterized by leaps in symbolic thinking which makes language, interaction with other, and playing with their own thoughts and imagination possible.

Cannot grasp common logical or understand complex relationships

Egocentrism

Egocentrism

The inability to take another person’s point of view

Early children don’t have a grasp on this

Three mountains task : from the bears point of view what can they see? The child standing opposite the bear will tell it from their perspective (house, mountain, tree) than the bears actual perspective (three, mountain, house)

Animism

The belief that inanimate objects are alive and have feeling and intentions

Don’t always describe inanimate objects w/ lifelike qualities

Recognize that living things are regulated by internal energy but inanimate objects aren’t.

Understand that animals grow and even plants grow, but objects don’t

Novel objects that move independently a confused with being alive (ex. trains)

Could be the child projecting it’s own personality on the item.

Centration

The tendency to focus on one part of a stimulus or situation and exclude all others.

Appearance-reality distinction

The inability to think that something isn’t what it appears to be

Ex. Father shaving their beard and leading to child thinking it’s a stranger

Studying with a cat, then putting on a mask on the cat in front of the child but the child will still believe it’s not a cat anymore and it’s something else.

Irreversibility

Failure to understand that reversing a process can often restore the original state

Conservation

Do not understand that the quantity of a substance is not transformed by changes in its appearance of that a change in appearance can be reversed (liquid from one glass poured into a taller narrower glass).

Also the case for numbers and mass

Vygotsky sociocultural perspective

Believe that we are embedded in a context that shapes how we think and who we become, which is formed by parents, teachers, peers, caregivers, and society as large influences an individual's cognitive development

Guided participation (or apprenticeship in thinking)

A form of sensitive teaching in which one partner is attune to the needs of the child and helps him or her to accomplish more than the child could do alone.

Scaffolding

Permits the child to bridge the gap between his or her current competence level and the task at hand.

Can use reframing questions to help

Zone of proximal development

The gap between the child’s competence level, what they can do alone, and what they can do with assistance.

Information processing perspective

Cognitive development entails developing mental strategies to guide one’s thinking and use one’s cognitive resources more effectively

In early childhood, children become more efficient at attention, encoding, and retrieving memories and problem solving.

Attention in Early Childhood Development

Improve throughout preschool years

Becomes better at planning, considering steps to complete an act, and focus their attention

Can’t complete complex task and bad at switching attention

Can be improved if irrelevant details are made less salient.

Episodic memory

Memory for events and information acquired during these events

Scripts

Procedural information about how to do something like the process of eating dinner.

Recognition memory

The ability to recognize a stimulus one has encountered before

Recall memory

The ability to generate a memory of a stimulus encountered before without seeing it again.

Memory strategies

Cognitive activities that make us more likely to remember.

Preschoolers often do not use memory strategies or apply them in new settings when taught how to use them.

Autobiographical memory

Memory of personal meaningful events that took place at a specific time and place in one’s past.

Infantile amnesia

Inability to remember things prior to age 3

Young children recall more details about events that are unique or new.

The way adults talk with the child about a shared experience can influence how well the child will remember it.

Elaborative conversation style

Parents discuss new aspects of experience, provide more information to guide a child through a mutually rewarding conversation and affirm the child’s responses.

Slightly problematic since you can add leading questions which can alter memory.

Memory in Early Childhood Development

Memory improves steadily between 4-10 with accelerated rates between 5-7.

Can tell tall tales, make errors, and succumb to misleading questions.

Theory of Mind

Children’s awareness of their own and other people’s mental processes

Piaget claims that children do not have it in early childhood, however, others suggest that children’s development language skills may not permit them to fully demonstrate their awareness of mental activity.

False belief

Theory of mind tasks that require them to understand that someone does not share their knowledge

Child hides ball in box A, then random boy moves the ball in box B instead. Developed theory of mind = understand that the first child will look in box A to find the ball. Underdeveloped theory of mine will think the girl knows the same information they know and assume the girl will look in Box B.

Performance on task closely relates with language development.

Interactions with parents offer opportunities for children to practice perspective taking.

Vocabulary in Early Childhood

2 year olds = 500 words, 3 year olds = 900-1000 words, 6 years old = use 2,600 words and can understand more than 20,000

Use fast mapping but need to hear words to fast map them

Logcial extension and mutual exclusivity assumption

Fast mapping

Words are associated with their object after only hearing them a few times.

Logical extension

Extending new words to other objects in the same category

Mutual exclusivity assumption

Tend to assume the new words are labeled for unfamiliar objects.

Early childhood and grammar

3 year olds use plurals, possessives, and past tense.

Use pronouns

Overgeneralization error

Overgeneralization error

The grammatical mistake that young children make because they are applying grammatical rules too stringently

ex. “catched” instead of “caught” using the past tense -ed rule.

Private speech / Self talk

speech spoken to oneself for communication, self-guidance, and self-regulation of behavior.

Accounts for 20-50% of the utterances of children ages 4-10.

Piaget belief of self talk

believed private speech is a result of cognitive development and indicative of cognitive immaturity.

Other arguments of private speech (Vygotsky)

Claim that it serves a developmental function

Thinking - guides behavior and fosters new ideas

Becoming internalized as inner speech

Plays a role in self-regulation

As children get older, private speech is used more effectively to accomplish tasks then becomes internal dialogue.

Research suggests it’s more complex than Vygotsky thought

Phallic stage

Psychosexual state between ages 3-6

The libido becomes focused on the genitals

Children ‘discover’ their bodies and realize that other have bodies as well--- “playing doctor”

Oedipus complex and Electra complex

Formation of superego

Fear of castration in boys, penis envy in girls

If not properly resolved men become overly aggressive, ambitious, and vain. Unresolved women will want to dominant men and be overly seductive or overly submissive.

Psychosocial state Initiative vs Guilt

Existential question : Is it okay for me to do, move, and act?

Builds on autonomy though child’s curiosity and need to get up and do something

Eager for responsibility-- usually want to do what parents do.

Make plans, tackle new tasks, set goals, and work to achieve them.

Can sometimes show aggressive behavior out of frustration that they couldn’t achieve their goal.

Children who develop initiative have confident self-image, more control over their emotions, social skill, and sense of conscience.

Develop core tenet of PURPOSE.

Self concept

Understanding oneself as concrete in terms of using observable descriptors and abilities

Refers to our belief about ourselves, our conceptions of our abilities, traits, and characteristics.

Self Concept in Early Childhood

Do not engage in social comparison and care more about fairness and equity (ex. he got more cookies than me)

Cultures and self concept

Americans talk about their experiences

Chinese people focus on social activities, daily routines, and were most modest.

Cultural differences can be a product of bias in testing

Asking who am I can be asked in many different ways, like physical traits, personality traits, social roles, etc., but in other languages, there’s different phrases which denotes those questions.

One question in another language might set someone up to answer in a certain way, like social roles, which will bias the results to thinking they’re more concerned with social roles, when the question is at fault.

Empathy in Early Childhood

The capacity to understand another person’s emotion

From early in children’s lives they learn to be prosocial to others.

Children share more, and can comfort others, but are self centered in that they’ll bring the person crying their favorite toy not the child who is crying’s favorite toy

Prosocial behavior becomes more complex and fosters friendships

Yields sympathy -- concern or sorrow for another person

Temperament and personality influences child’s response.

Influences of empathy and prosocial behavior

Parents influence the development of empathy and prosocial behavior through interactions

Parents should be warm and encouraging

Parents are role models for empathic behavior

discipline that uses induction -- showing the consequences of actions on others --- promotes empathy

Children influence parents -- those who are more kind and compassionate elicit more responsive and warm parenting.

Siblings influence each other.

Instrumental aggression and early childhood aggression

Harmful behavior that is unprovoked to obtain an outcome or coerce others--- is the most common form of aggression in early childhood.

By age 4, most children have developed self-control to express their desires, wait for what they want, moving from physical aggression to expressing desires with words

Children who don’t develop impulse control and self management skills risk to continue to escalate aggressive behavior.

Parenting in Early Childhood Development

Parents can influence the behavior of their children through direct instruction, modeling, and feedback.

Parenting and a child’s temperament interact with each other.

Bidirectional contributions are enhanced by companionship activities and compliance but can be damaged by overuse of parental power.

Warmth in parenting

Levels of affection and responsiveness

Control in parenting

Setting appropriate standards, enforcing them, and trying to anticipate conflicts.

Parenting styles

Permissive parenting- high warmth, low control - children tend to make their own decisions at an early age, be more socio-emotionally immature, show little self control and self regulation capacity

Uninvolved parenting - low warmth, low control - negative consequences in all forms of development.

Authoritarian parenting - low warmth, high control - often associated with higher instances of corporal punishment. Children are more withdrawn, mistrust, anxious and show behavioral problems

Authoritative parenting - high warmth, high control -- Children display confidence, cooperation, self-esteem, social skills, high academic achievement, and higher on measures of executive functioning.

Discipline in Early Childhood

Culture differences can lead to certain punishments being considered normal or negative.

Young children learn best when they are reinforced for good behavior.

Timeout is effective in reducing inappropriate behavior.

Effects of physical punishments

Can be damaging to children.

Spanking is against the law in some countries

Models aggressive behavior to their child. Increases compliance only temporarily but does not help internalize rules

Slapping them but not giving further discussion means the child can’t learn what to attribute that behavior / rule to.

Associated with anxiety, depression, rule breaking, and destructive behavior

Spanking laws in Canada

The use of force to correct a child is only allowed to help the child learn and can never be used in anger.

Must be between 2 years old and 12 years old.

Force must be reasonable and no marks / be minor

No objects used when applying force, can’t hit or slap the child’s head.

Seriousness of what happened or what the child did is not relevant.

Using reasonable force to restrain a child is acceptable in certain situations, like to protect them from running into traffic, but other aggressive restraints isn’t allowed

Hitting a child in anger or in retaliation for something a child did is not allowed.

Inductive disciplinary methods

Methods that use reasoning, primarily to show the child the consequence of their actions on others.

Discipline where an adult explains to the child how their actions or misbehavior impacts others.

Associated with best child outcomes.

Disciplining differences

Neighborhood context could play a role.

Low SES neighborhoods tend to have higher rates of authoritarian parenting, usually out of necessity.

Child’s perception of parenting styles and intention is important in determining its effect.

Gender Roles

Set of social norms dictating the type of behavior which are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for people based on their actual or perceived sex.

Biological explanation on Gender Role Development

Gender roles and sex differences are a function of biology

Gender differences begin at conception : there are a lot of genetic interactions that determine physical traits (body shape ad gonad development) and hormone levels, which interact with your cells to produce many of the traits we would typically considered gendered.

Evolutionary explanation of Gender Role Development

Male adapted to becoming more aggressive and competitive because these traits are advantageous in securing a mate.

Cognitive-Developmental Explanation of Gender Norms

Children’s understanding of gender is constructed in the same manner as their understanding of the world, by interacting with the world and thinking about their experiences.

Gender identity

Awareness of whether one is a boy or girl occurs at about age 2.

Gender stability

Understanding that gender does not change over time occurs between 3-5.

Gender constancy

Child’s understanding that gender does not change, that he or she will always be the same, regardless of appearance, activities, and attitudes.

Gender schema theory

Emphasize information and environmental influences by developing a sense of what it is to be a male or female.

Gender schemas influence memory : Children who see others behaving in gender inconsistent ways often misrecall the event.

ex. If a child is told girls play with dolls and boys play with dinosaurs, then when seeing a girl playing with a dinosaur, they’re more likely to misremember it later as a doll due to gender norms.

Contextual explanations of gender norms

Emphasize social learning and the influence of the sociocultural context in which children are raised.

Gender typing occurs through socialization

Sometimes parents teach children gender appropriate behavior.

Begins in infancy and is socially regulated through approval.

Boys tend to be more strongly gender socialized than girls.

Peer group, media, children’s books, and cultures affect gender norms.

Parallel play

Children play alongside each other but do not interact.

Associative play

Children play alongside each other but exchange toys and talk about each other’s activities.

Cooperative play

The most advance form of play-- children play together and work towards a common goal, like building a bridge, or engaging in make believe play.

Rough-and-tumble-play

Including running, climbing, chasing, jumping, and play fighting

Play and Learning in Early Childhood

Though play children learn how to assert themselves, interact with other children, and engage in physical play without hurting the other child.

Sociodramatic play

Children take on roles and engage in activities to act our stories and themes.

Sociodramatic play in boys involved activity and themes of danger and conflict

Sociodramatic play in girls involve themes of cooperation and fostering orderly social relationships, such as pretending to enact household and school rules.

Sociodramatic play is changing though.

Social learning theory and moral development

View moral behavior as being acquired through reinforcement and modeling.

Children pay attention to events that are modeled.

Bandura’s bobo doll experiment

Cognitive-developmental Theory of Moral Development in Early Childhood

Children reason about moral issues.

Piaget used observation and created morality of constraint -- by 6 years, children are aware of rules and see them as sacred and unalterable. Rules are right and punishment is justified.

Kohlberg posed dilemmas about justice and fairness and rights that place obedience to authority and law in conflict with helping someone. Responses to dilemmas changed with development

Kohlberg conventional reasoning

Children’s behavior is governed by self-interest, avoid punishment and gain rewards.

Moral behavior is a response to external pressure

Children are active in constructing their own moral understanding through social experiences with adults and peers.

As early as 3, children can differentiate between moral imperatives, which concern people’s rights and welfare, which concern people’s rights and welfare, and social conventions / customs.

Society and moral development in early childhood

Cross cultural research suggests that children in diverse cultures differentiate moral social conventional and personal issues (independent vs interdependent cultures)

Social experiences help young children develop conceptions about justice and fairness.

How adults discuss moral issues, like truth-telling, harm, and property rights, influences children’s understanding of these issues.

Peeking game

Used to test moral development, specifically telling the truth.

Have the child seated look away and have a toy make noise behind them

Have them guess the toy based on the sound.

First two are easy to guess but third toy’s sound gives no clue to what it could be.

The researcher has to run out and get something and tell child not to peek at two.

Researcher comes back, asked if they peeked.

Then asked the child to guess that the toy is

Only 20-30% of 2 year olds will lie after peeking

only 50% of 3 years olds will lie after peaking. So will most 4 yr olds.

Children who have an inability to lie

may be at risk for developmental disorders like ADHD and autism spectrum disorder.

Punishments and lying

Harsher punishments will often create better liars to avoid getting the severe punishment if they do get caught.

Middle childhood

6-11 years old

Middle childhood motor skills

Advances are influenced by body maturation and brain development

Growth of cerebellum and myelination of it’s connection to the cortex contributes to advances in gross and fine motor skills and speed.

Learn to inhibit their actions (frontal lobe development)

Contextual influences and nutrition, opportunities to practice motor skills and health effect this.

Health in Middle Childhood

Mortality declines after infancy

Low SES homes have higher rates or mortality than other children due to lack of access to healthcare and other resources.

Asthma and Obesity

Asthma

A chronic inflammatory disorder of the airways that causes wheezing and coughing

Rise in asthma diagnoses in industrial nations in recent decades due to high air pollutants.

Genetic factor : African American children are at higher risk

Environmental factor plays a role : insulation (breathing the same air), Less play outdoors (if pollutants outside, less play outdoors help), poor access to health care, urbanization, Low SES.

Obesity

Genetics contributes to obesity.

Children who eat an evening meal with parents tend to have healthier diets that include more fruit and vegetable

Healthcare professionals determine healthy range by examining BMI.

Obesity if a long and short term health problem which can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure, orthopedic problems, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

Programs to reduce obesity include reducing screen time, increasing physical activity and teaching children about nutrition.

Body image

Can be seen as early as preschool years --- 4 year olds rate thin bodies as more attractive.

Influences self esteem and can lead to body image dissatisfaction.

Parents, peers, and media exposure are important influences.

Greater exposure to teen media and images of thin models is associated with greater dieting awareness, more weight concerns, and greater body dissatisfaction.

Children pressured to lose weight become obsessed with body size and develop poor body image.

Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage

7-11 years

Able to solve everyday logical problems, thinking not fully matured and tied to tangible and specific problems.

Classification

In Piaget’s concrete operational stage

Permits school-age children to categorize or organize objects based on physical dimensions

Seriation

Ability to order objects in a series according to physical dimension such as height, weight, or color.

Transitive inference

The ability to infer the relationship between two objects by understanding each object’s relation to a third

Ex. you understand how a pencil and eraser works based on its relationship and effect on the paper.

Conservation in Middle Childhood

Children solved conservation problem by age 7 or 8

Some theorists argue that children’s capacity to solve conservation problems correspond to brain development and advanced in information processing abilities.

Numerical conservation (remembering a bunch of numbers) is associated with developments in working memory and ability to control impulses.

Central executive function in middle childhood

Regulating cognitive activities such as attention, action and problem solving.

Means improvements in working memory which are influenced by increases in storage capacity as well as advances in the ability to control and direct attention.

Responsible for : coordinating performances on two separate tasks or operations, such as storing and processing information at the same time, quickly switching between tasks, selectively attending to specific information and ignoring irrelevant information, Retrieving information from long term memory.

Likely because of brain development like myelination and pruning

Meta-memory

Understanding of one’s memory and ability to use strategies to enhance it.

Advances in metacognition allow children to become mindful of their thinking and better able to consider the requirement of a task, determine how to tackle it, and monitor, evaluate, and adjust their activity to complete the task.

Rehearsal

A memory aid whereby you systematically repeat information in order to retain it in working memory.

Organization

Categorizing or chunking items to remember by grouping it by theme or type.

Elaboration

Creating an imagined scene or story to link the material to be remembered.

General intelligence

There is one intelligence which is a g-factor which underlies all cognitive domains

Made by Charles Spearman