the early childhood and preschool years

early childhood growth

• growth slows

• tremendous variability among individuals

  • girls: gain fat, higher linguistic capacity (this is encouraged socially)

  • boys: gain muscles, more active than girls

• between girls and boys, development occurs at a similar rate

obesity

• when an individual weighs more than 20% higher for their particular age and height

  • prevalence has increased over the past 20 years

optimal strategy

• provide children with HIGH NUTRIENT and LOW FAT foods

  • rich in iron (energy)

  • exposing children to many foods (a variety of vitamins and minerals)

leading cause of death among preschoolers?

• Injury/Accidents

  • Most occur during sports/leisure activities (73%)

  • Many occur at home (55%)

Who is more likely to be injured and why?

• boys are most likely to be injured

  • more muscle - more active than girls

  • more curious than girls

Education

• More than half of Canadian children are put into out of home care

  • care centres

  • family run care centres

  • preschools

• Development depends on the quality of education

High quality education

• Well trained instructors

• Appropriate ratio of instructor to children

  • varies depending on age

• Carefully planned curriculum

• Rich linguistic environment

  • Face to face contact

  • Limiting screen time

  • Limiting isolation

Brain develops in 2 ways

• 1. Increasing number of interconnections

  • more complex neural connections

  • leads to acquisition of cognitive skills

• 2. Increasing myelination

  • myelin coats the axon

  • increases the speed of neural transmission/signalling

Right hemisphere

• Negative emotions

• Non verbal skills

• creativity, intuition, humour, patterns

Left hemisphere

• Verbal tasks

• Positive emotions

• Math, logic, rules, reading, etc

Lateralization

• = specialization

• Girls are more likely to be “both” brained, while boys are most likely to be “left brained”

Corpus callosum

• Bridges the hemispheres together → allows for communication

• During this time, corpus callosum becomes THICKER allowing for more effective communication/coordination between the hemsispehres

Class example of lateralization

• Right hand: clockwise

• Right foot: counterclockwise

  • These movements are both controlled by the left hemisphere. Since the left hemisphere is receiving two opposing signals, it’s hard to coordinate our right hand and right foot this way.

  • It doesn’t know which signal to follow

Gross motor skills

• Skills that require a high degree of coordination among larger body parts

  • e.g. biking, skiing, climbing

Requirements gross motor skills (2)

• Practice

• Brain development

  • e.g. myelination

Boys vs girls gross motor movements

• Boys have more muscle than girls, making gross motor movements easier for them

• Girls are better at tasks that require limb coordination

Toilet training

• Individuals must be physically and emotionally ready

• Signs of readiness:

  • Staying dry for 2+ hours

  • Regular/predicable bowel movements

  • Waking up dry after naps

Fine motor movement

• Tasks that are more precise and delicate

• Require smaller body parts, such as the hands

• Requires PRACTICE

Handedness

• A preference for using a particular hand

  • 90% of people are right handed

  • More boys are left handed than girls

Sensory and Perceptual development

• Increasing efficient in detecting boundaries of colours

• Many preschoolers are far sighted, but become increasing able to focus eyes and attention on close objects by grade 1

Piaget’s 4 stages

1. Sensorimotor

2. Pre-operational

3. Concrete operational

4. Formal operational

Sensorimotor

• Understanding the world through sensory environment and motor movement

  • e.g. undertanding an object by picking it up, putting it in mouth

• 0-2 years old

Preoperational

• Understanding symbols ~ language and fantasy

  • using symbols to think and communicate

• Do not understand conservation at this point

• Difficulty thinking logically

• 2-7 years old

Concrete

• Thinking logically and becoming capable of solving problems

• understands conservation

• 7-11 years old

Formal

• Thinking abstractly

• Thinking hypothetically

• 11+ years

Post-formal?

• It is argued that there is a post formal stage that focuses on perspectives, and understanding things on a continuum .

6 types of play

1. Sensorimotor play

2. Constructive play

3. First pretend play

4. Substitute pretend play

5. Sociodramatic play

6. Role governed play

Sensorimotor play

• Play through knowledge of sensory environment and using motor movements to explore and manipulate objects

Constructive play

• Building and constructing things

First pretend play

e.g. using an empty cup to pretend to drink water

• using object for its intended purpose

Substitute pretend play

• more advanced

• not necessarily using objects for its intended purpose

Sociodramatic

• Assigning roles

Rule governed play

• More logic imposed behind roles

• Nitpicky role play

Egocentrism

• A belief among younger children that others see and perceive the world the same as they do

3 mountain task

• Child is asked what do they see

  • Good proficiency

• Child is asked what the doll sees

  • Harder for them b/c they are unable to view other people’s perspectives

Centration

• The tendency to focus on one variable at the time

  • e.g. animism

Animism

• The belief that inanimate objects are alive

• e.g. because a leaf is moving in the wind, it must be alive

Conservation

• The understanding that, the appearance of an object can change, without its quantity actually changing.

• Children demonstrate this understanding in 3 ways

  • 1. Reversibility: whatever was done can be undone

  • 2. Identity: quantity remains constant (nothing is added or subtracted from it)

  • 3. Compensation: by adding one thing, you must subtract another thing

Criticism of Piaget

• Children are less egocentric than we think

Information processing theory (2)

• Numerical efficiency: Preschoolers can count in a systematic way

• Autobiographical memory: memory becomes increasingly accurate throughout preschool years

What is memory influenced by?

• The time at which memory is assessed

  • e.g. what did you do at school today?

• How salient/significant an event is

• Memories are organized into scripts (sort of like a schema)

Forensic developmental psychology

• A field that assesses the reliability of children’s autobiographical memory in a legal setting

AMAM blip

• “all memories are mine”

  • e.g. memories during or before the womb

Long term memory

• Permanent memory

• Unlimited

Short term memory

• Typically lasts in memory for 15-30 seconds without rehearsal of information

• Rehearsal of information can be used to retain information for longer amount of time

Working memory

• A mental “workbench” whereby individuals can manipulate and assemble information when problem solving, decision making, comprehending information, etc

Visuospatial sketchpad

• Visual semantics

Episodic buffer

• integrates information together

Phonological loop

• Language

Information processing memory approach order

Stimulus → Sensory memory → Short term memory → Long term memory

• Sensory → Short term memory: through attention

• Short term memory → Long term memory: through encoding

Attention

• Preschoolers ability to stay focused and keep attention improves through elementary and secondary school

  • Processing of irrelevant information decreases among adolescence

Multitasking

• Shifting attention from one activity to another improves

  • Decreases performance among complex tasks

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory

1. Primitive: learning language through classical conditioning

2. Naiive: not completely understanding of symbols

3. Egocentric: uses language (out loud) to solve problems

4. Ingrowth: internalization of language

Theory of mind

• The ability to predict what someone else is thinking

• Measured using the false belief task

  • most 3 year olds fail

  • most 4 years old succeed

Criticisms of sociocultural theory

• Underestimates the individual in a group setting

• Implications on group work

• Not enough evidence to support or contradict his theories

  • AKA it hasn’t been tested often

Once children move beyond 2 word utterances…

They are able to understand

• Possessive nouns

• Plural nouns

• Correct word endings

• How to use “to be”

Writing

• Motor skill: writing and being able to print words

  • Children often invent spellings based on what they hear

• Writing is often contingent on the development of cognitive skills

  • Metacognitive skills are needed to become a competent writer

Syntax

• the order of words

Semantics

• The meaning of words

  • Fast mapping: learning new words after very little exposure

Pragmatics

• Rules of conversation and language

  • e.g. Private and social speech: what is appropriate for a specific audience

Psychosocial development

• An individual’s capacity to shape their self through interactions with people and society.

• Initiative vs guilt

Initiative vs guilt

• 3-6 years

• During preschool, children are excited to learn, explore, and engage in new things. There are two possible outcomes for this:

  • Positive outcomes: Confidence and initiative

  • Negative outcomes: Guilt, and fear of trying new things

Main characteristics of self-understanding

• Confusion on self, mind, and body

• Active, physical, and concrete descriptions

• Unrealistic positive overestimations

Psychological traits

• Children tend to define themselves and perceive others in terms of psychological traits

  • Growing understanding that people do not give accurate reports of their beliefs → connected to theory of mind

• Some children are better at understanding others’ thoughts and emotions better than others

Joint commitments

• Working collaboratively

• Seeking of friends (typically around 1-3 people)

External guidance // Internalization

• At about 12-18 months of age, infants depend on their caregivers to externally monitor their behaviour (what is acceptable vs what is not)

• Eventually, at around 2-3 years of age, children being to internalize these rules, and do not require the guidance of their caregivers.

• Even though many children are learning rules and limitations, many still ignore safety and expectations!

  • myelination is still occurring

gender identity

• emerges before 2 years of age

• sex-based behaviour increases during preschool years

  • e.g. boys → trucks, girls → dolls

Peer relations

• 3 years old: prefer spending time with same sex peers

• 5-12 years old: prefer spending time with same sex groups

  • from 5 years old, boys tend to engage in bigger friend groups than girls

Behaviour of girls and boys in groups

• Girls: chatting and linguistic activities

• Boys: competition, play and tumble, risk taking

Gender playground

• Playground is called “gender playground” because girls and boys tend to associate with same sex peers/groups

Parents affect on gender identity

• Parents tend to define how to masculine or feminine to their children

  • Females: caring and nurturing

  • Boys: competitive, rough and tumble play

Parental investment

• Mothers tend to invest more time and energy into children

  • Caregiving and teaching activities

• Fathers increase investment if child is male (e.g. leisure activities)

  • Divorce rate is lower when child is male

Biological influences

• Estrogens: female sex hormone

  • e.g. regulating periods

• Androgens: male sex hormone

  • e.g. genital and secondary sex characteristics growth

  • most important androgen is testosterone

• males and females both have estrogens and androgens; differ on the amount of each

Evolutionary psychology view

• Natural selection has favoured males who adopted short term mating strategies

  • competitiveness, violence, risk taking

• Natural selection has favoured females who are caring and nurturing, and picky on their preference of males who can provide offspring with resources and protection

Social role theory

• Psychological gender differences result in contrasting roles and male and female

  • In most cultures, we see that females have less power and status and control fewer resources

    • Males in lucrative positions

    • Females thinly represented in higher organizations

Psychoanalytic theory of gender

• Freud’s belief that preschoolers are sexually attracted to opposite sex parent

  • by 5-6, children renounce this attraction because of anxiety

• Not much evidence for this!

Social cognitive theory of gender

• Environment and social interactions shapes child development

  • Imitation

  • Reward

  • Reinforcement

  • Punishment

at what age do children develop friendships?

3

Types of play (4)

• Parallel

• Onlooker

• Collaborative

• Associative

Parallel and Onlooker

• Parallel: same toys, same way of play, but not interacting with each other

• Onlooker: observing play, not interacting themselves

• Parallel and onlooker play tends to indicate that a child prefers to play alone

Associative and Collaborative

• Associative: loose engagement/interaction

  • children will often share and borrow toys

• Collaborative: forming a genuine connection and collaboration with others to reach an end goal

• Associative and collaborate play are reserved for older preschoolers

• With age comes more imaginative play

Values: preschoolers

• Same toys

• Same activities

Values: primary school

• Same experiences

• Same fun

Values: late childhood and adolescence

• Traits

• Communication

• Trust

• Intimacy

  • However, these values become less and less due to increased loneliness

Baumrind’s Parenting style

• Based on responsiveness (up) and levels of demand (right)

  • Permissive

  • Authoritative

  • Neglecting/Uninvolved

  • Authoritarian

Permissive

• Loose control

• Child is able to do whatever they want with no consequences

  • rarely learn how to respect others

  • challenging controlling their behaviour

Authoritative

• seems to be the best practice among all cultures

• warm and nurturing relationships

• misbehaviour is not tolerated

Neglecting/uninvolved

• Parents uninvolved

• Child develops a sense that they are not important

• Delinquency

Authoritarian

• Spanking

• Yelling

• Very firm limits

• Kids are fearful and anxious

Issues with Baumrind’s parenting styles

• Parenting styles are heavily influenced by context; they are not very consistent

• Their are cultural differences in parenting styles

  • there is not a universally best practice

Abuse

• 1-2% of children are subject to abuse

• Abuse can be physical or psychological

  • Physical abuse most prevelant in stressful environments

Cycle of violence hypothesis

• Kids that have been subject to abuse are more likely to adopt those same practices to their very own children

  • seems “normative” to them

  • 1/3 children participate in this

Childhood maltreatment results in ?

• Reduction in size of amygdala and hippocampus

Resilience

• When an individual is able to overcome the circumstances that place them at risk of physical and psychological damage

Moral development

• Change in an individual’s sense of right or wrong in moral circumstances

Piaget’s view of moral development

• Heteronomous morality

  • rules are unchanged between 4-7 years old

Social learning theory on moral development

• Children learn what is morally right and wrong though their interactions with the environment

Empathy

• Understanding another’s feelings

  • Empathy emerges very early on

    • e.g. when a baby cries, they will too

Hostile agression

• Aiming to cause intentional harm to another

Emotonal self regulation

• Ability to regulate the quality and intensity of one’s emotions