Child Development: A Cultural Approach - Toddlerhood

Growth and Change in Years 2 and 3

• Bodily Growth
• Brain Development
• Motor Development

Bodily Growth

• Toddler Growth
  • Children lose baby fat and become leaner.
  • The body grows faster than the head.
• Nutrition changes at about 6 months when solid food is introduced.
  • Nutritional deficiencies occur in developing countries, leading to slower growth.
    • Kwashiorkor – protein deficiency
    • Micronutrient deficiency – lack of crucial vitamins and minerals

Brain Development

• Toddler Brain Development
  • Steep increase of synaptic density.
    • Number of synaptic connections among neurons
    • New neurons produced in frontal cortex
  • Long process of synaptic pruning
    • Connections between neurons become fewer but more efficient.
    • Increases efficiency by allowing unused synapses to wither away
• Toddler Brain Activity
  • EEG research shows a sharp increase in overall cortical activity from 18 to 24 months.
  • fMRI method shows that toddlers have greater frontal lobe activity in response to speech than older children
    • Reflects the brain’s readiness for rapid language acquisition.

Motor Development

• Gross Motor Development: From Toddling to Running, Jumping, and Climbing
  • 11 months – walk without support
  • 15 months – stand and begin to climb
  • 18 months – some running
  • 24 months – can kick with more dexterity
  • Gross motor skills continue to develop as they gain more flexibility and balance
• Fine Motor Development: From Scribbling to Building With Blocks
  • Fine motor skills not as fast, but still substantial
  • 12 months – show left or right preference for eating
  • 24 months – learn to hold a cup, scribble, and turn pages
  • 36 months – expands previous fine motor skills

Socializing Physical Functions: Weaning and Sleeping

• Weaning
  • Breast-feeding for 2 to 3 years has been typical human custom until recently.
    • Varies widely among cultures
    • Harder to wean the longer into toddlerhood
    • Traditional cultures have customary practices for weaning
• Sleeping
  • Declines to 15 hours by age 1, and 12 to 13 hours by age 2.
  • More of a night-sleeping, day-waking arousal schedule
    • Not necessarily sleeping through the night
    • In traditional cultures, toddlers start sleeping with siblings

Theories of Cognitive Development

• Piaget’s Theory: The Completion of the Sensorimotor Stage
• Vygotsky’s Cultural Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget’s Theory: The Completion of the Sensorimotor Stage

• Mental Representations
  • Think about possibilities and select actions
  • Intentionally trying out different behaviors
  • Leads to development of language
• Deferred Imitation
  • Ability to repeat actions observed earlier
  • Piaget suggested 18 months but happens sooner – as early as 6 weeks
  • Maturation of hippocampus in toddlerhood, which is responsible for long-term memory encoding and recall
• Categorization
  • Ability to mentally put objects into categories
  • At 2 years, toddlers go beyond appearance and can categorize functions or qualities
    • “Blicket” experiment

Vygotsky’s Cultural Theory of Cognitive Development

• Lev Vygotsky’s Research
  • Often referred to as a sociocultural theory
  • Cognitive development is always both social and cultural
    • Children learn through interactions with others
    • Distinct cultural differences in knowledge children must acquire
• The Zone of Proximal Development
  • Range of skills child can perform if guided to, but can’t accomplish alone
  • Private speech
    • Self-guiding and self-directing comments children make to themselves
    • Adolescents and adults use when solving tasks
  • Scaffolding
    • Degree of assistance provided
  • Emphasis on social learning
• Guided Participation
  • Barbara Rogoff’s extension of Vygotsky’s theory
  • Teaching interaction between two people as they participate in a culturally valued activity
    • Can be direct or indirect
  • Emphasis on culture and role of values

Language Development

• The Biological and Evolutionary Bases of Language
• Milestones of Toddler Language: From First Words to Fluency
• Learning Language in a Social and Cultural Context

The Biological and Evolutionary Bases of Language

• Language
  • Can communicate not just about what exists but about what might exist or what we imagine
  • Can teach chimpanzees sign language, but not speech
  • Important distinguishing feature of human language is infinite generativity
    • Combining symbols in infinite ways
• Biological Characteristics
  • Unique vocal apparatus
  • Brain specialization: Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area
  • Specific genes
  • Evolutionary advantage for its social function
  • Children learn basic rules of grammar at same age
    • Chomsky proposed Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
      • Innate brain feature enabling children to learn language

Milestones of Toddler Language: From First Words to Fluency

• Twelve Months to 18 Months: Slow Expansion
  • Begins slowly then rises sharply during toddlerhood
  • First 50 words part of toddler’s routine
  • Similarities of first words across cultures
  • 12 to 18 months, use one word at a time
    • Holophrases
    • Overextensions
    • Underextensions
• Eighteen Months to 24 Months: The Naming Explosion
  • Pace of learning new words doubles, also called vocabulary spurt
  • Begin to see processes of:
    • Fast mapping
      • Learning and remembering a word after just one time of being told what object is
    • Telegraphic speech
      • Two-word phrases that strip away connecting words
    • Syntactic bootstrapping
      • Using knowledge of syntax to figure out the meaning of words
• Twenty-Four Months to 36 Months: Becoming Adept at Language
  • Diminished frequency of overextension and underextension
  • Show understanding of rules of language
    • May show overregularization
      • Applying grammatical rules to everything, even exceptions

Learning Language in a Social and Cultural Context

• Importance of Language
  • 7,000 different human languages
  • Language necessary for social development
  • Focus on how parents foster language
    • Parents read and explain word meaning
    • Some research suggests social class differences
    • Use of infant-directed (ID) speech beneficial as well

Emotional Development in Toddlerhood

• Toddlers’ Emotions
• The Birth of the Self
• Gender Identity and the Biology of Gender Development

Toddlers’ Emotions

• Emotional Self-Regulation
  • Show how we feel
  • Toddlers develop self-regulation in four ways:
    • Behavioral development
    • Use of language
    • Social demands (external requirements)
    • Development of sociomoral emotions
  • “Terrible twos” occur possibly due to increased sense of self
• Learning the Sociomoral Emotions
  • Primary emotions develop in infancy
  • Secondary emotions develop in toddlerhood
    • Known as sociomoral emotions
    • Empathy extremely important
      • Ability to understand and respond helpfully to another person’s distress
    • Beginning of prosocial behavior
      • Behavior intended to help or benefit others
    • Cultural differences in how sociomoral emotions are shaped

The Birth of the Self

• Self-Awareness
  • Starts in infancy but advances further in toddlerhood
  • Self-recognition
    • Recognizing image of self
  • Self-reflection
    • Think about themselves as they would think about others

Gender Identity and the Biology of Gender Development

• Gender Identity
  • Children begin to identify as male or female during toddlerhood
    • Sex – biological status of being male or female
    • Gender – cultural categories of male and female
  • Culture communicates gender expectations
    • Parents have early influence in conveying gender messages
    • Includes names, dressing, toys
• Gender and Biology
  • Three elements to biological basis of gender development
    • Evolutionary
      • Gender differences based on characteristics promoting survival
        • Males – aggressive, competitive, dominance
        • Females – nurturing, cooperative, emotionally responsive
    • Ethology
      • Animal behavior shows evidence of biology
    • Hormonal
      • Hormonal balance differences
• The Limits of Biology
  • Gender roles have changed dramatically while biology has stayed same
  • Enormous influence of culture
  • Variability within each gender much greater than between genders

Attachment Theory and Research

• Attachment Theory
• Quality of Attachment

Attachment Theory

• Bowlby’s Theory
  • Debunked belief that babies are attached to mothers solely because they are the source of food
    • Based on research findings on institutionalized infants, baby monkeys, and imprinting
  • Emotional tie between children and mothers based on children’s need for protection and care
    • Primary attachment figure
      • Person who is sought out when a child experiences distress or threat
    • Stranger anxiety
      • Fear in response to unfamiliar persons
• Bowlby’s Theory continued
  • Loss of primary attachment figure is a catastrophe for children’s development
  • Children use primary attachment figure as a secure base from which to explore surrounding environment
  • Attachment develops gradually over the first 2 years, culminating in a goal-corrected partnership
• Varieties of Attachment: The Strange Situation
  • Mary Ainsworth pioneered attachment research
  • Strange Situation devised to assess attachment by going through 8 vignettes
  • Led to the development of four attachment classifications:
    • Secure attachment
    • Insecure-avoidant attachment
    • Insecure-resistant attachment
    • Disorganized-disoriented attachment

Quality of Attachment

• Determinants of Attachment Quality
  • Attachment theory suggests quality influenced by:
    • Maternal sensitivity
      • What a child needs at any given time
    • Maternal responsiveness
      • Quick to assist or soothe when needed
  • Children develop an internal working model of attachment
    • What to expect from mother
    • Can apply to later relationships
• Attachment Quality and Later Development
  • Research is mixed on predictions of attachment theory
    • Internal working model established early may be modified substantially by later experiences
    • Disorganized-disoriented attachment can be predictive of later problems
• Critiques of Attachment Theory
  • Child effect critique
    • Children are born with different temperaments
    • Parent–child relations are reciprocal or bidirectional
  • Cultural variations critique
    • Some attachments are recognizable across cultures
      • Most common is what constitutes a securely attached child
    • Cultural differences in typical patterns of care
    • Cultural variations in what attachment types are desired

The Social World of the Toddler

• The Role of Fathers
• The Wider Social World: Siblings, Peers, and Friends
• Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Disruption in Social Development
• Media Use in Toddlerhood

The Role of Fathers

• Fathers in Traditional Cultures
  • Fathers rarely involved in daily child care, but are part of the child’s social environment in other ways
    • In China, father is provider and disciplinarian; in Latin America, father is provider and also warm and affectionate
    • Some cultures in Africa have a tradition of polygyny
  • Common cultural pattern is that fathers serve as providers but remote from the child’s emotional life
    • Some exceptions, such as Manu fathers
• Fathers in Developed Countries
  • Interact less and provide less care
    • Do interact, but in play rather than care
  • Change to more egalitarian in recent years
  • Parenting is a learned pattern, not innate, and can change with culture

The Wider Social World: Siblings, Peers, and Friends

• Siblings: Younger and Older
  • In both traditional cultures and developed countries, toddlers show attachment to older siblings
    • Older sibling provides emotional comfort and security if the primary caregiver is not around
  • Toddlers may show negative reactions to younger siblings
  • Conflict is common with siblings
• Peers and . . . Friends?
  • Toddlers form first social relations outside the family
    • Siblings, cousins, child care
  • Children engage in solitary play, parallel play, simple social play, and cooperative pretend play
  • Well-acquainted toddlers engage in more advanced forms of play than unacquainted toddlers
  • Toddlers can form friendships, similar to adults

Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Disruption in Social Development

• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
  • Features for diagnosis include:
    • Persistent deficits in social communication and interactions
    • Repetitive and restricted behavior
  • The majority of ASD children are low in intelligence and exhibit some degree of intellectual disability
• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) continued
  • 1 in 68 in U.S. fit the criteria for autism spectrum disorder
  • Origins are unclear, but believed to have a genetic basis
  • Although usually diagnosed between 18 to 30 months, it is seen in infancy
  • As adults can live with parents or in government-sponsored group homes

Media Use in Toddlerhood

• Media Use
  • 73% of toddlers watch TV every day
  • Toddlers understand images are not real although the boundary is not completely clear
  • The effect of media depends on content
    • Can encourage pro-social behavior
    • May expand vocabularies
  • Displacement effect is a concern
    • Children should spend time reading or playing instead