Lifespan Development: Early Childhood Study Notes

Lifespan Development

Module # 5: Early Childhood

Module Learning Outcomes

• Describe how children change physically and cognitively and develop socially and emotionally between ages two and six.
  • 5.1: Describe physical changes in early childhood.
  • 5.2: Explain cognitive changes in early childhood.
  • 5.3: Describe key emotional and social developments of early childhood.

Physical Development in Early Childhood

Learning Outcomes: Physical Development in Early Childhood

• 5.1: Describe physical changes in early childhood.
  • 5.1.1: Summarize overall physical growth and nutrition during early childhood.
  • 5.1.2: Understand nutrition concerns during early childhood.
  • 5.1.3: Describe changes in the brain during early childhood.
  • 5.1.4: Give examples of gross and fine motor skill development in early childhood.

Growth and Nutrition in Early Childhood

• Children between ages 2 and 6 years tend to:
  • Grow about 3 inches in height each year.
  • Gain 4-5 pounds in weight each year.
  • Start to lose some baby fat.
• Statistics:
  • 1 in 5 American children between ages 2 and 5 are overweight or obese.
• Caregiver Considerations:
  • Caregivers set up taste preferences during early childhood.
  • Providing adequate nutrition while limiting sugary snacks and drinks ensures children do not starve and receive proper nutrition.

Brain Development

• By age 6:
  • The brain reaches approximately 95% of its adult weight.
  • Myelination (the development of myelin) and the formation of new synapses continue in the cortex.
  • Synaptic pruning occurs, which is the process of loss of unused synapses that increases as neural processes become quicker and more complex.
• Significant developments include:
  • Greater development in the prefrontal cortex, leading to improved planning, complex thinking, and emotional control.
  • Significant growth in language (left hemisphere) and spatial skills (right hemisphere).
  • Growth spurts in the connection between the hemispheres (corpus callosum) and maturation of visual pathways.

Motor Skill Development

• Children develop:
  • Gross motor skills (involving large muscle groups).
  • Fine motor skills (involving more precise movements).

Sexual Development in Early Childhood

• Sexuality beginnings:
  • Sexuality begins as a response to physical states and sensations, not parallel to adult sexuality.
  • Boys and girls can exhibit erections and vaginal lubrication, even before birth, used primarily for comfort.
  • Self-stimulation and curiosity about bodies are natural.
  • As children grow, showing genitals to peers may occur, and masturbation becomes common.
  • Caregiver Guidance:
  • Caregivers should communicate with children about boundaries of when it is appropriate for others to see or touch them.

Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Learning Outcomes: Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

• 5.2: Explain cognitive changes in early childhood.
  • 5.2.1: Describe Piaget’s preoperational stage of development.
  • 5.2.2: Illustrate limitations in early childhood thinking, including:
  • Animism.
  • Egocentrism.
  • Conservation errors.
  • 5.2.3: Explain theory of mind.
  • 5.2.4: Explain language development and its importance in early childhood.
  • 5.2.5: Describe Vygotsky’s model, including the zone of proximal development.

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

• Preoperational Stage (ages 2–7):
  • Children learn to use language and think symbolically, laying the groundwork for the next cognitive stage.
  • Egocentrism:
  • The tendency of children to assume that others share their viewpoint.
  • Precausal Thinking:
  • Uses existing ideas to explain causal relationships; includes:
    • Animism: Belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities.
    • Artificialism: Belief that environmental characteristics are made by humans.
    • Transductive Reasoning: Misunderstanding true cause and effect.
    • Syncretism: Believing two simultaneous events are causally related.

Cognition Errors

• Centration:
  • Focusing on one characteristic of a situation while ignoring others (e.g., size of cake pieces).
• Conservation:
  • Understanding that changing an object's appearance does not change its fundamental properties (e.g., cutting a sandwich in half).
• Irreversibility:
  • Difficulty in reversing a sequence of events; reliance on visual representations leads to errors.
• Preoperational children struggle with logic and utilizing previous knowledge for inferences (transitive inference).

Theory of Mind

• The concept that each person holds unique beliefs, desires, emotions, and intentions.
• By age 4, children understand that people think differently and may hide their true feelings, indicating development of social intelligence and self-awareness.
• Children on the autism spectrum often exhibit difficulties in understanding others' minds.
• Typical signs of autism (by 24 months):
  • No babbling by 12 months.
  • No gestures by 12 months.
  • No single words by 16 months.
  • No two-word phrases by 24 months.
  • Loss of any language or social skills at any age.
• Sally-Anne Test:
  • Measures theory of mind; younger than 4 and those with autism tend to answer incorrectly.

Language Development

• Vocabulary growth:
  • Children’s vocabulary expands from about 200 words to over 10,000 through a process called fast-mapping.
• Connections between new words and existing concepts are crucial in learning new vocabulary.
• Children learn grammar rules both explicitly and intuitively, though they may overgeneralize these rules (e.g., adding “ed” for past tense).
• Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky):
  • The range of material a child is ready to learn with adequate support and guidance (scaffolding).
• Scaffolding (Chomsky):
  • Assistance provided as a child learns a new skill.
• Private Speech:
  • Piaget sees this as egocentric, while Vygotsky views it as problem-solving and thought clarification.
• Research by Hart and Risley:
  • Shows children from disadvantaged backgrounds are exposed to millions fewer words than peers, highlighting significant implications for language development.

Emotional and Social Development in Early Childhood

Learning Outcomes: Emotional and Social Development in Early Childhood

• 5.3: Describe key emotional and social developments of early childhood.
  • 5.3.1: Describe the development of self-concept.
  • 5.3.2: Explain Freud’s psychodynamic theory as it applies to early childhood.
  • 5.3.3: Explain Erikson’s psychosocial theory as it applies to early childhood.
  • 5.3.4: Describe gender identity development in early childhood.
  • 5.3.5: Describe the impact of different parenting styles on children’s development.
  • 5.3.6: Apply principles of operant conditioning to parenting and behavior modification.
  • 5.3.7: Examine concerns about childhood stress and trauma.

Developing a Concept of Self

• Self-concept:
  • The notion of who we are, our capabilities, and how we feel and think.
• Looking-glass self (Cooley):
  • Involves interpreting how others view us to make self-judgments.
• Two parts of the self:
  • The 'I': Spontaneous, creative, and innate without concern for others' views.
  • The 'me': Socialized self perceived through meaningful interactions.
• As children encounter diverse situations, they develop a multi-dimensional self-concept by recognizing how others perceive them.

Exhibition and Self-control

• Children may exaggerate qualities to form part of their self-concept, leading to realism in middle childhood through peer comparisons.
• Self-control:
  • Involves response inhibition and delayed gratification, assessed through the “marshmallow test.”
• Recent studies link poor delayed gratification in early childhood to issues in self-regulation, particularly with eating.

Psychodynamic and Psychosocial Theories of Early Childhood

• Freud’s stages relevant to early childhood:
  • Anal Stage (18 months – 3 years):
  • Focus of libido shifts from the mouth to the anus; pleasure from defecation leading to potty training challenges.
  • Phallic Stage:
  • Attraction to the parent of opposite sex (Oedipus Complex in boys, Electra Complex in girls); modeling behavior after same-sex parent.
• Chodorow (neo-Freudian):
  • Believes mothering contributes to gender stereotypical behavior and that early experiences shape lifelong gender self-concepts.
• Introjection (phallic stage):
  • Process of learning moral right from wrong.

Social Development: The Importance of Play

• Play provides a supportive space for children to recreate experiences.
• Early childhood play features:
  • Fantasy, organization, and comfort.
• Types of play in American children:
  • Unoccupied play.
  • Solitary (independent) play.
  • Onlooker play.
  • Parallel play.
  • Associative play.
  • Cooperative play.

Erikson: Initiative vs. Guilt

• Initiative vs. Guilt (starts at age 3):
  • Builds upon previous stages of trust and autonomy, fostering initiative.
  • Parental guidance essential to help children act appropriately without excessive guilt.

Gender and Early Childhood

• Children develop an interest in gender differences around preschool age.
• Gender Identity Development:
  • Understanding distinctions between boys and girls, often leading to established gender roles by age 4 or 5.
• Gender Stereotyping:
  • Overgeneralizations about traits or behaviors of genders.
• Exposure to varied roles and non-traditional toys may decrease stereotypical behavior.
• Gender Role Socialization:
  • Begins at conception; children tend to prefer gender-appropriate toys due to feedback.
• Gender dynamics can be particularly severe in cultures with strict expectations, such as in India.

Family Life and Parenting Styles

• Baumrind’s Parenting Styles:
  • Authoritarian: Focus on obedience, leading to fear rather than respect.
  • Permissive: Prioritizes friendship over discipline, resulting in insecurity.
  • Authoritative: Balances strictness with affection, fostering negotiation.
  • Uninvolved: Parents are disengaged and non-responsive.
• Lemasters and Defrain’s Parenting Styles:
  • Martyr: Sacrifices everything for the child, potentially leading to compliance extraction.
  • Pal: Aims for friendship, leading to lax boundaries.
  • Police Officer/Drill Sergeant: Focuses on discipline at the expense of autonomy.
  • Teacher-Counselor: Seeks expert advice, aiming for a perfectionist upbringing.
  • Athletic Coach: Guides children, explaining situational responses.

Cultural and Class Influences on Parenting

• Parenting styles differ across cultural and class lines:
  • Authoritarian tendencies: More prevalent in African-American, Hispanic, and Asian families.
  • Collectivist cultures emphasize obedience.
  • Between 1981 and 1997, parental involvement expanded significantly.
• Child Care Statistics:
  • 75% of children under 5 use childcare services; factors influencing quality include ratio and environment.

Learning and Behavior Modification

• Operant Conditioning Principles:
  • Reinforcement and punishment may be positive or negative:
  • Positive Reinforcement: Adding a stimulus to increase behavior (e.g., alarm clock).
  • Positive Punishment: Adding a stimulus to decrease behavior (e.g., spanking).
  • Negative Reinforcement: Removing an aversive stimulus to increase behavior (e.g., horse training).
  • Negative Punishment: Removing a stimulus to decrease behavior (e.g., time-out).
• Effective teaching involves utilizing positive reinforcement, whether continuous or intermittent.

Childhood Stress and Development

• Types of stress affecting children:
  • Positive Stress (Eustress): Essential for resilience, arising from mild to moderate stress.
  • Tolerable Stress: Intense but short-lived adverse experiences manageable with support.
  • Toxic Stress: Chronic and excessive stress that overwhelms coping mechanisms, leading to long-term effects.
• Stress stages:
  • Alarm response, meaning making, and seeking and executing coping strategies.
• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs):
  • Trauma includes neglect, abuse, witnessing violence, or having mentally ill parents.
• Study (Kaiser Permanent & CDC, 1998):
  • Found correlations between childhood trauma and lasting social and health outcomes.
• Food Insecurity:
  • Refers to limited access to safe and nutritious food.

Practice Questions

• Practice Question 1:
  • Correct answer identifies true aspects of physical growth for early childhood.
• Practice Question 2:
  • Correct answer acknowledges three-year-old Howard's sexual arousal capability.
• Practice Question 3:
  • Identifies fast-mapping from a child's learning process.
• Practice Question 4:
  • Alesandro is likely suffering from toxic stress due to family dynamics.

Class Activities

• Language Ability Discussion:
  • Explore past interactions with younger children to assess language understanding vs. expression.
  • Prepare plans for scaffolding language skills with clear examples.
• Building Resiliency Strategies:
  • Write down potential practices to help children cope with stress, grounded in theoretical principles and practical examples.

Quick Reviews

1. Key characteristics of physical growth during early childhood.
2. Nutrition concerns for early childhood children.
3. Brain changes during early childhood.
4. Examples of gross and fine motor skill development.
5. Characteristics of Piaget’s preoperational stage.
6. Limitations in early childhood thinking including animism, egocentrism, and conservation errors.
7. The theory of mind and its significance.
8. Language development and its importance.
9. Vygotsky’s model including the zone of proximal development.
10. Development of self-concept and theories by Freud and Erikson as they apply to early childhood.
11. Gender identity development.
12. Parenting styles and their impacts on development.
13. Principles of operant conditioning related to parenting.
14. Concerns about childhood stress and trauma.