chapter 8 physical and cognitive development in early childhood

Chapter 8

Physical and Cognitive

Development in Early Childhood

Black Hawk College Chapter 8 2

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Body Growth and Change

• Height and Weight

• The Brain


Height and Weight• The average child grows 2½ inches and gains

between 5 and 7 pounds a year in early childhood.

• The percentage of increase in height and weight decreases with each additional year.

• Body fat shows a steady decline during this time.• Girls are only slightly smaller and lighter than

boys, but they have more body fat while boys have more muscle tissue.

• Boys and girls slim down as their trunks lengthen.


Individual Differences

• Much of the variation in body size is due to heredity.

• The two most important contributors to height differences are:

– Ethnic origin

– Nutrition


Contributors to Short Stature

• Congenital Factors (genetic or prenatal problems)

• Physical Problems That Develop in Childhood

• Emotional Difficulties


Congenital Factors’ Influence on Height

• Preschool children whose mothers smoked regularly during pregnancy are shorter than their counterparts whose mothers did not smoke.


Physical Problems’ Influence on Height

• Children who are chronically sick are shorter than their counterparts who are rarely sick.


Emotional Problems’ Influence on Height

• Children who have been physically abused or neglected may not secrete adequate growth hormone, which can restrict their physical growth.


The Brain• The brain and the head grow more rapidly than any

other part of the body.• By age 3, the brain is three-quarters of its adult size,

and by age 5, the brain has reached about nine-tenths of its adult size.

• Some of this size increase is due to increase in size and number of nerve endings and an increase in myelination.

• Myelination is believed to be important in the maturation of a number of children’s abilities.

• From 3-6 years of age, researchers have found that the most rapid brain growth occurs in the frontal lobe.


Motor Development

• Gross Motor Skills

• Fine Motor Skills

• Handedness


Gross Motor Skills• At 3 years of age, children enjoy simple

movements, such as hopping, jumping, and running, just for the fun of it and the pride they feel in their accomplishment.

• At 4 years of age, children become more adventurous—taking on jungle gyms and climbing stairs with one foot on each step.

• At 5 years of age, children begin to perform hair-raising stunts on anything they can climb on, and they enjoy racing with each other and with parents.


Fine Motor Skills• At age 3, children are still clumsy at picking up very

small objects between their thumb and forefinger.• Three-year-olds can build very high block towers, but

the blocks are usually not in a perfectly straight line.• Puzzles are approached with a good deal of

roughness and imprecision.• By age 4, their coordination has improved and

become more precise.• By age 5, children are no longer interested in building

towers, but rather houses, churches, and buildings with more detail.


Handedness• Preference for one hand is linked with the dominance of

one brain hemisphere with regard to motor performance.• Right-handers have a dominant left hemisphere, while

left-handers have a dominant right hemisphere.• Evidence of handedness is present in infancy, as babies

show preferences for one side of their body over the other.

• Many preschool children use both hands without a clear preference emerging until later in childhood.

• The origin of hand preference has been explored with regard to genetic inheritance and environmental experience.


Nutrition

• Energy Needs

• Eating Behavior


Energy Needs

• What children eat affects their skeletal growth, body shape, and susceptibility to disease.

• An average preschool child requires 1,700 calories per day.

• Energy requirements for children are determined by the basal metabolism rate (BMR): the minimum amount of energy a person uses in a resting state.

• Differences in physical activity, basal metabolism, and the efficiency with which children use energy are among the possible explanation as to why children of the same age, sex, and size vary in their energy needs.


Eating Behavior

• Eating habits become ingrained very early in life.• It is during the preschool years that many

children get their first taste of fast food.• Our changing lifestyles, in which we often eat on

the run and pick up fast food meals, contribute to the increased fat levels in children’s diets.

• Although such meals are high in protein, the average American child does not need to be concerned about getting enough protein.


Obesity in Childhood• Being overweight can be a serious problem in

childhood.• Overweight preschool children are usually not

encouraged to lose a great deal of weight, but to slow their rate of weight gain so they will grow into a more normal weight for their height.

• Prevention of obesity in children includes helping children and parents see food as a way to satisfy hunger and nutritional needs, not as proof of love or a reward.

• Routine physical activity should be a daily event.


Illness and Death

• The United States

• The State of Illness and Health of the World’s Children


The United States• Accidents are the leading cause of death in

young children: motor vehicle accidents, drowning, falls, and poisoning are high on the list.

• The disorders most likely to be fatal during early childhood today are birth defects, cancer, and heart disease.

• Despite the greatly diminished dangers of many childhood diseases, it is still very important for parents to keep young children on an immunization schedule.

• Exposure to tobacco smoke increases children’s risk for developing a number of medical problems, such as pneumonia, bronchitis, ear infections, burns, asthma, and cancer in adulthood.


The State of Illness and Health of the World’s Children

• One death of every three in the world is the death of a child under 5 years of age.

• Every week, more than a quarter million children die in developing countries due to infection and undernutrition.

• The leading cause of childhood death in the world is dehydration and malnutrition as a result of diarrhea.

• This could be prevented if parents had available a low-cost breakthrough known as oral rehydration therapy (ORT).

• Oral rehydration therapy involves a range of techniques designed to prevent dehydration during episodes of diarrhea by giving the child fluids by mouth.


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Piaget’s Preoperational Stage of Development

• Characteristics of the Preoperational Stage

• Definition of Operations

• Symbolic Function Substage

• Intuitive Thought Substage


Characteristics of the Preoperational Stage

• The preoperational stage lasts from 2-7 years old.

• During this time stable concepts form, mental reasoning emerges, egocentrism begins, and magical beliefs are constructed.

• Thought is flawed and not organized.• This stage involves a transition from primitive to

more sophisticated use of symbols.• Children still do not yet think in an operational

way.


Definition of Operations

• Operations are internalized sets of actions that allow the child to do mentally what before she did physically.


Symbolic Function Substage

• The ability to think symbolically and to represent the world mentally predominates in this substage.

• It occurs roughly between the ages of 2-4.• Symbolic function is demonstrated by the child’s

ability to mentally represent an object not present.

• Symbolism is evident in scribbled designs, language, and pretend play

• Two important limitations in thought at this stage are egocentrism and animism.


Egocentrism• Egocentrism is the inability to distinguish

between one’s own perspective and someone else’s perspective.

• It is a salient feature of preoperational thought.

• Perspective-taking doesn’t develop uniformly in preschool children, as they frequently show perspective skills on some tasks, but not others.


Animism• Animism is the belief that inanimate

objects have “lifelike” qualities and are capable of action.

• A child may believe that a tree pushes its leaves off in the Fall, or that the sidewalk made him trip and fall down.


Intuitive Thought Substage• In this stage, children begin to use primitive

reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions.

• It occurs roughly between the ages of 4-7.• Piaget used the term intuitive because children

say they know something, but they know it without the use of rational thinking.

• Children in this stage also ask a barrage of questions, signaling the emergence of their interest in reasoning and why things are the way they are.


Centration• Centration is the focusing or centering

of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others.

• It is a major characteristic of preoperational thought, evidenced in young children’s lack of conservation.


Conservation• Conservation refers to an awareness that

altering an object’s or a substance’s appearance does not change its basic properties.

• Although obvious to adults, preoperational children lack conservation.

• A lack of conservation not only demonstrates the presence of centration, but also an inability to mentally reverse actions.


Vygotsky’s Theory of Development

• The Zone of Proximal Development• Scaffolding in Cognitive Development• Language and Thought• Evaluating and Comparing Vygotsky’s

and Piaget’s Theories• Teaching Strategies Based on

Vygotsky’s Theory


The Zone of Proximal Development

• The zone of proximal development is Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks too difficult for children to master alone, but which can be learned with the guidance and assistance of adults or more skilled children.

• The lower limit is the level of problem solving reached by the child working independently.

• The upper limit is the level of additional responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor.

• Vygotsky’s emphasis on the ZPD underscores his belief in the importance of social influences, especially instruction, on children’s cognitive development.


Scaffolding in Cognitive Development

• Scaffolding refers to changing the level of support.• Over the course of a teaching session, a more skilled

person adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the student’s current performance level.

• Dialog is an important tool of scaffolding in the zone of proximal development.

• As the child’s unsystematic, disorganized, spontaneous concepts meet with the skilled helper’s more systematic, logical, and rational concepts, through meeting and dialogue, the child’s concepts become more systematic, logical, and rational.


Language and Thought• Vygotsky believed that young children use language both

for social communication and to plan, guide, and monitor their behavior in a self-regulatory fashion.

• Language used for this purpose is called inner speech or private speech.

• For Piaget, private speech is egocentric and immature, but for Vygotsky it is an important tool of thought during early childhood.

• Vygotsky believed all mental funtions have social origins.• Children must use language to communicate with others

before they can focus on their own thoughts.• Researchers have found support for Vygotsky’s view of

the positive role of private speech in development.


Evaluating and Comparing Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s Theories

• Vygotsky’s theory is a social constructivist approach, which emphasizes the social contexts of learning and that knowledge is mutually built and constructed.

• Piaget’s theory does not have this social emphasis.• For Piaget, children construct knowledge by transforming, organizing,

and reorganizing previous knowledge.• For Vygotsky, children construct knowledge through social interaction.• The implication of Piaget’s theory for teaching is that children need

support to explore their world and discover knowledge.• The implication of Vygotsky’s theory for teaching is that students need

many opportunities to learn with the teacher and more skilled peers.• Vygotsky’s theory has been embraced by many teachers and

successfully applied to education.


Teaching Strategies Based on Vygotsky’s Theory

• Use the child’s zone of proximal development in teaching.

• Use scaffolding.• Use more skilled peers as teachers.• Monitor and encourage children’s use

of private speech.• Assess the child’s ZPD, not IQ.• Transform the classroom with Vygotskian

ideas.


Information Processing

• Attention• Memory• Strategies• The Young Child’s Theory

of Mind


Attention• The child’s ability to pay attention changes

significantly during the preschool years.• Preschool children are influenced strongly by

the features of a task that stand out, or are salient.

• This deficit can hinder problem solving or performing well on tasks.

• By age 6 or 7, children attend more efficiently to the dimensions of a task that are relevant.

• This is believed to reflect a shift in cognitive control of attention.


Memory

• Short-Term Memory

• How Accurate Are Young Children’s Long-Term Memories?


Short-Term Memory• In short-term memory, individuals retain

information for up to 15-30 seconds, assuming there is no rehearsal, which can help keep information in STM for a much longer period.

• Differences in memory span occur across the ages due to: – Rehearsal: older children rehearse items more than

younger children.– Speed and efficiency of processing information: the

speed with which a child processes information is an important aspect of the child’s cognitive abilities.


How Accurate Are Young Children’s Long-Term

Memories?• Young children can remember a great deal

of information if they are given appropriate cues and prompts.

• Sometimes the memories of preschoolers seem to be erratic, but these inconsistencies may be to some degree the result of inadequate prompts and cues.


Strategies• Strategies consist of using deliberate mental

activities to improve the processing of information:– Rehearsal– Organizing information

• Young children typically do not use rehearsal and organization.

• Children as young as 2 can learn to use other types of strategies to process information.


The Young Children’s Theory of Mind• Theory of mind refers to individuals’ thoughts about how

mental processes work.• Even young children are curious about the nature of the

human mind.• Children’s developing knowledge of the mind includes

the awareness that:– The mind exists.– The mind has connections to the physical world.– The mind can represent objects and events accurately

or inaccurately.– The mind actively interprets reality and emotions.


Becoming Aware that the Mind Exists

• By the age of 2 or 3, children refer to needs, emotions, and mental states.

• They also use intentional action or desire words, such as wants to.

• Cognitive terms such as know, remember, and think usually appear after perceptual and emotional terms, but are used by age 3.

• Later children distinguish between guessing vs. knowing, believing vs. fantasizing, and intending vs. not on purpose.


Understanding Cognitive Connections to the Physical

World• At about 2 or 3 years of age, children develop

an awareness of the connections among stimuli, mental states, and behavior.

• This provides them with a rudimentary mental theory of human action.

• Children can infer connections from stimuli to mental states, from mental states to behavior or emotion, and from behavior to mental states.

• Children also develop an understanding that the mind is separate from the physical world.


Detecting Accuracies/ Inaccuracies of the Mind

• Children develop an understanding that the mind can represent objects and events accurately.

• Understanding of false beliefs doesn’t usually occur until 4 or 5 years.


Understanding the Mind’s Active Role in Emotion and Reality

• Children develop an understanding that the mind actively mediates the interpretation of reality and the emotion experienced.

• In the elementary school years, children change from viewing emotions as caused by external events without any mediation by internal states to viewing emotional reactions to an external event as influenced by a prior emotional state, experience, or expectation.


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Language Development• Young children’s understanding sometimes

gets ahead of their speech.• Many of the oddities of young children’s

language sound like mistakes to adult listeners, but from the children’s perspective, they are not.

• As children go through early childhood, their grasp of the rules of language increases (morphology, semantics, pragmatics).


Morphology• As children move beyond two-word utterances,

they know morphology rules.• They begin using plurals and possessive forms of

nouns.• They put appropriate endings on verbs.• They use prepositions, articles, and various forms

of the verb to be.• Children demonstrate knowledge of morphological

rules with plural forms of nouns, possessive forms of nouns, and the third-person singular and past tense forms of verbs.


Semantics• As children move beyond the two-word

stage, their knowledge of meanings rapidly advances.

• The speaking vocabulary of a 6-year-old ranges from 8,000 to 14,000 words.

• According to some estimates, the average child of this age is learning about 22 words a day!


Pragmatics• No difference is as dramatic as the difference

between a 2-year-old’s language and a 6-year-old’s language in terms of pragmatics—the rules of conversation.

• At about 3 years of age, children improve their ability to talk about things that are not physically present—referred to as “displacement.”

• Displacement is revealed in games of pretend.• Large individual differences seen in

preschoolers’ talk about imaginary people and things.


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The Child-Centered Kindergarten

• In the child-centered kindergarten, education involves the whole child and includes concern for the child’s physical, cognitive, and social development.

• Instruction is organized around the child’s needs, interests, and learning styles.

• The process of learning, rather than what is learned, is emphasized.

• Experimenting, exploring, discovering, trying out, restructuring, speaking, and listening are all part of an excellent kindergarten program.


The Montessori Approach

• The Montessori Approach is a philosophy of education in which children are given considerable freedom and spontaneity in choosing activities.

• They are allowed to move from one activity to another as they desire.

• The teacher acts as a facilitator, rather than a director of learning.

• While it fosters independence, it deemphasizes verbal interaction.

• Criticism of the approach is that it neglects children’s social development and restricts imaginative play.


Developmentally Appropriate and Inappropriate Practices in the Education of Young Children

• Young children learn best through active, hands-on teaching methods.

• Schools should focus on improving children’s social as well as cognitive development.

• Developmentally appropriate practice is based on knowledge of the typical development of children within an age span, as well as the uniqueness of the child.

• Developmentally inappropriate practice ignores the concrete, hands-on approach to learning.

• Direct teaching largely through abstract paper-and-pencil activities presented to large groups of young children is believed to be developmentally inappropriate.


Does Preschool Matter?

• Preschool matters if parents do not have the commitment, time, energy, and resources to provide young children with an environment that approximates a good early childhood program.

• If parents have the competence and resources to provide young children with a variety of learning experiences and exposure to other children and adults, along with opportunities for extensive play, this may be sufficient.


Education for Children Who Are Disadvantaged

• Project Head Start is a compensatory education program designed to provide children from low-income families the opportunity to acquire skills and experiences important for success in school.

• Project Follow Through was implemented as an adjunct to Project Head Start to determine which types of educational programs were the most effective, and those were then carried through the first few years of elementary school.


Findings on Early Childhood Compensatory Education

• Children in academically oriented, direct-instruction approaches did better on achievement tests and were more persistent on tasks than were children in other approaches.

• Children in effective education programs were absent less often and showed more independence.

• Long-term effects have included lower rates of placement in special education, dropping out of school, grade retention, delinquency, and use of welfare programs.

chapter 8 physical and cognitive development in early childhood

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