EARLY CHILDHOOD:

Physical and cognitive development

Physical Development and Physical Development and Health ConcernsHealth Concerns

Physical Growth and Motor-Physical Growth and Motor-Skill DevelopmentSkill Development

Gross Motor Skills Fine Motor Skills

Sensory DevelopmentSensory Development

Visual, Tactile, and Kinesthetic Senses Hearing and Language Development Olfactory and Gustatory Sensations

The Brain and the Nervous The Brain and the Nervous SystemSystem

Rapid development

Children at Risk of Cognitive Children at Risk of Cognitive DelaysDelays

Congenital Birth Defects Autism Young Children with Behavior Problems Chemical Exposure in Young Children Further Resources for Young Children with

Mental Retardation and Other Developmental Delays

Nutrition and Health IssuesNutrition and Health Issues Variability in Eating Behaviors

When a child refuses certain foods Eating frequency Dental health affects nutritional intake Food allergies A vegetarian diet Good Health Also Means Sufficient Calories

Poverty Effects on Nutrition and Health Safety Practices in a Young Child’s Environment Children with HIV or AIDS

Self-Care BehaviorsSelf-Care Behaviors Toilet Training Sleep Illness and Immunization

Demographic Trends and Demographic Trends and Implications for Child HealthImplications for Child Health

Implications for health of minority children Infant Mortality Rates

Child Mortality Rates Child Mortality Rates and Causesand Causes

Causes of Death for Young Children– child mortality in minority communities

Future Directions

Cognitive DevelopmentCognitive Development

Intelligence and Its AssessmentIntelligence and Its Assessment

Intelligence: A global capacity to understand the world, think rationally, and cope resourcefully with the challenges of life.

Intelligence: Single or Multiple Intelligence: Single or Multiple Factors?Factors?

Multiple Intelligences Intelligence as Process Intelligence as Information Processing

Intelligence as a ProcessIntelligence as a Process

Its not “what” we know, but “how” we know

Intelligence as Information Intelligence as Information ProcessingProcessing

Conclusions from gifted children studies: Gifted children ignore irrelevant information. Insights increase performance of non-gifted

children. Insight skills can be developed by training.

Intelligence and the Nature-Intelligence and the Nature-Nurture ControversyNurture Controversy

Hereditarian Position: Intelligence tests prove importance of

heredity. Environmentalist Rebuttal:

Intellect is affected by environment. Contemporary Scientific Consensus

Piaget’s Theory of Piaget’s Theory of Preoperational ThoughtPreoperational Thought

Years between 2 and 7 Children develop a capacity to represent the

external world internally through use of symbols.

Symbols are things that stand for something else.

Difficulties in Solving Difficulties in Solving Conservation ProblemsConservation Problems

Conservation: The concept that the quantity or amount of something stays the same regardless of changes in its shape or position

CentrationCentration

Preoperational children concentrate on one feature of a situation and neglect other aspects

States and TransformationsStates and Transformations

Preoperational children pay attention to states rather than transformations

NonreversibilityNonreversibility

Preoperational children fail to recognize that operations can be gone through in reverse order to get back to the starting point.

Egocentrism: Lack of awareness that there are viewpoints other than one’s own.

Critiques of Piaget’s Critiques of Piaget’s Egocentric ChildEgocentric Child

Talking and Communicating Altruism and Prosocial Behavior

The Child’s Theory of MindThe Child’s Theory of Mind

Implicit Understanding and Knowledge: Piaget underestimates cognitive capabilities of preschoolers: Causality: Our attribution of a cause-and-effect

relationship to two paired events that recur in succession.

Numbers Concepts

Language AcquisitionLanguage Acquisition

Mastery of phonology (different sounds within the language) and morphology (how a word can change forms)

Developmental Phonological Disorders Stuttering

Chomsky’s Linguistic TheoryChomsky’s Linguistic Theory

Language acquisition device (LAD) takes what the child hears and produces consistent grammar

Late TalkersLate Talkers

Quiet baby Premature Twin Male bilingual Siblings communicating child’s wishes

Vygotsky’s PerspectiveVygotsky’s Perspective

Children learn in a social setting. Zone of proximal development (ZPD):

Children master tasks when they are helped by a more skilled partner

Language and EmotionLanguage and Emotion

Talking and Communicating Disabilities in Cognitive Development

Information Processing and Information Processing and MemoryMemory

Early MemoryEarly Memory

Memory refers to the retention of what has been experienced.

Childhood amnesia Freud: Repressed memories Piaget: Adults no longer think as children

Information ProcessingInformation Processing

Sensory Information Storage Short-Term Memory Long Term Memory

Metacognition and Metacognition and MetamemoryMetamemory

Individual’s awareness of their own mental processes: metacognition.

Individual’s awareness of their own memory processes: metamemory.

Memory StrategiesMemory Strategies

Rehearsal as a Memory Strategy Categorization as a Memory Strategy

Moral DevelopmentMoral Development

Ability to recall feelings allows for moral development

Reciprocity: leads to each child’s valuing each other in a way that allows him to remember the values brought forth by the interaction.

Piaget’s TheoryPiaget’s Theory

Evolution of Moral Reasoning– Reciprocity of Attitudes and Values– Playing by the Rules– Intentionality vs. accident

Kohlberg’s TheoryKohlberg’s Theory

Moral reasoning develops in progressive stages through social experiences

Preschool children in preconventional stage