physical and cognitive development in early childhood

Physical and Cognitive

Development in Early Childhood

Chapter 7:

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Physical Changes

• Cognitive Changes

• Changes in Language

• Differences in Intelligence

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

7.1 What are the major milestones of growth and motor development between 2 and 6?

7.2 What important changes happen in the brain during these years?

7.3 What are the nutritional and health-care needs of young children?

7.4 What factors contribute to abuse and neglect, and how do these traumas affect children’s development?

7.5 What are the characteristics of children’s thought during Piaget’s preoperational stage?

7.6 How has recent research challenged Piaget’s view of this period?

7.7 What is a theory of mind, and how does it develop?

7.8 How do information-processing and sociocultural theorists explain changes in young children’s thinking?

LEARNING OBJECTIVES (con’t)

7.9 How does fast-mapping help children learn new words?

7.10 What happens during the grammar explosion?

7.11 What is phonological awareness, and why is it important?

7.12 What are the strengths and weaknesses of IQ tests?

7.13 What kinds of evidence support the nature and nurture explanations for individual differences in IQ?

7.14 What theories and evidence have been offered in support of genetic and cultural explanations of group differences in IQ scores?

PHYSICAL CHANGES

Growth and Motor Development

In Early Childhood

• Changes in height and weight happen more

slowly during early childhood than in infancy.

• Impressive gains in major locomotor skills

• Manipulative skills improve, but less so than

major motor skills do.

PHYSICAL CHANGES

Milestones of Motor Development from Age 2

to Age 6

PHYSICAL CHANGES

Children’s Drawing

• Early training can accelerate the rate at which

children learn school-related fine-motor skills.

• Older children benefit more from training than

younger children do.

• Learning to write letters aids in letter

understanding.

STAGES IN CHILDREN’S DRAWING

THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM

Lateralization

Lateralization: the left and right halves of the

brain’s cerebral cortex execute different functional

specializations.

• Contributes to important neurological milestones

in early childhood

THE BRAIN AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

• The basic outline of

lateralization is

genetically

determined.

• Genes dictate the

functions to be

lateralized.

• Experience shapes

the pace of

lateralization.Figure 7.2 Lateralization of Brain

Function


Myelinization

Myelinization: protective, fatty material that wraps

around nerve cells in the peripheral and central

nervous system

• Reticular formation

• Hippocampus


Handedness

Right or Left . . . Not Right or Wrong!

• 83 percent of people are right-handed.

• 14 percent are left-handed.

• 3 percent are ambidextrous.

• Appears very early in life

• Research suggests a genetic link.

A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP FOR KIDS

(AND PARENTS, TOO!)

Pediatricians can recommend effective bedtime

practices that can help children—and their often

sleepy parents—sleep better at night.

• Structured, predictable daytime schedule

• Regular bedtime that is 8 to 10 hours before

waking

• Discontinue daytime naps

• Establish a routine of settling activities

• Provide a transitional object

Reflection

1. If you were Manny’s parent, what strategies

would you use to try to prevent him from

awakening at night and getting into your bed?

2. How might you explain the ways in which

variable reinforcement contributes to the

behavior of nighttime awakening in preschoolers

to a parent by using gambling (i.e., sometimes

you win, sometime you lose) as an analogy?

HEALTH AND WELLNESS

Eating patterns

Preschoolers

• Often eat less than when babies

• May not consume the majority of their daily

calories at mealtime

Challenges

• Food aversions may surface.

• Eating behaviors can bring on family conflicts.

HEALTH AND WELLNESS

Illnesses and Accidents

Illness

• Each year, four to six bouts of brief sickness are

typical.

• High levels of family stress are more likely to

produce sick children.

HEALTH AND WELLNESS

Illnesses and Accidents

Accidents

• 25 percent of U.S. children under 5 have 1

accident in any single year requiring medical

attention.

• Most occur in the home

• Major cause of death in preschoolers

• More common among boys

ABUSE AND NEGLECT

Child Abuse

What is child abuse?

• Child abuse: physical or psychological injury

resulting from an adult’s intentional exposure of

child to potentially harmful stimuli, sexual acts, or

neglect

ABUSE AND NEGLECT

Child Abuse Prevalence

Prevalence

• Responsible for about 10 percent of emergency

room visits

• Between 1 and 5 percent of children suffer

physical abuse.

• Two thousand infants and children die each year

as result of child abuse.

ABUSE AND NEGLECT

Risk Factors

Overview: Sociocultural Factors

• Personal or cultural values that regard physical

abuse as morally acceptable

• Cultural traditions that view children as property

• Communities that support these beliefs

TRUE OR FALSE?

Episodes of abuse are typically precipitated by

everyday interactions between parent and child.

ABUSE AND NEGLECT

Risk Factors: Child Characteristics

Characteristics of Child

• Physical or mental disabilities

• Difficult temperaments

• Age

ABUSE AND NEGLECT

Risk Factors: Abuser Characteristics

Characteristics of Abuser

• Depressed

• Lacking in parenting skills and knowledge

• History of abuse themselves

• Substance abusers

• Live-in male partners

ABUSE AND NEGLECT

Risk Factors: Family Stress

Family Stress

• Poverty

• Unemployment

• Inter-parental conflicts

The presence of several factors in combination

increases the likelihood of abuse.

ABUSE AND NEGLECT

Consequences of Abuse

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

• Delays in all developmental domains

• Children removed from the abusive situation

typically appear to catch up within one year.

ABUSE AND NEGLECTPrevention

Preventing abuse begins with education!

• Inform parents about the consequences of child

abuse.

• Parenting classes

• Identify families at risk.

• Protect children from further injury.

CHILDREN’S PLAY AND COGNITIVE

DEVELOPMENT

Children’s play changes in very obvious ways

during the years from ages one to six, following a

sequence that closely matches Piaget’s stages.

• Constructive play

• First pretend play

• Substitute pretend play

• Sociodramatic play

• Rule-governed play

Critical Analysis

1. Which of the research methods discussed in

Chapter 1 is best suited to the study of age-

related changes in children’s play activities?

2. Many children have imaginary friends (a

phenomenon that child psychologists consider to

be entirely normal). In which of the stages of play

would you expect to first see children inventing

imaginary playmates?

COGNITIVE CHANGES

Piaget’s Preoperational Stage: Overview

Preoperational Stage

Semiotic (symbolic) functioning

acquired

Increased proficiency in thinking and

communicating but difficulty in logical

thinking

Beginning of pretend play

COGNITIVE CHANGES

Piaget’s Preoperational Stage: Centration

Centration: the tendency to think of the world one

variable at a time

• Use of animism, the belief that inanimate objects

are alive

COGNITIVE CHANGES

Piaget’s Preoperational Stage: Egocentrism

Egocentrism: the child’s tendency to view things

from his or her own perspective

• Guided by object appearance

• May create frustration in communication

PIAGET’S THREE MOUNTAIN TASK

COGNITIVE CHANGES

Piaget’s Preoperational Stage: Conservation

Conservation: understanding that change in

appearance can occur without change in quantity

• Successful conservation based on three

characteristics of appearance-only matter

transformation including identity, compensation,

and reversibility

• Unsuccessful conservation involves centration

and irreversibility (usually occurs from ages four

to five)

PIAGET’S CONSERVATION TASKS

CHALLENGES TO PIAGET’S VIEWS

Flavell

Flavell’s Perspective-Taking Ability Levels

• Level One: the child knows that other people

experience things differently; begins at two to

three years of age.

• Level Two: the child develops a series of

complex rules to figure out precisely what the

other person sees or experiences; begins at four

to five years of age.

THEORIES OF MIND

Theory of mind: understanding the thoughts,

desires, and beliefs of others

18 months: rudimentary beginnings

Age 3: some aspects of link between

people’s thinking, feelings, and behavior

Age 4: recognizes each person’s actions as based on his or her own representation of

reality

THEORIES OF MIND

4- and 5-year-olds

• Can’t understand that others can think about them

• Don’t understand that most knowledge can be derived from inference (this understanding develops by age 6)

5- to 7-year-olds

• Understand the reciprocal nature of thought

THEORIES OF MIND

• Understand that other people think; don’t understand that their thinking can be about them

4–5 years:

• Understanding of the reciprocal nature of thought5–7 years:

• The realization that knowledge can be derived through inference6+ years:

False belief principle: children see a problem from another’s point of view and discern what information causes that person to believe something that isn’t true.

THEORIES OF MIND

Influences on the Development of a Theory of Mind

Correlated with:

• Performance on Piaget’s tasks

• Pretend play

• Shared pretense with other children

• Discussion of emotion-provoking events with parents

• Language skills and working memory

• Cross-cultural influences

ALTERNATIVE THEORIES OF EARLY

CHILDHOOD THINKING

Neo-Piagetian Theories: Robbie Case

• Short-term storage space (STSS)

• Operational efficiency

• Matrix classification task

Let’s take a closer look at this task.

NEO-PIAGETIAN MATRIX TASK


CHILDHOOD THINKING

Information-Processing Theories

Metamemory: knowledge about and control of

memory processes

Metacognition: knowledge about and control of

thought processes

Scripts: cognitive structures underlie behavior and

emerge during middle childhood


CHILDHOOD THINKING

Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural Theory

Overview

• Emphasis on the role of social factors in

cognitive development

• Problem solutions are socially generated and

learned.

• Key principles: the zone of proximal

development (ZPD) and scaffolding


CHILDHOOD THINKING


Stages of Cognitive Development

Primitive stage

Naïve psychology stage

Private speech stage

Ingrowth stage


CHILDHOOD THINKING


How are Vygotsky’s stages related to the eventual

development of adult thinking?

• Each stage represents a step toward the child’s

internalization of ways of thinking used by the

adults around him or her.

CHANGES IN LANGUAGE

Fast-mapping: the ability to categorically link new

words to real word referents

▪ Occurs at about age three

▪ Rapid formation of a hypothesis about a new

word’s meaning

Remember: Word learning drives the process of

language development.

CHANGES IN LANGUAGE

Grammar Explosion

Grammar explosion: the period in which the

grammatical features of child speech become more

adult-like.

• Inflections

• Questions and negatives

• Overregularizations

• Complex sentences

CHANGES IN LANGUAGE

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness: a child’s sensitivity to

sound patterns that are specific to a language

• Awareness of sounds represented by letters

• Learned in school through formal instruction

• Primarily developed through word play

• Related to invented spelling

INVENTED SPELLING

DIFFERENCES IN INTELLIGENCE

Measuring Intelligence

• Alfred Binet

• Lewis Terman: Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

• Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children

THE NORMAL CURVE

IQ scores form a normal distribution – the famous

“bell curve” with which you may be familiar.

Can you explain what this bell curve

tells us about IQ?

DIFFERENCES IN INTELLIGENCE

Stability and Predictive Value of IQ Scores

• Correlation between IQ score and future grades

is between .50 and .60.

• Consistent relationship are found within social

classes and racial groups.

• IQ scores are quite stable, but do not measure

underlying competence.

STOP AND THINK!

A high level of predictability masks an interesting

fact about children being tested.

Do you know what this is?

ORIGINS OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

IN INTELLIGENCE

Evidence of Heredity and Family Influences

Heredity

• Twin and adoption studies findings

Family Influences

• Adoption studies findings

• Family demographics and learning environments


IN INTELLIGENCE

Evidence for Preschool Influences

Short- and Long-Term Outcomes from Formal

Education Programs

▪ Head Start outcomes

Let’s look at the relationship between some early

education programs and IQ scores.


IN INTELLIGENCE

Combining the Information

Studies around the world consistently yield

estimates that roughly 40 percent of the

variation in IQ within a given population of

children is due to heredity.

• The remaining variation is clearly due to

environment or to interactions between

environment and heredity.

• Reaction range

EARLY EDUCATION AND IQ SCORES

GROUP DIFFERENCES IN INTELLIGENCE

TEST SCORES

Can you hypothesize why these findings occur?

Higher Scores than White Children

▪ Chinese and Japanese children

Lower Scores than White Children

▪ African-American children

Higher Scores in All Groups over Two Centuries

▪ Flynn effect

GROUP DIFFERENCES IN INTELLIGENCE

TEST SCORES

Group differences in IQ- or achievement-test

performance may be explained by the concept

of reaction range and attributed to cultural

beliefs.

• Same amount of variation in IQ scores in all

groups

TO TEST OR NOT TO TEST?

IQ tests are useful . . .

• For the identification of children who have special

education needs

• For the development of individualized

educational plans for children with disabilities

However, labeling young children on the basis of IQ

scores should be avoided.

You Decide

Decide which of these two statements you most

agree with and think about how you would defend

your position:

1. School children should not be given IQ tests

unless there is some reason to suspect that they

have a disability.

2. Using IQ tests to screen all school children for

potential learning problems is a good practice.

physical and cognitive development in early childhood

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