PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE

PHYSICIAL AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

CHAPTER 5

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

• Growth rate slows in early childhood but it is still the most obvious physical change • Girls are only slightly smaller and lighter

than boys during these years• Heads are still somewhat large for their

bodies• Body fat also shows a slow, steady decline• Girls have more fatty tissue than boys; boys

have more muscle tissue• Growth patterns vary individually• Much of the variation is due to heredity

THE BRAIN

• Maturation of the brain combined with opportunities for experience add to emerging cognitive abilities • they plan their actions • attend to stimuli more effectively • show increased language development

• Amount of brain material in some areas can nearly double in as little as a year• followed by loss of tissue as unneeded cells are pruned • the brain continues to reorganize itself

THE BRAIN

• Planning and Organizing• Prefrontal cortex• Perseveration

• Examples: “Mom,” “Are we there yet…?”

• In neurons, the number and size of dendrites increase • Myelination continues• myelination -- process in which axons are covered with a

layer of fat cells• it increases the speed and efficiency of information

traveling through the nervous system (Nelson, 2011)

GROSS MOTOR SKILLS

• 3 years of age: hopping, jumping, and running back and forth• Examples: Bike, skiing, climbing

• delight and pride in showing how they can run and jump

• 4 years of age, the same kinds of activities• but more adventurous• increased abilities on steps

• Age 5, they are even more adventuresome • run hard and enjoy races with each other and their

parents

FINE MOTOR SKILLS

• By age 3: have had the ability to pick up the tiniest objects between their thumb and forefinger for some time• but still somewhat clumsy• Examples: clay, coloring, tools

• By age 4: fine motor coordination has improved substantially and becomes much more precise• By age 5: hand, arm, and body all move together

under better command of the eye

NUTRITION AND EXERCISE

• Eating habits important to development• Affects their skeletal growth, body shape, and

susceptibility to disease • Exercise and physical activity are also very

important

OVERWEIGHT YOUNG CHILDREN

• Being overweight has become a serious health problem• 45 percent of children’s meals exceed

recommendations for saturated and trans fat• One-third of children's caloric intake comes from

restaurants• Young children’s eating behavior is strongly

influenced by their caregiver’s behavior• Need a predictable schedule• Model eating healthy food• Mealtimes are pleasant occasions• Engage in certain feeding styles

OVERWEIGHT YOUNG CHILDREN

• Categories for being overweight or at risk for being overweight are determined by body mass index (BMI)• Percentages of young children who are

overweight or at risk for being overweight have increased • By age 5• physicians are seeing Type II diabetes• overweight is associated with lower self-esteem

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011)

EXERCISE

• Routine physical activity should be a daily occurrence• Preschool children should engage in 2 hours of physical

activity per day• One hour structured• One hour unstructured

• Child’s life should be centered around activities, not meals

MALNUTRITION• Poor nutrition is associated with low

income • poor nutrition -- diets low in essential amounts of iron,

vitamins, or protein

• In the United States, the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program was designed to address malnutrition and provides:• Healthy supplemental foods• Health care referrals • Nutrition education for women from pregnancy and for

infants and children up to age 5 • WIC serves 7,500,000 participants

ILLNESS AND DEATH

• In the United States, accidents are the leading cause of death• motor vehicle accidents• drowning• falls• poisoning

• Cancer • Cardiovascular disease (National Center for Health Statistics, 2009; Modell, 2010)

PARENTAL SMOKING• An estimated 22 percent of children and

adolescents are exposed to tobacco smoke in the home• Children exposed to smoke are more likely to

develop wheezing symptoms and asthma than children in non-smoking homes• Linked to young children’s sleep problems and sleep-

disordered breathing

• JACK (age 3) was watching his Mom breast-feeding his new baby sister.... After a while he asked: 'Mom why have you got two? Is one for hot and one for cold milk?'

• MELANIE (age 5) asked her Granny how old she was.. Granny replied she was so old she didn't remember any more. Melanie said, 'If you don't remember you must look in the back of your panties.  Mine say five to  six.’

• STEVEN (age 3) hugged and kissed his Mom good night. 'I love you so much that when you die I'm going to bury you outside my bedroom window.'

• BRITTANY (age 4) had an ear ache and wanted a pain killer. She tried in vain to take the lid off the bottle..  Seeing her frustration, her Mom explained it was a child-proof cap and she'd have to open it for her. Eyes wide with wonder, the little girl asked: 'How does it know it's me?’

• SUSAN (age 4) was drinking juice when she got the hiccups. 'Please don't give me this juice again,' she said, 'It makes my teeth cough..’

• DJ (age 4) stepped onto the bathroom scale and asked: 'How much do I cost?’• CLINTON (age 5) was in his bedroom looking worried When his Mom asked

what was troubling him, he replied, 'I don't know what'll happen with this bed when I get married..  How will my wife fit in it?'

• MARC (age 4) was engrossed in a young couple that were hugging and kissing in a restaurant. Without taking his eyes off them, he asked his dad: 'Why is he whispering in her mouth?’

• TAMMY (age 4) was with her mother when they met an elderly, rather wrinkled woman her Mom knew.. Tammy  looked at her for a while and then asked, 'Why doesn't your skin fit your face?’

• JAMES (age 4)was listening to a Bible story. His dad read: 'The man named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city but his wife looked back and was turned to salt.'  Concerned, James asked: 'What happened to the flea?’

• Sunday sermon.....'Dear Lord,' the minister began, with arms extended toward heaven and a rapturous look on his upturned face. 'Without you, we are but dust...'  He would have continued but at that moment Sarah, who was listening leaned over to me and asked quite audibly in her shrill little four year old girl voice, 'Mom, what is butt dust?'

COGNITIVE CHANGES

• Piaget’s Preoperational Stage• from approximately 2 to 7 years of age • children begin to represent the world with words, images,

and drawings • form stable concepts and begin to reason • dominated by egocentrism and magical beliefs • Child does not yet perform operations -- which are

reversible mental actions

PREOPERATIONAL THOUGHT: SYMBOLIC FUNCTION SUBSTAGE

• Between ages of 2 and 4• Child gains the ability to mentally represent an

object that is not present • Egocentrism -- inability to distinguish between

one’s own perspective and someone else’s perspective• Examples: Mary, stairs, movies, “I’m this many…”

• Animism -- the belief that inanimate objects have life-like qualities and are capable of action• Examples: Curb, dolls, bad door

PREOPERATIONAL THOUGHT: INTUITIVE THOUGHT SUBSTAGE

• Between approximately 4 and 7 years of age • Begin to use primitive reasoning and ask all sorts of

questions • Questions signal the emergence of interest in

reasoning and in figuring out why things are the way they are • “Intuitive” because children seem sure about their

knowledge and understanding

CENTRATION AND THE LIMITS OF PREOPERATIONAL THOUGHT

• Irreversibility• Examples: Hamburger, blocks

•Another limitation of preoperational thought is centration -- centering of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others.

• Examples: Color not shape, photos• Focus on appearance

• Example: Dogs

• centration is most clearly evidenced in young children’s lack of conservation -- the awareness that altering an object’s or a substance’s appearance does not change its basic properties

• Examples: Juice, clay, candy

VYGOTSKY’S THEORY

• Vygotsky’s social constructivist approach emphasizes the social contexts of learning and the construction of knowledge through social interaction• ZPD -- zone of proximal development • scaffolding

ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT

• Zone of Proximal Development -- Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to master alone but that can be learned with guidance and assistance of adults or more skilled children• Examples: Puzzles, reading

• lower limit of the ZPD is the level of skill reached by the child working independently• upper limit is the level of additional

responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor

SCAFFOLDING

• Scaffolding -- changing the level of support• Examples: learning letters, painting

• A teacher or advanced peer adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child’s current performance • when the student is learning a new task, the skilled

person may use direct instruction • as the student’s competence increases, less guidance is

given

LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

• According to Vygotsky (1962), children use speech not only for social communication, but also to help them solve tasks -- children use language to plan, guide, and monitor their behavior • language for self-regulation is called private speech• for Piaget, private speech is egocentric and immature• for Vygotsky, it is an important tool of thought during the

early childhood years• Examples: Math problem, busy schedule

(Wertsch, 2007)

INFORMATION PROCESSING

• Attention -- the focusing of cognitive resources • Executive attention involves planning actions,

allocating attention to goals, detecting and compensating for errors, monitoring progress on tasks, dealing with novel or difficult circumstances• Sustained attention is focused and extended

engagement with an object, task, event, or other aspect of the environment 

• Control of attention • Salient versus relevant dimensions• Planfulness  

MEMORY

• Memory -- the retention of information over time Short-term memory -- individuals retain information for only about 30 seconds • using rehearsal (repeating information after it

has been presented), we can keep information in short-term memory for a much longer period • older children are better able to rehearse • speed and efficiency of processing information

are important • memory becomes more accurate with age

THE YOUNG CHILD’S THEORY OF MIND

• Awareness of one’s own mental processes and the mental processes of others• Studies view the child as “a thinker who is trying

to explain, predict, and understand people’s thoughts, feelings, and utterances” • Children’s theory of mind changes as they

develop through childhood (Harris, 2006; Gelman, 2009; Wellman, 2011)

THEORY OF MIND• Age 2–3, children begin to understand three

mental states:• perceptions• emotions • desires

• Age 4–5, they come to understand that the mind can represent objects and events accurately or inaccurately • they realize that people can have false beliefs -- beliefs

that are not true

THEORY OF MIND: BEYOND AGE 5

• Not until middle and late childhood do children see the mind as an active constructor of knowledge or processing center • Then they can move from understanding that

beliefs can be false to realizing that the same event can be open to multiple interpretations

(Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 2000; Carpendale & Chandler, 1996)

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

• Between 2 and 3 years of age children make a transition from saying simple sentences that express a single proposition to saying complex sentences • Children learn the special features of their own

language; there are regularities in how they acquire that particular language

(Bloom, 1998; Berko Gleason, 2005)

YOUNG CHILDREN’S LITERACY

• Build on what children already know about oral language, reading, and writing • Include language skills, phonological and

syntactic knowledge, letter identification, and knowledge about print and its functions

VARIATIONS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

• Child-centered kindergarten emphasizes the education of the whole child and concern for his or her physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development• Each child follows a unique developmental pattern• Young children learn best through firsthand experiences

with people and materials• Play is extremely important in the child’s total

development

VARIATIONS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

• The Montessori Approach is a philosophy of education in which children are given considerable freedom and spontaneity in choosing activities• Teacher is facilitator rather than director• Shows the child how to perform intellectual

activities• Demonstrates interesting ways to explore

curriculum materials• Offers help when the child requests it

DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE EDUCATION

• Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) is education that focuses on the typical developmental patterns of children and the uniqueness of each child• Desired outcomes include:• Thinking critically• Working cooperatively• Solving problems• Developing self-regulatory skills• Enjoying learning

EDUCATION FOR YOUNG CHILDREN WHO ARE

DISADVANTAGED• Project Head Start -- a compensatory program

designed to provide children from low-income families the opportunity to acquire the skills and experiences important for success in school• Evaluations support the positive influence of high-

quality early childhood programs on both the cognitive and social worlds of disadvantaged young children

CONTROVERSY OVER CURRICULUM

• Currently there is controversy about what the curriculum of U.S. early childhood education should be• Child-centered, constructivist approach along the

lines of developmentally appropriate practice versus an academic, direct instruction approach

A COMBINED APPROACH• Many high-quality programs include both

academic and constructivist approaches • Experts like Lilian Katz worry about academic

approaches that place pressure on young children to achieve and don’t provide any opportunities to actively construct knowledge • Programs should focus on cognitive

development and socioemotional development, not just on cognitive development

• Another controversy is whether preschool education should be instituted for all U.S. 4-year-old children