Life Span Development - Mids.

Physical Development in Infancy

Patterns of Growth:
 Cephalocaudal Pattern: sequence in which the earliest growth always occurs from
the top downward
 Proximodistal Pattern: sequence in which growth starts in the center of the body and
moves toward the extremities
Height and Weight
 Average North American newborn is 20 inches long and 7 ½ pounds
 At 2 years of age, infants weigh 26 to 32 pounds and are half their adult height.
The Brain:
 approximately 100 billion neurons at birth
 Extensive brain development continues after birth, through infancy, and later
 Head should be protected
 Shaken Baby Syndrome: brain swelling and hemorrhaging from child abuse trauma
The Brain’s Development
 At birth, the brain is 25% of its adult weight; at 2 years of age, it is 75% of its adult
weight
Mapping the Brain
 Frontal, Occipital, Temporal, and Parietal Lobes
 Lateralization
 Left-brained vs. Right-brained
The Brain:
 Changes in Neurons
 Continued myelination
 Greater connectivity and new neural pathways
Changes in Regions of the Brain
 Dramatic “blooming and pruning” of synapses in the visual, auditory, and prefrontal
cortex
 Blooming and pruning” of synapses varies by brain region
 Pace of myelination varies as well
Early Experience and the Brain
 Depressed brain activity has been found in children who grow up in a deprived
environment
 Repeated experience wires (and rewires) the brain
 Brain is both flexible and resilient
Sleep
 Typical newborn sleeps 18 hours per day
 Infants vary in their preferred times for sleeping
 Most common infant sleep-related problem is night waking
  Consistently linked to excessive parental involvement in sleep-related interactions
with their infant
REM Sleep – eyes flutter beneath closed lids
 Sleep cycle begins with REM sleep in infants
 May provide infants with added self-stimulation
 REM sleep may also promote brain development
 We do not know whether infants dream or not
Shared Sleeping
 Varies from culture to culture
 American Academy of Pediatrics discourages shared sleeping
Potential benefits:
 Promotes breast feeding and a quicker response to crying
 Allows mother to detect potentially dangerous breathing pauses in baby
Nutrition
Nutritional Needs and Eating Behavior
 50 calories per day for each pound they weigh
 Fruits and vegetables by end of 1st year
 Poor dietary patterns lead to increasing rates of overweight and obese infants
 Breast feeding reduces risk of obesity
Breast Versus Bottle Feeding
 Consensus: Breast feeding is better
 American Academy of Pediatrics strongly endorses breast feeding throughout the first
year
 Numerous outcomes for child and mother
Malnutrition in Infancy
 Early weaning can cause malnutrition
 Two life-threatening conditions resulting from malnutrition
Marasmus: a severe protein-calorie deficiency resulting in a wasting away of body tissues
Kwashiorkor: a severe protein deficiency that causes the abdomen and feet to swell with
water
Severe and lengthy malnutrition is detrimental to physical, cognitive, and social development

The Dynamic Systems View:

 Infants assemble motor skills for perceiving and acting
 Motor skills represent solutions to goals
 Development is an active process in which nature and nurture work together as part of
an ever-changing system
 Reflexes: built-in reactions to stimuli; automatic and inborn
o Rooting Reflex
 o Sucking Reflex
o Moro Reflex
o Grasping Reflex
o Some reflexes continue throughout life; others disappear several months after
birth
Motor Development
Gross Motor Skills: large-muscle activities
The Development of Posture
Posture – a dynamic process linked with sensory information in the skin, joints, and muscles,
which tell us where we are in space
Learning to Walk
 Occurs about the time of their first birthday
 Infants learn what kinds of places and surfaces are safe for locomotion
The First Year: Motor Development Milestones and Variations
 Some milestones vary by as much as two to four months
 Experience can modify the onset of motor accomplishments
 Some infants do not follow the standard sequence of motor development
Development in the Second Year
Toddlers become more skilled and mobile
By 13-18 months, toddlers can pull a toy or climb stairs; by 18-24 months, toddlers can walk
quickly, balance on their feet, walk backward and stand and kick a ball
Even when motor activity is restricted, many infants reach motor milestones at a normal age
Fine Motor Skills: finely tuned movements
 Using a spoon, buttoning a shirt, reaching and grasping
 Palmer grasp: grasping with the whole hand
 Pincer grip: grasping with the thumb and forefinger
 Perceptual-motor coupling is necessary for infants to coordinate grasping
What are Sensation and Perception?
Sensation: occurs when information interacts with sensory receptors (eyes, ears, tongue,
nostrils, and skin)
Perception: the interpretation of what is sensed
Ecological View: we directly perceive information that exists in the world around us
Affordances: opportunities for interaction offered by objects that fit within our capabilities to
perform activities
Visual Perception
 Visual Acuity and Human Faces
 Newborn’s vision is about 20/240 but 20/40 by 6 months of age
  Infants show an interest in human faces soon after birth
 Spend more time looking at their mother’s face than a stranger’s face as early
as 12 hours after being born
 A 2-month-old scans much more of the face than the 1-month-old
 Color Vision
Visual Perception
Perceptual Constancy: sensory stimulation is changing but perception of the physical world
remains constant
Size Constancy: recognition that an object remains the same even though the retinal image
of the object changes
Babies as young as 3 months show size constancy
Shape Constancy: recognition that an object remains the same shape even though its
orientation to us changes
Depth Perception
Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk studied development of depth perception using a “visual
cliff”
Infants 6-12 months old can distinguish depth
Nature, Nurture, and the Development of Infants’ Visual Perception
Other Senses
Hearing
Fetuses can hear and learn sounds during the last two months of pregnancy and can recognize
their mother’s voice at birth
Touch and Pain
Newborns do respond to touch and can also feel pain
Smell
Newborns can differentiate odors
Taste
Sensitivity to taste may be present before birth
Intermodal Perception: the ability to integrate information from two or more sensory
modalities
Perceptual–Motor Coupling: perception and action are coupled
 Action educates perception
Sensation: occurs when information interacts with sensory receptors (eyes, ears, tongue,
nostrils, and skin)
Perception: the interpretation of what is sensed
Ecological View: we directly perceive information that exists in the world around us
The perceptual system selects from the rich information provided by the environment
Perception enables interaction with, and adaptation to, one’s environment
 Visual Preference Method: infants look at different things for different lengths of time
 They look at preferred objects longer
 Habituation: decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations
 Dishabituation: recovery of a habituated response after a change in stimulation
Visual perception
 Newborn’s vision is about 20/600 (an object 20 feet away appears as if it were 600
feet away)
 By the age of 6 months, vision is 20/100 or better
 Vision approximates that of an adult by the infant’s first birthday
 Infants show an interest in human faces soon after birth
 The way they gather information about the visual world changes rapidly with
age
 Perceptual Constancy: sensory stimulation is changing but perception of the physical
world remains constant
 Size Constancy: recognition that an object remains the same even though the
retinal image of the object changes
 Babies as young as 3 months show size constancy
 Continues to develop until 10 or 11 years old
 Shape Constancy: recognition that an object remains the same shape even
though its orientation to us changes
 3-month-olds show shape constancy, but not for irregularly shaped
objects
 Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk studied development of depth perception using a
“visual cliff”
 Infants 6-12 months old can distinguish depth
 Infants 2-4 months old show heart rate difference when placed on deep side of
cliff
 Infants develop binocular depth cues by about 3-4 months of age
 Fetuses can hear and learn sounds during the last two months of pregnancy and can
recognize their mother’s voice at birth
 Newborns:
 Cannot hear soft sounds as well as adults
 Are less sensitive to pitch
 Are fairly good at determining the location of a sound
  Touch and Pain: newborns respond to touch and can feel pain
 Smell: newborns can differentiate odors
 Preference for mother’s smell by 6 days
 Taste: sensitivity to taste may be present before birth
 Intermodal Perception: the ability to integrate information from two or more sensory
modalities
 Babies are born with some innate abilities to perceive relations among senses
 Their abilities improve considerably through experience
 Perceptual–Motor Coupling: action guides perception, and perception guides action
 language is a system that relates sounds or gestures to meaning.
 Language is expressed through speech, writing and gesture.
Language development
Infants are equipped for language even before birth, partly due to brain readiness, partly
because of auditory experiences in the uterus
 Children around the world have the same sequence of early language
development
 Newborns prefer to hear speech over other sounds- they prefer to listen to
“baby talk”- the high pitched, simplified and repetitive was adults speak to
infants
 Birth Crying
 12 weeks cooing, smiles when talked to
 16 weeks turns head in response to human voice
 20 weeks makes vowels and consonant sounds
 6 months babbling (all sounds)
 8 months repeat certain syllables (ma-ma)
 12 months understands and says some words
 18 months can produce up to 50 words
 24 months more than 50 words, two-word phrases
 30 months about 100 words, phrases of 3-5 words
 36 months’ vocabulary of about 1,000 words
 48 months most basic aspects of language are well established
The Importance of Symbols
 Children begin using gestures, which are symbols shortly before their first birthday.
 Gestures and words convey a message equally well…sometimes gestures pave the
way for language
  In one study, 50% of all objects were referred to first by gesture and, about 3
months later, by word (Iverson & Meadow, 2005)
Overextension
The use a given word in a broader context than is appropriate
 Common between 1 and 3 years of age
 More common than Under extension
 Toddlers will apply the new word to a group of similar experiences
 “Open” – for opening a door, peeling fruit, or undoing shoelaces
Language Errors
 Children overextend because they have not acquired another suitable word or because
they have difficulty remembering a more suitable word
 Examples:
 Ball referring to ball, balloon, marble, egg, or apple
 Moon referring to moon, half-moon shaped lemon slice,
 Car referring to a car, bus, truck, or tractor
 Daddy referring to dad or any man
 Doggie referring to dog or any four-legged animal
Making Sentences
 Most children begin to combine words into simple sentences by 18 to 24 months of
age
 Children’s first sentences are two-word combinations referred to as Telegraphic
speech
 Words directly relevant to meaning
 Words not critical to the meaning are left out – similar to the way telegrams were
written such as:
 Function words: a, the in
 Auxiliary words: is, was, will be
Word endings: plurals, possessives, verb tenses
These sentences are brief and to the point, containing only vital information
“More cookie”, “Mommy go”, “Daddy juice”, “Sue dogs”
 By about 2 ½ years of age, children have the ability to produce more complex
sentences (four or more words per sentence).
 The longer sentences are filled with grammatical morphemes (words or endings of
words that make sentences more grammatical).
 A 1 ½-year-old might say “kick ball” but a 3-year-old would be more likely to say “I
am kicking the ball”
Over regularization
 Speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular.
 Applying rules to words that are exceptions to the rule
 This leads young children to talk about foots, tooths, sleeps, sheeps and
mouses.
Although technically wrong, over regularization is a sign of verbal sophistication because it
shows children are applying the rules to grammar
Between 3 and 6 Years of Age
 Children learn to use negation
 “That isn’t a butterfly”
 Children learn to use embedded sentences
 “Jennifer thinks that Bill took the book”
 Children begin to comprehend passive voice as opposed to active voice
 “The ball was kicked by the girl” as opposed to “The girl kicked the ball”
 By the time most children enter kindergarten, they use most of the grammatical forms
of their native language with great skill
The development of language in children is amazing, but how do they do it?
There are several theories that attempt to explain how we develop language
Infants Are Conditioned to Speak
Behaviorist’s believe that all learning is acquired step-by-step, through associations and
reinforcements
 According to this view, the reinforcement of the quantity and quality of talking to
child affect rate of language development.
 When a 6 month-old says, “ma-ma-ma” they are showered with attention and praise.
This is exactly what the baby wants and will make the sounds again to get the same
rewards.
 Children who are spoken to more and praised by caregivers tend to develop language
faster.
 Parents are great intuitive teachers- we name items for infants and praise infants when
they repeat our words.
 For instance, parents typically name each object when they talk to their child, “Here is
your bottle”, “There is your foot”, “You want your juice?”
 Parents name the object and speak clearly and slowly, often using baby talk to capture
the infant’s interest (Gogate et al., 2000).
What Do the Linguist’s say?
 Noam Chomsky believes language is a product of biology and is too complex to be
mastered so early and easily by conditioning.
  Chomsky noted that children worldwide learn the rudiments of grammar at
approximately the same age because the human brain is equipped with a language
device.
 including intonations and structure of language
Our Brain is Specialized for Language
 LAD (language acquisition device) is an area of our brain which facilitates the
development of language.
 Chomsky believes that the LAD facilitates language and enables children to derive the
rules of grammar from everyday speech, regardless of the native language.
 Language is experience-expectant; words are expected by the developing Brain-
Chomsky believes that children are pre-wired for language
Taking Turns
 Soon after 1-year-olds begin to speak, parents encourage their children to participate
in conversational turn-taking
 By age 2, spontaneous turn-taking is common in conversations between children and
adults
 By age 3, children have progressed to the point that if a listener fails to reply
promptly, the child repeats his or her remark in order to elicit a response
 Parent: Can you see the bird?
 Infant (cooing): oooooh
 Parent: It is a pretty bird.
 Infant: oooooh
 Parent: You’re right, it’s a cardinal.
 Parents having a conversation with a 6-week-old infant still involve taking turns. To
help children along, parents often carry both sides of the conversation to demonstrate
how the roles of speaker and listener alternate.
Initiating a Conversation
 emerges at 10 months
 Usually by touching or pointing to an object while simultaneously looking at
another person
 At 1 year, infants begin to use speech to communicate and often initiate
conversations with adults
 First conversation is about themselves but this rapidly expands to include
objects in their world
 By preschool, children begin to adult their messages to match the listener and
the context
 School-age children speak differently to adults and peers
  Preschool children give more elaborate messages to listeners who are
unfamiliar with a topic than to listeners who are familiar with it
Linguistic Competence
Phonemes: Basic sounds of language
Morphemes: words, suffixes, prefixes
Semantics: Rules that govern the meaning of words
Syntax: How words are combined into meaningful statements
Pragmatics: The use of language in context
Holographic Speech the use of single words to convey complete thoughts
Overextensions the tendency to overgeneralize words
Telegraphic Speech omitting the less significant words and including the words that carry
the most meaning
Pivot Grammar action words + nouns (see Daddy)

Socioemotional Development in Infancy

• Emotion: feeling, or affect, that occurs when a person is in a state or an interaction
that is important to him or her, especially to his or her well-being
• Biological and Environmental Influences:
• Changes in baby’s emotional capacities with age
• Development of certain brain regions plays a role in emotions
• Emotions are the first language with which parents and infants communicate
• Social relationships provide the setting for the development of a variety of
emotions
• Early Emotions:
• Primary Emotions: emotions that are present in humans and animals
• Appear in the first 6 months
• Self-Conscious Emotions: require self-awareness that involves consciousness
and a sense of “me”
• Appear between 6 months and 2 years of age
• Emotional expressions are involved in infants’ first relationships
• Positive interactions are described as reciprocal or synchronous
• Crying is the most important mechanism newborns have for communicating with their
world
• Three types of cries:
• Basic cry
• Anger cry
 • Pain cry
• Two types of smiling:
• Reflexive smile
• Social smile
• Fear is one of a baby’s earliest emotions
• Appears at about 6 months; peaks at about 18 months
• Stranger Anxiety: occurs when an infant shows a fear and wariness of strangers
• Emerges gradually, first appearing at about 6 months of age
• Intensifies at about 9 months of age, escalating past the 1st birthday
• Intensity of anxiety depends on:
• Individual differences
• Familiarity of the setting
• Who the stranger is and how the stranger behaves
• Separation Protest: crying when the caregiver leaves
• Due to anxiety about being separated from their caregivers
• Typically peaks at about 15 months for U.S. infants
• Cultural variations
• Social Referencing; reading other emotions
• Emotion regulation and coping of infant.
• Caregivers’ actions influence the infant’s neurobiological regulation of emotions
• As caregivers soothe, it reduces the level of stress hormones
• Swaddling
• Infant gradually learns how to minimize the intensity of emotional reactions
• Self-soothing
• Self-distraction
• Language (2nd year)
• Context can influence emotional regulation
• How should caregivers respond?
Temperament
• Temperament: an individual’s behavioral style and characteristic way of responding
• Chess and Thomas’s Classification:
• Easy child (40%)
• Difficult child (10%)
 • Slow-to-warm-up child (15%)
• Unclassified (35%)
• Kagan classifies children based on inhibition to the unfamiliar
• Shows stability from infancy to early childhood
• Kagan: children inherit a physiology that biases them to have a particular type of
temperament, but this is modifiable through experience
• Biological Influences:
• Physiological characteristics have been linked with different temperaments
• Heredity has a moderate influence on temperament differences
• Contemporary view: temperament is a biologically based but evolving aspect
of behavior
• Gender and Cultural Influences:
• Parents may react differently to an infant’s temperament depending on gender
• Different cultures value different temperaments
• Goodness of Fit: the match between a child’s temperament and the environmental
demands the child must cope with
Personality Development
• Three central characteristics:
• Trust: Erikson believed the 1st year is characterized by trust vs. mistrust
• Not completely resolved in the first year of life
• Arises again at each successive stage of development
• Development of a sense of self
• Occurs at approximately 18 months
• Independence through separation and individuation
• Erikson: autonomy vs. shame and doubt
Social Orientation
• Face-to-face play begins to characterize interactions at 2 to 3 months of age
• Infants begin to respond more positively to people than objects
• Frequency of face-to-face play decreases after 7 months of age
• Peer interactions increase considerably between 18 to 24 months of age
• Increased locomotion skills allow infants to explore and expand their social world
• Perceiving people as engaging in intentional and goal-directed behavior occurs toward
the end of the 1st year
• Joint attention and gaze following
 • Social Referencing: “reading” emotional cues in others to determine how to act in a
particular situation
• Emerges by the end of the 1st year; improves during the 2nd year
Attachment
• Attachment: a close emotional bond between two people
• Theories of Attachment:
• Freud: infants become attached to the person that provides oral satisfaction
• Harlow: contact comfort preferred over food
• Erikson: trust arises from physical comfort and sensitive care
• Bowlby: newborns are biologically equipped to elicit attachment behavior
from caregivers
• Four Phases:
• Phase 1 (birth to 2 months): infants direct their attention to human figures
• Phase 2 (2 to 7 months): attachment becomes focused on one figure
• Phase 3 (7 to 24 months): specific attachments develop
• Phase 4 (24 months on): children become aware of others’ feelings and goals,
and begin to take these into account in forming their own actions
• Infants develop an internal working model of attachment
• Strange Situation is an observational measure of infant attachment
• Attachment Classifications:
• Securely attached: explores environment while using caregiver as a secure
base; displays mild discomfort when caregiver leaves
• Insecure avoidant: avoids caregiver; shows no distress/crying when caregiver
leaves
• Insecure resistant: clings to caregiver and protests loudly and actively if
caregiver leaves
• Insecure disorganized: disorientation; extreme fearfulness may be shown
even with caregiver
• Ainsworth’s research is criticized for being culturally biased
• Interpreting Differences in Attachment:
• Attachment is an important foundation for later psychological development
• Early attachment can foreshadow later social behavior
• Early secure attachment is not the only path to success because children are
resilient and adaptive
• Later experiences also play an important role
 • Genetics and temperament play a role in attachment differences
• Attachment varies among different cultures of the world
Social Contexts
• The Family:
• Family is a constellation of subsystems
• Each subsystem has a reciprocal influence on the other
• Adjustment of parents during infant’s first years
• Infant care competes with parents’ other interests
• Marital satisfaction and relationship dynamics may change
• Reciprocal socialization: two-way interaction process whereby parents
socialize children and children socialize parents
• Parent–infant synchrony: temporal coordination of social behavior
• Scaffolding: parental behavior that supports children’s efforts through
turn-taking sequences
• Maternal and Paternal Caregiving
• An increasing number of U.S. fathers stay home full-time with their children
• Fathers can be as competent as mothers in caregiving
• Maternal interactions typically center on child-care activities (feeding,
changing diapers, bathing)
• Paternal interactions tend to be play-centered
• Fathers tend to be more involved when:
• They work fewer hours (and mothers work more)
• They are younger
• The mothers report greater marital intimacy
• The children are boys
• Child Care
• More children are in child care now than ever before
• Parental-leave policies vary across cultures
• The U.S. grants the shortest period of parental leave and is one of the
few countries that offers only unpaid leave
• Type of child care varies
• Child care centers, private homes, etc.
• Low-SES children are more likely to experience poor-quality child care
• National Institute of Child Health Study:
 • By 4 months, ¾ of infants were in some type of child care
• Socioeconomic factors linked to amount and type of care
• Quality of child care:
• Group size, child–adult ratio, physical environment, caregiver
characteristics
• High-quality care resulted in better language and cognitive skills, more
cooperation and positive peer interactions, and fewer behavior
problems
• Quantity of child care:
• Extensive amounts of time in child care led to fewer positive
interactions with mother, more behavior problems, and higher rates of
illness
• Influence of parenting was not weakened by extensive care

Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Body Growth
 Slower growth rate than during infancy
 2 to 3 inches in height and about 5 pounds in weight each year
 Boys slightly larger than girls
 Baby fat drops
 By end of preschool years’ children begin to lose primary “baby” teeth
 Important to care for teeth
 Childhood tooth decay is high for low SES children (poor diet, lack of fluoridation
and inadequate health and dental care
Children and High Fat Foods
 34% of energy in America’s diet is derived from fat
 In course of school day, most eaten foods (candy, potato chips, cheese, peanut
butter) contains at least 50% of fat
 Children’s food preferences are influenced by what adults eat
 Certain foods (high in fat) should be discouraged as a means for rewards with
children
 Health foods as rewards may be viewed as something to endure not to enjoy
Brain Development
 Between 2 and 6 years the brain increases from 70 to 90 percent of its adult
weight
 Left hemisphere- growth between 3 to 6 years and levels off-language skills
 Right hemisphere- spatial skills (drawing, recognizing shapes) develops gradually
over childhood and adolescence
Lateralization and Handedness
 Dominant cerebral hemisphere- an individual’s strong hand preference reflecting
the greater capacity of one side of the brain
 Right handers- 90% of population- language and hand control in left side of brain
  Lefties- 10% of population- language shared in both hemispheres
 Ambidextrous- let preferred but can be skillful with right hand
 Hand preference of twins relate to body position during prenatal period
 Small number of lefties show developmental problems

Emotional Well-being
 Preschoolers with very stressful home lives suffer more respiratory and intestinal
illnesses and injuries do to accidents
 Deprivation dwarfism- growth disorder that appears between 2 and 15 years of
age and is caused by the interference with the production of the growth hormone
due to emotional deprivation- short stature, low weight in relation to height,
decrease hormone production (GH)
 Removal from emotionally inadequate environment GH levels return to normal;
delay in treatment can cause permanent dwarfism
Nutrition
 Picky eaters and unpredictable eating pattern are not uncommon in preschool
years
 Decline in appetite is normal-slower growth
 Wariness to new foods- adaptive skill in learning safety of foods
 Preschoolers need high quality diet- fats, oils, sugars to a minimum
 Common dietary deficiencies in preschool years- iron (anemia, calcium-bones and
teeth; Vitamin A-eyes, skin and internal organs; Vitamin C- immune system, iron
absorption and wound healing
Immunizations
 Childhood immunizations- polio, measles, mumps, rubella (German measles)
pertussis (DTP) (whooping cough) diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis B, and chicken
pox.
 Infants- first 5 diphtheria, tetanus, and DTP injections at 2 months
 Polio vaccine in 3 injection series starting at 2 months
 Measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) given at 15 months- single shot
 Hep B 3 shots starting at birth
 Chicken pox as early as 12 months
 Irritable, less energetic, low grade fever not beyond 24 hrs
 1% chance of serious side effects
 4 out of 10 people who get tetanus die; 1 out of 100 babies under 6 months who
get pertussis dies
Cognitive Development Preoperational Stage-Piaget
Piaget’s preoperational stage- children are not capable of mental actions that obey logical
rules
Make Believe Play
 Increases in early childhood
 Becomes increasing detached form real life situations associated with it
 Less directed on self and begins to focus on objects
  Gradually contains more complex scheme
 Sociodramatic play- combines scheme and includes role playing of children
Egocentrism
 Inability to imagine the perspectives of others and reflect on their own thinking
 Leads to illogical features of thought
 Animistic thinking- belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities
 Magical thinking
 Rigid thinking and illogical nature of young children’s thinking
Conservation
Certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same even when their outward
appearance changes
Preschoolers have not yet developed this concept
 Understanding is centered (one aspect of situation
 Perception- bound (easily distracted by the appearance of objects)
 Focus on states rather than transformations (focus on beginning and end states
Irreversibility- cannot revise steps in a problem to get to the beginning
"Recently 2-year-old Brooke’s father shaved off his thick beard and mustache. When Brooke
saw him she was very upset. Using Piaget’s theory, explain why Brooke was upset by her
father’s appearance”
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
 Social context of cognitive development
 Rapid growth in language in early childhood
 Participation in culturally meaningful tasks
Private Speech
Piaget called children’s utterances to themselves- egocentric speech
Vygotsky- children speak to themselves for self-guidance and self-direction (private speech)
Private speech is used more often when tasks are difficult or when a child is confused about
how to proceed
Zone of Proximal Development
A range of tasks too difficult for the child to do alone but that can be accomplished with the
help of others
Adults and more skilled peers can assist with development through dialogue
Tanisha sees her 5-year-old son Toby talking to himself when he plays. Should she
discourage this behavior? Use Vygotsky’s theory to support your answer
Attention
 Preschoolers spend short time on activities
 Average time for single activity in preschool- 7 minutes
 Attention more “plan full” by end of preschool years
Memory
 Age 2 recall is 1 to 2 items
 Age 4 recall is 3 or 4 items
 Recall is poorer than recognition
 Young children are less able to use memory strategies- mental activities that improve
chances of remembering
 Children remember in terms of scripts
 Children’s memory can be assisted by discussing past events, asking questions, and
providing elaborate information
Language Affects Memory
 First verbs in children’s vocabulary
o Think, remember, and pretend
 By age 4 children understand that beliefs and reality can differ- people can hold false
beliefs
 Young children believe that all events must be directly observed to be known
Literacy
Preschoolers understand a great deal about written language long before they learn to read or
write in conventional ways
Preschoolers are aware of some ideas about symbols but may revise these ideas as their
perceptual and cognitive capacities improve and as they encounter writing in many different
contexts.
Mathematical Reasoning
 Built on foundation of informally acquired knowledge
 Early years- big, little, small, lots
 Between 2 yrs and 3 yrs they begin to count- memorization
 3 yrs to 4 yrs- one to one correspondence
 4 yrs and 5 yrs- cardinality- last number in a counting sequence indicates the quantity
of items in a set
 By end of preschool- count on concept
 Eventually later develop count down concept
Preschool and Daycare
 Over 30 years the number of young children in preschool has increased steadily
 Due to large number of women in workforce
 Types of preschools- child centered preschools, academic programs
Early Intervention
 Project Head Start- 1965 for children with Low SES
 Encourages parental involvement
 Children in Head Start scored higher in IQ and school achievement than controls
during first 2 to 3 years of elementary school
 Less likely to be placed in special education or retained a grade and a greater number
graduated from high school
 Good child care can reduce negative impact of an underprivileged home life
Important Factor for Good Childcare
 Group size
 Caregiver to child ratio
 Caregiver’s educational preparation
 Caregiver’s personal commitment to learning about and caring for children
Television
Sesame Street works as an academic tutor
TV can support cognitive development as long as children’s viewing is not excessive and
programs meet developmental needs
Language
 By age 2, 200 words
 BY age 6, 10,000 words
 Fast-mapping- connecting a new word with an underlying concept after only a brief
encounter
 Preschoolers extend language meanings through metaphor
Grammar
 The way we combine meaningful phrases and sentences
 2 and 3 yrs old English speakers use simple sentences- subject verb order
 Over-regularization- by about 3.5 children learn many grammar rules and may use
them in error
 Difficulty with passive form
Pragmatics
 Preschoolers are learning how to use appropriate communication tools effectively
 By age 4 children know culturally accepted ways of adjusting speech to fit age, sex,
and social status role of persons
 One day Sammy’s mother explained to him that the family would take a vacation in
Miami. The next morning Sammy emerged from his room with his belongings spilled
out of a suitcase and remarked, “I gotted my bag packed. When are we going to Your-
ami?” What do Sammy’s error’s reveal about his approach to language?

Social and Emotional Development in Early Childhood

Erik Erikson’s Stage-Initiative vs. Guilt
 Psychological conflict of Early Childhood
 Resolved positively through play experiences that foster healthy sense of initiative
and development of conscience that is not overly strict
 Play is important to preschoolers
Phallic Stage-Freud
 Sexual impulses transfer to genital region of body
 Oedipus Conflict-boy desires to possess mother and hostile towards father
 Electra conflict-girl desires to possess father and feels hostile toward mother
Self –Concept
 Sum of total attributes, abilities, attitudes and values that an individual believes to
help define who he/she is
 Preschoolers-describe self-using concrete terms (name, physical appearance,
possession, and everyday behaviors)
 Can describe emotions, and beliefs and attitudes by 3 ½.
 Firmer sense of self allows for cooperation
Self-Esteem
 Preschoolers usually rate on abilities as extremely high and underestimate difficulty
of task.
 Desire to master new skills
 Even a little criticism can undermine a preschooler’s self-esteem and enthusiasm for
learning
Emotional Development
 Rise in self-conscious emotions such as shame, embarrassment, guilt, envy and pride
 Preschoolers can interpret, predict, and change other’s feeling
 Fears are common
 Vivid imaginations
Empathy
 Begins to develop at this age
 Modeled after parent’s response to emotional event
Types of play
 Nonsocial activity- unoccupied, onlooker behavior and solitary play
 Parallel play-child plays near other children with similar materials but does not
interact with them
 Associative play-children are engaged in separate activities but they interact by
exchanging toys and commenting on one another’s behavior
 Cooperative play-occurs when children’s actions are directed toward a common goal
Sociodramatic play
 Role play and dramatic play
 Common during preschool years
First Friendships
 Important in these years to social emotional development
 Friendship-pleasurable play and sharing of toys-no long term enduring qualities at this
time
Discipline
 Positive reinforcement-model appropriate behavior, consistency with rules, warm and
responsive
 Punishment-can promote momentary compliance
 Harsh punishment-models aggression, avoidance of punishing adult, should be
avoided
Alternatives to Punishment
 Time-out
 Withdrawal of privileges
 Positive discipline
Gender Typing
 Developing gender roles
 Age 2 children can label on gender and of other persons
 Family teachers and peers and television can influence gender typing with
preschoolers
Parenting Styles
 Authoritative-rational, democratic approach
 Happy, self-confident, and self-control in child
Authoritarian- demanding and low in responsive to children’s needs.
anxious, withdrawn, and unhappy and hostile
Permissive-undemanding
immature, have difficulty controlling impulses, overly demanding and depended on
adults