Early Childhood

1
Early Childhood

• Ages 2-6
• aka Preschool Years

2
Physical Growth

• Age 2 25-30 pounds, 34 inches
• Age 6 45 pounds, 45 inches
• Arms and legs lengthen
• Size relationship between head and body more
  adultlike

3
Internal Changes

• Longer, sturdier bones
• Muscle mass increases
• Sense organs mature
• e.g. change of Eustachian tube in inner ear from
  horizontal to angular --- source of all those
  earaches

4
Nutrition

• Period where lifelong eating habits are developed
• Adequate diet generally available in US
• Increasing concern with obesity ( than 20 of
  average weight)
• closely related to extent mothers control or
  over-control childs food intake

5
Health

• Generally a health period for most children,
  colds excepted
• Growing concern with failures and complacency in
  immunization practices
• Immunization rate has fallen over the last 20
  years in US
• Increasingly irrational decisions against
  immunization

6
Brain Growth

• 2 year olds have 75 of adult brain mass
• 5 year olds have 90 of adult brain mass (but
  only 30 of adult body mass)
• Rapid increase the product of
• increased number of dendrite-axon connections
• increase in myelinization

7
Brain Lateralization

• Lateralization the process in when certain
  functions are located more in one hemisphere of
  the brain than the other.
• Left brain
• speaking, reading, thinking, reasoning
• Right brain
• spatial relations, pattern recognition, emotional
  expression

8
Gender Differences in Lateralization

• Boys have language mostly in left hemisphere,
  girls in both
• Boys have better developed hemispheric
  specialization in lower body reflexes
• Girls have better developed hemispheric
  specialization for auditory processing

9
Development of handedness

• Usually seen clearly by age 4 although there may
  be earlier signs
• About 90 are right-handed, 10 are left handed
• Left handedness may give some advantages
• 20 of the top scorers on the SAT are left
  handed, twice the predicted rate

10
Gross Motor Development

• Very rapid development during this stage
• Partly the result of extensive practice -- the
  highly active child
• Small gender differences
• Boys better at throwing and jumping
• Girls better coordinated

11
Gross Motor Skills at 3

• Cannot turn or stop quickly
• Can jump 15-24 inches
• Climbs stairs with alternating feet
• Hops with and irregular series of jumps

12
Gross Motor Skills at 4

• Has effective control of stopping and turning
• Jumps 24-33 inches
• Can descend a long stairway with alternating feet
• Can hop 4-6 steps on one foot

13
Gross Motor Skills at 5

• Stops and turns effectively in games
• Make a running jump of 28-36 inches
• Easily hop a distance of 16 feet

14
Fine Motor Development

• Skills involving delicate small muscle movement
• Require more concentrated deliberate practice
  than gross motor skills
• At age 3, children can draw circles and squares,
  do simple jigsaw puzzles, fit different shaped
  blocks into matching holes
• At age 4, children can draw a person that looks
  right, fold paper into triangles, hold a pencil

15
Testing Fine Motor Skills

• The Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test
• origins in childrens chalk drawing on New York
  sidewalks
• The Goodenough Draw a Person Test
• remarkably accurate age and perceptual
  development measure

16
Cognitive Development

• Period of dramatic cognitive growth
• A variety of theories that explain the changes
  that take place

17
Piagets Preoperational Thinking Stage

• Piagets stage marked by increasing use of
  SYMBOLIC thought, mental reasoning and increased
  concept formation
• Children still unable to do Operations formal
  logical mental processes

18
Symbolic Function

• The ability to use a mental symbol, a word or an
  object to stand for or represent something that
  is not physically present.
• One of the controversies in Developmental
  Psychology
• does better thinking skills lead to an
  improvement in language, or does better language
  lead to an improvement in thinking.

19
Centration

• Concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus
  and ignoring other aspects
• Tendency to focus on superficial, obvious
  elements that are within sight
• Which row contains more buttons?

20
Egocentric Thought

• Thinking that does not take into account the
  viewpoints of others
• Two forms
• lack of awareness that other see things from a
  different physical perspective
• failure to realize that others may hold thoughts,
  feelings, and points of view different from their
  own

21
Examples of Egocentrism

• What happens when you give a 4 year old socks or
  underwear when he was expecting a new toy truck?
• Why do children talk to themselves, even in the
  presence of others?
• Why does a 3 year old think she is hidden when
  she has her head (only) under a pillow?

22
Transformation Problems

• Transformation the process in which one state
  is changed into another.
• Children tend to ignore intermediate steps in a
  process
• understanding of a pencil falling
• All ants are the same ant

23
Emergence of Intuitive Thought

• Thinking that uses primitive reasoning and simple
  knowledge accumulation to reach conclusions
• Knowing something without being able to explain
  how they know
• At end of stage merges into functionality, the
  idea that actions and events are related in fixed
  patterns.

24
Conservation Problems

• Conservation the knowledge that the quantity is
  unrelated to the physical appearance and
  arrangement of objects
• Classic tall, skinny vs. short, fat water glass
  demonstration
• Cows and barns on green paper fields.

25
Information Processing Theory and Cognitive
Development

• Focus on
• memory development
• attention span
• ways of thinking

26
Autobiographical Memory

• memory of particular events in ones own life.
• Is not accurate until after age 3
• 3 year olds can remember central features of
  routine happenings
• Tend to fade quickly
• Highly susceptible to suggestion

27
Improvements in Attention Span

• ability to pay attention longer
• ability to attend to more than one dimension of
  an object at the same time
• ability to monitor and play HOW they will attend
  to something

28
Changes in approaches to problems

• Analogous to the way computer programs change
  over time as programmers modify them to work more
  efficiently or to do more.

29
Cultural Influences on Cognitive Development

• Based on work by L.S. Vygotsky
• Differences in the ways different cultures
  approach problems influence cognitive development
• Cognitive development is a function of social
  interactions in which partners (child and
  parents, child and peers) jointly work to solve
  problems.

30
The Zone of Proximal Development

• ZPD the level at which a child can almost, but
  not fully, comprehend or perform at task on his
  or her own.
• Cognitive growth takes place when appropriate
  instruction occurs within the ZPD

31
Language Development

• Period of dramatic language growth
• Age 2 telegraphic speech, 400 word vocabulary
• Age 6 adult grammar and syntax, 14000 word
  vocabulary

32
Types of Speech

• Private Speech spoken language not intended for
  others. Practice for internal monologs and
  thinking.
• Social Speech directed toward another person
  and meant to be understood.

33
Theories of Language Development

• Learning Theory Language acquisition follows
  the basic laws of reinforcement and conditioning.
• Universal Grammar and LAD Chomskys idea that
  all languages share a similar underlying
  structure and that humans have a neural system, a
  Language Acquisition Device, that generates
  language skill.

34
Poverty and Language

• Language addressed to children varies
  significantly as a function of social class.
• The nature of language varies as a function of
  social class, with prohibitions (no, dont,
  stop,) more common in poorer families.
• Reflected in IQ scores.

35
Psychosocial Development

• Self-concept
• Gender Identity
• Socialization
• peer
• parent
• Moral Development

36
Self-concept

• An individuals identity or set of beliefs about
  what they are like as individuals
• Basic identity established by age 2
• Tend to be pretty positive and not necessarily
  realistic
• Im a good runner
• I like to color
• Im a big girl (boy).

37
Self and Culture

• Self concept reflects the way a specific culture
  considers the self
• Individualistic orientation (Western cultures)
• emphasizes personal identity and the uniqueness
  of the individual
• self seen as in competition with others and
  highly autonomous

38
Self and Culture (contd)

• Collectivist orientation (Asian cultures)
• emphasizes interdependence and the importance of
  the group
• stresses social networks and interconnectedness
• Turtles vs Mighty Mouse

39
Eriksons Stages

• autonomy vs shame and doubt (18 months to 3 yrs)
• developing independence and self-reliance
• Initiative vs guilt (3-6 yrs)
• realization you are a person in your own right,
  make decisions and shape self

40
Gender Identity

• the sense of being male or female as defined by a
  given society
• well established by age 2, both for self and
  others

41
Gender and Play

• preference for same-sex play groups
• begins at age 3 for girls, age 4 for boys
• stronger in some cultures than others (China)
• stronger than ethnic preferences

42
Gender rigidity

• expectations are more rigid than at any other
  time in life
• most pronounced at about age 5, more flexible by
  age 7

43
Gender Expectations

• Boys
• competence
• independence
• competitiveness
• Girls
• warmth
• expressiveness

44
Biological Influences on Gender

• Androgen-exposed girls
• prefer boys as playmates
• prefer toys usually seen as male
• Estrogen-exposed girls
• more stereotypically female behaviors
• Girls have greater development in corpus collosum
• may be influenced by experience

45
Freud and early childhood

• The phallic stage
• Oedipus and Electra processes
• castration anxiety and penis envy
• primary task Identification with same sex parent

46
Social Learning and Gender

• observation of male and female behavior provides
  models for gender appropriate behavior
• Influenced by media -- and likely older,
  stereotyped media images
• TV defines females in relationship to males, and
  makes them victims

47
Cognitive Approaches to Gender

• Gender is a schema like other schemas
• New gender information is accommodated or
  assimilated like other material
• Develop operations or rules about what it means
  to be male or female

48
Modifying Gender Schema

• Sandra Bems idea that parents can teach children
  to exhibit both male and female characteristics
• Calls the concept androgyny
• Provides a larger range of available behaviors

49
Socialization Processes

• provided by both peers and parents
• serves to teach skills needed for survival in a
  given social environment
• marked by complex interactions

50
Peer Socialization

• The growth of Friendship
• real friendships develop at about age 3
• marked mostly by being in the same place at the
  same time
• fill needs for companionship, play and
  entertainment

51
Changes in Friendship

• at age 3, focus on shared activities
• by age 5, focus on trust, support, shared
  interests
• tolerance of disagreement increases from 3 to 6

52
Popularity

• Physical attractiveness is very important
• More attractive children are judged more likeable
  by peers and adults
• Behavior in interpreted in light of
  attractiveness
• Attractive children are judge more leniently than
  less attractive children

53
Other Determinants of Attractiveness

• Liked children
• Outgoing, sociable, more verbal
• Better understanding of others emotions
• Better able to read nonverbal cues
• Disliked Children
• More aggressive, more disruptive
• Less cooperative, less likely to take turns
• More likely to impose on others

54
Categories of Play

• Functional Play simple repetitive activities
  that may involve objects or repetitive muscle
  movements
• Constructive Play objects are manipulated to
  construct or build something
• Parallel Play play with similar toys in a
  similar manner but without interaction

55
Categories of Play (condt)

• Onlooker Play passive observation of the play
  of others without actual participation
• Associative Play two or more children actively
  interact with one another by sharing or borrowing
  toys, while not doing the same things
• Cooperative Play genuine play, taking turns,
  making rules, devising contests

56
Parent Socialization

• Parents role in teaching desired behavior
• Most research has centered on Parental Style,
  the typically characterizes most parents patterns
  of discipline.

57
Parental Styles Authoritarian

• Characteristics controlling, punitive, rigid,
  cold
• Relationship with Children Their word is law,
  they value strict, unquestioning obedience and do
  not tolerate expressions of disagreement

58
Parental Styles Permissive indifferent

• Characteristics lax and inconsistent feedback
• Relationship with Children Usually uninvolved
  in childrens lives, little interest or concern
  with childrens well-being

59
Parental Styles Permissive indulgent

• Characteristics lax and inconsistent feedback
• Relationship with Children more involved than
  permissive-indifferent, but place little or not
  limits or controls on the childs behavior

60
Parental Styles Authoritative

• Characteristics firm, setting clear and
  consistent limits
• Relationship to Children tend to be relatively
  strict, but are more receptive to disagreement
  and encourage independence. Use reason, provide
  explanations and communicate the rationale for
  punishments

61
Effects of Parental Styles

• Authoritarian Children tend to be withdrawn,
  low sociability, unfriendly. Girls tend to be
  dependent, boys hostile.
• Permissive-indifferent Children tend to be
  dependent, moody, low social skills, poor
  self-control.

62
Effects of Parental Styles

• Permissive-indulgent Children tend to have poor
  self-control, feel privileged or entitled, have
  difficulty with delayed gratification
• Authoritative Children tend to be independent,
  friendly, self-assertive and cooperative. Have
  good achievement motivation and are typically
  successful.

63
Moral Development

• The changes in reasoning about morality, their
  attitudes towards moral transgressions, and their
  behavior when faced with moral issues
• Not widely addressed by theorists for this age
  range
• Possible hidden assumption that it is too early
  to expect moral thinking/behavior
• Generally related to cognitive development

64
Piagets Heteronomous Morality

• The initial stage of moral development in which
  rules are seen as invariant, unchangeable and
  beyond personal influence or control (ages 2-7)
• Often leads to reliance on idiosyncratic versions
  of rules or the development of personal rules.

65
A Concrete Morality

• Rules and behaviors are understood to apply
  without reference to intent
• 1 cup or 15 cups
• Enforced by sense of immanent justice the notion
  that rules that are broken earn immediate
  punishment.

66
Empathy and Moral Behavior

• Empathy the ability to perceive and understand
  the feelings of others.
• First signs may appear as early as age 1
• Crying when other infants are heard crying
• Neglect and abuse tend to diminish ability to
  empathize, leading to later antisocial or
  immoral behaviors

67
Test is next.

• Review questions?