PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE GROWTH IN THE PRESCHOOL YEARS Chapter 7 Robert S. Feldman Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Looking Ahead What is the state of children’s bodies and overall health during the preschool years? How do preschool children’s brains and physical skills develop? How does Piaget interpret cognitive development during the preschool years? How do other views of cognitive development differ from Piaget’s?

Looking Ahead How does children’s language develop in the preschool years? What effects does television have on preschoolers? What kinds of preschool educational programs are available?

Physical Growth Growing Body By age 2, 25 to 30 pounds and close to 36 inches tall By 6 years old, about 46 pounds and 46 inches tall

Individual Differences in Height and Weight Averages mask great individual differences in height and weight Gender differences National and global economic differences

Changes in Body Shape and Structure Bodies vary in height, weight, and shape Toddler fat burns off Internal physical changes occur

Nutrition: Eating the Right Foods Slower growth = less caloric requirements Children can maintain appropriate intake of food, if provided with nutritious meals Inappropriate encouragement to increase food intake beyond an appropriate level may cause obesity

Avoiding a Butter Battle Good nutrition without adversarial situations occurs by: Providing a variety of foods, low in fat and high in nutritional and iron content Allowing development of natural preferences Exposing children to a wide variety of foods

Health and Illness 7 to 10 colds and other minor respiratory illnesses in each of years from age three to five Majority of US preschoolers are reasonably healthy

Pill-Popping Preschoolers? Increasing number of children being treated with drugs for emotional disorders such as depression Use of drugs such as antidepressants and stimulants has grown significantly

Injury During the Preschool Years Accidents are greatest risk Danger of injuries High levels of physical activity Curiosity Lack of judgment Individual differences Gender Cultural Socioeconomic

Range of Preschool Dangers Falls Burns Drowning Suffocation Auto accidents Poisons

Silent Danger: Lead Poisoning Some 14 million children are at risk for lead poisoning (Centers for Disease Control) U.S. DHHS calls lead poisoning most hazardous health threat to children under the age of 6

Effects of Lead Poisoning High levels of lead are linked to higher levels of antisocial behavior in school age children Aggression Delinquency

Children in poverty are more susceptible lead poisoning True or False?

Growing Brain Grows at faster rate than any other part of the body Increase in interconnections among cells and myelin Corpus callosum becomes thicker Lateralization improves

Left Hand, Right Hand PET scans illustrate activity in right or left hemisphere of brain differs according to task in which person is engaged How might educators use this finding in their approach to teaching?

Ya gotta hand it to him…or her! Gender-related lateralization differences Boys Greater lateralization of language in left hemisphere Higher autism incidence (Baron-Cohen’s theory) OR gender predisposition to functioning differences Girls Language is more evenly divided between two hemispheres OR Verbal abilities emerge earlier in girls because girls receive greater encouragement for verbal skills than boys

Brain Growth and Cognitive Development Growth spurts Myelin increases Cerebellum and cerebral cortex connection growth

So…does brain development produce cognitive advances or do cognitive accomplishments fuel brain development?

Motor Development

Potty Wars: Opposing Views Brazelton Flexible approach advocating waiting until signs of readiness appear Rosemond Rigid approach advocating quick and early training

American Academy of Pediatrics Current Guidelines Dry at least 2 hours during day or after nap Regular, predictable bowel movements Indications that bowel movement or urination is about to occur Ability to follow simple directions Ability to get to bathroom and undress on time Discomfort with soiled diapers Asking to use toilet Desire to wear underwear Begin only when children are ready

Fine Motor Skills Involve more delicate, smaller body movements Require much practice Show clear developmental pattern

Handedness Preference by end of preschool years No scientific basis of myths that suggest there is something with being left-handed

Becoming an Informed Consumer of Development Keeping Preschoolers Healthy: Eating well-balanced diet Exercising Getting enough sleep Avoiding contact with ill others Appropriate schedule of immunizations

Vaccination Schedule Let’s take a quick look at Table 7-2 for current vaccination schedule recommendations

Table 7-2

What do you do? You are the director of a child care program. A parent in your child care program refuses to immunize her toddler.

Review and Apply REVIEW The preschool period is marked by ____ physical growth. Preschoolers tend to eat ____ than they did as babies, but generally ____ their food intake appropriately, given ____ options and the ____ to develop their own choices and controls.

Review and Apply REVIEW The preschool period is generally the ____ time of life, with only ____ illnesses threatening children. ____ and ____ hazards are the greatest threats to preschoolers’ health. Parents and caregivers need to be aware of steps they can take to keep preschoolers healthy and prevent ____. ____ and fine motor development also advances rapidly during the preschool years. Boys’ and girls’ gross motor skills begin to ____, and children develop handedness.

Review and Apply APPLY What are some ways that increased understanding of issues relating to the physical development of preschoolers might help parents and caregivers in their care of children? How might biology and environment combine to affect the physical growth of a child adopted as an infant from a developing country and reared in a more industrialized one?

INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

PIAGET- A Quick Review Knowledge is product of direct motor behavior All children pass through series of stages Universal Fixed order

What does Piaget tell us? Quantity and quality of knowledge changes Focus on change in children’s understanding How could you use this information to answer a friend who tells you that his young son keeps putting things in his mouth?

Preoperational Thinking Preoperational Stage Time of stability and change Use of operations at end of stage

Relationship Between Language and Thought Symbolic function: Ability to use symbols, words, or object to represent something that is not physically present Language allows preschoolers to: Represent actions symbolically Think beyond present to future Consider several possibilities at same time

Centration What you see is what you think! Which row has more buttons?

Incomplete Understanding of Transformation Preoperational children Unable to envision successive transformations Ignore middle steps

Egocentrism Preschoolers do not understand that others have different perspectives from their own Egocentric thought takes two forms Lack of awareness that others see things from a different physical perspective Failure to realize that others may hold thoughts, feelings, and points of view that differ from theirs

Emergence of Intuitive Thought Curiosity blossoms and answers to wide variety of questions sought Often act as authorities on particular topics Leads preschoolers to believe that they know answers to all kinds of questions, but there is little or no logical basis for this confidence

Late Stages of Intuitive Thought Slowly certain qualities prepare children for more sophisticated forms of reasoning Begin to understand the notion of functionality Begin to show an awareness of the concept of identity

Evaluating Piaget’s Approach Positive Masterful observer Useful way to consider progressive advances in child cognition Negative More recent experimental work suggests higher child performance on tasks involving conservation, reversibility, transformation, and ability to count Contentions about continuity of development as theorized in Piaget’s stages

INFORMATION PROCESSING APPOACHES TO COGNITVE DEVELOPMENT

Focus of Approaches Changes in kinds of “mental programs” that children use when approaching problems Changes analogous to way computer program becomes more sophisticated as a programmer modifies it on basis of experience

Often Used Research Approaches Understanding numbers Memory development

1, 2, 3, 7…11-T-hundred! How can we tell when a preschooler knows how to count?

You must remember this…maybe! Recollections of events are sometimes, but not always, accurate Typically accurate in responses to open-ended questions Partly determined by how soon memories are assessed Affected by cultural factors Autobiographical memory Largely inaccurate before age 3 Not all last into later life

Why are some preschool memories inaccurate? Preschoolers’ memories of familiar events often organized in scripts Scripts become more elaborate with age Frequently repeated events meld into scripts Particular instances of scripted event are recalled with less accuracy than those that are unscripted in memory

Any other causes of inaccuracies? Difficulty describing certain kinds of information, such as complex causal relationships, may oversimplify recollections

SHE did it…I think!! Children’s Eyewitness Testimony Forensic developmental psychology Embellishment characteristic of fragility, impressionability, and inaccuracy of memory Memories susceptible to suggestions of adults asking them questions, especially repeatedly Children more prone to make inaccurate inferences about reasons behind others’ behavior and are less able to draw appropriate conclusions based on their knowledge of a situation Error rate is heightened when same question is asked repeatedly

Information Processing in Perspective PRO Relies on well-defined testable, processes which alternative approaches traditionally have paid little attention Provides a clear, logical, and full account of cognitive development CON Focuses on series of single, individual cognitive processes Individual sequence of processes never adequately paint whole, comprehensive picture of cognitive development

Vygotsky’s View of Cognitive Development Cognition result of social interactions in which children learn through guided participation Children gradually grow intellectually and begin to function on their own because of assistance that adult and peer partners provide

Culture and Gender Influences Nature of the partnership between developing children and adults and peers determined largely by cultural and societal factors Societal expectations about gender play role in how children come to understand world

Zone of Proximal Development Cognition increases through exposure to information that is new enough to be intriguing, but not too difficult Greater improvement with help = greater increases in zone of proximal development

Scaffolding Support for learning and problem solving that encourages independence and growth Aids in development of overall cognitive abilities

Cultural Tools Actual, physical items or intellectual and conceptual framework for solving problems Language Alphabetical and numbering schemes Mathematical and scientific systems Religious systems

Assessing Vygotsky’s Perspective PRO Increasingly influential in the last decade Helps explain growing body of research about importance of social interaction in promoting cognitive development Consistent with growing body of multicultural and cross-cultural research CON Lack of precision in conceptualization of cognitive growth Sparse information about attention and memory develop and how children’s natural cognitive capabilities unfold

Review and Apply REVIEW According to Piaget, children in the preoperational stage develop ____ ____, a qualitative change in their thinking that is the ____ of further cognitive advances. Preoperational children use ____ thought to explore and draw conclusions about the world, and their thinking begins to encompass the important notions of ____ and ____. Recent developmentalists, while acknowledging Piaget’s gifts and contributions, take issue with his emphasis on children’s ____ and his ____ of their capabilities.

Review and Apply REVIEW Proponents of ____ ____ approaches argue that quantitative changes in children’s processing skills largely account for their ____ development. ____ believed that children develop cognitively within a context of ____ and society. His theory includes the concepts of the zone of proximal development and ____.

Review and Apply APPLY In your view, how do thought and language interact in preschoolers’ development? Is it possible to think without language? How do children who have been deaf from birth think? If children’s cognitive development is dependent on interactions with others, what obligations does society have regarding such social settings as preschools and neighborhoods?

GROWTH OF LANGUAGE AND LEARNING

Language Development During preschool years: Sentence length increases at a steady pace Syntax doubles each month Enormous leaps in number of words used through fast mapping

What is fast mapping? New words are associated with their meaning after only brief encounter By age 6, the average child has a vocabulary of around 14,000 words Vocabulary acquired at rate of nearly one new word every 2 hours, 24 hours a day

Preschool Language on the Grow Use plurals and possessive forms of nouns Employ the past tense Use articles Ask, and answer, complex questions Extend appropriate formation of words to new words

Learning what is not said… Preschoolers also learn what cannot be said as they acquire principles of grammar Although they still make frequent mistakes, 3-year-olds follow principles of grammar most of time and are correct in their grammatical constructions more than 90 percent of time

Do you ever talk to yourself?

I’m not talking to YOU… Private Speech of Children Speech by children that is spoken and directed to themselves Performs important function. Serves to try out ideas, acting as sounding board Facilitates children’s thinking and helps them control their behavior Serves an important social function

What about practical communication? Pragmatics Relates to communicating effectively and appropriately with others Helps children to understand the basics of conversations Turn-taking Sticking to a topic What should and should not be said, according to the conventions of society Use of different language in various settings

Social Speech Before the age of 3: Speak only for their own entertainment Apparently unaware if anyone else can understand During preschool years: Begin to direct their speech to others Want others to listen Become frustrated when they cannot make themselves understood Begin to adapt their speech to others through pragmatics

Poverty and Language Development Heard home language has profound implications for future cognitive success Hart and Todd Risley (1995) landmark study Affluence of the parents = more speech to children. Parents professionals spent almost twice as much time interacting Children in families that received welfare assistance exposed to fewer words Language used home differed among various types of families. See Figure 7.12 for complete comparison

Figure 7.12

What do these findings suggest? Importance of early exposure to language Usefulness of intervention programs Consequences for children’s general cognitive development and behavior related to poverty and family income

Learning from the Media What do children learn from television? What do children learn from the media?

Story Stats

Saying No to the Show American Academy of Pediatrics Recommends that exposure to television should be limited Suggests that until age of 2, children watch no television, and after that age, no more than 1 to 2 hours of quality programming each day

What are the limits of preschoolers’ “television literacy”? Preschool children Often do not fully understand plots Unable to recall significant story details Make limited and often erroneous inferences about motivations Difficulty separating fantasy from reality Not able to critically understand and evaluate advertising messages

Is Big Bird a Good Bird? Sesame Street is most popular children’s US educational program for children Child viewers Have significantly larger vocabularies Read more books Perform significantly higher on several measures of verbal and mathematics ability at ages 6 and 7

Or a Bad Bird? Frenzied pace at which different scenes are shown makes viewers less receptive to traditional forms of teaching BUT…careful evaluations of program find no evidence that viewing Sesame Street leads to declines in enjoyment of traditional schooling

So…would you let your young child watch?

Who cares for our children?

Taking the pre out of preschool Increasing number of children in out-of- home care Some benefits to educational activities before formal schooling Cognitive and social benefits from high quality preschool experiences

Varieties of Early Education Child care centers Family child care programs Preschools Montessori Reggio Emilia School-age child care

How effective are early education programs? Children in EE programs Are more verbally fluent, show memory and comprehension advantages, and achieve higher IQ scores than at-home children Are more self-confident, independent, and knowledgeable about social world in which they live than those who do not participate

Any downside? Not all outcomes of outside-the-home care are positive Children in child care: Are found to be less polite, less compliant, less respectful of adults, and sometimes more competitive and aggressive than their peers Have a slightly higher likelihood of being disruptive in class extending through the sixth grade (when spending 10+ weeks) Poor programs actually may harm children

What makes a good program great? Characteristics of Quality Child Care Providers are well trained Appropriate overall size and ratio of care providers to children. Curriculum is carefully planned and coordinated among teachers Language environment is rich Caregivers are sensitive to children’s emotional and social needs Materials and activities are age appropriate Basic health and safety standards are followed

Why does the US lag behind? No coordinated national policy on preschool education Decisions about education have traditionally been left to states and local school districts No tradition of teaching preschoolers Status of preschools in United States is traditionally low

The Purpose of Preschool: An International View

What justification could you use to support preschool readiness programs with your tax dollars? Graduates of high quality programs less likely to repeat grades and more likely to graduate For every dollar spent on program, taxpayers saved seven dollars by time graduates reached age of 27

What do you know about Head Start?

From Research to Practice Montessori Approach After reading the box on page 246: Can you think of any potential drawbacks to Montessori education? Would it be appropriate for every pupil? Keep in mind that in this comparison, all of the parents originally wanted their children to attend a Montessori school. What about children whose parents aren’t as supportive of the Montessori method? In what ways does the Montessori method relate to Vygotsky’s view of cognitive development?

Becoming an Informed Consumer of Development Thinking critically about “expert” advice Who are the “experts” in your life? What expert advice have you received about going to college? Why (or why not) did you value or use this advice?

Review and Apply REVIEW In the preschool years, children rapidly increase in ____, developing an improved sense of grammar and shifting gradually from ____ to ____ speech. ____ can affect children’s language development by limiting the opportunities for parents and other caregivers to interact ____ with children. Preschoolers watch ____ at high levels. The effects of television on preschoolers are ____, with benefits from some programs and clear disadvantages due to other aspects of viewing.

Review and Apply REVIEW Preschool educational programs are beneficial if they are of high quality, with ____ staff, ____ curriculum, proper ____ ____, and small staff- student ____. Preschool children are likely to benefit from a ____ ____, individualized, and supportive environment for learning.

Review and Apply APPLY Is private speech egocentric or useful? Do adults ever use private speech? What functions does it serve? Do you accept the view that children in U.S. society are “pushed” academically to the extent that they feel too much stress and pressure at a young age? Why?

EPILOGUE Before moving on to a discussion of children’s social and personality development in the next chapter, turn back for a moment to this chapter’s Prologue, which describes William’s eventful exploration of the drawers at his preschool. Consider these questions: Why, specifically, do you think William opened the drawers? Was it merely to hunt for food? What gross and fine motor skills were involved in William’s walk across the preschool room and in opening the drawers, tupperware and boxes? What dangers did William face in this incident? What could William’s teachers, who had a class full of preschoolers to attend to, have done to prevent William getting into the drawers?