Early Childhood: Physical and Cognitive Development Chapter Seven

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Growth Patterns Growth rate slows during preschool years; girls and boys gain 2 to 3 inches in height per year and weight gains fairly stable from 4 to 6 pounds per year Children become “slender” as height increases Boys slightly larger; variations child to child

Development of the Brain Brain develops more quickly than any other organ during childhood; at 2 years brain is 75% of adult weight; at 5 years brain is 90% of adult weight; body weight of 5 year old is only 1/3 of adult weight Increase in brain size due in part to myelination of nerve fibers Completion of myelination of neural pathways that link the cerebellum to the cerebral cortex helps development of fine motor skills

Brain Development Continued Between ages 4 and 7 parts of the brain involved in the ability to sustain attention and screen out distractions has become more myelinated Most children ready to read and do school work by this time Visual processing speed improves and reaches adult level at adolescence Functions of left and right hemispheres overlap Information from right to left hemispheres and left to right hemisphere able due to the corpus callosum (connecting nerve fibers)

Brain Development Continued Plasticity – brain’s ability to compensate for injuries to particular parts of the brain Plasticity greatest at 1 to 2 years of age; preschoolers with damage to language areas can overcome them due to plasticity Sprouting (growth of new dendrites) may contribute to brain’s plasticity; redundancy of neural connections may also contribute

Motor Development Gross motor skills involve large muscles used in locomotion such as balancing on one foot, walking up stairs, pedaling a bike; by age 4 to 5 most older preschoolers have mastered large motor skills Boys and girls similar in development; girls slight advantage in balance and precision; boys slight advantage in throwing and kicking Nature and nurture contribute to motor development Preschoolers spend an average of 25 hours a week in large muscle activity; decreases as child ages

Rough-and-tumble play is not the same as aggressive behavior.

Physical Activity Continued Rough and tumble play helps develop physical and social skills in children; aggression does not The more physically active the parent, the more physically active the child Children of active fathers 3.5 times as likely to be active as children of inactive fathers Twin studies suggest heredity component of activity Fine motor skills include control of wrists and fingers; develop slowly and lag gross motor skills; consist of buttoning, tying shoelaces, stacking blocks

Children’s Drawings Development of drawing is linked to the development of motor and cognitive skills Kellogg (1959, 1970) identified basic scribbles needed in the building blocks of art: vertical, horizontal, diagonal, circular, curving, waving/zigzagging, and dots Four stages of making scribbles consist of: placement, shape, design and pictorial stages; stage develops from random placement of scribble on paper at age 2 to drawing basic shapes at age three to drawing a recognizable object at age 4 or 5

Figure 7.2: The Twenty Basic Scribbles. By the age of 2, children can scribble. Rhoda Kellogg has identified these 20 basic scribbles as the building blocks of the young child’s drawings. Fig. 7-2, p. 128

Figure 7.3: Four Stages in Children’s Drawings. Children go through four stages in drawing pictures. (a) They first place their scribbles in various locations on the page. They then (b) draw basic shapes and (c, d) combine shapes into designs. Finally, (e) they draw recognizable objects. Fig. 7-3, p. 129

Handedness Handedness emerges during infancy; by age 4 mos. clear preference for right-hand; by 7 to 11 months preference for particular hand increases; by childhood clear preference for right or left hand Left-handedness associated with dyslexia, stuttering, high blood pressure, epilepsy, schizophrenia and depression; ALSO associated with higher math ability, success in athletics, success in musical fields, architectural fields and the arts Heredity contributes to handedness

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Nutrition 4 to 6 year olds need 1,400 calories a day; 1 to 3 year olds need 1,000 to 1,300 Appetite becomes erratic during 2nd and 3rd year of life Children are often fed too much salt and sugar Food preferences are somewhat environmental Repeated exposure to a food increases the liking of it; parents are the role model for which types of food a child will like to eat

Health and Illness Minor illnesses refer to respiratory infections, gastrointestinal upsets; last a few days to a week These diseases in childhood are normal; leading killer of children in developing countries is diarrheal illness Advances in immunization along with development of antibiotics have reduced and/or eradicated illnesses such as rubella, measles, tetanus, mumps, whooping cough, diphtheria and polio

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Health and Illness Continued 1/3 of children in the U.S. younger than 18 years of age suffer from a chronic illness such as arthritis, diabetes, cerebral palsy, or cystic fibrosis World wide 8 to 9 million children die from six diseases: pneumonia, diarrhea, measles, tetanus, whooping cough, and tuberculosis Air pollution from the combustion of fossil fuels for heating and cooking causes many respiratory infections which are responsible for one death in five for children younger than 5 years of age

Health and Illness Continued Diarrhea kills nearly 2 million children under the age of 5 each year; due to unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation and hygiene Consuming lead or breathing in dust from paint with lead in it or drinking tap water with lead in it can contribute to neurological damage and a lowered cognitive functioning and other delays in childhood

Accidents Number one cause of death in early childhood is motor vehicle accidents Boys more likely than girls to incur accidental injuries at all ages and in all socioeconomic groups Poor children are five times as likely to die from fires and more than twice as likely to die in motor vehicle accidents than children who aren’t poor High accident rate of low-income children may result in part from living in dangerous housing and neighborhoods

Sleep Disorders Sleep terrors — more severe than nightmares; occur during deep sleep; nightmares occur during REM; begin in childhood; end in late adolescence; can be associated with stress; may wake suddenly with a surge in heart and respiration rates, talk incoherently; thrash about Sleep terrors can contribute to child’s fear of going to sleep and insomnia; caretakers have to be understanding and give affection; regular sleep routine helps

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Sleep Disorders Continued Sleep walking (somnambulism) — children may walk, rearrange toys, go to the bathroom, go to the refrigerator; no memory of activity; awakening them does not cause aggressive behavior; onset is between ages of 3 and 8; occurs during deep sleep; sleep walking associated with immaturity of the nervous system

Elimination disorders Most American children potty trained between the ages of 3 and 4; may still have “accidents” Enuresis — failure to control the bladder (urination) once the “normal” age for achieving bladder control has been reached (usually at age 5); does not include bed-wetting under twice a month; immaturity of the motor cortex may be contributor; outgrow between age 8 and adolescence

Elimination Disorders con’t Bed-wetting — inability to wake up during the night and go to the bathroom; 8 to 10% of American children bed wet; occurs during deep sleep

Elimination Disorders Continued Encopresis — lack of control over the bowels; more common with boys as is bed-wetting; 1 to 2% of children at the ages of 7 and 8 have continuing problems with bowels; soiling more likely to happen during the day causing embarrassment to the child; stems from physical causes such as chronic constipation as well as psychological factors such as harsh punishment for toileting accidents

Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Preoperational stage lasts from age 2 to age 7 Language ability greatest symbolic activity during this stage; scribbling/drawing begins at start of this stage Symbolic play (pretend play) is engaged in from 15 months of age; increases in complexity as child ages Quality of child’s play has long term implications; preschoolers who engage in violent pretend play are less empathic, less likely to help other children and more likely to engage in antisocial behavior later on

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Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Continued 65% of preschoolers have imaginary friends; more common among first born and only children than children with siblings Children with imaginary playmates are less aggressive, more cooperative, more creative than children without imaginary friends; show better ability to concentrate and are more advanced in language development

Piaget con’t Egocentrism — one-dimensional thinking; think parents are aware of everything that is happening to them; Piaget used “three-mountains” test to measure it Precausal — unless preoperational children know the natural causes of an event, their reasons are likely to be based egocentrically and not based on science

Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Continued Transductive reasoning — children reason by going from one specific isolated event to another Animism — attribution of life and intentions to inanimate objects Artificialism — assumes environmental factors such as rain and thunder have been designed and made by people

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Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Continued Preoperational child has difficulty making distinctions between mental and physical events; may believe dreams are real Can only focus on one dimension at a time Conservation — law that holds that properties of substances such as volume, mass and number remain the same even if you change their shape or arrangement; attainment of this skill moves the child into concrete operational stage Preoperational child has not master reversibility

Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Continued Class inclusion — including new objects or categories in broader mental classes or categories; requires child to focus on two aspects of a situation at once; this skill not observed during preoperational stage

Vygotsky’s Factors in Cognitive Development Scaffolding — temporary support provided by a parent or teacher to learning children; guidance by adult decreases as child is capable of carrying out task on their own Zone of proximal development (ZPD) — gap between what children are capable of doing now and what they could do with help from others; adults or older children help in guiding by gearing assistance to children’s capabilities

“HOME” Environment HOME – Caldwell et al (2003) developed measure for evaluating children’s home environments; acronym for Home Observation for the Measurement of the Environment; contains six subscales; better predictors of young children’s IQ than social class, mother’s IQ or infant IQ scores; home environment connected with occupational success as an adult Parental responsiveness, stimulation, encouraging independence of preschooler is connected with higher IQ scores and greater school achievement

Effects of Early Childhood Education Preschool education enables children to get an early start on achievement in school Higher the SES, the greater the performance of standardized intelligence tests Preschool programs begun in 1960’s Head Start provides health care as well as beginning reading skills Environmental enrichment as well as parent education can enhance cognitive development of economically disadvantaged

Television U.S. children spend more time watching television than they do in school 3 year olds watch 2 to 3 hours of TV per day Children’s programming shows mild to moderate effects on preschoolers’ cognitive development; effects better for girls than boys Sesame Street has been shown to increase lower SES children’s learning of numbers, letters Commercials are harmful to children’s food choices

Theory of Mind Preschoolers can accurately predict and explain human action and emotion in terms of mental states Preschoolers can separate their beliefs from those of another person who has false knowledge of a situation by age of 4 to 5 By age 4 children understand that senses contribute to understanding qualities of an object Appearance-reality distinction — understanding the difference between real events and mental events

Development of Memory By age 4 children can remember events from 1 1/2 years earlier Young children form scripts when describing what happens during a particular event Script becomes more elaborate as it is told Autobiographical memory (episodic memory) — memory for specific events is facilitated by children talking about them with others

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Development of Memory con’t Children remember events that follow a logical order easier Children remember according to interest Younger children depend on older children for cues to help them retrieve their memories Parental interest and questioning increases preschooler’s memory

Development of Memory Continued When preschoolers are younger, they remember more than the report Verbal reports used to measure accuracy of preschoolers’ memory Rehearsal — memory strategy using repetition; engaged in around 5 years Sorting objects enhances preschoolers’ memory Memory strategies advance during middle childhood

Language Development: Why “Daddy Goed Away” Preschoolers learn an average of 9 words a day Fast-mapping — process where child quickly attaches a new word to its appropriate concept Whole-object assumption — assume that words refer to whole objects and not to their component parts or characteristics Contrast assumption — novel terms must refer to unfamiliar objects and not to familiar objects that already have labels

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Development of Grammar Children’s sentence structure increases during 3rd year of life Overregularization — children acquire grammatical rules as they learn language; young ages apply rules rigidly Some grammar errors are logical due to understanding the past tense rule Certain Wh questions (what, who, where) appear earlier than others (why, when, which, how) Passive sentences difficult until ages 5 or 6

Pragmatics Pragmatics — practical application of language; children demonstrate pragmatics when they adjust speech to fit the social situation Language and cognitive development are interwoven Piaget maintained cognitive development precedes language development; children learn the word and then apply it to the category Research on which develops first is inconclusive Vygotsky maintained that vocalizations and thoughts are separate during the first year Inner speech — spoken aloud thoughts are internalized