Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Magical Thinking  Preschooler’s mind is very flexible  Children can readily “invent”  They are not constrained by logic and concrete thinking  This is important for building creativity and imagination  Yet we often wonder how we can get the child to link more with reality

Preschooler’s Physical Growth  Growth velocity slows in comparison to pre-birth rates  Changes in proportion and appearance  Brain proliferation reaches its peak  Handedness is clear  Remarkable consistency in left-handed, right-handed rates

Height, Weight & Brain  Average child grows 2.5 inches, gains 5-7 lbs. Per year in EC  Waist becomes smaller than hips  Growing muscles, bones, organs  At 3 yrs, brain is 3/4 of adult size  At 5 yrs, brain is 9/10 of adult size  Brain, head grow more rapidly than other parts of body  MYELINATION!!

Figure 7.1 Weight at the 50th percentile for U.S. children ages 2 to 6. Source: Adapted from the Health Department, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; based on data by H. C. Stuart and H. V. Meredith, prepared for use in Children’s Medical Center, Boston. Used by permission of the Milwaukee Health Department.

Figure 7.2 Height at the 50th percentile for U.S. children ages 2 to 6. Source: Adapted from the Health Department, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; based on data by H. C. Stuart and H. V. Meredith, prepared for use in Children’s Medical Center, Boston. Used by permission of the Milwaukee Health Department.

Figure 7.4 Changes in form and proportion of the human body during fetal and postnatal life. Source: Reproduced with permission from Jensen et al., Biology. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1979, p. 233.

Figure 7.5 Preschoolers’ and older children’s susceptibility to injury and illness. The graph shows the percentage of children who will be affected at least once by the indicated condition. Source: Adapted from U.S. Bureau of the Census (1998), p. 148.

Motor Development  Learning to walk is a significant milestone  Relates to cognitive and social development  Exploring child can interact more with others  Interactions with others and objects positively effects cognitive development Gross & Fine Motor Skills  Gross: Involve large muscle groups  Fine: more finely tuned movements

At 3 years of age, children...  still enjoy simple movements such as hopping, running back and forth, jumping (they like these just for fun)  They take great pride in running across a room and jumping 6 inches-they especially like their caregiver observe this!  still have difficulty handling objects and placing them in specific locations  they are somewhat clumsy at handling tiny objects between their thumb and forefinger, but can do it.  they can build high block towers, but sometimes not in a completely straight line  they have difficulties placing jigsaw puzzle pieces, they aren't very precise-they might try to force the piece in.

Some tasks they can do at 3 years of age: Fine motor skills:  can "sort-of" draw a circle  cuts paper  pastes using pointer finger  can build a three block bridge  can draw 0 and +  dresses and undresses doll  pours from pitcher without spilling

At 3 years of age…Gross motor skills:  can throw ball underhanded (about 4 feet)  can pedal tricycle about 10 ft  catches large ball  completes (aided) forward somersault  can hop three hops with both feet  can catch bounced ball

At 4 years of age, children...  still enjoy running back and forth, hopping, jumping, but have become more adventurous  are better skilled at the jungle gym/climbing  can now come down stairs with one foot on each step, but sometimes they revert to both feet on each step  are much more precise in building block towers, often toppling their creations due to their desire for precision

Some tasks they can do at 4 years of age: Fine motor skills:  can lace their shoelaces  can follow a line and cut  can string ten beads  copies a figure X  opens and places clothespins with one-hand  can build a five block bridge  can pour liquid successfully from a variety of containers  can print first name

At 4 years of age…gross motor skills:  bounces and catches ball  runs 10 feet and stops  can push/pull a wagon/buggy  can carry 12 pound object  catches ball  has control when bounding ball  hops of one foot for four hops

At 5 years of age, children...  Are more adventurous than at age 4  they run hard and enjoy racing with peers and parents  Some tasks they can do…Fine motor skills:  -can fold paper into halves and quarters  -traces around hand  -draws rectangle, circle, square, and triangle  -cuts interior piece from paper  -uses crayons appropriately  -makes complicated clay objects (with two small parts)  -can reproduce letters  -can copy two short words

At 5 years of age…gross motor skills:  can throw ball (girls, 25 feet, boys, 44 feet)  carries a 16 pound object  kicks rolling ball  skips alternating feet  roller skates  skips rope  rolls ball to hit object  rides two-wheel bike with training wheels

Figure 7.6 Usual order of difficulty, with very approximate ages, for copying simple geometric designs reasonably well. Because of the close relationship between motor and intellectual development in early childhood, many intelligence tests for young children include tasks such as these.

Cognitive Development in Preschoolers  Lev Vygotsky: the importance of social interaction  Zone of Proximal Development--it is DYNAMIC Upper limit (level of performance child can do with help Lower limit (level of performance child can do alone

Figure 7.8 Of 3-year-olds asked to hide a toy in a sandbox, half who were asked to try to remember where the toy was hidden (the instructions group) marked its location; only 20% of the no-instructions group did likewise. Preschoolers may be capable of using simple memory strategies, but often do not do so spontaneously.

Cognitive Development – Piaget  Preschooler is not yet an “operational” thinker  “Operation” defined as “logical thought”  Preoperational thinking  Egocentrism  Centration  Reversible actions  Conservation  animism

Animistic Thinking  A version of magical thinking  “The moon is following me”  “The sun is sad”  “The flower is thirsty”  “The dog is happy”

Preschooler Egocentricity  Makes sense to assume all people view the world the same way  Unable to assume another perspective  Irreversibility in thinking  Illustrated by conservation tasks

More Piaget  Preoperational Substage  Symbolic Function (preconceptual)-ages 2-4  Preconcepts  Animism  Intuitive Thought Substage-ages 4-7

Figure 7.9 Tasks and experiments concerned with preoperational thought.

Figure 7.10 Arrangement for the Hughes experiment. (a) Subjects had to determine whether a doll hidden in 1, 2, 3, or 4 could be seen by the police officer at left. (b) In a later part of the experiment, a second police officer was placed at X. The child then had to decide where the doll would have to be hidden so as not to be seen by either officer. Preschoolers had little trouble answering correctly.

Cognitive Achievements  Classification: Ability to classify and form new schemas  Symbolic Representation months  Understand and deal with numbers  Numerical reasoning  Language skills