Lecture 5

Early childhood

Height and Weight

Growth deceleration. Girls are only slightly smaller and lighter than boys. Body fat shows a steady decline during this time. Boys and girls slim down as their trunks lengthen.

Gross Motor Skills Developmental timetables. Example: Denver Developmental

Screening Test (Denver II): Age norms at which 25, 50, 75, and 90 percent of children are

expected to demonstrate a given capability. Four different areas are examined by the test: language, personal-

social, fine motor, and gross motor. Developmentally delayed when incapable of performing a task of

which 90% of children of the same age are capable.

Example

Gross Motor Task 50% 90%

Kicks ball forward 18.3 months 23.2 months

Throws ball overhand

20.3 months 2.9 years

Balance on 1 foot 1 second

2.5 years 3.4 years

Balance on 1 foot 5 seconds

4.3 years 5.4 years

Characteristics of Piaget’s Preoperational Stage

The preoperational stage lasts from 2-7 years old.

Symbolic Function The ability to think symbolically and to represent the world mentally.

Egocentrism Egocentrism is the inability to distinguish between one’s own

perspective and someone else’s perspective. Three-moutain problem

Confusion of appearance and reality

Difficult to distinguish between the way things seem to be and the way they are.

Precausal reasoning

Animism is the belief that inanimate objects have “lifelike” qualities and are capable of action.

A child may believe that a tree pushes its leaves off in the Fall, or that the sidewalk made him trip and fall down.

Children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions.

Ask preschoolers the following questions:

How did you learn to talk? Where does the sun go at night? Why is the sky blue? Why do dogs bark? Why does it rain? Where do babies come from? Why do you eat breakfast in the morning instead of at night? Why do you have toes? How do birds fly?

Limited social cognition

Piaget’s heteronomous morality (versus autonomous morality). Occurs from approximately 4-7 years of age. Justice and rules are conceived of as unchangeable properties of the

world, removed from the control of people.

Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development

Range of tasks too difficult for children to master alone, but which can be learned with the guidance and assistance of adults or more skilled children.

Scaffolding in Cognitive Development

Scaffolding refers to changing the level of support. Over the course of a teaching session, a more skilled person adjusts

the amount of guidance to fit the student’s current performance level.

Language and Thought

For Piaget, private speech is egocentric and immature, but for Vygotsky it is an important tool of thought during early childhood.

Children must use language to communicate with others before they can focus on their own thoughts.

Researchers have found support for Vygotsky’s view of the positive role of private speech in development.

Teaching Strategies Based on Vygotsky’s Theory

Use the child’s zone of proximal development in teaching. Use scaffolding. Use more skilled peers as teachers. Monitor and encourage children’s use of private speech. Assess the child’s ZPD, not IQ.

Memory

By age 2, infants will occasionally recall interesting events that happened months ago.

2-year-olds show some signs of their emerging prospective memory.

Preschoolers - > Scripts: mental representations of a series of an event that occur in a certain order in everyday life.

Incidental mnemonics: Remembering - > not the result of a deliberate and systematic attempt to elaborate or to rehearse but involuntary.

Strategies

Strategies consist of using deliberate mental activities to improve the processing of information:

Rehearsal Organizing information

Preschoolers' memory strategies: "Primitive". Wellman (1988). Preschoolers seldom involve deliberate reorganization or even rehearsal.

Why do young children recall so little about new information?

Why does recall memory improve so dramatically between preschool years and early adolescence?

Four Explanations. 1. Changes in basic strategies 2. Changes in knowledge 3. Changes in metamemory 4. Changes in capacity

Changes in Strategies:

To remember something you have to transfer information from STM to LTM. Younger children fail to use strategies that could help them to store new information and retrieve input.

Changes in Knowledge

Older children or adolescents outperform younger children because they are more familiar with the information they are asked to retain.

Changes in Metamemory

Knowledge about memory and memory processes allows older children to select the most appropriate strategies for a task and to carefully monitor progress.

Changes in Capacity

Some researchers argue that older children do better than younger ones because they have a better information-processing capacity ("computer").

Young children as witnesses

When young children are asked about events that have personal significance, they are likely to provide correct answers.

They have trouble locating events in time. Adults' probes may lead to problems. The questioning may affect the child's memory of what

happened without the child's awareness.

Continued

It is also possible that the child remembers both what the adult suggested and what really happened but can no longer tell which memory is authentic.

Young children are likely to believe that adults know more. When questioned in a legal proceeding, they may incorporate the adult's suggestions in their answers because they want to please the adult.

Language Development: Syntax

Between the ages of two and five: Child's speech includes increasingly sophisticated grammatical structures. Inflections (plurals or verb tense), more articles, and conjunctions.

Also the child comes to use negatives, questions and passives correctly.

Difficulty in understanding the passive voice (comprehending the meaning of a passive construction: later preschool years).

Overregularization

Application of grammatical rules to words that require exceptions to those rules.

Berko WUG study (1958). Berko presented children (ages 4-6) with a series of line

drawings that corresponded to a set of statements. For example:

Here is a wug. Now there are two. There are two ____. Here is a bix. Now there are two. There are two ____. Here is a man who knows how to rick. He ricks every day.

Today he ricks. Yesterday he ____.

Semantics

As children move beyond the two-word stage, their knowledge of meanings rapidly advances.

The speaking vocabulary of a 6-year-old ranges from 8,000 to 14,000 words.

According to some estimates, the average child of this age is learning about 22 words a day!

Pragmatics

Dramatic difference between a 2-year-old’s language and a 6-year-old’s language in terms of pragmatics—the rules of conversation.

What Is Play?

Play is a pleasurable activity that is engaged in for its own sake.

Play’s Functions Increases affiliation with peers and increases the opportunity for

interaction Advances cognitive development Provides an opportunity to practice roles children will assume later in

life

Types of Play

Practice Play Pretense/Symbolic Play Social Play Constructive Play Games

Practice Play

Practice play - the repetition of behavior when new skills are being learned or when physical or mental mastery and coordination of skills are required for games or sports.

Pretense/Symbolic Play. In the early elementary school years, children’s interest often shift to

games.

Social Play Social play - involves social interaction with peers. Social play with peers increases dramatically during the preschool

years.

Constructive Play. Occurs when children engage in self-regulated creation or construction

of a product or a problem solution.

Games

They include rules and often competition with one or more individuals. Games play a big part in the lives of elementary school children.

Parten’s Classic Study of Play Solitary play - the child plays alone and independently of others.

More frequent in 2- to 3-year-olds than older children. Primitive social play Onlooker play - the child watches other children play, but may still

talk and ask questions. Parallel play - the child plays separately from others, but with similar

toys or in a manner that mimics their play. Associative play - involves social interaction with little or no

organization. Cooperative play - involves social interaction in a group with a

sense of group identity and organized activity.

What Is Gender?

Sex - the biological dimension of being male or female. Gender - the social dimensions of being male or female. Gender identity - the sense of being male or female. Gender role - a set of expectations that prescribe how males or

females should think, act, and feel.

Psychoanalytic and Social Cognitive Theories

Psychoanalytic theory maintains a preschool attraction to the opposite-sex parent ultimately results in identification with the same-sex parent.

Social cognitive theory emphasizes gender development occurs through observation and imitation of gender behavior, and through the rewards and punishments for gender appropriate and inappropriate behavior.

Critics of this approach argue that gender development is not as passive as it indicates.

Parental Influences

By action and example, mother and fathers influence their children’s gender development.

Fathers are more likely to ensure that boys and girls conform to existing cultural norms.

Fathers are more involved in socializing their sons than their daughters.

Peer Influences Boys teach one another the required masculine behavior and enforce it

strictly. Girls pass on female culture and congregate with one another. Peer demands for conformity to gender roles become especially

intense during adolescence.

Cognitive Developmental Theory

(a) Basic gender understanding: There are two different genders.

Children use physical and behavioral clues to differentiate gender roles and to gender-type themselves in early development.

(b) Gender constancy: Understanding that gender remains the same even though activities, clothing, and hair style might change.

Once they consistently conceive of themselves as male or female, children often organize their world on the basis of gender.

Gender Schema Theory

States that an individual’s attention and behavior are guided by an internal motivation to conform to gender-based sociocultural standards and stereotypes.

“Gender typing” occurs when individuals are ready to encode and organize information along the lines of what is considered appropriate for males and females in society.

A general readiness to respond to and categorize information on the basis of culturally defined gender roles fuels children’s gender-typing activities.

“Racial" identity

By the time children are 4 years old they can sort dolls and pictures into racial categories.

Kenneth and Mamie Clark (1939, 1958): Asked American children of African and of European ancestry to choose between pairs of dolls (3 years old and older).

African American children seemed to prefer the white dolls - > Brown vs. Board of Education.

Attitudes toward ethnicity depend on both the attitudes of adult caregivers and perception of the power of own group in relation to others.

Harriette McAdoo (1985) reports that African American preschoolers' preference for white dolls has declined since the 1950s.

Parenting Styles

Authoritarian Parenting Authoritative Parenting Neglectful Parenting Indulgent Parenting

Authoritarian Parenting A restrictive, punitive style in which parents exhort the child to

follow their directions and to respect work and effort. These parents place firm limits and controls on the child and

allow little verbal exchange. Children of authoritarian parents often are unhappy, fearful,

anxious, fail to initiate activity, and have weak communication skills.

Authoritative Parenting This style encourages children to be independent but still places

limits and controls on their actions. Extensive verbal give-and-take is allowed, and parents are warm

and nurturant toward the child. Children of authoritative parents are often cheerful, self-controlled

and self-reliant, achievement-oriented, maintain friendships with peers, cooperate with adults, and cope well with stress

Indulgent Parenting A style of parenting in which parents are highly involved with their

children, but place few demands or controls on them. Indulgent parenting is associated with children’s social

incompetence, especially a lack of self-control. The result is that children never learn to control their own behavior

and always expect to get their way. Children of indulgent parents may be aggressive, domineering,

and noncompliant.

Neglectful Parenting A style in which the parent is very uninvolved in the child’s life. It is associated with children’s social incompetence, especially a

lack of self-control. Children whose parents are neglectful frequently have low self-

esteem, are immature, and may be alienated from the family. In adolescence, they may show patterns of truancy and

delinquency.

The Multifaceted Nature of Abuse Developmentalists are increasingly using the term child maltreatment

rather than child abuse. The term does not have the same emotional impact of abuse, and

acknowledges that maltreatment involves a number of different conditions.

Severity of Abuse Less than 1% of maltreated children die. Eleven percent suffer life-threatening, disabling injuries. Almost 90% of cases suffer temporary physical injuries,

although they tend to be experienced repeatedly. Neglected children, who suffer no physical injuries, often

experience extensive, long-term psychological harm.

Forms of abuse and neglect

Physical abuse Physical neglect (and medical and nutritional neglect) Educational neglect Emotional neglect Sexual abuse

Child Abuse Experts believe that the view that parents who abuse their children are

bad, sick, monstrous, sadistic individuals, who cause their children to suffer is too simple.

The Cultural Context of Abuse The extensive violence that takes place in American culture is reflected in

the occurrence of violence in the family. Many abusive parents report not having sufficient resources or help from

others.

Family Influences To understand abuse in the family, the interactions of all family

members need to be considered. Poverty About one-third of parents who were abused when they were young

abuse their own children. + “Child characteristics”

Developmental Consequences of Abuse

Maltreated children show poor emotion regulation. They show attachment problems, as they are typically

categorized as disorganized. They have problems in peer relations due to their

aggressiveness, avoidance, and aberrant responses to distress and positive approaches from peers.

They have difficulty in adapting to school due to problematic interactions with teachers.

Other psychological problems: anxiety, depression, conduct disorder, and delinquency.