Physical development
what are the physical growth that occurs
sleeping
- growth slower than infancy
- gain about 5-8cm and about 2.7 kg in weight
- higher motor activity lvls = better ability to control or inhibit their behaviour allowing for successful task achievement
- motor activity lvls increase linearly w age - peak b/w 7-9
- sleeping: 3-5 yr old need 10-13 hrs of sleep
Physical development
what are the motor development that occurs?
- large muscle skills
- small-muscle or “fine motor,” abilities also improve
- early training can accerlerate the develpment of the fine motor skills
Physical development
What development takes place in the brain and nervous sys
lateralization,myelinized of reticular formation,hippocampus,handedness
- brain growth, synapse formation and myelinization continue but at slower rate
- lateralization: functional specialization of the left and righ hemispheres of the brain
- corpus callosum grows and matures most during this time
- genes provide mechanism for lateralization but experience shapes pace
- language is primarily centred in the left brain
- myelinization of the reticular formation: regulates attention and concentration
- hippocampus: matures and probably accounts for improvements in long-term memory function with explains infantile amnesia
- handedness: a strong preference for using one hand develops b/w 2 and 6 yrs; right handedness is a dominant gene
Physical development
what is infantile amnesia and what are some theories about it?
- cut-off age for our earliest memories seem to occur around 2.5 yrs old
factors that can facilitate the long-term narrative memory of early life events, including:
- childs ability to verbally describe the event
- emotional impact it had at the time
- importance of event to the child
- distinctiveness and uniqueness of the event
- age of a child when it occured
theories
- brain growth overrides
- development of autobiographical memory
- language development
Cognitive development
What happens in Piaget’s preoperational stage?
- 2-6/7 yrs
- children become proficient in the use of symbols in thinking and communicating but still have difficulty thinking logically
- characteristics of this thinking: egocentrism; centration; conservation
Cognitive development
What happens in the 1st substage - Perconceptual (2-4 yr)
Imaginary friends
- frequent ~60% of preschoolers
- children know the difference b/w real and not real friends
- imaginary friends have cognitive and emotional benefits: less shy, sociable, have friends later in life
- more engaged in more believe play
Cognitive development
What happens in the 2nd substage: Intuitive
explain the errors made: 7 errors
- 4-7yrs
- limitations on perceptual tasks
1. “sun sleeps” - amimistic thinking
2. “I fell because the phone was ringing” - transductive thinking or reasoning
3. pronouns unidentified during story telling
4. moutain scnece task
5. pencil example
6. Maynard the cat becomes a dog - perception bound thought
7. Classification tasks ( putting things that don’t belong together)
Cognitive development
what are more erros made in the preoperational stage?
6 errors and why?
- Class inclusion
- Distance Velocity
- Conservation of number
- 1 to 1 correspondence problems (copy the example)
- transformations - focus on end states
- seriation
Cognitive development
Challenges to Piagets thinking
Kwong See, Rasmussen and Pertman and define: theory of mind
- examined age stereotyping by children (5yrold)
- indirect measure = modified Piagetian number conservation task
- explores the question: does the nature of the task lead children to change their answer?
- use of puppets with different ages
- children have stereotypes and act on them
- found that preschoolers are more cognitively sophisticated than Piaget thought
- Theory of mind: a set of ideas constrcuted by an individual to explain other people’s ideas, beliefs, desires, and behaviour
Cognitive development
Describe the Information Processing Perspective
deine the STSS, operational efficiency, encoding, storage, retrieval
- STSS: Robbie Case’s term for the working memory; limit to how many ‘schemes’ can be attended to
- Operation efficiency: a neo-piagetian term that refers to max number of schemes that can be processed in working memory at one time; improves as the child ages
Cognitive development
Define Metamemory and Metacognition
part of the Infromation Processing theory
- Metamemory: knowledge about how memory works and the ability to control and reflect on one’s own memory function
- metacognition: knowledge about how the mind thinks and the ability to control and reflect on one’s own though processes
- improvement leades to better problem solving ability
Cognitive development
Explain Vygotsky’s SocioCultural Theory
Define and explain: Primitive period, naive psychology period, egocentric speech stage, ingrowth stage
- group learning is important
- emphasizes the role of social factors in cognitive development
- Primitive period: learning through conditioning
- Naive psychology period: learning use of language to communicate
- egocentric speech stage: talking to themselves to solve problems
- ingrowth stage: logical thinking results from interalization of speech acquired from children and adults in a social world
Cognitive Development
Explain the Growth in Language
Define: Fast-Mapping
- rapid growth; 1yr = dozen words; 2.5yr = 600 words; 5/6 = 15,00 words
- fast mapping: ability to categorically link new words to real-world referents
- forms hypothesis about new words meaning and uses the word often to get feedback to help them judge the accuracy of their hypothesis
Cognitive Development
Explain the Grammar Explosion
- Inflections: additions that change meaning; adding -ing
- Questions and negatives
- Overregularization/overgeneralization: using rules when they don’t apply; “i goed to the store, i brush my tooths”
- complex sentences: using conjuctions to combine two ideas or using embedded clauses; usgae of and, but, if
Cognitive Development
Describe a child’s phonological awareness
define: invented spelling
- Children’s understanding of the sound patterns of the lnaguage they are acquiring
- the greater a child’s awareness, the faster he/she learns to read
- primarily develops through word play
- invented spelling: a strategy young children with good phonological awareness skills use when they write
Cognitive Development
How do you measure intelligence?
first IQ test, Intelligence quotient, Wechsler,
- IQ quotient (IQ): the ratio of mental age to chronological age
- Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children: standardized test with different types of problems on: verbal comp, visual spatial, fluid reasoning, working memory, and processing speed
Cognitive Development
What are the individual differences of IQ
french adoption study
- evidence for heredity: twin studies
- evidence for environment: rxn range
