Early Childhood

• Centration: the tendency to focus on one aspect of a situation and neglect others
• Decenter: thinking about several aspects of a situation at one time
• Irreversibility: Piaget’s term for a preoperational child’s failure to understand that an operation can go in two or more directions. Children's thinking is concrete, preoperational children cannot mentally reverse the action and realize the original state
• Transductive reasoning: Children do not use deductive or inductive reasoning; instead they see cause where none exists
• Egocentrism: inability to consider another person’s point of view; a characteristic of young children’s thought
• Animism: the tendency to attribute life to objects that are not alive
• Theory of Mind: the awareness of the broad range of human mental states and the understanding that others have their own distinctive beliefs, desires, and intentions
• Conservation: the failure to understand that two things that are equal remain so if their appearance is altered, as long as nothing is added or taken away
• Transduction: mentally linking two events, especially events close in time, whether or not there is logically a causal relationship
• Social Interaction Model: proposes children construct autobiographical memories through conversation with adults about shared events
• Fast Mapping: a process by which a child absorbs the meaning of a new word after hearing it once or twice in conversation
• Initiative vs. Guilt: children assert themselves more frequently through directing play and other social interaction
• Inductive Techniques: disciplinary techniques designed to induce desirable behavior by appealing to a child’s sense of reason and fairness
• Altruism: behavior intended to help others out of inner concern and without expectation of external reward
• Prosocial Behavior: any voluntary behavior intended to help others
• Power Assertion: disciplinary strategy designed to discourage undesirable behavior through physical or verbal enforcement of parental control
• Authoritarian Parenting: emphasizes control and unquestioning obedience
• Authoritative Parenting: emphasizes a child’s individuality but also stresses limits
• Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt: children at this stage are focused on developing a sense of personal control over physical skills and a sense of independence
• Purpose: children develop a sense of initiative and feel secure in their ability to lead others and make their own decisions
• Will: if children in this stage are encouraged and supported in their increased independence, they become more confident and secure in their own ability to survive in the world
• Gender Segregation: tendency to select playmates of one’s own gender
• Emergent Literacy: preschoolers’ development of skills, knowledge, and attitudes that underlie reading and writing
• Relational Aggression: a form of indirect social aggression, consists of damaging or interfering with relationships, reputation, or psychological well-being through teasing, manipulation, ostracism, or bids for control
• Contingent Self-Esteem: The “Helpless” Pattern. Children whose self-esteem is contingent on success tend to become demoralized when they fail. Often these children attribute failure to their deficiencies, which they believe they are unable

  to change.

  
  

  Children with noncontingent self-esteem, in contrast, tend to attribute failure or disappointment

  to factors outside themselves or to the need to try harder.