PSY C505: Early Childhood

• Early childhood development


  • Refers to the many skills and milestones that children are expected to reach by the time they reach the age of five
  • Includes learning how to run, how to talk using simple sentences and how to play with others
• Early childhood development


  • Occurs naturally when parents and children spend time playing, preparing dinner or looking at books together
  • Preschools and Head Start programs provide activities based on early childhood development guidelines
  • Toys and books for both children and parents that promote developmental goals
• Early childhood is a time of remarkable physical, cognitive, social and emotional development
• Infants enter the world with a limited range of skills and abilities
• Watching a child develop new motor, cognitive, language and social skills is a source of wonder for parents and caregivers
• Physical development milestones from birth to 3 months


  • Use rooting, sucking and grasping reflexes
  • Slightly raise the head when lying on the stomach
  • Hold head up for a few seconds with support
  • Clench hands into fists
  • Tug and pull on their own hands
  • Repeat body movements
• Physical development milestones from 3 to 6 months


  • Roll over
  • Pull their bodies forward
  • Pull themselves up by grasping the edge of the crib
  • Reach for and grasp object
  • Bring object they are holding to their mouths
  • Shake and play with objects
• Physical development milestones from 6 to 9 months


  • Crawl
  • Grasp and pull object toward their own body
  • Transfer toys and objects from one hand to the other
• Physical development milestones from 9 to 12 months


  • Sit up unaided
  • Stand without assistance
  • Walk without help
  • Pick up and throw objects
  • Roll a ball
  • Pick up objects between their thumb and one finger
• Physical development milestones from 1 to 2 years


  • Pick things up while standing up
  • Walk backwards
  • Walk up and down stair without assistance
  • Move and sway to music
  • Color or paint by moving the entire arm
  • Scribble with markers or crayons
  • Turn knobs and handles
• Physical development milestones from 2 to 3 years


  • Tantrums
  • Strong feelings
  • Pretend play
  • Independence
• Physical development milestones from 3 to 4 years


  • Ride a tricycle
  • Go down a slide without help
  • Throw and catch a ball
  • Pull and steer toys
  • Walk in a straight line
  • Build a tall towers with toy blocks
  • Manipulate clay into shapes
• Physical development milestones from 4 to 5 years


  • Jump on one foot
  • Walk backwards
  • Do somersaults
  • Cut paper with safety scissors
  • Print some letters
  • Copy shapes including squares and crosses
• Preoperational stage (Piaget's theory)


  Marked by rapid growth in representational, or symbolic, mental activity
• Language


  • Our most flexible means of mental representation
  • Sensorimotor activity provides the foundation for language, just as it underlies deferred imitation and make-believe play
• Make-believe play


  • Increases dramatically during early childhood
  • Piaget believed that through pretending, young children practice and strengthen newly acquired representational schemes
• Development of Make-Believe Play

  1. Play becomes increasingly detached from the real-life conditions associated with it

  2. Make-believe play gradually becomes less self-centred as children realize that agents and recipients of pretend actions can be independent of themselves

  3. Play also includes increasingly more complex scheme combinations

  4. Sociodramatic play is the make-believe play with peers that first appears around age 2 1/2 and increases rapidly until 4 to 5 years

  5. The emergence of sociodramatic play signals an awareness that make-believe play is a representational activity
• Spatial understanding


  • Improves rapidly over the third year of life
  • Children realize that a spatial symbol stands for a specific state of affairs in the real world
  • Insight into one type of symbol-real world relation, such as that represented by a photograph, helps preschoolers understand others, such as simple maps
  • Providing children with many opportunities to learn about the functions of diverse symbols, such as picture books, models, maps, and drawings, enhances spatial representation
• Limitations of preoperational thought

  • Rigid, limited to one aspect of a situation at a time, and strongly influenced by the way things appear at the moment
  • Egocentrism is the inability to distinguish the symbolic viewpoints of others from one's own
  • Animistic thinking is the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities, such as thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions
  • Inability to Conserve - Conservation refers to the idea that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when outward appearance changes
  • Transductive Reasoning - Reasoning from one particular event to another particular event, instead of from general to particular or particular to general
  • Lack of Hierarchical Classification - The organization of objects into classes and subclasses on the basis of similarities and differences between the groups
• Initiative vs. Guilt


  • Children use their perceptual, motor, cognitive, and language skills to make things happen
  • The governor of initiative is conscience, as children begin to hear the inner voice of self-observation
  • Initiative may bring rewards or punishment
  • Widespread disappointment leads to an unleashing of guilt that lowers self-esteem
  • Leaving this stage with a sense of initiative rather than guilt depends on parental responses to children's self-initiated activities
• Self-understanding


  • The child's cognitive representation of self, the substance and content of the child's self conceptions
  • Based on the various roles and membership categories that define who they are
  • In early childhood, children usually conceive of the self in physical terms
  • The active dimension is a central component of the self, as children describe themselves terms of such activities as play
• Emotional development

  • Important changes are the increased use of emotion language and the understanding of emotion
  • Between 2 and 3 years, children considerably increase the number of terms they use to describe emotion
  • Children also begin to learn about the causes and consequences of feelings
  • At 4-5 years, children show an increased ability to reflect on emotions and a growing awareness about controlling and managing emotions to meet social standards
• Peer relations


  • The peer group provides a source of information and comparison about the world outside the family
  • Children receive feedback on their abilities from peers
  • Good peer relations appear to be necessary for normal social development
  • Children who are rejected by peers are at risk for depression