Devv

• Early Childhood (3-6)


  • Children slim down and shoot up
  • Need less sleep than before and are more likely to develop sleep problems
  • Improve in running, hopping, skipping, jumping, and throwing balls
  • Become better at tying shoelaces, drawing with crayons, and pouring cereal
  • Begin to show a preference for using either the right or left hand
• Physical Aspect


  At about 3, children normally begin to lose their babyish roundness and take on the slender, athletic appearance of childhood
• Sleep Patterns


  1. Walking and talking during sleep are fairly common in early and middle childhood

  2. Approximately 5 percent of children sleepwalk

  3. Approximately 37 percent sleep talk

  4. Enuresis - repeated, involuntary urination at night by children old enough to be expected to have bladder control, is not unusual
• Brain Development

  • During the first few years of life, brain development is rapid and profound
  • By age 3, the brain is approximately 90 percent of adult weight
• Motor Skills


  • Physical skills that involve the large muscles
  • Such as buttoning shirts and drawing pictures, involve eye-hand and small-muscle coordination
  • Gains in these skills allow young children to take more responsibility for their personal care
• Motor Skills


  Increasingly complex combinations of skills, which permit a wider or more precise range of movement and more control of the environment
• Handedness


  Preference for using a particular hand
• Piagetian Approach


  1. In one experiment, when the child heard the instructions to retrieve the rubber duck, the more often selected the rubber duck that the experimenter could see even though the child could

  2. Posing the problem in a different way can yield different results
• Episodic Memory


  Long term memory of specific experiences or events, linked to time and place
• Generic Memory


  Memory that produces scripts of familiar routines to guide behavior
• Autobiographical Memory


  • Memory of specific events in one's life
  • Generally emerges between 3 to 4 years old
• Social Interaction Model


  Proposes children construct autobiographical memories through conversation with adults about shared events
• Fast Mapping


  Process by which a child absorbs the meaning of new word after hearing it once or twice in conversation
• By age 6, a child typically has an expressive (speaking) vocabulary of 2,600 words and understands more than 20,000
• Language Development

  1. Children typically begin to use plurals, possessives, and past tense and know the difference between I, you, and we

  2. Between ages 4 and 5, sentences average four to five words and may be declarative, interrogative, or imperative

  3. By ages 7, children's speech has become quite adultlike
• Pragmatics


  The practical knowledge needed to use language for communicative purposes
• Social Speech


  • Speech intended to be understood by a listener
  • Know how to ask for things, how to tell a story or joke, how to begin and continue a conversation, and how to adjust comments to the listener's perspective
• Private Speech


  Talking aloud to oneself with no intent to communicate with others
• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)


  Vygotsky's term for the difference between what a child can do alone and what the child can do with help
• Scaffolding


  Temporary support to help a child master a task
• Self-Concept


  • Single representation (age 4) - isolated and one dimensional
  • Representational Mapping (5-6) - logical connections among parts of the self
• Self-Esteem


  • The judgement a person makes about his or her self-worth
  • Young children wildly overestimate their abilities
  • One-dimensional: either all good or all bad
  • Children whose self-esteem is contingent on success tend to become demoralized when they fail
  • Children with noncontingent self-esteem, in contrast, tend to attribute failure or disappointment to factors outside themselves or to the need to try harder
• Discipline


  Methods of molding children's character and of teaching them to exercise self-control and engage in acceptable behavior
• Corporal Punishment


  • Use of physical force with the intention of causing pain but not injury so as to correct or control behavior
  • Risk of injury, poor relationship, increased aggression and antisocial behavior
• Inductive Reasoning


  Designed to induce desirable behavior by appealing to a child's sense of reason and fairness
• Power Assertion


  Designed to discourage undesirable behavior through physical or verbal enforcement of parental control
• Withdrawal of Love


  Involves ignoring, isolating, or showing dislike for a child
• Authoritarian Parenting


  Parenting style emphasizing control and obedience
• Permissive Parenting


  Parenting style emphasizing self-expression and self-regulation
• Authoritative Parenting


  Parenting style blending respect for a child's individuality with an effort to instill social values
• Uninvolved Parenting


  A style of parenting that is low in nurturance, maturity demands, control, and communication
• Instrumental Aggression


  Used as a means of achieving a goal
• Overt (Direct) Aggression


  Openly directed at its target
• Relational Aggression


  Aimed at damaging or interfering with another person's relationship, reputation, or psychological well-being
• Play has physical, cognitive and psychosocial benefits
• Middle Childhood


  • Slow, steady gains in height and weight
  • Body structure - no dramatic changes
  • Gains in motor control and coordination
  • Individual differences - substantial at this age
  • Girls age 10-12 often taller than boys at this age
  • Tend to mature faster than boys
  • Tend to experience adolescents growth spurt earlier
• Brain Development


  • Increase in myelination and lateralization
  • More efficient processing of information
  • Higher cognitive functions
  • Enhanced self-regulation
  • Better able to integrate past/present experiences
  • Improved problem, memory, language skills
• Brain development affects learning; learning affects brain structures
• Emotions, stress, lack of sleep/exercise negatively affect brain development and learning
• Motor Development


  • Gross motor skills are well developed by middle childhood
  • Fine motor skills continue to improve
  • Hand-eye coordination improves
  • Better hand-writing, drawing
  • Boys: more upper body strength (throw ball farther/faster)
  • Girls: more agile (flexibility for dancing or other activities)
  • Athletic abilities seen as measure of competence