physical & cognitive early childhood

• Toddlerhood


  18 month to 3 year
• Freud's psychosexual development


  • 12-18 months to 3 years: Anal Stage
  • The infant's main pleasure comes from the anus
• Erikson's psychosocial development


  • 1-3 years: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
  • Toddlers either succeed or fail in gaining a sense of autonomy over their own actions and bodies
• Self-Awareness


  • Knowledge of oneself
  • Appears between 18 and 24 months
• Self-Awareness test


  Mirror task
• Presence of self-awareness


  • Allows self-conscious emotions
  • Allows empathy
• Self-conscious emotions


  • Higher-order emotions like shame, pride, embarrassment, guilt, and envy
  • Involve injury or enhancement of our sense of self
  • Assist children in acquiring socially valued behaviors and goals
• Empathy


  • An emotional response that corresponds to the feelings of another person
  • By age 2, infants begin to demonstrate the rudiments of empathy
  • Toddlers sometimes comfort others or show concern for them
• Emotional self-regulation


  • Strategies we use to adjust our emotional state to a comfortable level of intensity so we can accomplish our goals
  • In the second year, growth in representation and language leads to new ways of regulating emotions, like describing their internal states and guiding caregivers in helping them
• Body Growth and Change in Early Childhood

  • Slower growth rate
  • Average growth is 2.5 inches (~6cm) and 5 to 7 (2-3 kg) pounds per year
  • Boys are slightly larger than girls
  • Trunks and legs lengthen; heads become more proportional
  • Baby fat drops
• Brain Development in Early Childhood

  • Brain growth slows
  • Brain has reached 95% of adult volume by age 6
  • Lateralization occurs, with left and right halves of the cerebral cortex executing different functional specializations
• Handedness


  • ~90% right-handed
  • ~10% left-handed
  • Preference for hand develops by 20 months, but may be seen in developing fetus
  • By 5, 90% show preference for hand
  • Jointly influenced by nature and nurture
• Gross Motor Skills in Early Childhood

  • Balance improves
  • Simple run-and-jump movements at age 3
  • Child becomes more adventurous at age 4
  • Child is self-assured and often takes hair-raising risks at age 5
  • Upper- and lower-body skills combine into more refined actions by age 5
  • Greater speed and endurance
• Fine Motor Skills in Early Childhood

  • Self-help skills like dressing and feeding
  • Drawing and writing skills develop from scribble to first representational forms to more realistic drawings
• Piaget's Preoperational Stage


  • 2 to 7 years
  • Children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings
  • Dominated by egocentrism and magical beliefs
  • Preoperational because the child does not yet perform reversible mental operations
• Symbolic Thought


  Preschoolers gain the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present
• Limitations of Preoperational Thought

  • Egocentrism
  • Animism
  • Centration
  • Irreversibility
  • Inability to conserve
  • Lack of hierarchical classification
• Egocentrism


  • Inability to distinguish between one's own perspective and someone else's perspective
  • Collective monologue: 2 or more children who appear to be having conversations but in fact are producing individual monologues
• Animism


  Belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action
• Centration


  Focusing on one aspect of a situation, neglecting other important features
• Irreversibility


  Failure to mentally reverse the operations that led to the change in attribute
• Conservation


  • The awareness that altering an object's appearance does not change its basic properties
  • Preschoolers have not yet developed this concept, as their understanding is centered and perception-bound
• Types of conservation


  • Number
  • Matter
  • Length
• Lack of Hierarchical Classification
• Red Rose vs. Rose
• Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory


  Children think and understand primarily through social interaction
• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

  • A range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to do alone but that can be accomplished with the help of others
  • Lower limit can be achieved by child working independently
  • Upper limit can be achieved by child with adult guidance
  • Adults and more skilled peers can assist with development through dialogue
• Scaffolding


  1. Changing the level of support

  2. A more skilled person adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child's current performance
• Vocabulary and Grammar


  • By age 6, 10,000 words
  • Fast-mapping: Connecting a new word with an underlying concept after only a brief encounter
  • From simple sentences to complex grammar
  • Overgeneralization: overextend the rules to words that are exceptions
• Pragmatics


  • Preschoolers are learning how to use appropriate communication tools effectively
  • By age 4 children know culturally accepted ways of adjusting speech to fit age, sex, and social status role of persons
• Freud's Psychosexual Theory


  • 3 to 6 years: Phallic Stage
  • Child's pleasure focuses on the genitals
  • Oedipus Complex → Identification with parents
• Erikson's Psychosocial Development


  • During early childhood, children must discover who they are
  • Children show eagerness to try new tasks
  • Children use their perceptual, motor, cognitive, and language skills to make things happen
• Initiative vs. Guilt


  • If freedom and opportunity to initiate motor play happen → Initiative
  • If made to feel that their motor skill is bad, their questions are a nuisance, that their play is silly → Guilt
• Self-Conscious Emotions


  • Self-conscious emotions become more common
  • Influenced by parents' response to children's behavior
  • Gender differences for shame: Girls showed more shame than boys
• Emotion Language and Understanding of Emotion

  • Children increase the number of terms they use to describe emotions (emotion language)
  • They also are learning about the causes and consequences of feelings
  • Children begin to understand that the same event can elicit different feelings in different people
• Emotional Self-Regulation


  • Strategies we use to adjust our emotional state to a comfortable level of intensity so we can accomplish our goals
  • The ability to modulate one's emotion is an important skill that benefit children in their relationship with peers
• Foundations of Self-Concept


  • "I am Yumi."
  • "I got this new red T-shirt."
  • "I'm 4 years old."
  • "I can brush my teeth."
  • "I made this big, big tower."
  • "I am happy when I play with my friends."
  • "I don't like being with grown-ups."
  • "I am helpful."
  • "I'm shy."
• Peer Relations


  • Peers provide young children with learning experiences they can get in no other way
  • Good peer relations are necessary for normal socioemotional development
  • Preference for same-sex playmates increases in early childhood
• Types of Play


  • Unoccupied play
  • Solitary play
  • Onlooker play
  • Parallel play
  • Associative play
  • Cooperative play
• Unoccupied Play


  • Not play as it is commonly understood
  • The child may stand in one spot or perform random movements that do not seem to have a goal