WEEK 5: MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

• Night Terror


  Sudden episode of intense fear/arousal during sleep, screaming, crying, rapid breathing

  Linked to stress, fever, lack of sleep
• Sleepwalking (Somnambulism)


  Walking while partially asleep, walking/talking or engaging in routine activities
• Sleep Talking (Somniloquy)


  Speaking words while asleep, mumbling/vocalizations
• Enuresis (Bedwetting)


  Involuntary urination during sleep
• Systems of Action


  Increasingly complex combination of motor skills, permits wider or more precise range of movement and control on environment
• Handedness


  Individual’s preference for using one hand (dominant hand) because it’s more stronger, faster, dextrous
• Dental Caries


  “Tooth decay” or “cavities

  Common infectious disease that destroys hard tissues of teeth
• Preoperational Stage


  Symbolic thought expands but children cannot yet use logic

  Piaget’s second stage of cognitive development
• Irreversibility


  not realizing things can be reversed, seeing transformation as a one way street
• Operations


  Reversible mental actions allowing children to think about, operate objects mentally (thinking bout it langs) without needing physical appearance
• Symbolic Function/Play


  Child’s ability to use mental things such as words, numbers, to represent things

  Using cardboard box as spaceship pretending to travel to planets
• Pretend Play


  Play involving imaginary people and situations

  Fantasy/Dramatic/Imaginative play
• Transduction


  Tendency to mentally link particular phenomena whether there is logically causal relationship
• Animism


  Tendency to attribute life to objects

  Stuff toy feels happy or sad, child don’t know the concept of toys not having feelings
• Centration


  To focus on one aspect of a situation and neglect others

  Child might think there’s now more juice in the tall glass because it looks fuller

  E.g. child insists there are more apples because they are spread out even with same amount, just further apart
• Decenter


  Ability to mentally juggle multiple aspects of situation and understand how they relate to each other

  Child realizes that stick can be short compared to a tree but long compared to a worm
• Egocentric


  Inability to consider another person’s POV and see world from their perspective

  During 2-7 years old

  Children don’t consider sibling’s preferences, only theirs.

  E.g. the child insists that the moon follows them wherever they go
• Intuitive Thought Substage


  Children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know answers to sorts of questions (4-7 years old)

  “Why is the sky blue?”
• Conservation


  Understanding that a quantity or property of an object remains the same regardless of changes in appearance.

  E.g. : each piece of cookie is the same size as the original cookie even if divided into 2 equal pieces
• Irreversibility


  failure to understand that operation can go in 2 or more directions

  Child might believe that pouring juice from a tall glass into wide glass results in more juice because it looks fuller, sees transformation as a one way street
• Theory of Mind


  Ability to imagine what other people are thinking, predict their behavior and intentions, to speculate about their concerns and beliefs

  3-4 years old (very active in acquiring structures of language)
• Encoding


  Process by which child take in information and prepare it for long-term storage and later retrieval
• Storage


  Process by which young children retain information in their memory for future use
• Retrieval


  Process where Information is accessed or recalled from memory storage
• Sensory Memory


  Storage system that is a temporary storage of sensory information, either transferred to short-term memory or forgotten

  Visual (less than a second), Auditory (few seconds)
• Working Memory


  “Short-term memory”

  System responsible for temporarily holding information necessary for cognitive tasks such as reasoning, comprehension, learning
• Long-term Memory


  System responsible for holding amounts of information over extended time, ranging from minutes to lifetime
• Phonological Loop


  responsible for temporary storage of verbal information
• VisuoSpatial Sketchpad


  temporary storage of visual and spatial information
• Recognition


  Ability to identify previously encountered stimulus when presented again
• Recall


  Ability to retrieve information from memory without presence of external cues, involves accessing stored information and bringing it into conscious awareness
• Metamemory


  Awareness of one’s own memory processes Knowledge about memory strategies, effectiveness of different memory techniques, one’s own memory strengths/weaknesses

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• Metacognition


  Ability to think about one’s own thinking process

  Being aware of cognitive abilities, how to learn and solve problem, and monitor/controlling one’s own mental processes
• Executive Function


  Set of cognitive processes that enable individuals to engage in goal-directed behavior, problem-solving, etc.

  
  

  Ability to consciously control/regulate mental processes (attention, working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, planning, self-monitoring)
• Generic Memory


  Produces scripts of familiar routines to guide behavior, stores generalized procedures/scripts that can be applied to various situations often deeply ingrained through repetition and practice, relatively resistant to forget
• Scripts


  General outline of repeated event

  Mental representation of sequence of actions, behaviors, events that occur during particular situations

  Helps individuals anticipate what will happen next
• Episodic Memory


  Long-term memory system that stores specific events linked to particular time and place

  Involves remembering not only what happened but also when and where
• Autobiographical Memory


  Subtype of episodic memory that involves recollection of specific events from one’s own life

  Encompasses memory of personal events and important milestones, rich in detail and include sensory informations
• Social Interaction Model


  proposes children construct autobiographical memories through conversation with adults about shared events
• More Knowledgeable Others


  facilitate children’s cognitive development by providing guidance and collaborative learning