Childhood Development

• This chapter orients us to the field of child development, illustrating the wide array of topics it covers and the range of ages it examines, from the moment of conception through the end of adolescence
• We survey the foundations of the field and examine the key issues and questions that underlie child development
• We consider where the child development field is likely to go in the future
• Early Childhood


  • Physical, cognitive, and language changes that typically occur during this growth stage
• Body Growth and Change


  1. Height and weight growth

  2. Growth patterns vary individually

  3. Growth hormone deficiency
• Why are some children unusually short?

  • Congenital factors (genetic or prenatal problems)
  • Growth hormone deficiency
  • Physical problem that develops in childhood
  • Maternal smoking during pregnancy
  • Emotional difficulty
• The Brain


  • Brain continues to grow in early childhood, but not as rapidly as in infancy
  • Myelination increases the speed and efficiency of information traveling through the nervous system
• Brain Changes During This Stage

  1. At age 3 - Brain is three-quarters of its adult size

  2. At age 6 - Brain has reached about 95 percent of its adult size

  3. Between age 3 to 15 - Brain undergoes dramatic anatomical changes

  4. Between age 3 to 6 - Brain's rapid growth takes place in the frontal lobe areas involved in planning, organizing, and maintaining attention
• Gross Motor Skills


  1. At age 3 - Simple movements like hopping, jumping, and running

  2. At age 4 - More adventurous movements

  3. At age 5 - Even more adventurous, enjoy races
• Children with higher motor proficiency have higher levels of physical activity in adolescence
• Fine Motor Skills


  1. At age 3 - Clumsy at picking up tiny objects, difficulty positioning objects

  2. At age 4 - Fine motor coordination has improved substantially

  3. At age 5 - Fine motor coordination has improved further, hand-eye coordination is better
• Getting a good night's sleep is important for children's development
• Sleep problems children can experience

  • Narcolepsy
  • Insomnia
  • Nightmares
• Sleep problems in early childhood

  Associated with subsequent attention problems that in some cases persisted into early adolescence
• Preschool children who slept 7 hours per day or less

  Had a worse school readiness profile (including language/cognitive deficits and emotional immaturity)
• Preschool children who used electronic devices 3 or more hours per day


  Had shortened sleep durations
• Preschool children with longer sleep duration

  More likely to have better peer acceptance, social skills, and receptive vocabulary
• Short sleep duration in children

  Linked with being overweight
• Additional hour of daily screen time in 2-5 year olds


  Associated with decrease in sleep time, less likelihood of sleeping 10 hours or more per night, and later bedtime
• 1. year-old children with insomnia


  Characterized by hostile-aggressive and hyperactive-distractible problems
• To improve children's sleep

  Make sure bedroom is cool, dark, and comfortable; maintain consistent bedtimes and wake times; build positive family relationships; help child slow down before bedtime
• Eating habits and exercise/physical activity are important aspects of development during early childhood
• Being overweight has become a serious health problem in early childhood
• Young children's eating behavior

  Strongly influenced by their caregivers' behavior; improves when caregivers eat with children on a predictable schedule, model choosing nutritious food, make mealtimes pleasant, and use certain feeding styles
• Forceful and restrictive caregiver behaviors are not recommended
• Routine physical activity


  Should be a daily occurrence for young children
• Expert panels recommend young children get 15 or more minutes of physical activity per hour over a 12-hour period, or about 3 hours per day total
• Children's safety is influenced by their own skills/behaviors, family/home, school/peers, and community
• Devastating effects on the health of young children occur in countries where poverty rates are high
• Characteristics that enhance young children's safety


  • In each context of a child's life, steps can be taken to create conditions that improve the child's safety and reduce the likelihood of injury
• The second Piagetian stage lasts from 2 to 7 years of age
• Preoperational stage


  Children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings; form stable concepts and begin to reason; cognitive world is dominated by egocentrism and magical beliefs
• Preoperational thought


  The beginning of the ability to reconstruct in thought what has been established in behavior
• Symbolic Function Substage


  Young child gains ability to mentally represent an object that is not present; use scribble designs, language, and pretend play; limited by egocentrism and animism
• Intuitive Thought Substage


  Children begin to use primitive reasoning and ask many "why" questions; know something without using rational thinking
• Centration


  Centering of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others
• Conservation


  Awareness that altering an object's or substance's appearance does not change its basic properties
• Failing Piaget's conservation-of-liquid task is a sign that children are at the preoperational stage
• Vygotsky's theory


  Children actively construct their knowledge and understanding through social interaction; their cognitive development depends on the tools provided by society
• Piaget's Conservation Task


  • Failing the conservation-of-liquid task is a sign that children are at the preoperational stage of cognitive development
  • Failure demonstrates centration and inability to mentally reverse actions