Lesson 7: Early Childhood (Physical & Cognitive Devt)

• Bodily Growth and Change

  • At age 3, children normally begin to lose their babyish roundness and take on the slender, athletic appearance of childhood
  • Muscular and skeletal growth progresses, making children stronger. Cartilage turns to bone at a faster rate than before, and bones become harder, giving the child a firmer shape and protecting the internal organs
• Sleep Patterns and Problems

  • Most U.S. children average about 11 hours of sleep at night by age 5 and give up daytime naps
  • Sleep disturbances may be caused by accidental activation of the brain's motor control system by incomplete arousal from a deep sleep, disordered breathing, or restless leg movements
  • Tend to run in the family and are often associated with separation anxiety, nasal abnormalities, and overweight
  • The majority of sleep problems are behavioral in nature and most commonly include refusing to go to bed, taking a long time to go to sleep, or frequent night waking
• Possible sleep disturbances

  • Night terrors
  • Walking and talking while asleep
  • Nightmares
  • Enuresis
• Brain Development

  • By age 3, the brain is approximately 90 percent of adult weight
  • Most rapid brain growth occurs in the frontal areas that regulate planning and goal setting, and the density of synapses in the prefrontal cortex peaks at age 4 → "exuberant connectivity" will gradually be pruned over time as a result of experience, a process that underlies the great plasticity of the human brain
  • Myelin – a fatty substance that coats the axons of nerve fibers and accelerates neural conduction
  • Corpus callosum – a thick band of nerve fibers that connects both hemispheres of the brain and allows them to communicate more rapidly and effectively with each other
• Motor Skills

  • Preschoolers make great advances in gross motor skills, such as running and jumping, which involve the large muscles
  • Motor coordination in childhood tends to be a relatively stable trait over time → basis for sports, dancing, and other activities
  • Fine motor skills, such as buttoning shirts and drawing pictures, involve eye-hand and small-muscle coordination
  • As they develop motor skills, preschoolers continually merge abilities they already have with those they are acquiring to produce more complex capabilities → systems of action
• Handedness


  • Preference for using one hand over the other → this is usually evident at age 3
  • Because the left hemisphere of the brain, which controls the right side of the body, is usually dominant, 90 percent of people favor their right side
  • While inheritance patterns appear to suggest single gene inheritance, the genes themselves have not been easy to find, and some evidence suggests handedness may actually be the result of many genes working together
• Obesity

  • In 2015 to 2016, almost 14 percent of 2- to 5-year-olds had a body mass index (BMI) at or above the 95th percentile for their age; this number was slightly higher in boys than girls
  • Excessive weight gain hinges on increases in caloric intake, changes in diet composition, declining levels of physical activity, and changes in the gut microbiome
  • Three factors are important in the prevention of obesity: Regularly eating an evening meal as a family, Getting adequate sleep, Watching less than 2 hours of television a day
  • To avoid obesity and prevent cardiac problems, young children should get only about 30 percent of their total calories from fat, and no more than one-third of fat calories should come from saturated fat
• Undernutrition

  • In developed countries such as the United States, overweight and obesity are common patterns. However, in many developing countries, a different pattern emerges.
  • Stunted – children that appear to be of normal weight but are shorter than they should be for their age and may have cognitive and physical deficiencies
  • Wasted – children that are an appropriate height for their age but are thinner than they should be
  • Undernutrition is an underlying cause in about a third of worldwide deaths for children under 5
• Food Allergies

  • Ninety percent of food allergies can be attributed to eight foods: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, soy, wheat, and shellfish
  • Changes in diet, how foods are processed, the timing of the introduction of foods, and decreased vitamin D based upon less exposure to the sun have all been suggested as contributors to the increase in allergy rates
• Oral Health

  • Two common areas of oral health of concern to parents: thumbsucking and tooth decay
  • By age 3, all the primary (baby) teeth are in place, and the permanent teeth will begin to appear at about age 6
  • Tooth decay in early childhood often stems from overconsumption of sweetened milk and juices in infancy together with a lack of regular dental care
  • Fluoride – a mineral essential for the maintenance and solidification of bones. At low levels, fluoride has been shown to reduce the incidence of dental caries or cavities
• Deaths and Accidental Injuries

  • Most deaths from injuries among preschoolers occur at home: from fires, drowning in bathtubs, suffocation, poisoning, or falls
  • Car accidents are the commonly reported cause of accidental death for children → use forward-facing car seats with a harness until they reach the top weight or height limit for their seat
  • Other common causes of death in early childhood include cancer, congenital abnormalities and chromosomal disorders, assault and homicide, heart disease, respiratory diseases (including influenza and pneumonia), and septicemia [a bacterial infection that poisons the blood leading to organ failure]
• Socioeconomic Status and Race/Ethnicity

  • The lower a family's socioeconomic status, the greater a child's risks of illness, injury, and death
  • Medicaid – a govt program that provides medical assistance to eligible low income persons and families, has been a safety net for many poor children since 1965
• Homelessness


  Results from circumstances that force people to choose between food, shelter, and other basic needs
• Exposure to Environmental Pollutants

  • Parental smoking is a preventable cause of childhood illness and death → children exposed are at increased risk of respiratory infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia, ear problems, worsened asthma, and slowed lung growth
  • Air pollution is associated with increased risks of death and of chronic respiratory disease
  • There is some evidence that low-dose pesticide exposure may affect the developing brain
  • Lead poisoning can seriously interfere with cognitive development and can lead to neurological and behavioral problems
• Piagetian Approach: The Preoperational Child


  This stage lasts from approx. ages 2 to 7, it is characterized by an expansion in the use of symbolic thought. However, children are not yet fully ready to engage in logical mental operations
• Tests of Various Kinds of Conservation

  1. Number: test if a child understands that the number of items remains the same even when their arrangement changes

  2. Length: test if a child understands that the length of an object stays the same even if its position changes

  3. Liquid: test if a child understands that the amount of liquid remains the same even when it is poured into a different shaped container

  4. Matter (mass): test if a child understands that the mass of an object remains the same even if its shape changes

  5. Weight: test if a child understands that the weight of an object stays the same even if its shape or position changes
• Theory of Mind


  • Refers to the awareness of the broad range of human mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, dreams, and so forth—and the understanding that others have their own distinctive beliefs, desires, and intentions
  • "Thinking about thinking"
• Irreversibility


  Failure to understand that an action can go in two or more directions
• Number conservation test


  Tests if a child understands that the number of items remains the same even when their arrangement changes
• Length conservation test


  Tests if a child understands that the length of an object stays the same even if its position changes
• Liquid conservation test


  Tests if a child understands that the amount of liquid remains the same even when it is poured into a different shaped container
• Matter (mass) conservation test


  Tests if a child understands that the mass of an object remains the same even if its shape changes
• Weight conservation test


  Tests if a child understands that the weight of an object stays the same even if its shape or position changes
• False Beliefs and Deception

  • The understanding that people can hold false beliefs flows from the realization that people can hold incorrect mental representations of reality
  • Deception – effort to plant a false belief in someone else's mind
• Distinguishing between Appearance and Reality

  Research showed that if children were presented with two objects, such as an eraser that looked like a chocolate bar and a real chocolate bar, and asked to hand an experimenter "the real one," they were able to select the correct item
• Distinguishing between Fantasy and Reality

  • Three-yearolds know the difference between a real dog and a dog in a dream, and between something invisible (such as air) and something imaginary
  • Magical Thinking – a way to explain events that do not seem to have obvious realistic explanations (usually because children lack knowledge about them), or simply to indulge in the pleasures of pretending—as with a belief in imaginary companion
• Individual Differences in Theory-of-Mind Development

  • The kind of talk a young child hears at home may affect the child's understanding of mental states
  • Bilingual children know that an object or idea can be represented linguistically in more than one way, and this may help them see that different people may have different perspectives
  • Theory of mind has also been positively related to reading storybooks, perhaps because parents and children often discuss characters and their desires, beliefs, or emotions
• Encoding


  Process by which information is prepared for long-term storage and later retrieval; Like putting information in a folder to be filed
• Storage


  Retention of information in memory for future use; Like putting the folder away in the filing cabinet
• Retrieval


  Process by which information is accessed or recalled from memory storage; Like when you search for the file and take it out
• Sensory memory


  Temporary storehouse for incoming sensory information
• Working memory


  A short-term storehouse for information a person is actively working on, trying to understand, remember, or think about
• Long-term memory


  A storehouse of virtually unlimited capacity that hold information for long periods of time
• Working memory location

  Partly in the prefrontal cortex
• Functions controlled by the central executive


  n Baddeley’s model, element of working memory that controls the processing of information.; the Found in a variety of regions in the frontal lobes and in some posterior, primarily parietal, areas
• Functions controlled by the phonological loop


  Found in the left hemisphere in the inferior parietal areas and anterior temporal frontal areas, including Broca's area, the premotor cortex, and the sensory motor association cortex
• Functions controlled by the visuospatial sketchpad


  Found in the right hemisphere in the occipital and inferior frontal areas
• Growth of working memory

  Permits the development of executive function, the conscious control of thoughts, emotions, and actions to accomplish goals or to solve problems
• Recognition


  Ability to identify something encountered before
• Recall


  Ability to reproduce knowledge from memory