What is the age span of early childhood?
2-6 years old
When does the preoperational period in Piaget's theory of development begin?
preschool years
True/False: Infancy is at a slower pace in terms of physical growth than Early childhood
False
Growth in early childhood begins at a ______ pace than in infancy
slower
During the years 2 to 6, children grow about _____ inches and continue to gain weight at the rate of about _____ a year
12 inches; 5 lbs
What part of the brain impacts planing and organizing thought and actions?
frontal lobe
What happens in the frontal lobe of the brain during early childhood?
rapid growth
What happens physically during early childhood?
children tend to slim down, trunks lengthen and body fat declines
What are the differences between a girl's body and a boy's body during early childhood?
girls tend to be short and less heavy but has more fatty tissue but boys have more muscular tissue
What is a neural pathway?
A neural pathway connects one part of the nervous system with another and usually consists of bundles of elongated, myelin-insulated neurons, known collectively as white matter.
How do young children collect take in information from the environment?
through their five sense
What is the prefrontal cortex?
patterns in the specific part of the frontal lobe that allow young children to organize their attention and action
What is myelin?
layer of fat cells that insulate the axons
What is myelination?
process where the presence of myelin speeds up the rate that information travels throughout the nervous system
What are the influences of myelination to our motor and brain development?
influences visible skills such as hand-eye coordination and child's ability to focus attention
What is lateralization?
important differences between the two halves of the brain that are linked to specific functions such as right-handedness/left-handedness
What are gross motor skills?
skills using large muscle such as running, dancing etc
What are fine motor skills?
skills using small muscles of the hands an finer such as picking objects (pincer grip)
What are the major forces that interact to influence development outcomes?
genetic elements, nutrition, disease, psychological issues and socioeconomic status
While ______ direct the formation of the organs of the nervous system, ________ ultimately determine the extent of children's brain development
genes, experience
What is the best-known theory relating to children's thinking?
cognitive development
What is the preoperational period?
implies children in this stage are unable to perform tasks or "operations" older children can do such as taking two different bits of information at the same time
What is the main feat during the preoperational period that children acquire that amazes the scholars?
the basics of language development
What do children do in order to learn their environment?
play
To Piaget, what does 'preoperational' mean for children?
children are unable to take two things in consideration at the same time (Like a flower is both a tulip and red); cannot return to the beginning of a thought sequence and who cannot believe that properties of substance remain the same if even changed in s
For Piaget, what is children's great accomplishment during the preoperational period?
the growing ability to represent things and themselves
what is representation?
child's application of abstract thinking during preoperational period
What is animisn?
when children consider inanimate objects to possess human thought, feelings and actions
What is deferred imitation?
when children imitate an action or an event that was previously witnessed
What is symbolic play?
children's mental representation of an object or event and reenactment of it in their play
What is egocentrism?
inability to distinguish between one's own perspective and someone else's perspective.
What is centration?
focusing or centering of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others.
What is classification?
ability to group objects with some similarities within a larger category
What is lack of conservation?
the understanding that an object remains certain properties no matter how its shaped
What is lack of reversibility?
inability to mentally reverse back to the original question or premise
What is assimilation?
when new experiences fit into existing schemes
What is accomodation?
when schemes have to be modifired as a consequence of new experiences
___________ allows for dealing with new data or experiences (assimilation/accomodation)
accomodation
What is equilibrium?
balance between assimilation and accommodation
what is disequilibrium?
more accommodation than assimilation
What is equillibration?
inadequate schemes are replaces with more advanced and mature schemes
What are the periods of Piaget's cognitive development?
sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operation and formal operational
What did Vygotsky stress on about early childhood?
the role of social interactions and learning context
What is the active process of construction?
the belief that children create, organize and transform knowledge through active engagement in the environment
What is social contructivism?
belief that children construct knowledge through social interactions
what was one of the social influences that Vygotsky stressed as important to children's learning?
instruction relationship (parent-child, teacher-child)
What is the Zone of Proximal development?
refers to the range of ability that a child has when faced with a task; includes what a child can do alone and what a child can do with guidance from adults or older children
what is scaffolding?
systematic use of support to assist a child in their performance on a given task
What is information-processing theory?
attempts to explain the ways in which children's thinking develops
What is the underlying belief of the information-processing theory?
that children develop strategies to notice and process information
What is attention?
When sensory information receives additional cognitive processing
What is selective attention?
ability to focus on specific activities or stimuli
What is habituation?
lessening of the reaction to a new stimulus
What does information-processing theorists assumes about the mind?
it is like computers with limited space with which to operate efficiently
What is rehearsal?
repeating target information
What does rehearsing information do?
Allows children to hold on to information for as long as possible increasing the possibility of storing the information in long-term memory
What is organization?
group items in chunk and reduce the number of things they are trying to remember
What is retrieval?
obtaining information from memory
What are two forms of retrieval?
recognition and recall
What is the theory of mind?
Children's understanding of their own thoughts and mental processes develops throughout childhood
What age do children begin to understand what it means to desire something?
2 or 3
Realizing that the success or failure to obtain something results in related feelings of happiness, sadness, frustration and so on is a feature of...
theory of mind
In terms of theory of min, what is key development at ages 4-5?
recognizing false beliefs
When does early education start?
infants through 8 years old
Early childhood education tends to reflect a rich mixture of ideas from educational ___________ and educational and developmental __________
philosophy, psychology
What is the constructivist approach?
an approach to learning influenced by Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories where children are encouraged to be active participants in constructing knowledge and learn by interacting with their environment.
What does Piaget's theory stress about children's interactions?
Piaget's theory stresses children's active interactions with their environment, not the rote memorization of facts; He believes that children should create their own meaning to things from their own experiences
Who was an Italian education who believed that developing children pass through different physical and mental growth phases that alternate with periods of transition
Maria montessori
What are sensitive periods?
Montessori's term of children's development marked by sensitivity/readiness to learn
What did Head Start help disadvantage children in?
(i) Preschool education
(ii) Health screening
(iii) Mental health services
(iv) Nutrition education
(v) Social services
(vi) Parental involvement
At wha age do children know the rules of language? (pragmatics, semantics, syntax and phonology)
age 4 or 5
What is the rule of phonology?
how to put sounds together to form words
What is the rule of syntax?
determine sentence structure and word order
What is the rule of semantics?
how to interpret the meaning of the words
What is the rule of pragmatics?
how language is used in social context, how people converse
What is receptive language?
ability of the child to understand written and spoken language
What is expressive language?
language children uses to express their ideas and needs
Children are able to indicate that they understand words __________ (before/after) they are able to articulate them themselves
before
What are overextensions?
using a word in too broad a manner, often speaking in overgeneralizations (such as calling a human a dog because its 4-legged) generalizations because of their similarities
What are overregularization?
children tend to extend regular grammatical rules to irregular words (repeatedED = repeated)
What is self-description?
most children tend to focus on physical characteristics (hair color, eyes, freckles)
What are self-judgements?
when children use language to tell us what they think of themselves; Reflects their changing cognitive and social maturity
What is representational thinking?
As they compare their performances with those of others, more realistic evaluations begin to appear
Erik Erikson categorized early childhood as the stage when children grapple with .. __________ vs ________
initiative vs guilt
Opinions of others become increasingly important as children strive to establish their self-understanding is a part of _______'s theory of early childhood
Erikson's initiative vs guilt
Who created the 4 types of parenting styles? (authoritarian, permissive..etc)
Baumrind
What is sibling underworld?
subsystems formed by siblings that are the basis for the formation of powerful coalitions
Young children are more affected during divorce because...
they think are responsible for it (egocentrism)
What is day care?
typically refers to child care outside of home
What are the benefits of day care?
aids motor development, increases in height and weight, contract infections thereby strengthening their immune system at a young age rather than later
Children who attend day-care programs are ______ (less/more) independent of their mothers, but their attachment to their mothers ____ (is/isn't) threatened
more, isn't
Enrollment in day-care during early childhood _____ aid or impede positive relationship with peers
does NOT
What is sex?
biological maleness or femaleness
What is gender?
psychosocial aspects of maleness and femaleness
what is gender identity?
conviction about being male or female
what is gender stereotypes?
rigid beliefs about the characteristics associated with being male or female
what are gender roles?
culturally defined expectations about how females and males should act
What are the four theories of gender development?
biological, social learning theory, cognitive, gender schema
What is the biological theory of gender development?
XX and XY development in sex cells
What is the social learning theory of gender development?
social interactions such as with parents re-inforcing gender-role behaviours
What is the cognitive theory of gender development?
perspective assumptions that children first acquire their sense of gender identity and then display and identify their appropriate behaviours
What is the gender schema theory of gender development?
proposes that children develop a scheme for gender
What is a schema?
mental blueprint for organizing information
When do children begin to differentiate their sex from others?
age 2 to 3
When do children undergo gender constancy?
ages 4 or 5
What is sex cleavage?
youngster of the same sex tend to play and do things together
what helps come together to intensify what a boy thinks is masculine and what a girl think is feminine?
imitation, reinforcement and cognitive development
What is congenital adrenal hyperplasia?
large amounts of androgen inborn
What is play?
activity people engage in because they enjoy for its own sake
what is one thing that children do effortlessly and without training?
play
what is unoccupied play?
where children are seen as observers and not actually engaged in any activity
what is solitary play?
where children play by themselves and are not involved with others
what is onlooker play?
where children watch others and do not become active themselves, but may call out suggestions or questions
what is parallel play?
where children play beside but not with other children
What is associative play?
where children play with others but seem more interested in the social interactions than the activity itself
what is cooperative play?
where children play with others and are active participants in the goal of the activity
Through ______, children learn about the objects in their world, what these objects do, what they are made and how they work
play
What does imaginary scenarios allow children to do?
allow children to pretend to do things that they wouldn't be able to do in reality as determined by their developmental abiliites
Play helps social development because
the involvement of others demands a give-and-take that teaches early childhood youngsters the basics of forming relationships
In _____, children avoid the right-or-wrong, life-or-death feelings that accompany interactions with adults
play
In _____, children can be creative without worrying about failure and work out their emotional tensions through play
play
What are the four categories of play materials?
Social and fantasy, exploration and mastery, music, art and movement, gross motor play
Four stages of children's art?
placement, shape, design or pictorial
Play category: Encourage the use of imagination and the mental representation of objects and evens, Deeper understanding of people and the rules we live by, Often used in dramatic play
social and fantasy
Play category: Puzzles, pattern-making games, Sand, water and string increase children's knowledge about the physical world, Encouraging them to device ways to enrich their comprehension of how things work
exploration and mastery
play category: development of artistic expression
music, art and movement
play category: playground and gym equipment, push and pull toys and sports equipment, fosters large muscle development and skills
gross motor play