3. Early Childhood: Physical and Cognitive Development Flashcards
when is early childhood?
preschool years (2-5)
Describe the changes in development in early childhood
there are changes in all domains of development rapidly and clearly observable
what is the most observable domain of physical development in early childhood?
fine motor skills
what is the most observable domain of cognitive development in early childhood?
acquisition of language
what is the most observable domain of psychosocial development?
increasing social interactions, importance of place
what sort of physical activities can children in early childhood begin to do?
physical activities that require more strength, balance and coordination
what changes are there in the reason for movement from infancy to early childhood?
shift from moving for the joy of it to using movement as a means to an end
how quick is the development of fine motor skills?
very rapid
how tall is a child around 2 years old?
85cm which is around half of their adult height
how much weight and height does a child between 2 and 5 gain in a year?
2-3 kg and 6cm per year
what is essential for learning gross motor skills?
big body muscles to gain strength and coordination and balance
what does proximal mean?
close
what does distal mean?
far away
what are the gross motor and locomotor skills developed at the age of 3?
runs forward easily and is able to climb without help
what are the motor coordination skills developed at 3 years?
kicks ball forward, can jump about 30 cms
what are the fine and manual dexterity skills developed at 3 years old?
able to stack blocks and pick up marbles and can hold pencils and make marks
what are the gross motor and locomotor skills developed at 4 years?
stops, starts and turns while running, hops short distances
what are the motor coordination skills developed at 4 years?
Pedals and steers a bike, jumps about 6 cm in air, can climb ladder
what are the fine motor and manual dexterity skills developed at 4 years?
draws with pencil, cuts paper with scissors and strings beads
what are the gross motor and locomotor skills developed at 5 years?
descends stairs without help, hops on one food for up to 5 meters, walks on tiptoe
what are the motor coordination skills developed at 5 years?
catches ball, rocks a swing, rides a bike well
what are the fine motor skills and manual dexterity skills developed at 5 years?
copies simple shapes with a pencil, threads a needles, ties simple knots
why is drawing an exercised used to examine children’s development?
it allows them to express what they are thinking and how they are thinking about it. The use of colours makes it easier to get into their world. it is also an extremely important prerequisite for writing. this is often used in therapy
what is the sensorimotor stage?
the infant constructs an understanding of the world by coordinating summary experiences with physical actions. AN infant progresses from reflexive, instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought towards the end of the stage
what is the preoperational stage?
the child begins to represent the world with words and images. These words and images reflect increased symbolic thinking and go beyond the connection of sensory information and physical action
what is the concrete operational stage?
the child can now reason logically about concrete events and classify objects into different sets
what is the formal operational stage?
the adolescent reasons in more abstract, idealistic and logical ways
what is the age range for preoperational stage?
2-7 years
what is the fundamental feature of the preoperational stage?
symbolic representation supersede sensorimotor activities. able to understand consistences as well as object permanence and begin to internalise functional relationships (e.g. if you run faster you get there sooner)
what are the main limitations of preoperational thinking?
conservation, centration, irreversibility of thought, static thought
what is conservation?
understanding that essential property of things (e.g. quantity, number, volume) does not change despite superficial changes in appearance (e.g. more pieces of pizza means more pizza thus less hungry)
what are some further limitations of preoperational thinking i.e. skills?
number skills, classification, animism, magical thinking
what is the number skill limitation in preoperational thinking?
questions concerning understanding of numerical concepts
what is the classification limitation in preoperational thinking?
limited to basic level categories and incapable of taxonomic categorisation
what is taxonomic categorisation?
defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups.
what is the animism limitation of preoperational thinking?
tendency to apply attributes of living things to inanimate objects (e.g. trips over rug and then says “the rug tripped me” - thinks the rug is alive)
what is the limitation of magical thinking in preoperational thinking?
attribute inexplicable events to magic or fantasy figures
what indicated that children developed a sound understanding of the world earlier than Piaget thought?
simplified tasks that are less demanding (e.g. memory and verbal skills)
what is involved in language development?
language, phoneme, morpheme, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, prosody
what is language?
a symbolic system in which a finite number of signals can be combined according to rules to produce an infinite number of messages
what is a phoneme
a basic sound unit in language
what is a morpheme
the basic meaning unit in a word
what is syntax?
rules combining words to form meaningful sentences
what are semantics?
the aspect of language certering on meanings
what are pragmatics?
rules specifying how language should be used in different social contexts
what is a prosody?
the sound of speech, including intonation, stress, rhythm and timing
what are the three important pre-language skills?
production of speech-like noise. Reception and pseudo-conversations
what is reception
listening to others’ spech
what guides language acquisition?
the motivation to communicate
what is involved in semantic development
learning word meanings
what is expressive language?
words, sigs and gestures
what is receptive language?
understanding what is communicated
what is naming explosion in early childhood?
the rapid expansion of vocabulary between 14 and 24 months
what commonly declines as vocabulary develops with regard to meaning?
the overextensions and underextensions of meanings
How is the process of a child’s semantic production described?
it is an active constructive process
What is the main contributor to the acquisition of vocabulary and word meaning?
social conversations
what are the elements to mastering rules of language?
holophrastic stage, two-word sentences and telegraphic speech, overregulation, and complete sentences
what is holophrastic stage?
one word to convey the meaning of a sentence
what are two-word sentences and telegraphic speech?
early sentences that consist primarily of content words and omit all less meaningful parts of speech
what is overregulation in the mastering of the rules of language?
the overapplication of regular grammatical patterns to words that require irregular modification
what are the two fundamental theories of language?
nativist, neurocognitive approach and the learning and socio-cultural approaches
who was the main influence of the nativist, neurocognitive approach?
Noam Chomsky
what does the nativist, neurocognitive approach provide about language development?
language skills are hard-wired at birth through innate Language Acquisition Device.
what is the level of support for the nativist, neurocognitive approach to language development?
Logically plausible and widely favourable but unproven hypothesis
what side of the nature-nurture debate is the learning and socio-cultural approach to language development?
nurture
who were the main influences of the learning and socio-cultural approach to language development?
Skinner, Bruner, Vygotsky
what did the learning and socio-cultural approach provide about language development?
language is a social tool and social construction created for social reasons.
What is the level of support for the learning and socio-cultural approach to language development?
empirically better supported
