5: Early Childhood

Question 1

first phase of childhood, from age 3 through kindergarten (about age 6) - initiative vs. guilt

Answer 1

early childhood

Question 2

second phase of childhood, from roughly age 7-12 - industry vs. inferiority

Answer 2

middle childhood

Question 3

Erikson term for early childhood psychosocial task of exuberantly testing skills and expressing bodies/minds

Answer 3

initiative

Question 4

Erikson term for middle childhood psychosocial task of bending to adult reality and learning to work for what we want

Answer 4

industry

Question 5

physical abilities that involves large muscle movements, such as running and jumping (boys are generally superior)

Answer 5

gross motor skills

Question 6

physical abilities that involve small, coordinated movements, such as drawing and writing one’s name (girls are generally superior)

Answer 6

fine motor skills

Question 7

inability to step back from one’s immediate perceptions and think conceptually - age 2-7 in Piaget’s theory

Answer 7

preoperational thinking

Question 8

emerging ability to reason about the world in logical, adult ways - age 8-11 in Piaget’s theory

Answer 8

concrete operational thinking

Question 9

changing the shape of substances to see whether children can go beyond their visual appearance to understand that the amount remains the same

Answer 9

conservation tasks

Question 10

knowledge that a specific change in the way a given substance looks can be reversed (concrete operational thinking)

Answer 10

reversibility

Question 11

preoperational child’s tendency to fix on the most visually striking feature of a substance and not take into account other dimension

Answer 11

centering

Question 12

concrete operational child’s ability to look at several dimensions of an object or substance

Answer 12

decentering

Question 13

understanding that a general category can encompass several subordinate elements (ex. “chocolate” / “candy”)

Answer 13

class inclusion

Question 14

ability to grasp that a person’s core self stays the same despite changes in appearance (costumes, masks) - preoperational children lack

Answer 14

identity constancy

Question 15

preoperational child’s belief that inanimate objects are alive

Answer 15

animism

Question 16

preoperational child’s belief that human beings make everything in nature

Answer 16

artificialism

Question 17

preoperational child’s inability to understand that other people have different points of view from their own

Answer 17

egocentrism

Question 18

Lev Vygotsky’s term for the gap between children’s ability to solve a problem totally on their own and their potential knowledge if taught by a more capable person

Answer 18

zone of proximal development (ZPD)

Question 19

process of teaching new skills by entering a child’s ZPD and tailoring efforts to the child’s competence level

Answer 19

scaffolding

Question 20

the way human beings learn to regulate their behavior and master cognitive challenges through silently repeating information or talking to themselves (Vygotsky)

Answer 20

inner speech

Question 21

sound units that convey meaning in a given language (ca, ba, da, fa)

Answer 21

phonemes

Question 22

smallest units of meaning in a particular language (“boys” = “boy” and “-s”)

Answer 22

morphemes

Question 23

child’s average number of morphemes per sentence

Answer 23

mean length of utterance (MLU)

Question 24

system of grammatical rules in a particular language

Answer 24

syntax

Question 25

system of meaning in a language (what words stand for)

Answer 25

semantics

Question 26

error in early language development in which young children apply rules for plurals and past tenses to exceptions (runned, mouses, feets)

Answer 26

overregularization

Question 27

error in early language development in which young children apply verbal labels too broadly (calling all four-legged creatures “doggies”)

Answer 27

overextension

Question 28

error in early language development in which young children apply verbal labels too narrowly (thinks only their dad can be called “Dad”)

Answer 28

underextension

Question 29

recollection of events and experiences that make up one’s life history

Answer 29

autobiographical memories

Question 30

child who is removed from a traumatic situation denies remembering anything about it - failure of autobiographical memory

Answer 30

repression

Question 31

children’s first cognitive understanding that other people have different beliefs and perspectives from their own (about age 4)

Answer 31

theory of mind

Question 32

conditions characterized by social deficits, repetitive behaviors/rituals, hypersensitivity, fixation on inanimate objects - difficulties with theory of mind

Answer 32

autism spectrum disorders (ASDs)

Question 33

running and chasing play that exercises children’s physical skills

Answer 33

exercise play

Question 34

play that involves shoving, wrestling and hitting in which no actual harm is intended - characteristic of boys

Answer 34

rough-and-tumble play

Question 35

pretend play in which a child makes up a scene, often with a toy or prop

Answer 35

fantasy play

Question 36

fantasy play in which children work together to develop and act out scenes

Answer 36

collaborative pretend play

Question 37

play in which boys and girls associate only with members of their own gender - typical of childhood

Answer 37

gender-segregated play

Question 38

once children learn their own gender, they model others of their sex

Answer 38

gender schema play