Chapter 7: Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Question 1

What age is early childhood?

Answer 1

2-6 years

Question 2

Three areas of motor development in early childhood

Answer 2

Gross motor skills, fine motor skills, brain development

Question 3

Gross motor skills

Answer 3

• Increase in physical strength
• Learning new motor skills
• More proximodistal development
• Not learning gross motor movements, but increasing efficiency and combining movements (ex. climbing)

Question 4

Fine motor skills

Answer 4

Interaction between cognitive and motor domains (ex. writing and gripping development)

Question 5

Brain development in early childhood

Answer 5

• Period of rapid brain growth
• Myelination
• Demonstration of plasticity

Question 6

Children sleep about __% less than infants and toddlers

Answer 6

20

Question 7

Problems with sleep

Answer 7

• Trouble developing a sleep schedule
• Nightmares and night terrors

Question 8

Piaget: characteristics of ____ ____

Answer 8

preoperational reasoning

Question 9

Preoperational reasoning

Answer 9

• Trying to connect with things
• Mental representation of what an object is
• Egocentrism
• Animism
• Centration
• Irreversibility

Question 10

Egocentrism

Answer 10

Children have a hard time taking in another’s point of view. Children being to realize that other people have different thoughts and observations. (ex. the three mountain task)

Question 11

Three mountain task

Answer 11

Child describes what they [and the adult] see on their side of the mountain, not realizing that the adult doesn’t see what they see.

Question 12

Animism

Answer 12

Inanimate objects have feelings and intentions

Question 13

Centration

Answer 13

The appearance-reality distinction, hyperfocusing one thing

Question 14

Example of centration

Answer 14

Calling a person with a bear mask on a bear, not a person

Question 15

Irreversibility and conservation

Answer 15

Once and object changes form, it can never go back (ex. taking the cap off a pen destroys it).

Question 16

Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective

Answer 16

Emphasis on culture on development, including scaffolding and zone of proximal development

Question 17

Scaffolding

Answer 17

Activities to help the child learn what is on their ZPD

Question 18

Zone of proximal development

Answer 18

Skills that are close to the ones that have already been mastered. Lower than the zone is current understanding, above it is out of reach.

Question 19

Characteristics of effective scaffolding

Answer 19

Demonstrating how to do something, finding most efficient way changes with age

Question 20

Private speech

Answer 20

Self-talk that turns into inner speech and aids in self-regulation.

Question 21

Four key parts of information processing in early childhood

Answer 21

Attention, working memory and executive function, memory, theory of mind

Question 22

Changes to attention in early childhood

Answer 22

Improvements in sustained attention, but still have difficulty with selective attention.

Question 23

Changes to working memory and executive function in early childhood

Answer 23

Improvements in holding information in working memory as we think through the things we’re learning, improvements in creating and carrying out a plan.

Question 24

Changes to memory in early childhood

Answer 24

• Autobiographical memory
  - Important or unique events are more easily recalled
• Long-term descriptions of things

Question 25

Components of theory of mind

Answer 25

People have different mindsets and you recognize this, false belief, metacognition

Question 26

Example of theory of mind

Answer 26

Water bottle filled with orange juice
- No theory of mind: you think everyone thinks there’s orange juice in the WATER bottle
- Theory of mind: you realize everyone assumes there’s water in the water bottle

Question 27

False belief

Answer 27

Wrongly assuming something, then saying you think other people will assume what you just learned (ex. smarties and pencil)

Question 28

Metacognition

Answer 28

Thinking about our thinking, about other people’s thinking

Question 29

Why are cognitive abilities are necessary for theory of mind?

Answer 29

Object permanence, conception of self, mental representations, hold memories

Question 30

Vocabulary development in early childhoood

Answer 30

Rapid vocabulary acquisition, fast mapping, logical extension, mutual exclusivity assumption

Question 31

Logical extension

Answer 31

Figuring out what a word means (ex. knowing a ball is big, you can call a large square “big”)

Question 32

Early grammar often leads to ___ ____

Answer 32

Overregulation errors - trying to fit everything into the grammar rule they learned, need to learn the boundaries of the rule

Question 33

Characteristics of bilingual language learning

Answer 33

Slower growth rates in each individual language, but have a combined vocab that is equal.