DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY LEC 4 - EARLY CHILDHOOD Flashcards
What’s the psychical developments in brain development for early childhood?
Between 12-24 months - myelinisiation continutes, especially in cortex and between cortex and brain stem
Myelination is responsible for increase in brain size and weight
At 20 months : cortex reaches its maximum up thickness
At 24 months : axons reach adult length and density distrubtion and relative size of brain structures are adult like 70% of adult weight
Beyond 24 months - brain development slows
Hats the physical development in early childhood?
Physical development
• 6-12 mo: Crawling & shuffling on buttocks.
• By 12 mo: Can pull self upright; take first steps
• By 18 mo: Most children can walk independently
What did Dennis do?
Dennis (1950s-60s)
Studied children raised in cribs in Iranian orphanage
• Children <2yrs did not move. 2yr olds shuffled on their backs
• Only 15% could walk at ages 3 &4
What did Dennis conclude?
Oppurtinut for movement and stimulating environment promote development of walking
Explain motor development for early childhood?
Major advancements in control of fine motor skills are made in
early childhood
• Voluntary reaching starts ~3 mo but is smooth and effortless
by ~11 months
• ~12 mo: able to use pincer grasp; major step-change advance
• ~24 mo: Child able to feed self
• ~30 mo: Child able to dress/undress self
What’s the language development of early childhood?
From ~12 mo
Child produces first words (incl. ‘holophrases’ e.g. ‘milk’).
Not necessarily real words, e.g. ‘oof’=animal (in Smith et al, 2005)
From ~18 mo
‘Telegraphic speech’ appears, e.g. ‘Mommy sit’
Rapid increase in vocabulary: 20 word vocabulary increases to
200 words at 21 months
Between ~24-27 mo
Child produces 3 & 4 word utterances. Errors reveal use of
grammatical rules. e.g. ‘I runned fast’: overregularisation of ‘-ed’
Around 3 yrs
Rapid increase in use of grammatical rules (e.g. negative)
Pronunciation improves greatly
Who did the behaviourist theory?
Skinner
Who did the nativist therory?
Chomsky
Who did the sociocultural theory?
Bruner
Describe the behaviourist theory?
Skinner proposed language is learnt through operant conditioning
Children imitate adult utterances and adults selectively reinforce them
Like smililimg them the child says doggie when dog is present
We learn whole sentences through imitations and reinforcement
What’s the arguments for behaviourist theory?
For
Adults do reinforce children speech by saying please and I’ll give u a cookie
Explains why children learn local language and dialect
Limitations
- overreguarisation of grammatical rules like my teacher hooded the baby rabbits
- adults don’t use such words so suggest children develop grammatical rules
Explain the nativist theory?
Chomsky proposed human haves innate language learning system
Argued grammar is too complex to be learnt by cognitively immature
child, so perhaps humans have innate knowledge of grammar
•Suggests humans have a “Language Acquisition Device” (LAD)
•LAD contains universal rules of grammar found in all languages (e.g.
tenses)
•Innate knowledge enables child to interpret the specific grammar of
native language
Arguments for and against the nativist theory?
Arguments in favour:
- Universal properties of language learning suggest innate mechanism:
Language occurs in all cultures
Children in all cultures go through the same stages of language
development
Languages share universal properties (e.g. nouns , verbs)
Limitations:
- Focuses on grammar – ignores social interaction
Explain the social interaction theory
Bruner (1983) argues that preverbal social interactions form the basis
for learning language
E.g. joint focus of attention, gesturing, interpretation of gurgles as
meaningful; pre-verbal form of simple conversation
What’s the arguments for and against social interaction theory?
Arguments for
• Children raised in isolation have linguistic deficits
• Adult-child speech facilitates learning
•Shorter, simpler and repetitive utterances
•Slower speech, longer pauses, more stress
•Higher and more varied pitch
•Same features in many cultures
Preference for this style even at 2 days old (Cooper & Aslin, 1990)
Limitations
Not clear how it could account for e.g. overregularisation errors
Social interaction theory
Explain categorisation for cognitive development?
Categorisation forming is essential to make sense of the world and interact with it effectively
State the months for categorisation?
At 12 months - children group objects based on perceptual similarity - a is different from 2
At 2 years - can group perceptually different objects into hierarchical categories like group objects inot kitchen utensils even though objects within this category are perceptually different
Describe the hierarchy in categories?
Rapidly learn new basic level categories like animal leads to dogs and cats and that leads to types of those animals
- these organisations help thinking about the world in meaningful ways
Explain recognition of the self?
Self concept provides a reference for interpreting social world
What did Lewis and brooks-Gunn find about recognition of the self?
9-24 months placed in front of mirror
Mother puts red dye on child nose
Less then 15 months = reach to red nose in mirror as its not related to themselves
Higher then 15 months= most likely to touch own nose
Thi suggests increasing awareness of the self
By age 2 = prefer to look at picture of self not other children
Development in emotion in early childhood?
Less then 1 year =52.143 weeks ability to display basic emotions like happiness, sadness, anger and fear
At 1.5 - 2 years =-0.5 years ability to display more complex slef conscious emotions
Requires self awareness
Explain what happens at 3yrs for emotions development in early childhood?
Children become able to use emotional masks = display an emotion they don’t feel
Easier to act happy than sad or angry
Become better at concealing negative emotions
Emotional deception is due to social pressure as they are encouraged to display positive emotions to promote good relationships
Explain pro-social behaviour for social development?
Behaviour that benefits others without expected benefit in return
Before 1-2 years = seek comfort for self in response to another’s distress
After 1-2 years = more likely to comfort others
What did zhan-waxler and radkhe-yarrow state about pro-social behaviour?
Mother pretended to be sad
21 month old son offered comforting words, hugs and distractions with puppet
