Module 11: Infancy and Childhood Flashcards
Maturation
- Biological growth processes that enable orderly change in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.
- Babies first stand, then walk
- Maturation (nature) sets the basic course of development; experience (nurture) adjusts it
Brain Development
- In womb, brain formed nerve cells fast (one-quarter million per minute)
- Day born —-> had the most brain cells you would ever have, but the wiring among these cells was immature
- After birth, neural networks have growth spurt (branched and linked in patterns that would allow you to talk, walk, and remember).
- 3 - 6 —-> most rapid brain growth in frontal lobes (rational planning)
- Use it or lose it pruning process shut down unused links
Critical period
Optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development
Brain maturation and infant memory
- Most of us consciously recall little before age 4, but the brain is still processing and storing information
- As children mature, infantile amnesia goes away
Cognition
All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
Schema
A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
Assimilation
Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas
- Simple schema for dog —-> toddler may call all four-legged animals dogs
Accommodation
Adapting our current understanding (schemas) to incorporate new information.
- Child learns that original dog schema is too broad —-> accommodates by refining the category
Piaget’s Theory
Believed that children construct their understanding of the world while interacting with it.
Sensorimotor Stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.
- Take in the world through looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping
Object permanence
The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.
- Infants lack this
- By about 8 months, infants begin remembering things no longer seen
Preoperational stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.
- Represent things with words or images
- Can’t perform mental operations (imagining an action and mentally reversing it)
Conservation
The principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of the objects.
- Before age 6, children lack this concept
Egocentrism
In Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view.
- When pre-schoolers block your view of the T.V., they assume you see what they see
Theory of Mind
People’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states - about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict.
- Preschoolers, although egocentric, develop ability to infer others’ mental states
- Children with autism have a hard time understanding anothers’ state of mind differs from their own.
Concrete operational stage
In Piaget’s theory, the state of cognitive development (7 to 11) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.
- Begin to grasp conservation —-> can mentally pour milk back and forth between glasses of different shape
Formal operational stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning at about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.
Piaget vs. Lev Vygotsky
Piaget —-> how mind grows through interaction with physical environment
Vygotsky —-> how mind grows through interaction with social environment
Scaffold
A framework that offers children temporary support as they develop higher levels of thinking.
- By giving children new words and mentoring them, parents, teachers, and other children provide a scaffold
Age and key milestones of sensorimotor stage
- Birth to nearly 2 years old
- Object permanence
- Stranger anxiety
Age and key milestones of preoperational stage
- About 2 to 6 or 7 years old
- Pretend play
- Egocentrism
Age and key milestones of concrete operational stage
- About 7 to 11 years
- Conservation
- Mathematical transformations
Age and key milestones of formal operational stage
- About 12 through adulthood
- Abstract logic
- Potential for mature moral reasoning
Autism Spectrum Disorder
A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixed interests and repetitive behaviors.
Stranger anxiety
The fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months.
- Have schemas for familiar faces
Attachment
An emotional tie with another person shown in young children by their seeking closeness to their caregiver and showing distress in separation.
- Humans are attached to soft and warm parents that rock, feed, and pat
Imprinting
The process by which animals form strong attachments during early life
- Ducklings imprint, children do not
Secure attachment
- In mother’s presence, play comfortably and happily explore new environment
- Mother leaves —-> they become distressed, when she returns they are fine
Insecure attachment
- Anxiety or avoidance of trusting relationships
- Less likely to explore their surroundings and may cling to mother
- Leaves they either cry loudly and remain upset or seem indifferent to her departure or return
Temperament
A person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.
- Some babies are difficult and some are easy
Basic trust
According to Erik Erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.
- Securely attached children approach life with this
Anxious attachment
Constantly crave acceptance, but remain alert to signs or rejection
Avoidant attachment
Experience discomfort getting close to others and use avoidant strategies to maintain distance
Authoritarian
- Parents that are coercive
- Impose rules and expect obedience
Permissive
- Parents that are unrestraining
- Make few demands, set few limits, and use little punishment
Authoritative
- Parents that are confrontative
- Both demanding and responsive
- Exert control by setting rules but encourage open discussion and allow exceptions
