SLO's ch. 7

Question 1

Describe a child’s bodily growth and overall
health risks during the preschool years

Answer 1

In addition to gaining height and weight, the bodies of preschool
children undergo changes in shape and structure.
Children grow more slender, and their bones and muscles
strengthen. Children in the preschool years are generally
quite healthy. Obesity in these years is caused by genetic
and environmental factors. The greatest health threats are
accidents and environmental factors.

Question 2

Summarize how preschool children’s brains
develop

Answer 2

Brain growth is particularly rapid during the preschool
years, with the number of interconnections among cells and
the amount of myelin around neurons increasing greatly.
The halves of the brain begin to specialize in somewhat different
tasks—a process called lateralization

Question 3

Explain how preschool children’s motor skills
develop.

Answer 3

Both gross and fine motor skills advance rapidly during the
preschool years. Gender differences begin to emerge, fine motor
skills are honed, and handedness begins to assert itself

Question 4

Summarize how Piaget explains cognitive
development during the preschool years

Answer 4

During the stage that Piaget has described as preoperational,
children are not yet able to engage in organized, formal, logical
thinking. However, their development of symbolic function
permits quicker and more effective thinking as they are
freed from the limitations of sensorimotor learning. According
to Piaget, children in the preoperational stage engage in
intuitive thought for the first time, actively applying rudimentary
reasoning skills to the acquisition of world knowledge

Question 5

Summarize the information-processing
approaches to cognitive development in the
preschool years.

Answer 5

A different approach to cognitive development is taken by
proponents of information processing theories, who focus
on preschoolers’ storage and recall of information and on
quantitative changes in information processing abilities
(such as attention).

Question 6

Describe Vygotsky’s view of cognitive
development in the preschool years.

Answer 6

Lev Vygotsky proposed that the nature and progress of
children’s cognitive development are dependent on the
children’s social and cultural context

Question 7

Explain how children’s language develops in
the preschool years

Answer 7

Children rapidly progress from two-word
utterances to
longer, more sophisticated expressions that reflect their
growing vocabularies and emerging grasp of grammar.
The development of linguistic abilities is affected
by socioeconomic status. The result can be lowered
linguistic—and, ultimately, academic—performance by
poorer children.

Question 8

Summarize the effects television and other
media have on preschoolers.

Answer 8

The effects of television are mixed. Preschoolers’ sustained
exposure to emotions and situations that are not representative
of the real world have raised concerns. On the other
hand, preschoolers can derive meaning from such targeted
programs as Sesame Street, which are designed to bring
about cognitive gains.

Question 9

Distinguish the typical educational programs
available to children in the preschool years

Answer 9

Early childhood educational programs, offered as center-based
or school-based
child care or as preschool, can lead
to cognitive and social advances. The United States lacks
a coordinated national policy on preschool education. The
major federal initiative in U.S. preschool education has
been the Head Start program, which has yielded mixed
results.