Week 5 - Early childhood (3 > 6 years)

Question 1

identify physical changes in early childhood

Answer 1

Physical growth -
Children grow 5cm/year and gain approx. 2kgs.
Developing countries - heights and weights lower.

Brain -
Extensive development here
Frontal lobe growth underlies advancements in emotional regulation.
Corpus callosum has its myelination peak during early childhood
Cerebellum has increased myelination which aids balance.
Reticular formation and hippocampus (Memory) myelination not complete until 5yo.
Infantile amnesia - the inability to remember young ages due to lack of language to represent memory.

All changes are influenced by sleep, nutrition and exercise.

Gross Motor Skills -
Extension of abilities that appeared earlier.
Throwing, catching, climbing, balancing all stronger now. Playgrounds help develop skills.

Fine Motor Skills -
Allow refinement of skills.
Drawing shapes, letters and sentences, painting all important.
Handedness (left or right) appears.

Question 2

describe three views of cognitive changes that occur in early childhood

Answer 2

Piaget’s preoperational stage -
Children represent the world with words, images and drawings, forming stable concepts and beginning to reason.
Cognitions dominated by egocentrism and magical beliefs.
Children still cant perform operations (mental actions to reason)
Cant grasp that someone else may feel differently.
Limitation: central focus on one element, not the interaction of all, oversimplified.

Theory of mind -
The ability to understand the thinking process in one’s self and others.
Can be observed in joint attention and pretend play.
False belief task - box of crayons.

Cultural Learning -
Early childhood is where children have capacity for learning culturally specific skills.
food prep, child/animal care
Factors impacting cultural learning: time apart from families (developed countries) and complexity of adult activity in the economy.

Question 3

summarise how language develops in early childhood

Answer 3

Early childhood a time of immense plasticity.
Children are able to learn multiple languages easier than any other time in life.
Mental ‘grammar’ acquired in this period.
Language learned implicitly (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantic and pragmatics (social and cultural context of language))
Explosive growth in vocabulary.

Culturally -
Eastern cultures learn verb’s 1st
Western cultures learn nouns 1st.

Question 4

evaluate different approaches to early childhood education

Answer 4

Education of teachers -
preschool teachers who are trained provide a better social and cognitive environment, as compared to home.

Class size and child-teacher ratio - no more than 20/classroom, 5-10 3yo/teacher, 7-10 4yo/teacher.

Age appropriate materials and activities - learn through active engagement, not lecture.

Interactions - important for teacher to interact with children, not one another.

Question 5

discuss emotional and personality development in early childhood

Answer 5

Emotional regulation -
Under-control of emotions can raise risk of externalising problems.
Over control can increase risk internalisation.
Sociomoral emotions develop due to awareness of expected behaviour.
Empathy important for moral development (modelling important here)

Affects to emotional and personality development -
Parenting style, discipline, siblings or lack thereof, peers and friends.

Question 6

explain how families can influence young children’s development

Answer 6

Family dynamics heavily influence the way young people see themselves, others and the world, relationships, behaviours and wellbeing.

Parenting -
Demandingness: degree of rules and expectations for behaviour.
Responsiveness: degree of sensitivity to child’s emotions/reactions .

Neglectful: low acceptance and control
Indulgent: low control and high acceptance
Authoritarian: High control and low acceptance
Authoritative: High control and high acceptance.

Discipline/Punishment -
Western: favours authoritative
Eastern: favours withdrawal of love, guilt and shame.
Corporal punishment: smacking, scalding
Abuse: neglect, physical emotional and sexual.

Question 7

describe the roles of peers, play and television in children’s development.

Answer 7

Peers - share some aspect of their status in common (eg: age)

Play - 
Pretend play: proactive social skills
Solitary play
Parallel play
Girls tend to be quieter and cooperative
Boys tend to be fantasy and role play

Media use -
Developed countries: 1-3 hrs/day
Violence in media DOES promote aggression in young children.
Music interaction starts to develop.