Early childhood

Question 1

Describe the physical growth and change that takes place during early childhood.

Answer 1

From age 3 to 5, the typical child grows about 7 cm per year and gains about 2 kg.

Three-year-old boys at the 50th percentile are 96 cm tall and weigh 14.5 kg, and at age 5 are 110 cm and 18.5 kg. Three-year-old girls at the 50th percentile are 96 cm tall and weigh 14 kg, and at age 5 are 108 cm and 18 kg.

Question 2

Stunting

Answer 2

A term referring to children short for their age.

Approximately 149 million children, or 22%, worldwide were stunted in 2020.

Question 3

Teeth

Answer 3

By three, most children have the full set of 20 primary/baby teeth. They will be replaced with 32 permanent teeth through childhood, beginning at about age six. Process last until about 14.

Question 4

Describe the changes in brain development that take place during early childhood

Answer 4

At age 3, the brain is about 70% of its adult weight, and at age 6, about 90%.

The frontal lobes grow faster than the rest of the cerebral cortex during early childhood. Growth in the frontal lobes underlies the advances in emotional regulation, foresight and planned behaviour that take place during the preschool years. Throughout the cerebral cortex, growth from age 3 to 15 takes place in spurts within the different lobes, followed by periods of vigorous synaptic pruning.

During early childhood, the number of neurons continues the decline that began in toddlerhood via synaptic pruning. The increase in brain size and weight during early childhood is due to an increase in dendritic connections between neurons and to myelination.

Question 5

Four parts of the brain especially notable for their myelination during early childhood.

Answer 5

The corpus callosum

Cerebellum

Reticular formation

Hippocampus

Question 6

Infantile amnesia

Answer 6

Inability to remember anything before age 2.

While we retain language, habits and general information, our memory for events and things that happened to us is not well retained. This type of memory for specific personal events is called autobiographical memory.

One theory proposes that autobiographical memory before age 2 is limited because the awareness of self becomes stable at about 2 years of age and serves as a new organiser around which events can be encoded, stored and retrieved in memory as personal. Another perspective proposes that the encoding of memories is promoted by language development because language allows us to tell ourselves a narrative of events and experiences; consequently, most autobiographical memory is encoded only after language development accelerates at age 2. Memory researchers have proposed that the answer lies in the development of the hippocampus. Specifically, the hippocampus is immature at birth and adds neurons at a high rate in the early years of development. The addition of so many new neurons may interfere with the existing memory circuits so that long-term memories cannot be formed until the production of neurons in the hippocampus declines in early childhood, as it becomes more fully developed.

Question 7

Nutrition and malnutrition

Answer 7

Appetites vary a lot from day to day in early childhood, and the 5-year-old who barely touched dinner one night may eat nearly as much as Mum and Dad the next night.

About 70% of Australian children do eat the required serves of fruit, but only 3% eat the recommended serves of vegetables.

Because young children in developed countries often eat too much of unhealthy foods and too little of healthy foods, many of them have specific nutritional deficiencies despite living in cultures where food is abundant.

A five-year-old in a developed country is most likely to have a deficiency in calcium.

Question 8

Anaemia

Answer 8

Iron deficiency, known as anaemia, is experienced by the majority of children under age 5 in developing countries. Anaemia causes fatigue, irritability and difficulty sustaining attention, which in turn lead to problems in cognitive and social development.

Question 9

Illness and disease

Answer 9

From 1980 to 2018, the number of deaths worldwide of children under age 5 declined from 14 million to under 5.5 million, even though the world’s population more than doubled during that time.

The decline is due to a variety of factors, especially improved food production in developing countries and increased prevalence of childhood vaccinations.

In developed countries minor illnesses are common in early childhood, with most children experiencing 7–10 per year,

Question 10

Injuries

Answer 10

Young children have high activity levels and their motor development is advanced enough for them to be able to run, jump and climb, but their cognitive development is not yet advanced enough for them to anticipate situations that might be dangerous. This combination leads to high rates of injuries in early childhood and these injuries are the most common reason for death and hospitalisation between 5 and 14 years.

Rates of unintentional injury among 1- to 14-year-olds in South Africa are 5 times higher than in developed countries; in Vietnam, rates are 4 times higher, and in China 3 times higher. Disease still accounts for 95% of deaths.

Question 11

Gross and fine motor skills

Answer 11

Refine and develop skills learnt in toddlerhood.

Gender differences in gross motor development appear in early childhood, with boys generally becoming better at skills emphasising strength or size and girls becoming better at body-coordination skills.

Their growing fine motor abilities allow children to learn to do many things their parents had been doing for them, such as putting on a coat or shoes, and brushing their teeth.

Children in some cultures also learn to use chopsticks around 4.5 years old.

Question 12

Describe the development of handedness and identify the consequences and cultural views of left-handedness.

Answer 12

Once children begin drawing or writing in early childhood, they show a clear preference for using their right or left hand, but handedness appears long before early childhood. In fact, even prenatally, fetuses show a definite preference for sucking the thumb of their right or left hand, with 90% preferring the right thumb.

Identical twins are more likely than ordinary siblings to differ in handedness, even though identical twins share 100% of their genotype and other siblings only about 50%. This appears to be due to the fact that twins usually lie in opposite ways within the uterus, whereas most singletons lie towards the left. Lying towards one side allows for greater movement and hence greater development of the hand on the other side, so most twins end up with one being right-handed and one being left-handed, while most singletons end up right-handed.

Question 13

Left-handedness in culture

Answer 13

In addition, culture is also a big part of the picture. Historically, many cultures have viewed left-handedness as dangerous and evil, and have suppressed its development in children.

In Western languages, the word sinister is derived from a Latin word meaning ‘on the left’, and many paintings in Western art depict the devil as left-handed.

In many Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, only the left hand is supposed to be used for wiping up after defecation, and all other activities are supposed to be done mainly with the right hand.

In China, using the left hand is suppressed in many families from childhood onwards, and the prevalence of left-handedness is as low as 1%, far lower than the 10% figure in cultures where left-handedness is tolerated.

Question 14

Left-handedness biologically

Answer 14

Left-handed infants are more likely to be born prematurely or to experience an unusually difficult birth, and there is evidence that brain damage prenatally or during birth can contribute to left-handedness. In early and middle childhood, left-handers are more likely to have problems learning to read and to have other verbal learning disabilities. This may have something to do with the fact that about one-quarter of left-handers process language in both hemispheres rather than primarily in the left hemisphere.

Left-handed children are more likely to show exceptional verbal and maths abilities. Left-handers are especially likely to have strong visual–spatial abilities, and consequently they are more likely than right-handers to become architects or artists. The majority of left-handers are in the normal range in their cognitive development, and show neither unusual problems nor unusual gifts. Hence, the widespread cultural prejudice against left-handers remains mysterious.

Question 15

Explain the features of Piaget’s preoperational stage of cognitive development.

Answer 15

2 - 7 years old.

Piaget specified a number of areas of preoperational cognitive mistakes that are characteristic of early childhood, including conservation, egocentrism and classification.

During the latter part of toddlerhood, and especially in early childhood, that we become truly representational thinkers. Language requires the ability to represent the world symbolically, through words, and this is when language skills develop most dramatically. Once we can represent the world through language, we are freed from our momentary sensorimotor experience. With language, we can represent not only the present, but also the past and the future, not only the world as we see it before us, but also the world as we previously experienced it and the world as it will be.

Question 16

Conservation

Answer 16

According to Piaget, children in early childhood lack the ability to understand conservation, the principle that the amount of a physical substance remains the same even if its physical appearance changes.

Question 17

Centration

Answer 17

Young children’s thinking is centred, or focused, on one noticeable aspect of a cognitive problem to the exclusion of other important aspects.

Question 18

Reversibility

Answer 18

Young children lack reversibility, the ability to reverse an action mentally.

Question 19

Egocentrism

Answer 19

Another cognitive limitation of the preoperational stage, in Piaget’s view, is egocentrism, the inability to distinguish between your own perspective and another person’s perspective.

Question 20

Animism

Answer 20

One aspect of egocentrism is animism, the tendency to attribute human thoughts and feelings to inanimate objects and forces.

Question 21

Classification

Answer 21

Preoperational children also lack the capacity for classification, according to Piaget, meaning that they have difficulty understanding that objects can be simultaneously part of more than one ‘class’ or group.

Here, as with conservation, the cognitive limitations of centration and lack of reversibility are at the root of the error, in Piaget’s view.

Question 22

Evaluating Piaget’s theory

Answer 22

The criticisms focus on two issues: claims that he underestimated children’s cognitive capabilities and claims that development is more continuous and less stage-like than he proposed.

Even toddlers show the beginnings of an ability to take others’ perspectives when they discern what they can do to annoy a sibling. By age 4, children switch to shorter, simpler sentences when talking to toddlers or babies, showing a distinctly un-egocentric ability to take the perspective of the younger children.

Question 23

Theory of mind

Answer 23

The ability to understand thinking processes in one’s self and others and also to understand that others have beliefs, intention and perspectives that are different from one’s own.

Perspective-taking ability advances considerably from age 3 to 6.

This change is vividly demonstrated in research involving false-belief tasks.

Most 3-year-old children answer erroneously that Maxi will look for the chocolate in the new place, where his mother stored it. In contrast, by age 4, most children recognise that Maxi will believe falsely that the chocolate is in the cabinet where he left it. The proportion of children who understand this correctly rises even higher by age 5. By age 6, nearly all children in developed countries solve false-belief tasks easily.

Question 24

Identify the ways that cultural learning takes place in early childhood.

Answer 24

More than in toddlerhood, young children have the capacity for learning culturally specific skills. A Mayan 5-year-old can readily learn the skills involved in making tortillas, whereas a 2-year-old would not have the necessary learning abilities, motor skills or impulse control.

During early childhood, they acquire the cultural learning necessary for these duties, sometimes through direct instruction but more often through observing and participating in adults’ activities.

A child in an economically developed country might help his parents prepare a grocery shopping list, and in the course of this process learn culturally valued skills such as reading, using lists as tools for organisation and planning, and calculating sums of money.

Children in Western countries are also encouraged to speak up and hold conversations. This is in contrast to cultures from Asia to northern Canada in which silence is valued, especially in children, and children who talk frequently are viewed as immature and low in intelligence.

Children in developed countries are apart from families for more of the day and do not receive as much guided instruction for daily activities as traditional cultures.

Question 25

Explain how advances in vocabulary and grammar occur in early childhood.

Answer 25

The average 3-year-old has a vocabulary of about 1,000 words; by age 6, the average vocabulary has increased to over 2,500 words. Fast mapping: Children learning Eastern languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean tend to learn more verbs than nouns at first because sentences often emphasise verbs but only imply the nouns without speaking them. In contrast, children learning English and other Western languages fast map nouns earlier than verbs because nouns are prominent in these languages. In both Eastern and Western languages, modifiers (words such as ‘large’, ‘narrow’, ‘pretty’, ‘low’) are added more slowly than nouns and verbs. By age 4, it is estimated that children use correct grammar in 90% of their statements. Jean Berko (19581269) had young children respond to questions involving nonsense words such as ‘wug’. The children were able to apply the grammar of English and use nouns in plural and possessive forms.

Question 26

Sensitive period

Answer 26

In the course of development, a period when the capacity for learning in a specific area is especially pronounced.

Question 27

Pragmatics

Answer 27

Social and cultural context of language that guides people as to what is appropriate to say and not to say in a given social situation. The use of pragmatics represents not only social understanding, but also cultural knowledge.

Question 28

Emotional self-regulation

Answer 28

Young children become more adept not only at understanding others’ emotions, but also at controlling their own. Across cultures, early childhood is a time when expectations for emotional self-regulation increase. From age 2 to 6, extremes of emotional expression such as temper tantrums, crying and physical aggression decrease. Some of the most effective strategies are leaving the situation, talking to themselves, redirecting their attention to a different activity and seeking comfort from an attachment figure. These strategies are part of what researchers call effortful control, when children focus their attention on managing their emotions. Parents can help young children develop effortful control by providing emotional and physical comfort when their children are upset, suggesting possible strategies for managing emotions and modelling effortful control themselves.

Question 29

Socialisation

Answer 29

The process by which children acquire the behaviours and beliefs of the culture they live in.

Question 30

Undercontrol

Answer 30

Children who have problems of undercontrol in early childhood have inadequately developed emotional self-regulation.

Question 31

Externalising problems

Answer 31

Involves others, such as aggression and conflict with others, in early childhood and beyond.

Question 32

Overcontrol

Answer 32

An excessive degree of self-regulation of emotions, is also problematic.

Question 33

Internalising problems

Answer 33

Distress inwards, such as anxiety and depression, in early childhood and beyond. Throughout life, internalising problems are more common among females and externalising problems are more common among males.

Question 34

Eriksons initiative vs guilt

Answer 34

Early childhood stage in which the alternatives are learning to plan activities in a purposeful way or being afflicted wich excessive guilt that undermines initiative. But different cultures have different views on what the optimal level of emotional control is.

Question 35

Describe moral development in early childhood, including empathy, modelling and morality as cultural learning.

Answer 35

One sociomoral emotion that is especially important to moral development in early childhood is empathy. Toddlers and even infants show indications of empathy, but the capacity for empathy develops further in early childhood. Young children are more capable than toddlers of anticipating the potential consequences of their actions and avoiding behaviours that would be morally disapproved. Young children begin to display the rudiments of moral reasoning. By the age of 3 or 4, children are capable of making moral judgments that involve considerations of justice and fairness. However, their moral reasoning tends to be rigid at this age. They are more likely than older children to state that stealing and lying are always wrong, without regard to the circumstances. Also, their moral judgments tend to be based more on fear of punishment than is the case for older children and adults.

Question 36

Richard Shweder, who has compared children, adolescents and adults in India and the United States.

Answer 36

Shweder found that by about age 5, children already grasp the moral standards of their culture, and their views change little from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.

Question 37

Gender constancy

Answer 37

Understanding that male or female is biological.

Question 38

Gender roles

Answer 38

Cultural expectations for appearance and behaviour specific to males or females.

Question 39

Gender schemas

Answer 39

Gender based cognitive structure for organising and processing information, comprising expectations for males and females appearance and behavior. Also applies to inanimate objects, examples include the moon as ‘female’ and the sun as ‘male’ in traditional Chinese culture, or blue as a ‘boy colour’ and pink as a ‘girl colour. (In Korea, pink is a ‘boy colour’, which illustrates how cultural these designations are.)

Question 40

Self-socialisation

Answer 40

Process by which people seek to maintain consistency between their gender schemas and their behaviours.

Question 41

Gender socialisation

Answer 41

Fathers become especially important to gender socialisation in early childhood and beyond. They tend to be more insistent about conformity to gender roles than mothers are, especially for boys. Once children learn gender roles and expectations, they apply them not only to themselves, but also to each other. They reinforce each other for gender-appropriate behaviour and reject peers who violate gender roles.

Question 42

The importance of preschool

Answer 42

Children who attend preschool have better vocabulary skills and more literacy and numeracy skills compared to children who did not attend preschool. Children from low-income families especially benefit cognitively from preschool. There are also social benefits to attending preschool. American children who attend preschool are generally more independent and socially confident than children who remain home. However, there appear to be social costs as well. Children attending preschool have been observed to be less compliant, less respectful towards adults and more aggressive than other children.

Question 43

What factors should parents consider when searching for a high-quality preschool experience for their children?

Answer 43

Education and training of teachers. Class size and child–teacher ratio (Experts recommend no more than 20 children in a classroom, and a ratio no higher than five to ten 3-year-olds or seven to ten 4-year-olds per preschool teacher). Age-appropriate materials and activities. Teacher–child interactions.

Question 44

Authoritative parents

Answer 44

Authoritative parents are high in demandingness and high in responsiveness. Children who have authoritative parents tend to be independent, self-assured, creative and socially skilled. They also tend to do well at school and to get along well with their peers and with adults.

Question 45

Authoritarian parents

Answer 45

Authoritarian parents are high in demandingness but low in responsiveness. Children with authoritarian parents tend to be less self-assured, less creative and less socially adept than other children. Boys with authoritarian parents are more often aggressive and unruly, whereas girls are more often anxious and unhappy.

Question 46

Permissive parents

Answer 46

Permissive parents are low in demandingness and high in responsiveness. Children with permissive parents tend to be immature and lack self-control. Because they lack self-control, they have difficulty getting along with peers and teachers.

Question 47

Disengaged parents

Answer 47

Disengaged parents are low in both demandingness and responsiveness. Children with disengaged parents also tend to be impulsive. Partly as a consequence of their impulsiveness, and partly because disengaged parents do little to monitor their activities, children with disengaged parents tend to have higher rates of behaviour problems.

Question 48

Reciprocal or bidirectional effects

Answer 48

Between two people, the principle that they both affect each other.

Question 49

Filial piety

Answer 49

Children are expected to respect, obey and revere their parents throughout life, common in Asian cultures.

Question 50

Cultural variations in discipline

Answer 50

In Western cultures, the approach to discipline in early childhood tends to emphasise the authoritative style of explaining the consequences of misbehaviour and the reasons for discipline. Western parents also tend to use a lot of praise for compliant and obedient behaviour, which is notable because the use of praise is relatively rare in other cultures. In addition to using time out, parenting researchers recommend: (1) explaining the reasons for discipline; (2) being consistent so that the consequences will be predictable to the child (and hence avoidable); and (3) exercising discipline at the time of the misbehaviour (not later on) so that the connection will be clear. Japan provides an interesting example of a culture where shame and withdrawal of love is the core of discipline in early childhood. Western cultures tend to use corporal punishment sparingly but with anger. African American and traditional cultures use it more but not in a rage.

Question 51

Psychological control

Answer 51

Parenting strategy that uses shame and withdrawal of love to influence a children's behaviour. (In Western societies) This kind of parenting has been found in many studies to be related to negative outcomes in early childhood and beyond, including anxious, withdrawn and aggressive behaviour, as well as problems with peers.

Question 52

Corporal punishment

Answer 52

Physical punishment. Many studies in the United States and Europe have been conducted on physical punishment of young children, and these studies have found a correlation between physical punishment and a wide range of antisocial behaviours in children, including telling lies, fighting with peers and disobeying parents. Also increases the likelihood of bullying and delinquency in adolescence and aggressive behaviour (including spousal abuse) in adulthood. To date, there are 62 countries or states that have laws against all forms of corporal punishment, including in the home. Physical punishment is still legal for parents in Australia. New Zeeland was first English speaking country to abolish it in 2007.

Question 53

Child maltreatment

Answer 53

Physical abuse Emotional abuse Sexual abuse Neglect Research from every region of the world (France, Denmark, Uganda and the United States to name a few countries) found that during COVID-19 lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, hospitalisations due to physical abuse were as much as 40% higher.

Question 54

Mead’s classifications of childhood social stages

Answer 54

0–2 Lap child: Needs constant care; doted on by others 3–4 Knee child: Still cared for mainly by mothers, but spends more time with other children 5–6 Yard child: More time spent with same-sex peers; sometimes unsupervised

Question 55

Anthropologists Beatrice Whiting and Carolyn Edwards (1988)

Answer 55

Whiting and Edwards studied children aged 2–10 in 12 different places around the world, including Africa, Asia, South America and the United States. They found substantial similarities worldwide in how cultures socialise young children and structure their social environments. There is a gradual lessening of dependence on the mother and a gradual move into the social orbit of peers and older children.

Question 56

Siblings and only children

Answer 56

Traditionally, a gap of 2–4 years between children is common worldwide. Studies indicate that young children with older siblings possess more advanced theory of mind understanding than children who have no older sibling. Only children self-esteem, social maturity and intelligence tend to be somewhat higher than for children with siblings. However, in American studies, they are somewhat less successful in social relations with peers (not in China).

Question 57

China one child policy

Answer 57

Beginning in 1978, in response to fears of overpopulation, the Chinese government instituted a ‘one-child policy’, making it illegal for parents to have more than one child without special government approval. In 2016, China changed the policy to two children, and in 2021 amended it again to a limit of three children, due to concerns that if the birth rate remains low the population may become too heavily weighted towards older people who are no longer working. Demographers and researchers, however, predict that China’s birth rate is unlikely to rise now that people have developed an expectation of having only 1–2 children. One unexpected benefit of the one-child policy is that girls, who in Chinese tradition have been less favoured than boys, have more opportunities in education than they did when they had to compete with brothers for family resources. However, only children in China are more likely to be overweight or obese, similar to findings from other countries.

Question 58

Play in early childhood

Answer 58

From toddlerhood through early childhood, solitary play and parallel play decline somewhat, while simple social play and cooperative pretend play increase. Cooperative pretend play becomes more complex in the course of early childhood as children’s imaginations bloom and they become more creative and adept at using symbols. In the 12-cultures study by Whiting and Edwards, across cultures children played in same-sex groups 30–40% of the time at age 2–3, rising to over 90% of the time by age 11.

Question 59

Instrumental aggression

Answer 59

Instrumental aggression is involved when a child wants something (toys, food, attention) and uses aggressive behaviour or words to get it.

Question 60

Hostile aggression

Answer 60

A child may also exhibit signs of anger and intend to inflict pain or harm on others. This is known as hostile aggression.

Question 61

Relational aggression

Answer 61

Relational aggression (or social aggression) involves damaging another person’s reputation among peers through social exclusion and malicious gossip. Relational aggression is slightly more common among girls than among boys, but the difference is minor—smaller than the gap between boys and girls in physical and verbal aggression.

Question 62

Screen time

Answer 62

Current recommendations for 3- to 5-year-olds is allowing no more than 1 hour of sedentary screen time per day. In a national survey, Australian 2- to 4-year-olds spent an average of 83 minutes of screen time per day. A poll conducted by The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne (RCHM) found that 36% of preschoolers had their own device and half used them on their own without supervision.

Question 63

The negative impacts of screen time

Answer 63

Content analyses have found that children’s programs are even more violent than programs for adults. One study found that two-thirds of all children’s programs contained violence, and about half the violence took place in cartoons. Violence was portrayed as funny about two-thirds of the time, and in most cases the victims were not shown experiencing pain and the perpetrator of the violence was not punished. Young children aged 3–6 are more likely than younger or older children to model their behaviour after the behaviour of others, including cartoon characters. An analysis of Australian food advertising during the peak hours of television exposure for children found there was an average of five ads per hour; 57% were for unhealthy foods and these ads were more common at these times of the day compared to times when adults were more likely to be watching.

Question 64

The benefits of media

Answer 64

In one study, viewing Sesame Street at ages 2 and 3 predicted higher scores at age 5 on tests of language development and maths skills, even controlling for parents’ education and income. Some videos and games are in fact passive and do not engage or teach young children as suggested. The most beneficial uses might be those that encourage creativity and dramatic play and use technology as tools to investigate and problem solve. Some literacy games potentially have some benefits as well, but there is still very little research evidence. It is during early childhood that children first connect musical sounds with specific emotions; for example, recognising songs in major keys as happy and songs in minor keys as sad. By age 5, children show distinct preferences for music that is harmonious rather than dissonant and has a steady rather than an erratic beat.