Exam 3 Chapter 8-10 Flashcards
(43 cards)
Skeletal growth
Epiphyses: 45 new growth centers
Teeth: lose baby teeth, care of primary teeth is essential, 30-60% US preschoolers have some affected teeth
Body growth (3-6 year old)
Slower growth pattern Height 2-3", weight 4-5lbs Boys are bigger than girls Body fat declines Shape becomes more streamlined Posture/balance improve
Brain development
Size increases 70-90% of adult weight
Reshaping and refining (overproduced synapses and Myelination of neural fibers leads to synaptic pruning) (plasticity declines)
Rapid growth in prefrontal cortical areas (impulse inhibition, attention, memory, planning, and organizing)
Lateralization (left: thought, language, behavior control) (right: spatial skills gradually develop)
Dominant cerebral hemisphere and handedness
Greater capacity of one side of brain to carry skilled motor actions
Language and right handed - 90% left hemisphere
Language and left handed - 10% both hemispheres
May be genetic basis but affected by experience
Advances in brain development
Cerebellum: aids balance, control, motor coordination, thinking
Reticular formation: alertness, consciousness
Hippocampus: memory, spatial ability
Amygdala: processing emotional information, facial expressions, memory for emotionally salient events
Corpus callosum: communication between hemispheres, coordination of movement, integration of thinking
Heredity, hormones, and emotional well being
Pituitary gland: releases 2 hormones that induce growth
Growth hormone: development of almost all body tissues
Thyroid stimulating hormone: pituitary to thyroid to release thyroxin (necessary for brain development and body growth)
Psychosocial dwarfism: decreased gh secretion, very short stature, immature skeletal age, adjustment problems
Young children sleep
Contributes to growth
Total sleep declines
Disrupted or lack of sleep can cause cognitive declines and behavior problems
Nutrition
Appetite decreases Caution of new foods Need high quality diet Nutritionally deficit diet Good nutrition: varied and healthy diet, predictable meals with small portions, repeated exposure to new foods, positive climate, pleasant meals, avoid restricting foods
Motor skill development in early childhood
Balance improves Gait smooth and rhythmic by age 2 Upper and lower body skills combine into more refined actions by age 5 Greater speed and endurance Self-help: dressing, eating, tying shoes Drawing: writing and painting
Piagets preoperational stage
Ages 2-7: increase in representational or symbolic activity
Advances in mental representation
Language: most flexible means of mental representation, detaches thought from action
Make believe play: children practice and strengthen representational schemes
Development of make believe play
Gradually becomes more detached from real life conditions, less self centered, more complex combinations of schemes
Benefits of make believe play
Sustained attention, memory, logical reasoning, language and literacy, imagination, creativity
Interactions last longer, show more involvement, include more children into activity, more cooperative, can control behavior and take another’s perspective, rated more socially competent by teachers
Limitations of preoperational thought
Cannot perform mental operations (mental actions that obey logical rules, thinking is rigid and influenced by appearance)
Egocentric
Unable to conserve
Lack hierarchical classification
Egocentric thinking
Fail to distinguish the symbolic viewpoints of others from ones own
Focus on their own viewpoint
Assume others perceive, think, and feel as they do
3 mountain task
Animistic thinking
Belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities such as thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions
Magical thinking
Conservation
Physical characteristics of object remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes
Centered thinking
Irreversibility
Hierarchical classification
Organization of objects into classes and subclasses on basis of similarities and differences
Educational principles derived from piagets theory
Discovery learning
Sensitivity to readiness to learn
Acceptance of individual differences
Vygotskys sociocultural theory: children’s private speech
Piaget Egocentric speech: talk for self
Vygotsky disagreed with Piaget (private speech is the foundation for all higher cognitive processes and helps guide behavior)
Gradually becomes more silent
Children with learning and behavior problems tend to use private speech longer
Social origins of early childhood cognition
Zone of proximal development
Effective social interaction (intersubjectivity: start at different understanding but arrive at a shared understanding, scaffolding: adjust support offered during teaching, guided participation: shared endeavor without specifying precise features of communication)
Vygotsky and early childhood education
Piaget and vygotsky emphasize active participation and acceptance of individual differences
Vygotsky: assisted discovery, make believe play
Improvements in information processing
Sustained attention continues to improve
Inhibition: increased ability to inhibit impulses, keep mind on a competing goal, parents who help child maintain focus are more cognitively and socially mature
Planning: thinking out a sequence of acts ahead of time, allocating attention to reach a goal, children can generate and follow a plan for familiar and simple tasks, games with rules/patterns/recipes helps
Improvements in information processing: memory
Recognition: noticing that a stimulus is identical or similar to previously experienced
Recall: generating a mental representation of an absent stimulus
Emergent literacy
Efforts to construct literacy knowledge through information experiences
Phonological awareness: reflect/manipulate sounds of spoken language, related to emergent literacy and later reading and spelling achievement
Informal literacy experiences: point out letter sound correspondences, playing rhyming and language games, engage in interactive book reading