Unit 5: Development in Early Childhood (2-6 years)

Question 1

How much height and weight do children between the ages of 2 - 6 gain in total?

Answer 1

30 cm
8kg

Question 2

Muscle maturation occurs, as fat is turned into muscles. This leads to the average body mass index (BMI) being at its ______ between 5-6 years.

Answer 2

lowest

Question 3

How tall and heavy is the average 6 year old?

Answer 3

> 110 cm
12-23 kg

Question 4

How does the center of gravity shift, why and which effect does that have?

Answer 4

shifts from chest to abdomen
faster growing legs (and arms) -> 60% height increase by puberty
provides more stability and development of more complex movements

Question 5

Which factors can influence growth and maturation?

Answer 5

genetic inheritance
exercise and daily physical activity
Social class
Physical deficiencies/ illnesses
Trauma and physical/ psychological abuse
Nutrition

Question 6

What does a very high level of training cause?

Answer 6

less growth

Question 7

When do most eating disorders begin?

Answer 7

during physical development

Question 8

What does obesity in early puberty mainly cause?

Answer 8

delays in cognitive development

Question 9

Where do the hemispheres mainly get their information from/ exert their influence on?

Answer 9

contralateral parts

Question 10

Which structure allows for a transfer of information between the hemispheres and why is the exchange of information crucial?

Answer 10

corpus callosum
crucial for everyday functioning (e.g. coordinated movements)

Question 11

When does the process of myelinisation occur at a particularly high rate and which effect does this have?

Answer 11

3-6
increased efficiency of corpus callosum

Question 12

lateralization

Answer 12

each hemisphere is specialized for certain functions

Question 13

Is lateralization true for all processes?

Answer 13

no
e.g. speech comprehension

Question 14

Does lateralization depend on handedness?

Answer 14

yes

Question 15

handedness

Answer 15

preference of using one hand or side of the body over the other

Question 16

How many adults are righthanded, and what does this mean when talking about lateralization?

Answer 16

90%
dominant left half of brain

Question 17

Even though there are signs of lateralization from birth, when is handedness well established?

Answer 17

2-3 years

Question 18

Should you “lateralize” your child by the age of 5 if it does not happen spontaneously?

Answer 18

yes

Question 19

double lateralization hypothesis

Answer 19

innate laterality (genetic inheritance, spontaneous)
learned laterality (use of objects)

Question 20

How can preoperational children think compared to sensorimotor beings?

Answer 20

in symbols (not just via senses)

Question 21

What is symbolic function?

Answer 21

ability to make one thing represent another

Question 22

Which are examples of manifestations of mental representations appearing during the preoperational stage?

Answer 22

drawing
symbolic play
language (describing objects)

Question 23

cataloguing/ categorization and class logic

Answer 23

children have an enormous capacity for learning new words and logical connections between them

Question 24

animism

Answer 24

belief that inanimate objects are alive
non-human objects have human characteristics

Question 25

Why are children in the preoperational stage egocentric?

Answer 25

children understand the world from own perspective and have difficulties to understand the POV of others

Question 26

How did Piaget and Inhelder study egocentrism in children?

Answer 26

Three mountains study

Question 27

Do children in the preoperational stage still act intuitively, despite their ability to describe things not immediately present?

Answer 27

yes

Question 28

How do children interpret the environment? (e.g. DeVries & "Maynard" experiment)

Answer 28

based on its appearance

Question 29

conservation

Answer 29

recognition that properties of an object are not altered if appearance is altered in a superficial way

Question 30

Do children in the preoperational stage understand conservation?

Answer 30

no Flavell: experiment with water containers -> children below 6-7 think taller container contains more liquid

Question 31

Which concepts do children in the preoperational stage lack, to understand conservation (according to Piaget)?

Answer 31

Decentration: ability to concentrate on more than one aspect of a problem at a time Reversibility: ability to mentally reverse actions

Question 32

Which other properties of objects prove that children younger than 6-7 don't understand conservation (Flavell)?

Answer 32

Mass (longer = more perceived mass) Number (same amount of objects wider spaced is perceived as more objects being there)

Question 33

Which are the 5 behaviors Piaget identified as vehicles of representation?

Answer 33

delayed imitation mental imagery language drawing play

Question 34

Signifier

Answer 34

designates graphic or phonetic representation

Question 35

Signified

Answer 35

meaning of a word semantic aspect

Question 36

What's the difference between Signals, Symbols and Signs?

Answer 36

Signal: signifier directly linked to signified (e.g. smoke and ifre) Symbol: greater distance between signifier and signified (e.g. symbol of a house and house) Sign: arbitrary, no relation (e.g. mathematical signs)

Question 37

When does the ability to use differentiated signifiers begin to develop?

Answer 37

1.5 years

Question 38

Delayed imitation

Answer 38

imitation in absence of model reveals existence of internal models

Question 39

Symbolic play

Answer 39

situations produced in symbolic way -> giving meaning to elements

Question 40

Mental imagery

Answer 40

internalized imitation -> representation of situations

Question 41

Language

Answer 41

use of arbitrary signs

Question 42

What are some advantages of play?

Answer 42

physical development improved planning and self-control (e.g. setting rules) emotional regulation and social skills

Question 43

Rough-and-tumble play

Answer 43

one of the most common forms of active play mimcs aggression (e.g. wrestling, chasing or hitting) without intention to harm more common in boys

Question 44

peers

Answer 44

children of similar age but not from the same family

Question 45

What's a difference between child-parent and child-child interactions?

Answer 45

vertical relationship (child parent) horizontal relationship (child chil) -> more difficult to manage (require compromise)

Question 46

How does play develop from infancy to childhood?

Answer 46

6 months old: little attention to peers 2 years old: parallel play 2-5: play with increasing cooperation

Question 47

How did Mildred Parten categorize play?

Answer 47

Unoccupied play (no activity) Onlooker play (watches others) Solitary play Parallel play Associative play (interact in same activity) Cooperative play (interact in coordinated way, e.g. taking turns)

Question 48

Can we take the progression through Parten's play behaviors as an index of social and cognitive abilities (ages 2-5)?

Answer 48

no, younger and older children engage in various forms of play

Question 49

Functional play

Answer 49

first 2 years simple, physical activities "sensorimotor play" (piaget)

Question 50

Symbolic play

Answer 50

2-6 years child symbolically represents something, which is absent in immediate setting

Question 51

Make-believe (sociodramatic) play

Answer 51

2-6 years acting out various roles and plots emerges after simpler forms of symbolic play

Question 52

Why is sociodramatic play important?

Answer 52

allows exploration of social roles learning how to explain and negotiate practice emotional regulation

Question 53

Constructive play

Answer 53

3-6 years creating or building objects (or representations of objects)

Question 54

Games with rules

Answer 54

6+ years structured games with publicly accepted rules

Question 55

What is drawing?

Answer 55

form of imitation of reality -> shapes mental representations

Question 56

Are children's drawings simple copies of reality?

Answer 56

no, they also involve internal images and information

Question 57

Which other activities/ skills is drawing connected with?

Answer 57

Play Language

Question 58

Which components are involved in drawing?

Answer 58

motor cognitive (understanding of reality) affective (represents interests, worries and desires)

Question 59

What are children able to do at 2 years of age (context: language)?

Answer 59

use basic grammar place words into categories

Question 60

naming insight

Answer 60

18-24 months children realize that names apply to everything

Question 61

fast-mapping

Answer 61

process of quickly acquiring a word after hearing it -> immediately place it into a category often occurs when child and speaker are jointly attending to object mentioned

Question 62

overextension

Answer 62

when children use one word for a wide variety of objects

Question 63

underextension

Answer 63

tendency to use general term to smaller range of objects

Question 64

overlap error

Answer 64

mixture of overextension and underextension

Question 65

How much does the child's vocabulary expand by 3 years?

Answer 65

1000 - 5000 words -> language progresses with conjunctions sentences up to 8 words -> many why questions

Question 66

How do vocabulary and sentence length change by 4 years?

Answer 66

10.000 words 20 word sentences

Question 67

How does grammar progress by the 4th year?

Answer 67

includes dependent clauses and tags at sentence end (e.g. won't you)

Question 68

How do vocabulary and sentence length change by 6 years?

Answer 68

30.000 words unlimited sentences

Question 69

How does grammar change by the 6th year?

Answer 69

passive voice subjunctive more complex questions

Question 70

What are the component processes of the memory system?

Answer 70

encoding storage retrieval

Question 71

How does the preferential looking method work and what does familiarity imply?

Answer 71

infants spend less time looking at familiar stimuli compared to unfamiliar stimuli shows degree of memory

Question 72

What is a common task employing the preferential looking method and how does it work?

Answer 72

Visual paired comparison task (VPC) children shown stimulus after delay they are shown 2 stimuli (1 unfamiliar, 1 familiar from before) time spent looking at familiar compared to unfamiliar stimulus used as index of recognition memory

Question 73

What has the VPC found out so far?

Answer 73

children between 3-6 recognize visual stimuli

Question 74

Morgan and Hayne used the VPC to study encoding. What did they find out about the coding abilities of 1 year old's compared to 4 year old's?

Answer 74

1: took 10 sec to remember stimulus; forget about stimulus after 1 week 4: took 5 to remember stimulus; need 10 sec to encode stimulus to recognize it after 1 week -> 1 year old's need more time to encode stimuli

Question 75

What did Morgan and Hayne discover when looking at our abilities of retrieval and encoding? (VPC of children between 1-4)

Answer 75

retrieval depends on the time we spend encoding the information encoding develops significantly between 1 and 4 years

Question 76

Are memory processes only possible from 1 year onward?

Answer 76

no 6 months: recognition after 20 sec delay 9 months: recognition after 2-3 minute delay Bowlby: infants can recognize caregiver at 2 months of age

Question 77

infantile amnesia

Answer 77

not having memories younger than 3.5 years of age

Question 78

What could explain infantile amnesia?

Answer 78

role of language still very rudimentary until 3 -> may affect how memories are encoded

Question 79

Why is a mature understanding of emotions in others important for us?

Answer 79

key role in understanding own internal states -> allows us to behave competently in social interactions

Question 80

When do basic emotions become visible?

Answer 80

birth: interest, distress, disgust, contentment 2 months: social smiles 2-7 months: anger, sadness, joy, surprise and fear

Question 81

When do complex emotions like shame or guilt develop?

Answer 81

18-24 months

Question 82

When can children recognize the emotions of others?

Answer 82

7-10 months

Question 83

social referencing

Answer 83

ability to use other's emotional expressions as guide for how to behave

Question 84

Why is the ability to display and understand emotions important for social development?

Answer 84

allows child to understand how they should feel

Question 85

What is understanding how external expressions are related with inner feelings important for?

Answer 85

developing a theory of mind

Question 86

First definition of theory of mind (ToM)

Answer 86

ability to predict what another person believes in a situation, and based on that, predict how they might behave

Question 87

What is a ToM important for?

Answer 87

managing social interaction understanding intentions empathise

Question 88

Which cognitive abilities does the theory of mind depend on?

Answer 88

ability to understand what another person wants (desire) ability to understand what another person believes (belief)

Question 89

Baron-Cohen suggested, that the ToM develops in two phases. Which ones?

Answer 89

8 months: gaze following (awareness that sb else is looking at something of interest) 12 months: proto-declarative pointing (to confirm that they know what another person is looking at)

Question 90

At 2 years children develop a private and public self. What are they?

Answer 90

private self: how we feel public self: how we show how we feel to others

Question 91

empathy

Answer 91

reading feelings by physical expressions

Question 92

When do children understand that internal emotions correspond with desires (which then again motivate the behavior of others)?

Answer 92

2 years

Question 93

belief-desire reasoning

Answer 93

ability to empathize and predict how others might act based on beliefs and desires -> may not act if desires go against beliefs developed at 3 years of age

Question 94

principle of seeing leads to knowing

Answer 94

understanding that what a person knows about a situation depends on what that person sees developed at 3-4 years

Question 95

meta-representation

Answer 95

used in pretended play learning to separate what is true from what someone is pretending to do developed at 3-4 years

Question 96

What's the most used task to assess a child's understanding of first-order false beliefs?

Answer 96

Sally-Anne task

Question 97

Belief question

Answer 97

designed to test ability to understand another person's belief

Question 98

reality question

Answer 98

tests understanding of reality

Question 99

memory question

Answer 99

tests ability to recall events

Question 100

Until which age can subjects not answer the belief question? (but are capable of answering the others)

Answer 100

until 4 years they can't answer belief questions

Question 101

When do children develop an understanding of second-order states and what does that mean?

Answer 101

6 understand that others say and do thing to evoke a response in others