Chapter
7
Physical
and Cognitive Development
in
the Preschool Years
Chapter
Outline
1. Physical Growth
1. The Growing Body
1. Children grow steadily
during the preschool period.
2. The average six-year-old weighs
46 pounds and is 46 inches tall.
3. There are significant
individual differences in height and weight.
1.
Ten percent of six-year-olds weigh 55 pounds or more, ten percent weigh
36 pounds or less.
2.
By the age of six, boys are taller and heavier, on average, than girls.
3.
There are profound differences in height and weight between children in
economically developed countries and those in developing countries.
4.
Differences in height and weight also reflect economic factors within
the
4. Changes in body shape and
structure occur during the preschool years.
1. Boys and girls become less
chubby and roundish and more slender.
2. Arms and legs lengthen.
3. Body proportions are more
similar to those of adults.
4.
Children grow stronger as muscle size increases and bones become sturdier.
5. The sense organs continue to
develop.
5. Nutritional needs change
during the preschool years.
1.
The growth rate slows during this age, thus preschoolers need less food
to maintain their growth.
2.
Encouraging children to eat more than they want to, may lead to
increased food intake.
1.
This may lead to OBESITY, defined
as a body weight more than 20 percent higher than the average weight for a
person of a given age and height.
2.
Obesity among older preschoolers has increased significantly over the
last 20 years.
3.
Obesity is brought about by both biological (genetics, responsiveness
to sweets) and social factors (parental encouragement).
3.
Children tend to be quite adept at maintaining an appropriate intake of
food.
4.
The best strategy is to ensure a variety of foods, low in fat and high
in nutritional content.
5.
Children should be given the opportunity to develop their own natural
preferences for foods.
6. The majority of children in
the
1.
For the average American child, the common cold is the most frequent,
and most severe illness.
2.
An increasing number of children are being treated with drugs for
emotional disorders.
1. The use of antidepressants and stimulants has doubled and sometimes tripled between 1991 and 1995.
7.
The danger of injuries during the preschool years is in part a result
of children’s high levels of physical activity.
1. Some children are more apt
to take risks than others.
2. Economic and ethnic
differences exist in injury rates.
8. Some 14 million children are
at risk for lead poisoning.
1.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has called lead
poisoning the most hazardous health risk to children under the age of 6.
2. Even tiny amount of lead can
permanently harm children.
1. Lower intelligence
2. Problems in verbal and
auditory processing
3. Hyperactivity and
distractibility
4.
Higher levels of antisocial behavior, including aggression and
delinquency
5. Illness and death
3. Poor children are
particularly susceptible.
4. Parent education and legislation are among the efforts to reduce lead poisoning.
2. The Growing Brain
1. The brain grows at a faster
rate than any other part of the body.
2. By age five, children’s brains weigh 90 percent of
the average adult brain weight.
3. Brain growth is so rapid
because of the increase in the number of interconnections among cells, and the
increase in myelin (the protective insulation that surrounds parts of neurons).
4. The corpus callosum,
a bundle of nerve fibers that connect the two hemispheres of the brain, become
considerably thicker, developing as many as 800 million individual fibers that
help coordinate brain functioning between the two hemispheres.
5.
LATERALIZATION, the process where certain functions are located more in one hemisphere
of the brain than the other, becomes
more pronounced in early childhood.
1. The left hemisphere focuses
on verbal competence (speaking, reading, thinking, reasoning), and processes
information more sequentially.
2. The right hemisphere
concentrates on nonverbal areas (spatial relations, recognition of patterns and
drawings, music, emotional expression) and processes information more globally.
3. The two hemispheres of the
brain act in tandem.
4. Individual differences exist
in lateralization – 10 percent of left-handed and ambidextrous people have
language centered in the right hemisphere, with no specific language center.
5. There are many individual
differences in the nature of lateralization, and in relation to gender and
culture.
1. Males show greater
lateralization of language in the left hemisphere, whereas for females,
language is more evenly divided between the two hemispheres. (This may account for why females’ language
development proceeds at a more rapid rate during early childhood.)
2. The differences in
lateralization between males and females may be attributed to both genetic
(corpus callosum differences) and environmental factors (girls typically
receive greater verbal encouragement).
6. There are periods during childhood when the brain shows unusual growth spurts, and these are linked to cognitive abilities.
7. Other research suggests that increased myelination may be related to preschoolers’ growing cognitive abilities, for example, increased attention spans and memory (hippocampus).
3. Motor Development
1. Both gross motor skills
become increasingly fine-tuned during this age.
1. These skills may be related to increased myelination.
2. Also, children spend a lot of time developing them – preschoolers’ level of activity is extraordinarily high.
2. Girls and boys differ in
certain aspects of motor development.
1. Boys, because of increased
muscle strength, tend to be somewhat stronger, and their overall activity
levels are greater than a girl’s.
2. Girls tend to surpass boys
in tasks of dexterity or those involving the coordination of limbs.
3. Fine motor skills (cutting with scissors, tying one’s shoes, playing the piano, printing) are progressively developing, too.
4. Most preschool children show a clear preference for the use of one hand
over another — the development of HANDEDNESS. Ninety percent are right-handed, and more
boys than girls are left-handed.
1. There is no scientific basis
for myths that suggest there is something wrong
with being left-handed, in fact, some evidence exists that left-handedness may
be associated with certain advantages such as SAT scores and art.
2. Intellectual Development
1. Piaget’s Stage of Preoperational
Thinking
1. Piaget saw the preschool
years as a time of both stability and great change.
2. Preschoolers are in the PREOPERATIONAL STAGE, from age two to seven, characterized by
symbolic thinking.
1. Mental reasoning and the use
of concepts increases, but children are not capable of OPERATIONS, organized,
formal, logical mental processes.
3. A key aspect of
preoperational thought is symbolic
function, the ability to use symbols, words, or an object to represent
something that is not physically present.
1. Symbolic function is
directly related to language acquisition.
1. Language allows preschoolers
to represent actions symbolically.
2. Language allows children to
think beyond the present to the future.
3. Language can be used to
consider several possibilities at the same time.
2. Addressing the question if
thought determines language or if language determines thought, Piaget argued
that language grows out of cognitive advances.
4. CENTRATION — the process of concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus
and ignoring other aspects — is a major characteristic of preoperational
thought, and the major limitation of this period because it leads to inaccuracy
of thought.
5. CONSERVATION is the knowledge that quantity is
unrelated to the arrangement and physical appearance of objects.
1. Preschool children do not yet understand this principle.
2. They cannot focus on the relevant features of a situation or follow the sequence of transformations that accompanies the change in appearance of a situation.
6. Children in the preoperational period are unable to understand the notion of TRANSFORMATION, the process in which one state is changed into another.
7. EGOCENTRIC THOUGHT, thinking that does not take into account the viewpoint of others, takes two forms.
1.
Lack of awareness that others see things from different physical
perspectives.
2. Failure to realize that others may hold thoughts, feelings, and points-of-view different from one’s own.
3. Egocentrism is at the root
of many preschool behaviors, for example, talking to oneself and hiding games.
8. A number of advances in
thought occur in the preoperational stage.
1. INTUITIVE THOUGHT — the use of primitive reasoning
and avid acquisition of knowledge about the world.
2. Children begin to understand
functionality — the concept that
actions, events and outcomes are related to one another in fixed patterns.
3. They begin to understand the
concept of identity — that certain
things stay the same regardless of changes in shape, size and appearance.
9. Critics of Piaget’s theory argue that he seriously
underestimated children’s capabilities.
1. They argue that cognition
develops in a continuous manner, not in stages.
2. They believe that training can
improve performance in conservation tasks.
3. They also argue that Piaget
focused too much on the deficiencies of young children’s thought.
2. Information-Processing
Approaches to Cognitive Development
1. Information-processing
theorists focus on two domains.
1. Understanding of numbers
1. The average preschooler is
able not only to count, but to do so in a fairly systematic, consistent manner.
2. By age 4, most can do simple
addition and subtraction and compare quantities.
2. Memory: Recalling the Past
1. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY, memory of
particular events from ones’ own life, is not very accurate until after three.
2. Preschooler’s
autobiographical memories fade, they may not be accurate (depending when they
are assessed), and they are susceptible to suggestions.
1. Preschooler’s memories of familiar events are often organized in terms of SCRIPTS, broad representations in memory of events and the order in which they occur.
2. With age, scripts become more elaborate.
3. Preschoolers have difficulty
describing certain information and oversimplify recollections that may have
implications for eyewitness testimony.
1. Young children are
susceptible to suggestions from adults.
2. Questioning children right
after the event and outside the courtroom may produce more accurate recollections.
2. According to
information-processing approaches, cognitive development consists of gradual
improvements in the ways people perceive, understand and remember.
1. Preschoolers begin to
process information with greater sophistication.
2. They have longer attention
spans, attend to more than one dimension of an object, and can better monitor
what they are attending to.
3. Information processing
provides a clear, logical, and full account of cognitive development.
1. Reliance on well-defined
processes that can be tested is one of this perspective’s most important features.
2. Information processing
theorists pay little attention to social and cultural factors.
3. Information processing
theorists pay too much attention to detailed, individual sequence of processes that
they never paint a whole, comprehensive picture of cognitive development.
3. Vygotsky’s View of Cognitive
Development: Taking Culture into Account
1. Culture and societies
influence cognitive development.
1. Cognition proceeds because
of social interactions where partners jointly work to solve problems.
2. This partnership is
determined by cultural and societal factors.
2. According to Vygotsky,
children’s cognitive abilities increase when information is
provided within their ZONE OF PROXIMAL
DEVELOPMENT (ZPD), the level at which
a child can almost, but not fully, perform a task independently, but can do so
with the assistance of someone more competent.
1. The assistance provided by
others is called SCAFFOLDING, the support for learning and problem solving
that encourages independence and growth.
2. The aid that more
accomplished individuals provide to learners comes in the form of cultural tools, the actual physical
items such as pencils, paper, calculators, and computers.
3. Vygotsky’s view has become
increasingly influential in the last decade.
1. It helps explain a growing
body of research attesting to the importance of social interaction in promoting
cognitive development.
2. The zone of proximal
development is not precise and not easily testable.
3. His theory is silent on how
basic cognitive functions such as attention and memory develop.
3. The Growth of Language and
Learning
1. Language
1. Between late twos and
mid-threes, sentence length increases.
1.
SYNTAX, the ways words and
phrases are combined to make sentences, doubles each month.
2. By six, the average child
has a vocabulary of 14,000 words.
1. They manage this feat through a process known as FAST MAPPING, instances in which new words are associated with their meaning after only a brief encounter.
2.
By age three, children use plurals and possessive forms of nouns
(boys/boy’s), employ the past tense (adding -ed), use articles
(the/a), and can ask and answer complex questions (“Where did you say my book
is?”).
3.
Preschoolers begin to acquire the principles of GRAMMAR, the system of rules that determine how our thoughts can
be expressed.
4.
Preschoolers engage mostly in PRIVATE
SPEECH, speech by children that is spoken and directed to themselves.
1.
Vygotsky argues that private speech facilitates children’s thinking, helps
them control their behavior, solve problems and reflect.
2. 20 to 60 percent of what
children say is private speech.
5.
SOCIAL SPEECH, speech directed toward
another person and meant to be understood by that person, increases.
6.
The language children hear at home influences their language
development.
1.
Hart and Risley (1995) researched the effects of poverty on language.
1.
Economic level was a significant factor in the amount of parental
interactions, types of language children were exposed to, and kinds of language
used.
2. Poverty was also related to lower IQ scores by age five.
2. Television: Learning From the Media
1. Average preschooler watches
20 to 30 hours of TV a week.
2. Consequences of TV viewing
are unclear.
1. Children do not fully understand
the plots.
2. They may have difficulty
separating fantasy from reality.
3. Some information is well
understood by young viewers, i.e. facial expressions.
4. Yet, much of what is viewed
is not representative of events in the real world.
3. Television may be harnessed
to facilitate cognitive growth.
1. Sesame Street is the most popular educational program in the
1. Viewers had significantly
larger vocabularies.
2. Lower-income viewers were
better prepared for school, scored higher on tests of cognitive ability, and spent
more time reading.
3. Critics of
2. There are difficulties in
assessing the effects of educational viewing (e.g. the effects may be related
to parenting).
3. Early Childhood
Education: Taking the “Pre” Out of the
Preschool Period
1. Three-quarters of children
in the
1. Major factor is working
parents.
2. Evidence suggests that children
can benefit from early educational activities.
2. There are a variety of early
education programs.
1. CHILD CARE CENTERS are places that typically
provide care for children all day, while their parents work.
1. Some are home-care.
2. Others are provided by
organized institutions.
2. PRESCHOOLS (or NURSERY SCHOOLS) provide
care for several hours a day, and are designed primarily to enrich the child’s development.
3. SCHOOL CHILD CARE is a child-care facility
provided by some local school systems in the
3. There are pros and cons of
attending early education programs.
1. Advantages might include
increases in verbal fluency, memory and comprehension tasks, self-confidence,
independence, and knowledge about the social world.
2. Disadvantages found included
children being less polite, less compliant, less respectful of adults and
sometimes more competitive and aggressive.
4. The key factor in
determining the effects of early education programs is quality.
1. Well-trained care providers.
2. Overall size of the group
and the child-care provider ratio.
3. Curriculum.
5. Developmental Diversity: Preschools Around the World
1.
Unlike other countries such as
1. These decisions have traditionally been left to the states or local school boards.
2.
The
2.
Japanese parents view preschools as a way of giving children the
opportunity to become members of a group.
3.
Chinese parents see preschools primarily as a way of giving children a
good start academically.
4.
6. In the
1. Designed to serve the whole
child, including physical health, self-confidence, social responsibility, and social
and emotional development.
2. Although graduates of Head
Start tend to show immediate IQ gains, these increases do not last.
3. Children who attend Head
Start are more ready for future schooling than those who do not.
4. Graduates of Head Start have
better future school adjustment than their peers, and are less likely to be in
special education programs or to be retained a grade.
7. David Elkind argues that
1. Children require DEVELOPMENTALLY
APPROPRIATE EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE, education based on both typical
development and the unique characteristics of a given child.
2. Better to provide an
environment where learning is encouraged, not pushed.
Key
Terms and Concepts
Obesity
Lateralization
Handedness
Preoperational stage
Operations
Centration
Conservation
Transformation
Egocentric thought
Intuitive thought
Autobiographical memory
Scripts
Zone of proximal development (ZPD)
Scaffolding
Syntax
Fast mapping
Grammar
Private speech
Pragmatics
Social speech
Child-care centers
Preschools (or nursery schools)
School child care
Developmentally appropriate
Educational practice