PSYCHOLOGY TEST 2
UNIT 7
EARLY CHILDHOOD: PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Physical Changes in Children
• Focus on height, weight, motor/perception development.
• Consider sleep, nutrition, exercises.
• Consider illness/death.
Height and weight
● increase: Average child grows 2.5 inches and gains 5-7 pounds.
● As children grow older, height and weight decrease.
● Girls are slightly smaller and lighter until puberty.
● Both boys and girls slim down as body trunks lengthen.
● Decrease in body fat: Girls have more fatty tissue, boys have muscle tissue.
Brain
• Continuous development occurs from 3 years to 6 years.
• Brain size reaches 95% of adult size.
• Interior changes include increased dendritic connections and myelination.
• Nerve cells are insulated with fat cells for improved information speed and efficiency.
Motor Development
Gross Motor Skills:
• 3 year olds: Can stay upright and move around using larger muscles.
• 4 year olds: Enjoy activities with increased adventurousness.
• 5 year olds: More adventurous, enjoy running and races.
Fine Motor Skills:
• 3 year olds: Difficulty picking small objects with fine muscles.
• 4 year olds: Improved fine motor coordination and precision.
• 5 year olds: Improved hand, arm, and body coordination.
Sleep
• Recommended sleep for children is 11-13 hours per night.
• Bedtime resistance can lead to conduct problems or hyperactivity.
• Sleep problems in children include narcolepsy, insomnia, nightmares, depression, and anxiety.
• Sleep problems in preschool children can lead to difficult temperament and anxiety at 5
months and 17 months.
• Sleep problems in children can lead to adolescent issues like drug use and depression at 3-8
years.
• Short sleep in children is linked to being overweight.
• Improvement strategies include consistent bed and wake times, cool, dark bedrooms, and
slowing down before bedtime.
Nutrition and Exercise
• Influence of caregivers on children's eating habits and exercise.
• Overweight in early childhood is linked to restrictive feeding style.
• Importance of healthy eating with caregivers away from distractions.
• Prevention of obesity by promoting food as a means to satisfy hunger and meet nutritional
needs.
• Malnutrition, particularly iron deficiency anemia, is a significant health issue.
• Daily physical activity recommended.
• Two hours of structured and unstructured play.
• Child life should focus on play, not just meals.
• Vigorous physical activity linked to lower obesity risk.
Illness and Death
• Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death, followed by cancer, cardiovascular
diseases, and drowning.
• Mortality rates are influenced by factors like maternal and child health services, clean water,
safe sanitation, and child's environment.
• High poverty rates lead to hunger, malnutrition, illness, inadequate healthcare, unsafe water,
and lack of protection.
• HIV/AIDS is a significant issue.
COGNITIVE CHANGES
The three views of cognitive changes that occur in childhood:
• Piaget’s preoperational stage;
• Vygotsky’s theory;
• Information processing;
Piaget's Preoperational Stage
● Second stage of cognitive development, ages 2-7.
● Children represent the world with words, images, and drawings.
● Cognitive world dominated by egocentrism and magical beliefs.
● Cannot perform mental operations (e.g., adding, subtracting).
● Two substages: Symbolic Function (ages 2-4) and Intuitive Thought (ages 4-7).
● Limitations: egocentrism, animism, centration, and lack of conservation.
Symbolic Function Substage
● Ages 2-4, ability to mentally represent absent objects.
● Use scribbles, language, and pretend play.
● Limitations: egocentrism (inability to consider others' perspectives) and animism (belief
that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities).
Intuitive Thought Substage
● Ages 4-7, use of primitive reasoning and questioning.
● Limitation: centration (focusing on one characteristic and ignoring others) and lack of
conservation (not understanding that changing an object's appearance doesn't change
its basic properties).
Vygotsky's Theory
● Children construct knowledge through social interaction.
● Cognitive development shaped by cultural context and societal tools.
● Key concepts: zone of proximal development (ZPD), scaffolding, language and thought,
teaching strategies.
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
● Range of tasks a child can learn with guidance.
● Lower limit: child's independent skill level.
● Upper limit: child's potential with assistance.
Scaffolding
● Adjusting support based on the child's current performance.
Language and Thought
● Children use language for self-regulation and private speech.
● Language and thought initially develop independently, then merge.
● Private speech aids in social competence.
Vygotsky's Teaching Strategies
● Assess child's ZPD to determine appropriate tasks and assistance.
● Utilize peer support and guidance.
● Place instruction in meaningful contexts.
● Implement Vygotskian ideas in classroom practices.
Information Processing
Attention:
• Attention involves focusing mental resources on specific information.
• Toddlers tend to spend less time focusing on one object or event.
• Children progress in executive and sustained attention.
• Executive attention involves action planning, goal allocation, error detection, and task
progress.
• Sustained attention involves focused engagement with an object, task, or environment.
• Increases in attention are due to comprehension and language development.
Attention Deficits
• Salient vs relevant dimensions: Children pay attention to stimuli that stand out, even if not
relevant to the task.
• Planfulness: Children make quick judgments without considering all details.
Memory:
• Memory is the retention of information over time.
• Implicit memory: Unconscious memory of skills and how to do things.
• Explicit memory: Memories that can be consciously recalled, stored in different brain regions.
• Short term memory (working memory): Individuals retain information for up to 30 seconds
without rehearsal.
Child's Memory and Language Development
Memory Accuracy Factors:
• Age differences in susceptibility to suggestions.
• Independent variable susceptibility.
• Interviewing techniques can distort children's reports.
Child's Theory of Mind:
• Awareness of one's own and others' mental processes.
• Child viewed as a thinker trying to explain, predict, and understand people's thoughts.
• From 18 months-3 years, child understands perceptions, emotions, and desires.
• Perceptions: At 2 years, child recognizes others' perceptions.
• Emotions: Child can distinguish between positive and negative emotions.
• Desires: Child recognizes others' desires.
• False beliefs: Child understands people can have false beliefs.
Language Development:
• Understanding phonology and morphology: Child can produce all vowel sounds and most
consonant sounds.
• Changes in Syntax and Semantics: Child learns and applies syntax rules.
• Advances in Pragmatics: Young children engage in extended discourse and learn culturally
specific rules.
Variations in Early Childhood Education
Child-Centered Kindergarten:
• Focuses on the whole child's education, considering physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional
development.
• Instruction is based on the child's needs, interests, and learning style.
Montessori Approach:
• Allows children freedom in choosing activities and encourages decision-making from an early
stage.
• Aims to develop self-regulated problem solvers.
Developmentally Appropriate and Inappropriate Education:
• Allows for individual differences in cognitive development.
• Promotes active, hands-on teaching methods like games and dramatic play.
• Aims to improve cognitive and socio-emotional development.
Controversies in Early Childhood Education:
• Curriculum Controversy: Focuses on child-centered curriculum. Child-centered constructivist
vs direct instruction approach.
• Universal Preschool Education: Questioning if education should be universal across the
country. Quality preschools prepare children for school readiness and academic success.
UNIT 8
EARLY CHILDHOOD: SOCIOEMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Socioemotional Early Childhood:
• Focuses on emotional and personality development (sex, gender, personality development,
and peer relations).
• Explores peer relations, play, and television.
• Discusses family dynamics including parenting, child maltreatment, sibling relationships, birth
order, and changes in family.
Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Stage:
• Early childhood is characterized by initiative versus guilt.
• Children identify with their parents, often perceived as powerful but often unreasonable.
• Children use their perceptual, motor, cognitive, and language skills to make things happen.
• They have a surplus of energy, allowing them to forget failures and approach new areas with
zest.
• Initiative and enthusiasm can lead to guilt, lowering self-esteem.
Understanding the Self
• Self-understanding refers to a child's cognitive representation of themselves.
• Early childhood self-descriptions often involve body attributes, material possessions, and
physical activities.
• At 4 to 5 years, children begin to include psychological trait and emotion terms in their own
self-descriptions.
Understanding Others
• Children's theory of mind includes understanding others' emotions and desires.
• Children start describing themselves and others in terms of psychological traits at 4 to 5 years.
• Even 4-year-olds understand that people may make false statements to obtain desired
outcomes or avoid trouble.
• Children mistrust people who make a single error at 3 years, but trust is influenced by the
frequency of errors.
• 3-year-olds recognize when an adult is committed and when they are committed to joint
activity.
Emotional Development in Early Childhood
• Young children's emotional awareness is linked to their ability to feel an expanding range of
emotions.
• Expressing emotions like pride and guilt become more common, influenced by parents'
responses to children's behavior.
• Children understand that certain situations evoke specific emotions, and that emotions can
influence others' emotions.
• Between 2 and 4 years, children increase the number of terms they use to describe emotions
and learn about the causes and consequences of feelings.
• By 5 years, most children can accurately determine emotions produced by challenging
circumstances and describe strategies to cope with everyday stress.
Emotional Development
● Emotion regulation:
● Key role in managing social interactions and conflicts.
● Parental guidance can foster emotion-coaching or emotion-dismissing
approaches.
● Emotions in peer relationships:
● Emotional modulation benefits children in peer interactions.
● Emotionally positive children tend to be more popular.
Moral Development
● Moral development:
● Involves thoughts, feelings, and behaviors regarding social rules and conventions.
● Moral feelings:+ Anxiety and guilt play a central role in moral development (Freud).
● Identifying and addressing others' emotional states contributes to moral
development.
● Moral reasoning (Piaget):
● Heteronomous morality (4-7 years): Rules are unchangeable, and punishment is
immediate (immanent justice).
● Autonomous morality (10+ years): Children understand rules are created by
people and consider intentions and consequences.
Moral Development
● Moral behavior:
● Influenced by reinforcement, punishment, and imitation.
● Reward and positive modeling promote moral behavior, while punishment can
reduce immoral behavior.
● Conscience:
● Internal regulation of moral standards, integrating thoughts, feelings, and
behavior.
● Young children show awareness of right/wrong, empathy, guilt, and sensitivity to
rule violations.
● Parenting and moral development:+ Parent-child relationships introduce mutual
obligations and guide moral growth.
● Conversations on moral topics benefit children's development.
Gender
● Gender: Characteristics related to being male or female.
● Gender identity:+ Sense of one's own gender, usually established by 2.5 years.
Includes knowledge, understanding, and acceptance of being male or female.
● Gender roles:
Cultural expectations for how males and females should think, act, and feel.
Most children adopt their culture's gender roles during the preschool years.
● Gender typing:
Acquisition of traditional masculine or feminine roles.
Examples: fighting (masculine), crying (feminine).
Gender
● Biological influences:+ Chromosomes, hormones, and evolution contribute to sex
differences.
● XX chromosomes in females, XY in males.
● Hormones play a key role in sex differentiation.
● Evolutionary view:+ Adaptations during human evolution resulted in psychological
differences between sexes.
● Social influences:+ Social experiences shape gender differences.
● Social role theory: Differences arise from contrasting roles of men and women.
● Psychoanalytic theory: Children adopt characteristics of same-sex parent due to
attraction and identification.
● Social cognitive theory: Children learn gender through observation, imitation,
rewards, and punishments.
● Cognitive influences:+ Children develop gender schemas based on cultural norms.
● Gender schema theory: Children are motivated to perceive the world according to
gender schemas.
Families
● Parenting styles (Baumrind, 1971):
● Authoritarian: Restrictive, punitive; leads to children's social incompetence.
● Authoritative: Encourages independence with limits; associated with children's
social competence.
● Neglectful: Uninvolved parenting; leads to children's social incompetence.
● Indulgent: Highly involved but with few demands; associated with children's
social incompetence.
Punishment
● Corporal punishment:
● Physical punishment, such as spanking, has been used historically for
discipline.+ Research links it to immediate compliance and increased aggression
in children.
● May lead to fear, rage, avoidance, or imitation of aggressive behavior.
● Relationship between marital conflict and punishment highlights the importance of
coparenting (support in jointly raising a child).
● Child Maltreatment:
● Four main types: physical abuse, child neglect, sexual abuse, and emotional
abuse.
● Factors contributing to maltreatment include culture, family, and child
developmental characteristics.+ Consequences include poor emotion regulation,
attachment problems, difficulties in school, and psychological issues.
Sibling Relationships
● Characteristics:+ Siblings experience frequent conflicts, especially between ages 2 and
7.+ Parental intervention varies (resolving conflicts, admonishment, or no action).
● Sibling relationships involve emotional quality, familiarity/intimacy, and variation in
experiences.+ Roles include emotional support, rivals, and communication
partners.
Birth Order
● Birth order may influence personality characteristics:+ Firstborns: More intelligent,
achieving, conscientious.
● Later-borns: More rebellious, liberal, agreeable.
● Only children: Often achievement-oriented with desirable personalities.
Changes in Family Structure
● Families vary in composition:+ Single-parent families: Common, with potential positive
and negative effects on parenting.+ Working parents: Parenting quality depends on work
conditions rather than the number of working parents.
● Divorced families: Children may show poorer adjustment but can benefit from
reduced family conflict.
● Remarried families: Complex relationships and transitions can lead to adjustment
difficulties.+ Gay and lesbian parents: No inherent developmental disadvantages
for children compared to heterosexual parents.
Gay and Lesbian Parents
● Increasing numbers of gay and lesbian couples are creating families.+ Most children of
gay/lesbian parents were born in previous heterosexual relationships.
● Other cases involve donor insemination, surrogates, or adoption.
● Research shows no significant differences in adjustment or mental health of children
from gay/lesbian families compared to heterosexual families.
● Cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic variations influence parenting styles and values.
Peer Relations
● Peers provide information, comparison, and feedback about abilities.+ Friendships are
based on play in early childhood, becoming more selective with age.+ Parents influence
children's peer relations through interactions, management, and opportunities.
Play
● Play is a pleasurable, voluntary activity with cognitive, socioemotional benefits.+ Freud
and Erikson: Play helps children master anxieties and conflicts.
● Allows for tension relief, coping with problems, and energy release.
● Facilitates cognitive development through imagination, divergent thinking, and
problem-solving.+ Social benefits: Perspective-taking, cooperation, negotiation,
emotional regulation.
● Vygotsky: Play helps children develop self-regulation and imagination.
Types of Play
● Sensorimotor play: Infants engage in behavior to derive pleasure from exercising
existing sensorimotor schemas.
● Practice play: Involves repetition of behavior for learning new skills or mastering
physical/mental coordination for games/sports.
● Pretense/symbolic play: Children transform the physical environment into symbols.
● Social play: Play involving social interactions with peers.
● Constructive play: Combines sensorimotor, repetitive, and symbolic representation for
self-regulated creation/construction.
● Games: Rule-based activities, often involving competition, become more significant
during elementary school years.
Television
● Television has significant influence on children's behavior and development.+ Many
children spend more time watching TV than interacting with parents.
● Negative effects: Passivity, distraction from homework, stereotypes, violent
models, and unrealistic worldviews.
● Positive influences: Providing models of prosocial behavior.+ Exposure to TV
violence and playing violent video games can lead to aggressive behavior in
children.
UNIT 9
MIDDLE AND LATE CHILDHOOD: PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
Physical Changes and Health
● Slow, consistent growth during middle and late childhood, with average height increases.
● Weight gain mainly due to skeletal, muscular, and organ growth.
● Proportional changes include decreased head and waist circumference relative to
height.
● Bones continue to ossify but remain flexible.
● Muscle mass and strength increase as "baby fat" decreases.
Brain Development
● Total brain volume stabilizes by late childhood, with ongoing changes in structures and
regions.
● Advances in the prefrontal cortex relate to improved attention, reasoning, and
cognitive control.
● Cortical thickness changes reflect improvements in language abilities, such as
reading.
● Synaptic pruning increases efficiency in cognitive performance, particularly
cognitive control.
Motor Development
● Children's motor skills become smoother and more coordinated.
● Examples: Running, climbing, swimming, and bicycle riding.
● Boys generally excel in gross motor skills, while girls excel in fine motor skills.
● Age 6: Children can tie shoes, hammer, paste, and fasten clothes.
● Age 7: Children prefer pencils for printing, with fewer letter reversals.
● Age 8-10: Improved independent hand movements allow for writing instead of
printing.
● Age 10-12: Fine-motor skills approach adult-like levels, enabling complex tasks
like playing musical instruments.
Exercise
● Children become more fatigued by prolonged sitting than physical activities like running
or jumping.
● Physical activities help refine developing skills; exercise is crucial for growth and
development.
● 45 minutes of moderate and 15 minutes of vigorous daily activity reduce the
likelihood of being overweight.
● Parents and schools play important roles in promoting exercise.+ Regular
exercise by parents provides positive models for children.
● Ways to encourage exercise:+ Offer school-based physical activity programs run by
volunteers.
● Improve physical fitness activities in schools.+ Encourage children to plan
engaging community and school activities.
● Promote family-focused physical activities.
Health, Illness, and Disease
● Parents can help children regulate emotions through emotion-coaching or
emotion-dismissing approaches.
● Accidents and injuries:
● Motor vehicle accidents are the most common cause of severe injury and death.
● Other injuries involve bicycles, skateboards, roller skates, and sports equipment.
● Overweight and obesity:
● Girls are more likely than boys to be overweight.
● Overweight children are at risk for health problems, such as sleep apnea, hip
problems, diabetes, and hypertension.
● Cardiovascular disease:
● Childhood experiences and behaviors can contribute to adult cardiovascular
disease risk.
● An increasing percentage of children have elevated blood pressure.
● Cancer:
● Childhood cancers mainly affect white blood cells, brain, bone, lymph system,
muscles, kidneys, and the nervous system.
● Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer.
● Advances in treatment have improved survival rates for children with cancer.
CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES
The Scope of Disabilities
● Learning Disabilities: Difficulties in understanding or using spoken or written language,
and performing mathematical tasks.
● Dyslexia: Impairment in reading and spelling.+ Dysgraphia: Difficulty in
handwriting.
● Dyscalculia: Difficulty in math computation.
● Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Characterized by inattention,
hyperactivity, and impulsivity.
● Diagnosed as:
● ADHD with predominantly inattention- ADHD with predominantly
hyperactivity/impulsivity - ADHD with both inattention and
hyperactivity/impulsivity
● Emotional and Behavioral Disorders: Persistent problems involving relationships,
aggression, depression, and fears.
● Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD): Range from severe Autistic Disorder to milder
Asperger Syndrome.
● Characterized by issues in social interaction, communication, and repetitive
behaviors.
Educational Issues
● Individualized Education Plan (IEP): A tailored program for a child with a disability.
● Least Restrictive Environment (LRE): An educational setting similar to that of children
without disabilities.
● Inclusion: Full-time education of children with special needs in a regular classroom.
COGNITIVE CHANGES
Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory
● Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11 years):
● Children can perform concrete operations and reason logically with concrete
examples.
● Abilities include:- Seriation: Ordering stimuli along a quantitative dimension (e.g.,
length). - Transitivity: Logically combining relations to understand conclusions.
● Neo-Piagetians modify Piaget's theory, emphasizing information processing, strategies,
and precise cognitive steps.
Information Processing
Memory
● Short-term memory: Increases during early childhood and less after age 7.
● Long-term memory: Permanent memory storing large amounts of information.
● Fuzzy trace theory: Memory involves verbatim and gist representations. Improved
memory with age is attributed to fuzzy traces from extracting gist information.
● Metacognition: Cognition about cognition, including metamemory (knowledge about
memory).
● Brainstorming: Generating creative ideas in a group setting.
Thinking
● Critical thinking: Reflective and productive thinking, evaluating evidence.
● Mindfulness: Being mentally present and cognitively flexible in daily tasks.
● Creative thinking: Generating novel ideas and unique problem solutions.+ Convergent
thinking: Producing one correct answer.
● Divergent thinking: Generating many answers to a question, characteristic of
creativity.
● Scientific reasoning: Identifying causal relations, emphasizing causal mechanisms.
Intelligence
● Intelligence: Ability to solve problems, adapt, and learn from experiences.+
Sternberg's Triarchic Theory:+ Analytical intelligence: Analyzing, judging,
evaluating. + Creative intelligence: Creating, designing, inventing. + Practical
intelligence: Implementing ideas, practical problem-solving.
● Gardner's Eight Frames of Mind:
● Verbal: Language, expression.
● Mathematical: Mathematical operations.
● Spatial: Three-dimensional thinking.
● Bodily-kinesthetic: Physical manipulation, dexterity.+ Musical: Sensitivity
to rhythm, melody, tone.
● Interpersonal: Understanding, interacting with others. + Intrapersonal:
Self-understanding. + Naturalist: Observing patterns, understanding
systems.
Language Development
● Skills gained during middle and late childhood enable reading and writing:
● Using language for abstract concepts.+ Recognizing sounds and
understanding words.
● Learning alphabetic principle: letters represent language sounds.
● Vocabulary, Grammar, and Metalinguistic Awareness:
● Vocabulary organization: Children connect related words.
● Categorization: Children better understand relationships between words.
● Metalinguistic awareness: Knowledge about language and its structures.
Reading
● Pre-reading skills:
● Using language for abstract concepts.
● Recognizing sounds and understanding words.+ Having a robust vocabulary aids
in reading development.
● Reading approaches:
● Whole-language: Instruction parallels natural language learning, using
meaningful texts.+ Phonics: Teaches basic rules for translating written symbols
into sounds.
● Cognitive processes in reading (Mayer, 2008):
● Recognizing phonemes in words.+ Decoding words: Converting print into
sounds.
● Accessing word meaning: Finding mental representation of meaning.
Writing
● Early writing:
● Children invent spellings; focus on encouragement over correction.+ Becoming a
good writer requires practice and opportunities to write.
● Teachers play a key role in improving writing skills.
● Bilingualism and Second Language Learning:
● Sensitive periods for learning a second language vary across language
components.
● Adults learn faster but achieve lower final proficiency than children.+ Bilingual
education: Teaches subjects in native language while gradually introducing
English.
● Bilingualism does not interfere with performance in either language.
