CHAPTER
P H Y S I C5A L
AND COGNITIVE
PHYSICIAL AND COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
• Growth rate slows in early childhood but it is
still the most obvious physical change
• Girls are only slightly smaller and lighter than
boys during these years
• Heads are still somewhat large for their
bodies
• Body fat also shows a slow, steady decline
• Girls have more fatty tissue than boys; boys have
more muscle tissue
• Growth patterns vary individually
• Much of the variation is due to heredity
THE BRAIN
• Maturation of the brain combined with
opportunities for experience add to emerging
cognitive abilities
• they plan their actions
• attend to stimuli more effectively
• show increased language development
• Amount of brain material in some areas can nearly
double in as little as a year
• followed by loss of tissue as unneeded cells are pruned
• the brain continues to reorganize itself
THE BRAIN
• Planning and Organizing
• Prefrontal cortex
• Perseveration
• Examples: “Mom,” “Are we there yet…?”
• In neurons, the number and size of dendrites
increase
• Myelination continues
• myelination -- process in which axons are covered with a
layer of fat cells
• it increases the speed and efficiency of information
traveling through the nervous system
(Nelson, 2011)
GROSS MOTOR SKILLS
• 3 years of age: hopping, jumping, and running back
and forth
• Examples: Bike, skiing, climbing
• delight and pride in showing how they can run and jump
• 4 years of age, the same kinds of activities
• but more adventurous
• increased abilities on steps
• Age 5, they are even more adventuresome
• run hard and enjoy races with each other and their parents
FINE MOTOR SKILLS
• By age 3: have had the ability to pick up the tiniest
objects between their thumb and forefinger for
some time
• but still somewhat clumsy
• Examples: clay, coloring, tools
• By age 4: fine motor coordination has improved
substantially and becomes much more precise
• By age 5: hand, arm, and body all move together
under better command of the eye
NUTRITION AND EXERCISE
• Eating habits important to development
• Affects their skeletal growth, body shape, and
susceptibility to disease
• Exercise and physical activity are also very
important
OVERWEIGHT YOUNG CHILDREN
• Being overweight has become a serious health
problem
• 45 percent of children’s meals exceed
recommendations for saturated and trans fat
• One-third of children's caloric intake comes from
restaurants
• Young children’s eating behavior is strongly
influenced by their caregiver’s behavior
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Need a predictable schedule
Model eating healthy food
Mealtimes are pleasant occasions
Engage in certain feeding styles
OVERWEIGHT YOUNG CHILDREN
• Categories for being overweight or at risk for being
overweight are determined by body mass index
(BMI)
• Percentages of young children who are overweight
or at risk for being overweight have increased
• By age 5
• physicians are seeing Type II diabetes
• overweight is associated with lower self-esteem
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011)
EXERCISE
• Routine physical activity should be a daily
occurrence
• Preschool children should engage in 2 hours of physical
activity per day
• One hour structured
• One hour unstructured
• Child’s life should be centered around activities, not
meals
MALNUTRITION
• Poor nutrition is associated with low income
• poor nutrition -- diets low in essential amounts of iron,
vitamins, or protein
• In the United States, the WIC (Women,
Infants, and Children) program was
designed to address malnutrition and
provides:
• Healthy supplemental foods
• Health care referrals
• Nutrition education for women from pregnancy and for
infants and children up to age 5
• WIC serves 7,500,000 participants
ILLNESS AND DEATH
• In the United States, accidents are the leading
cause of death
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motor vehicle accidents
drowning
falls
poisoning
• Cancer
• Cardiovascular disease
(National Center for Health Statistics, 2009; Modell, 2010)
PARENTAL SMOKING
• An estimated 22 percent of children and
adolescents are exposed to tobacco smoke in the
home
• Children exposed to smoke are more likely to
develop wheezing symptoms and asthma than
children in non-smoking homes
• Linked to young children’s sleep problems and sleepdisordered breathing
• JACK (age 3) was watching his Mom breast-feeding his new baby sister.... After a while
he asked: 'Mom why have you got two? Is one for hot and one for cold milk?'
• MELANIE (age 5) asked her Granny how old she was.. Granny replied she was so old she
didn't remember any more. Melanie said, 'If you don't remember you must look in the
back of your panties. Mine say five to six.’
• STEVEN (age 3) hugged and kissed his Mom good night. 'I love you so much that when
you die I'm going to bury you outside my bedroom window.'
• BRITTANY (age 4) had an ear ache and wanted a pain killer. She tried in vain to take the
lid off the bottle.. Seeing her frustration, her Mom explained it was a child-proof cap and
she'd have to open it for her. Eyes wide with wonder, the little girl asked: 'How does it
know it's me?’
• SUSAN (age 4) was drinking juice when she got the hiccups. 'Please don't give me this
juice again,' she said, 'It makes my teeth cough..’
• DJ (age 4) stepped onto the bathroom scale and asked: 'How much do I cost?’
• CLINTON (age 5) was in his bedroom looking worried When his Mom asked what was
troubling him, he replied, 'I don't know what'll happen with this bed when I get
married.. How will my wife fit in it?'
• MARC (age 4) was engrossed in a young couple that were hugging and kissing in a
restaurant. Without taking his eyes off them, he asked his dad: 'Why is he whispering in
her mouth?’
• TAMMY (age 4) was with her mother when they met an elderly, rather wrinkled woman
her Mom knew.. Tammy looked at her for a while and then asked, 'Why doesn't your skin
fit your face?’
• JAMES (age 4)was listening to a Bible story. His dad read: 'The man named Lot was
warned to take his wife and flee out of the city but his wife looked back and was turned
to salt.' Concerned, James asked: 'What happened to the flea?’
• Sunday sermon.....'Dear Lord,' the minister began, with arms extended toward heaven
and a rapturous look on his upturned face. 'Without you, we are but dust...' He would
have continued but at that moment Sarah, who was listening leaned over to me and
asked quite audibly in her shrill little four year old girl voice, 'Mom, what is butt dust?'
COGNITIVE CHANGES
• Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
• from approximately 2 to 7 years of age
• children begin to represent the world with words, images,
and drawings
• form stable concepts and begin to reason
• dominated by egocentrism and magical beliefs
• Child does not yet perform operations -- which are
reversible mental actions
PREOPERATIONAL THOUGHT: SYMBOLIC
FUNCTION SUBSTAGE
• Between ages of 2 and 4
• Child gains the ability to mentally represent an
object that is not present
• Egocentrism -- inability to distinguish between one’s
own perspective and someone else’s perspective
• Examples: Mary, stairs, movies, “I’m this many…”
• Animism -- the belief that inanimate objects have
life-like qualities and are capable of action
• Examples: Curb, dolls, bad door
PREOPERATIONAL THOUGHT:
INTUITIVE THOUGHT SUBSTAGE
• Between approximately 4 and 7 years of age
• Begin to use primitive reasoning and ask all sorts of
questions
• Questions signal the emergence of interest in
reasoning and in figuring out why things are the way
they are
• “Intuitive” because children seem sure about their
knowledge and understanding
CENTRATION AND THE LIMITS OF
PREOPERATIONAL THOUGHT
• Irreversibility
• Examples: Hamburger, blocks
• Another limitation of preoperational thought is
centration -- centering of attention on one characteristic
to the exclusion of all others.
• Examples: Color not shape, photos
• Focus on appearance
• Example: Dogs
• centration is most clearly evidenced in young children’s lack of
conservation -- the awareness that altering an object’s or a
substance’s appearance does not change its basic properties
• Examples: Juice, clay, candy
VYGOTSKY’S THEORY
• Vygotsky’s social constructivist approach
emphasizes the social contexts of learning and the
construction of knowledge through social
interaction
• ZPD -- zone of proximal development
• scaffolding
ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
• Zone of Proximal Development -- Vygotsky’s
term for the range of tasks that are too
difficult for the child to master alone but that
can be learned with guidance and
assistance of adults or more skilled children
• Examples: Puzzles, reading
• lower limit of the ZPD is the level of skill reached by
the child working independently
• upper limit is the level of additional responsibility
the child can accept with the assistance of an
able instructor
SCAFFOLDING
• Scaffolding -- changing the level of support
• Examples: learning letters, painting
• A teacher or advanced peer adjusts the amount of
guidance to fit the child’s current performance
• when the student is learning a new task, the skilled person
may use direct instruction
• as the student’s competence increases, less guidance is
given
LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT
• According to Vygotsky (1962), children use
speech not only for social communication,
but also to help them solve tasks -- children
use language to plan, guide, and monitor
their behavior
• language for self-regulation is called private speech
• for Piaget, private speech is egocentric and immature
• for Vygotsky, it is an important tool of thought during the
early childhood years
• Examples: Math problem, busy schedule
(Wertsch, 2007)
INFORMATION PROCESSING
• Attention -- the focusing of cognitive
resources
• Executive attention involves planning actions,
allocating attention to goals, detecting and
compensating for errors, monitoring progress on
tasks, dealing with novel or difficult circumstances
• Sustained attention is focused and extended
engagement with an object, task, event, or other
aspect of the environment
• Control of attention
• Salient versus relevant dimensions
• Planfulness
MEMORY
• Memory -- the retention of information over
time Short-term memory -- individuals retain
information for only about 30 seconds
• using rehearsal (repeating information after it has
been presented), we can keep information in
short-term memory for a much longer period
• older children are better able to rehearse
• speed and efficiency of processing information
are important
• memory becomes more accurate with age
THE YOUNG CHILD’S THEORY OF
MIND
• Awareness of one’s own mental processes and the
mental processes of others
• Studies view the child as “a thinker who is trying to
explain, predict, and understand people’s thoughts,
feelings, and utterances”
• Children’s theory of mind changes as they develop
through childhood
(Harris, 2006; Gelman, 2009; Wellman, 2011)
THEORY OF MIND
• Age 2–3, children begin to understand three mental
states:
• perceptions
• emotions
• desires
• Age 4–5, they come to understand that the mind
can represent objects and events accurately or
inaccurately
• they realize that people can have false beliefs -- beliefs that
are not true
THEORY OF MIND:
BEYOND AGE 5
• Not until middle and late childhood do children see
the mind as an active constructor of knowledge or
processing center
• Then they can move from understanding that
beliefs can be false to realizing that the same event
can be open to multiple interpretations
(Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 2000; Carpendale & Chandler, 1996)
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
• Between 2 and 3 years of age children make a
transition from saying simple sentences that express
a single proposition to saying complex sentences
• Children learn the special features of their own
language; there are regularities in how they acquire
that particular language
(Bloom, 1998; Berko Gleason, 2005)
YOUNG CHILDREN’S LITERACY
• Build on what children already know about oral
language, reading, and writing
• Include language skills, phonological and syntactic
knowledge, letter identification, and knowledge
about print and its functions
VARIATIONS IN EARLY
CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
• Child-centered kindergarten emphasizes the
education of the whole child and concern for his or
her physical, cognitive, and socioemotional
development
• Each child follows a unique developmental pattern
• Young children learn best through firsthand experiences
with people and materials
• Play is extremely important in the child’s total development
VARIATIONS IN EARLY
CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
• The Montessori Approach is a philosophy of
education in which children are given considerable
freedom and spontaneity in choosing activities
• Teacher is facilitator rather than director
• Shows the child how to perform intellectual
activities
• Demonstrates interesting ways to explore
curriculum materials
• Offers help when the child requests it
DEVELOPMENTALLY
APPROPRIATE EDUCATION
• Developmentally Appropriate Practice
(DAP) is education that focuses on the
typical developmental patterns of children
and the uniqueness of each child
• Desired outcomes include:
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Thinking critically
Working cooperatively
Solving problems
Developing self-regulatory skills
Enjoying learning
EDUCATION FOR YOUNG
CHILDREN WHO ARE
DISADVANTAGED
• Project Head Start -- a compensatory program
designed to provide children from low-income
families the opportunity to acquire the skills and
experiences important for success in school
• Evaluations support the positive influence of highquality early childhood programs on both the
cognitive and social worlds of disadvantaged
young children
CONTROVERSY OVER CURRICULUM
• Currently there is controversy about what the
curriculum of U.S. early childhood education should
be
• Child-centered, constructivist approach along the
lines of developmentally appropriate practice
versus an academic, direct instruction approach
A COMBINED APPROACH
• Many high-quality programs include both
academic and constructivist approaches
• Experts like Lilian Katz worry about academic
approaches that place pressure on young
children to achieve and don’t provide any
opportunities to actively construct knowledge
• Programs should focus on cognitive development
and socioemotional development, not just on
cognitive development
• Another controversy is whether preschool
education should be instituted for all U.S. 4year-old children