Chapter 7:
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Chapter Objectives
– To describe the expansion of motor skills
during toddlerhood, indicating their
importance for the child’s expanding capacity
to explore the environment and experience
opportunities for mastery
– To document accomplishments in language
development and describe the influences of
interactive experiences and the language
environment for gaining communicative
competence
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Chapter Objectives (cont.)
– To describe the development of fantasy play
and its importance for cognitive and social
development
– To examine the development of self-control,
especially impulse management and goal
attainment, highlighting strategies young
children use to help them regulate their
actions
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Chapter Objectives (cont.)
– To analyze the psychosocial crisis of
autonomy versus shame and doubt, to clarify
the central process of imitation, and to
describe the prime adaptive ego strength of
will and the core pathology of compulsion
– To apply a psychosocial analysis to the topic
of day care, emphasizing the impact of the
social environment on patterns of
development during toddlerhood
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Case Study: Alice Walker Goes To The Fair
– Thought Questions
• What is the spirit of toddlerhood that is captured in
this case?
• How does the case relate to the tasks of
locomotion, language, fantasy play, and selfcontrol?
• What aspects of Alice’s self-concept appear to be
forming in this episode?
• What images of her mother and father are being
established at this age?
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Elaboration of Locomotion
– Plays a central role in the toddler’s
psychosocial development, facilitating the
transformation of ideas into action, and
prompting new types of interactions with the
social and physical environment
– Caregivers must limit locomotion to protect
child’s safety
– Advances occur in walking and running;
jumping; hopping; throwing and catching;
pedaling and steering
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: Semiotic Thinking
– Piaget describes the years from about 2 to 5
or 6 as the stage of preoperational thought or
a transitional period during which the
schemes that were developed during infancy
are represented internally
– The most significant achievement of this new
stage of cognitive development is the capacity
for semiotic or representational thinking understanding one thing can stand for another
through signs and symbols
– Symbols are usually related in some way to
the object for which they stand
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: Semiotic Thinking
(cont.)
– Signs stand for things in a more abstract,
arbitrary way (e.g., words)
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: Communicative
Competence
– Children become adept at using all the
aspects of language that permit effective
participation in the language environment of
their culture
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
Figure 7.1 Three Areas of the Brain That Are Intimately Related to
Speech: Broca’s Area, Wernicke’s Area, and the Arcuate Fasciculus,
a Bundle of Nerve Fibers That Connects the Two
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: Communication
Accomplishments in Infancy
– Language Perception: capacity to recognize
language sounds, including phonetic
combinations of letters and words and the
intonation of sentences
– Babbling: characterized by sounds of
connecting consonants and vowels and
repeating these combinations occurs around
6 to 10 months
– Communication with Gestures: by 8 months
infants use gestures to achieve a goal
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: Communication
Accomplishments in Infancy (cont.)
– Early Grammar: refers to rules that guide
combination of words and phrases in order to
preserve meaning and is apparent by 7 or 8
months
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: Communication
Accomplishments in Infancy (cont.)
– First Words
• Receptive language: around 8 months of age
infants understand the meanings of some
individual words and phrases
• A significant event in the development of language
production is the naming of objects
• Holophrases are single-word utterances
accompanied by a gesture, action, vocal
intonation, or emotion
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: Communicative
Competence in Toddlerhood
– Vocabulary: during the period form 12 to 16
months, infants make significant progress in
learning the names of objects and applying
them to pictures or real examples
– The average toddler of 30 months has a
spoken vocabulary of 570 words. In order to
accomplish this feat, children seem to fastmap new meanings as they experience words
in conversation
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: Communicative
Competence in Toddlerhood (cont.)
– Two-word sentences, or telegraphic speech,
occurs from 16 to 30 months of age
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: Communicative
Competence in Toddlerhood (cont.)
– Grammatical Transformations: by the age of
4, children appear to be able to structure their
sentences using most grammatical rules
without instruction
• Once children learn the rule for expressing the
past tense by adding ‘ed’, they occasionally
overregularize this rule and begin to make errors
(e.g., runned)
• Grammatical errors children make alert us to the
fact that they are working to figure out a system of
rules with which to communicate meaning
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: Language
Development Beyond Toddlerhood
– Although fundamentals of language are well
established by age 4, there are still some
things that toddlers cannot achieve with
language
– Important language functions develop more
fully during early and middle childhood
– Language becomes a vehicle for creative
expression
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: Language
Development Beyond Toddlerhood (cont.)
– Language plays a critical role in the resolution
of subsequent psychosocial crises, especially
the establishment of group identity, intimacy,
and generativity
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: The Language
Environment
– When speaking to toddlers, adults and older
children adjust their spoken language in the
following ways:
• They simplify utterances to correspond with the
toddler’s interests and comprehension level
• They emphasize the here and now
• They use a more restricted vocabulary
• They do a lot of paraphrasing
• They use simple, well-formed sentences
• They use frequent repetitions
• They use a slow rate of speech with pauses
between utterances and after the major content
words
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Language Development: The Language
Environment (cont.)
– Scaffolding occurs in which children try to
match the verbal expressions used by adults
– Adults use expansion to help clarify a child’s
meaning of speech
– Adults also use prompting, often in the form of
a question, to help with the child’s language
development and communication skills
– Reading and language games also enhance
language development
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Fantasy Play: The Nature of Pretend Play
– The worlds of make-believe, poetry, fairy
tales, and folklore, the domains we often
associate with childhood, open up to the
toddler as the ability for symbolization
expands
– Sensorimotor play consists of the repetition of
motor activity
– Symbolic play, or pretend play, appears
around 2 years of age. A vivid mental image
of an action permits them to copy what they
recall rather than what they see
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Fantasy Play: The Capacity for Pretense
– Pretense, whether through symbolic play,
symbolic drawing, or telling make-believe
stories, requires that children understand the
difference between pretend and reality
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Fantasy Play: Changes in Fantasy Play During
Toddlerhood
– Children engaged in solitary pretense are
involved in their own fantasy activities
– Children engaged in social play join with other
children in some activity
– In social pretend play, children have to
coordinate their pretense
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Fantasy Play: Changes in Fantasy Play During
Toddlerhood
– Play changes in 4 ways during toddlerhood
• The action component becomes more complex as
children integrate a sequence of actions
• Children’s focus shifts from the self to fantasies
that involve others and the creation of multiple
roles
• The play involves the use of substitute objects,
including objects children only pretend to have,
and eventually the invention of complex characters
and situations
• The play becomes more organized and planned,
and play leaders emerge
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Fantasy Play: The Contributions of Fantasy Play
to Development
– Children use fantasy play to experiment with
and understand their social and physical
environments and to expand their thinking
– Vygotsky viewed fantasy play as a zone of
proximal development of the child in which a
range of potential could be reached
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Fantasy Play: The Contributions of Fantasy Play
to Development (cont.)
– Adults and more advanced peers promote
development by enabling children in activities
and problem-solving tasks that draw children
into their zone of proximal development, the
new directions along which their capacities
are moving
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Fantasy Play: The Role of Play Companions
– Play companions can elaborate a child’s
capacity for fantasy, legitimize fantasy play,
and help the child to explore new domains of
fantasy
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Self-Control
– Language and Fantasy as Strategies for
Controlling Impulse: talking about and acting
out feelings and needs enables adults to help
children understand more about their
emotions and to help them devise strategies
for self-regulation
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Self-Control
– Language and fantasy as strategies for
controlling impulses
• Parents articulate the family or cultural rules of
emotional expression
• Adults help modify the intensity of emotions
through reassuring or distracting talk
• Adults give children ideas for ways to manage their
impulses
• Children listen to and imitate adults who talk about
their own strong emotions and impulses
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Self-Control: Control of Impulses
– Increasing sensitivity to the distress of others
– Disciple strategies
• Power assertion
• Love withdrawal
• Inductions
– Parental modeling and reinforcement of
acceptable behaviors are also associated with
the development of impulse control
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Self-Control: Control of Impulses (cont.)
– Discipline that is immediate or as close in time
to the situation as possible, and is
appropriately firm, but not overreactive helps
develop self-control
– Individual differences in the ability to control
impulses
– Toddlers differ in their capacity to emphasize
with the distress of others
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Self-Control: Control of Impulses (cont.)
– Differences in temperament affect self-control
• Effortful control: a child’s ability to suppress a
dominant response and perform a subdominant
response instead
– Capacity for self-regulation may depend on
the quality of the mother-infant attachment
• Delay gratification: a child must exert willpower in
order to resist a strong immediate pull or
temptation
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
Figure 7.3 Factors Associated with the Ability to Control Impulses
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Self-Control: Control of Impulses (cont.)
– Self-regulated goal attainment, or a toddlers
feelings that they can direct their behavior and
the behavior of others to achieve intended
outcomes, is also associated with the
development of self-control
– Agency - view of themselves as the
originators of action—expands to include a
broad array of behaviors
– Speech plays a central role in self-directed
goal attainment and practical problem solving
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• The Psychosocial Crisis: Autonomy versus
Shame and Doubt
– Autonomy: the ability to behave
independently, to perform actions on one’s
own
– Shame and Doubt: some children fail to
emerge from toddlerhood with a sense of
mastery
• Shame: an intense emotion that can result from
social ridicule or criticism and internal conflict
• Doubt: a lack of self-confidence and worth and
have a constant sense of failure
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• The Central Process: Imitation
– The primary mechanism by which toddlers
emerge as autonomous individuals is imitation
– Once toddlers succeed in imitating a certain
skill, that still belongs to them and they can
use it for any purpose they like
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• The Prime Adaptive Ego Quality and The Core
Pathology
– Will: capacity of the mind to direct and control
action
– Compulsion: repetitive behaviors that are
motivated by impulse or restriction on the
expression of it
– Children in this stage devise some welloriented rituals
• Obsessions are persistent, repetitive thoughts that
serve as mechanisms for binding anxiety
• Compulsions are repetitive-ritualized actions that
serve the same function
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• The Impact of Poverty on Psychosocial
Development in Toddlerhood
– 17 percent of children under age 18 are poor
according to federal standards
– Poverty is often associated with conditions
that are disruptive to optimal development,
including poor nutrition, inadequate health
care, limited parental education, unstimulating
parent-child interactions, and harsh
punishment
– Parents living in poverty emphasize
obedience and are less likely to use reasons
and explanations in their discipline practices
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• The Impact of Poverty on Psychosocial
Development in Toddlerhood (cont.)
– Poor families are more likely to live in highrisk neighborhoods where children are likely
to be exposed to violence
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)
• Applied Topic: Child Care
– The impact of child care on intelligence and
academic achievement
– The impact of child care on social
competence
– The impact of child care on peer relations
– Directions for the future of child care in the
United States
Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)