Summary Psychology 223, Ch.4, EARLY CHILDHOOD Notes
17 views 0 purchase
Course
Psychology 223
Institution
Stellenbosch University (SUN)
Book
Human Development for Students in Southern Africa
Psychology 223, Chapter 4 notes, EARLY CHILDHOOD, this is a brief summary of chapter 4 to make it easier to learn. ( This document goes hand in hand with my other document on Stuvia called "psychology 223 exam notes").
EARLY CHILDHOOD So, this where the problems begin…
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
CHANGES IN:
• Height and Weight à increase
• Physical proportions à loss of baby fat
• Muscle and bone growth à ossification (hardening of the Cartlidge and bone)
• Teeth à loss of baby teeth
• Brain development
• The frontal lobe areas of the cerebral cortex develop, which expands
language skills, enhances balance and motor control and consciousness
• Plasticity (The ability of one area of the brain to take over the function of
another brain area that has been damaged)
Characteristics:
• Perceptual development
• Age 2-3 à auditory acuity (hear soft sounds)
• Age 4- 6 à perception of figure-ground (recognise objects in a busy
background)
• Motor development
• Gross motor skills à the use of large muscles
• Fine motor skills à the use of the small muscles in the hands and fingers
• Bilateral coordination à co-ordination of the left and right halves in the
body
Influences:
• Heredity and hormones
• The pituitary gland sits at the base of the brain and releases the growth
hormone (also known as somatotropin) to help aid in tissue and organ
growth
• thyroid-stimulating hormone stimulates the thyroid to release thyroxiǹ
à necessary for normal development of nerve cells of the brain and for
growth hormone to have its full impact on body height and size
• Nutrition
• Malnutrition
• Undernourishment
• Obesity
• Wasting (extreme loss of body tissue, especially for their muscles)
• Emotional well-being
• Influence of environmental factors (divorce, martial conflict, stress,
unemployment, and poverty)
1
,DARYAN.VDW
• Psychosocial/deprivation dwarfism (delayed physical growth as result of
stress and emotional deprivation)
• Stress on hormones, digestion and the immune system à negative
impacts
• Preoperational thinking à illogical thinking - cannot engage in mental
operations
• Symbolic/pre-conceptual period (2-4 years) à complex symbols – attach
meaning to words, numbers and images
• Intuitive period (4-7 years) – children so sure of their world and what they know
however can’t tell you how they’ve come to know or what exactly they know à
primitive reasoning
• Advances of pre-operational thought
• Deferred imitation (the ability to repeat the behaviour of a model that is
no longer present)
• Symbolic play/pretend play (substituting imaginary situations for real
ones)
• Spoken language à thinking occurs through representation of actions
thus children have the ability to understand the symbolic meanings of
the words
• Immature aspects of pre-operational thought
• Perception-bound thinking (solve problems based on what stands out
vividly and perceptually.
• Irreversibility (cannot reverse an operation)
• Perceptual centration (can only reason about one dimension at a time)
• Egocentrism (believe that others think, feel and perceive in the same
way as they do)
• Animism (believe that inanimate objects have feelings)
• Transductive reasoning (reason from event to event rather than in a
more logical fashion)
• By the end of the pre-operational period, children should be able to classify
and categorise objects but they are not capable of multiple classification
and do not have a number concept
• Evaluation
• Animism is of too small a degree
• pre-schoolers are able to display empathy and
• awareness of how other people feel
• Number concept and ability to classify develops earlier than Piaget
assumed
2
, DARYAN.VDW
NEO-PIAGETIANS
• Theorist who have expanded on Piaget’s work
• Kurt Fischer’s viewpoint
• Agrees that cognitive development is an action based, self-regulating,
constructive process but he disagrees that there is a generalised
cognitive structure
• Cognitive development must be described for each task and in a different
context
• Cognitive development needs support from environment, higher levels
of support leads to higher cognitive performance
• Robbie Case’s viewpoint
• Thinking develops in stages and is influenced by executive processing
space (active, temporary conscious memory)
• Operational efficiency à Limit to the number of schemas that children
can attend to in this space at any one time
• improvement occurs through practice and brain maturation
NAÏVE THEORIES
• Children as theorists à theories are not created by specialists and aren’t
scientific but help to understand new experience and predict future events
• Core knowledge hypothesis (children are born with very basic knowledge of
the world, which grows as children have new experiences)
• Naïve physics (understanding of objects and properties)
• Naïve biology (understanding about the distinction between animate and
inanimate objects - motion)
• 4yrs old ToB (properties associated with living objects): Movement,
Growth, Internal parts, Inheritance, Healing
• Naïve psychology (individuals’ tendencies to try and explain why people act as
they do)
• Henry Wellmen
• First phase, 2yrs oldsà aware of and can communicate desires and link
their desires to their behaviours
• Second phase, 3yr olds à clearly distinguish mental and physical world
and can use mental verbs (think, believe, remember etc)
• Third phase, 4yrs olds à understand their own and others’ actions and
understand that their own and others’ behaviour is based on beliefs
about events and situations (False-belief task)
• Theory of mind (ability to attribute mental states to themselves but also to
others)
• Tool to explain, predict and manipulate other people’s behaviour
• Children do not fully grasp Reciprocal thought - understand that others
can think, but not about them, at 5-7yrs this develops
• Factors that contribute to development of ToM: Pretend play &
Parent-child communication
• Prior developments needed for acquisition of ToM:
• Self-awareness
• The capacity for pretence
3
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller Daryanvdw. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $3.59. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
