Phsyical Development

Changing in the body and the brain

Body growth is slow

-Gain 2-3 inches in height & 5 pounds in weight annually

-shape becomes more streamlined which leads to better posture and balance

-motor coordination

-adult like proportions

-males slightly larger

skeletal growth continues

-lose baby teeth

    - obese children get permanent teeth sooner

    - 30% of US preschoolers have tooth decay

Brain growth increases

-Hemispheres began to lateralize

- skeletal changes of infancy continue throughout ealy childhood. Between the ages of 2-6, approx. 45 new epiphyses, or growth centers in which cartilage hardens into bone, emerge in various parts of the skeleton.

-start to lose their primary or baby teeth by the end of preschool years

-girls who are ahead of boys in phsyical development- loose teeth faster than boys

-malnutrition delays  the appearence of permanent teeth; obesity accelerates it

-preventing decay is primary; diseased baby teeth can affect the health of permanent teeth

-exposure to tabacco smoke which suppresses children's immune system

-young children in homes with regular smokers are 3 times as likely as their agemates to have decayed teeth

-30% of american preschoolers have tooth decay

-between the ages 2-6 the brain increases from 70% of its adult weight to 90%

-by age 4 cerebral blood flow peaks, high energy

-preschoolers improve in a wide variety of skills  

•  physical coordination, perception, attention, memory, language, logical thinking and imagination

-Rapid growth in the frontal lobe- which entails inhibiting impulses and planning and organizing behavior

-also the left hemisphere is very active between age 3-6 "language skills"

-also the right hemisphere "spatial skills"

-differences in the hemispheres suggests that it is trying to lateralize

-Handedness reflects the greater capacity of one side of the brain- the individual's dominant cerebral hemisphere- to carry out skilled motor action.

-Western nations,90% of population; language is housed in the left hemisphere with hand control & for left handers 10%,language is occasionally located in the right hemisphere

-Indicates that the brains of left handers tend to be less strongly lateralized than those of right handers

-twins likely to have different preferences in handedness due to different positioning in womb

-handedness also involves practice;bias in new borns head position leads to using one hand more frequently

-left handedness is shown to develop outstanding verbal/math talents

-increasing coordinated function of the central nervous system

-At the rear and base of the brain is the cerebellum, a structure that aids in balance and control of body movement.

-by the end of preschool students can play hopscotch, throw a ballwith well-coordinated movements

-connections between the cerebeullum and cerebral cortex also support thinking

-children with damage to the cerebellum usually display both motor and cognitive deficits, problems with planning,memory and language.

-An inner-brain structure called the hippocampus which plays a vital role in memory and in images of space that help us find out way

-is a large bundle of fibers connecting the two cerebral hemisphere.

-peak between age 3-6 and continue more slowly through adolescence

-supports smooth coordination of movements on both sides of the body and integration of many aspects of thinking, including perception, attention, memory, language and problem solving

-the pituitary gland, located at the base of the brain,plays a critical role by releasing two hormones that induce growth.

-the first growth hormone(GH) is necessary for development of all body tissues except the central nervous system and genitals.

-2nd pituitary hormone, thyroid-stimulating hormone(TSH) prompts the thyroid gland in the neck to release thyroxine, which is necessary for the brain development and for GH to have its full impact on body size.

-appetites decline because growth has slowed

-children tend to imitate the food choices of people they admire

-unpressured exposure to a new food also increases acceptance

-poor diet depresses the body's immune system, making more children susceptible to disease.

-disease is a major contributor to malnutrition, hindering physical growth and cognitive development.

-under developed countries widespread diarrhea, b/c of unsafe water and contiminated foods, leads to stunted growth and almost 2 million deaths each year.

-developmental impairments/deaths due to diarrhea could have been saved with a no cost rehydration therapy or (ORT) "given glucose, salt and water"

-zinc is a great help for immunity and cheap as well

-dieseases have dramtically dropped due to infant and young children immunizations

-23% of US preschoolers lack essential immunizations

-US children do not have access to health care they need

-cost of vaccines arent the only problems, gettin the time to come in and get to the apt. with busy lifestyles is also a problem

-also some believe in the link between autism and vaccines which is not true

-unitentional injuries are the leading cause of childhood mortality in industrialized nations

-35%childood &50%adolesencents deaths result from injuries

-most common are traffic accidents,drownings,and burns

-boys are 1.5 times greatert to be injured than girls

-poverty,single parenthood, and low parental education are at higher risk

-high in US b/c of poverty, shortages of high-quality child care, teenage birth rates,

-laws: safety seats, flame proof clothing, fencing

-communities: help by modifying their physical environment

-Playgrounds are a big place for injuries

-40% of parents fail to palce thier preschoolers in car safety seats

-need supervision

-center of gravity shifts downward, toward the trunk improving balance

-smooth and rhythmic- 1st running then later jumping, hoping and galloping

-steadier on feet,their arms and torsos are freed to experiment with new skills- throwing, catching, steer tricycles

-more refined movements later- age 5-6 steer and pedal

-later everything is done faster

-control of hands and fingers; able to put together puzzles/cut& paste

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-realization that pictures can serve as symbols and improved planning and spatial understanding. progresses like this

scribbles- contain the intended representation

1st representational forms- around age 3. scribbles become pictures

major milestone- using lines to represent the boundaries of objects

More realistic- greater realizm. complete more complex drawing. ages 5-6.

-at 1st preschoolers do not distinguish writing from drawing.

- draw a circle to write the word sun

around age 4-6 they realize writing stands for language

-usually start with your name

-until they start to read cant understand mirror images such as b and d

-As children move from the sensorimotor to the preoperational stage, which spans the years 2-7, the most obvious change is an extraordinary increase in representational, or symbolic, activity.

-Piaget believed that sensorimotor activity leads to internal images of experience, which children then label with words.

-theorists believed this theory to be incomplete

-Piaget's egocentric speech- reflecting his belief that young children have difficulty taking the perspectives of others.

-their talk he said is oftern "talk for self: in which they express thoughts in whatever form they happen they happen to occur, regardless of whether a listener can understand. 

-Piaget believed that cognitive development and certain social experiences eventually bring an end to egocentric speech. 

-Vygotsky disagreed though- believed speech is self-guidence 

         - inner speech- the internal verbal diaglogues we carry on while thinking and acting in everyday situations 

-as a result, children's self-directed speech is now called private speech instead of egocentric speech.

-Vygotsky predicted, private speech goes underground, changing into whispers and silent lip movements.

-children who freely use private speech during a challenging activity are more attentive, involved and show better task performance than their less talkative agemates.

-adjusting the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child's current level of performance.

-is aq unique broadly influential zone of proximal development in which children try out a wide variety of challenging activities and acquire many new competencies.

-a broader concept than scaffolding. It refers to shared endeavors between more expret and less expert participants, without specifying the precise features of communication.

-Piaget paid way more attention than Vygotsky to the development of basic cognitive processes.

- sustained attention improves considerably in early childhood. A major reason is a steady gain in children's ability to inhibit impulses and keep their mind on a competing goal.

-they can resist the pull of their attention toward a dominant stimulus- a skill that, as early as age 3 to 5 predicts reading and math achievement from K through high school.

better PLANNING- thinking out a sequence of acts ahead of time and allocating attention accordingly to reach a goal.

-recognition memory--- ability to tell whether a stimulus is the same as or similar to one they have seen before

-recall- is more demanding. child generates a mental image of an absent stimulus. strongly associated with language development.

memory strategies- deliberate mental activities that improve our chances of remembering.

-like adults, preschoolers remember familiar, repeated events- what you do when you go to preschool or have dinner

- in terms of scripts general descriptions of what occurs and when it occurs in a particular situation.

-scripts help organize and describe everyday experiences.

-or representation of personally meaningful, one-time events

-follow the child's lead- ask varied questions, add information to the child's stements, and volunteer their recollections and evaluations of events.

-provide little information and keep repeating the same questions, regardless of the child's interest.

-children begin to construct a theory of mind, or coherent set of ideas about mental activities. This understanding is also called metacognition, or "thinking about thought"

False beliefs- ones that do not represent reality accurately

-language,cognitive abilities, make-believe play and social experiences

-Children in industrailized nations live in a world filled with written symbols. Their active efforts to construct literacy knowledge through informal experiences are called emergen literacy.

-the ability to reflect on and manipulate the sound structure of spoken language, as indicated by the sensitivity to changes in sounds within words, to rhyming and to incorrect pronunciation.

-between 14-16 months,toddlers display a beginning grasp of ordinality or order relationships btween quantities.

- by ages 3 and a half and 4 and a half most children have mastered the meaning of numbers up to ten, cuont correctly, and grasp the vital principle of cardinality- that the last number in a counting sequence indicates the quantity of items in a set.

-In child-centered programs,teachers provide a variety of activities from which children select, and much learning takes place through play. In contrast, in academic programs, teachers structure children's learning, teaching letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and other academic skills through formal lessons, often using repetition and drill.

-The most extensive of these federal programs, Project Head Start, began in 1965. A typical head start center provides children with a year or two of preschool, along with nutritional and health services. Parent involvement is cental to the head start philosophy.

-United States and industrialized nations nearly all homes have at least 1 tv and most have 2 or more. about 85% of U.S. children live in homes with 1 or more computers.

-research shows that children can connect new words with their underlying concepts after only a brief encounter, a process called fast mapping.

-Once children acquire these markers, they sometimes overextend the rules to words that are exceptions- a type of error called overregularization. "my toy car breaked" "we each have two feets"

-besides acquiring vocabulary and grammar, children must learn to engage in effective and appropriate communication.

Supporting Language Development in Early Childhood

Recasts

Expansions

-adults often provide indirect feedback about grammar by suing two strategies,often in combination"recasts-restructuring inaccurate speech into correct form and expansions-elaborating on childrens speech, increasing its complexity.