Study Unit 2, Chapter 1, Topic 1
Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood
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Learning Outcomes
At the end of the study topic, you will be able to:
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Identify and describe the milestones in physical development of preschoolers.
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List milestones in cognitive development of preschoolers.
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Identify the main characteristics of Piaget’s preoperational stage of cognitive development.
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Explain the language development and its importance in learning based on Vygotsky’s Social Constructivism view.
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early
childhood
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Physical Development in Early Childhood
Body Growth and Change •
Height and Weight (grows 6cm, 2.5kg a year).
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Losing the baby fat, getting more slender.
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Do you notice that girls are only slightly smaller and lighter than boys during these years? These small differences continue until puberty.
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Contributors to height differences: ethnic origin and nutrition.
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Why are some children unusually short? – The culprits are congenital factors (genetic/prenatal problem), growth hormone deficiency, a physical problem that develops in childhood, or an emotional difficulty. – For instance, preschool children whose mothers smoked regularly during pregnancy are half an inch shorter than their counterparts whose mothers did not smoke.
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Brain - most important physical development during early childhood.
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The changes in the brain that occur during early childhood enable children to plan their actions, attend to stimuli more effectively, and make considerable strides in language development.
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Motor Development
Think of a child in his/her pre-nursery years (3 to 4 years of age). What are their favourite activities? Do you find them ‘hyperactive’? Running as fast as they can, building towers with blocks, scribbling, cutting paper with scissors, are but just some activities that you might be thinking of. Click the buttons to read more information.
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2 Gross Motor Skills
Fine Motor Skills
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Motor Development - Gross Motor Skills
Think of a child in his/her pre-nursery years (3 to 4 years of age). What are their favourite activities? Do you find them ‘hyperactive’? Running as fast as they can, building towers with blocks, scribbling, cutting paper with scissors, are but just some activities that you might be thinking of. Click the buttons to read more information.
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2 Gross Motor Skills
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3 yrs - children enjoy simple movements such as hopping and jumping.
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4 yrs - they enjoy the same kind of activities, but they have become more adventurous; e.g., coming down stairs.
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5 yrs - even more adventuresome – can run hard, hop on one leg.
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Fine Motor Skills
Motor Development - Fine Motor Skills
Think of a child in his/her pre-nursery years (3 to 4 years of age). What are their favourite activities? Do you find them ‘hyperactive’? Running as fast as they can, building towers with blocks, scribbling, cutting paper with scissors, are but just some activities that you might be thinking of. Click the buttons to read more information.
1
2 Gross Motor Skills
Fine Motor Skills •
3 yrs - still emerging from the infant ability to place and handle things - cut paper.
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4 yrs – improved and more precise cuts following a line.
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5 yrs - cuts interior piece from paper.
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Cognitive Development in Early Childhood
How would you describe a pre-schooler? Are they creative? Are they imaginative? These amazing cognitive abilities are characterised of their fast maturing brain and reasoning capabilities. •
In this section, we will be looking at 3 perspectives on cognitive development in early childhood:
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Piaget’s Preoperational Thought
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Vygotsky’s Theory
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Information Processing
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Piaget’s Perspective Recall Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development.
Sensorimotor (0-2yrs) Preoperational (2-7 yrs) 4 stages of Development (qualitatively different)
Concrete Operational (7-11 yrs) Formal Operational (>11 yrs)
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Piaget’s Perspective
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Early childhood = 2 to 7 years.
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Preoperational stage of cognitive development.
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Understanding the world with words, images and drawings.
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Egocentrism and magical beliefs.
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Pre-operational thought = the beginning of the ability to reconstruct in thought what has been established in behaviour. Two sub-stage of preoperational thought are: – Symbolic function substage. – Intuitive thought substage.
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The label preoperational emphasises that the child cannot yet think something through without acting it out.
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A story of childhood “egocentrism”
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Symbolic Function Sub-stage - 1
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Occurs roughly between 2 and 4 years old, in which a young child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present.
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However, the child’s thought still has several limitations - egocentrism and animism.
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Egocentrism – the inability to distinguish own perspective from another’s. ‘The three mountain task’ is the popular task used to study egocentrism among young children. E.g., Doll’s view of mountain versus the child’s view. Experiment of egocentrism with children: Learning Activity 1.
Go to http://www.youtube.com
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Search for : Egocentrism
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Watch the video entitled “Egocentrism” duration: 1:29 min uploaded by jenningh
Have you ever encounter a child around this age nodding silently during a telephone conversation; having failing to consider that the other party’s perspective. •
Animism – inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action: E.g. “Chair hurt me.” A young child may say, “That tree pushed the leaf off, and it fell down.”
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Symbolic Function Sub-stage - 2
Photo 1 (View from A)
Photo 2 (View from B)
Photo 3 (View from C)
Photo 4 (View from D)
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Intuitive Thought Sub-stage
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Occurs between approximately 4 and 7 years of age.
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Often referred to as “why-4”.
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Children may begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions.
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It is ‘intuitive’ because, on the one hand, young children seem so sure about their knowledge and understanding, yet they are so unaware of how they know what they know.
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Their knowledge seems to be intuitive without the use of rational thinking.
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Centration and Conservation
An important characteristic of preoperational thought is centration – the focusing, or centering, of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others. 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 quantitative properties. There are many types or dimensions of conservation. Check out your textbook (Figure 7.7) for the examples of conservation of number, matter, quantity, mass, area, weight, volume, and length.
Learning Activity Watch the following video on Centration 1.
Go to http://www.youtube.com/
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Search for : Piaget - Stage 2 - Preoperational - Lack of Conservation
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Watch video entitled “Piaget - Stage 2 - Preoperational - Lack of Conservation” duration: 2:16 min uploaded by Fi3021
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Vygotsky’s Theory
Contrasting to Piaget’s cognitive constructivist theory, Vygotsky’s is a social constructivist approach - emphasises the social contexts of learning and that knowledge is mutually built and constructed. •
Important concepts in Vygotsky’s theory: – zone of proximal development (ZPD) - the range of tasks that are too difficult for a child to master alone but that can be learned with the guidance and assistance of adults or more-skilled children. • For example, an adult helping a child put together a jigsaw puzzle falls into the ZPD. • The ZPD captures the child’s cognitive skills that are in the process of maturing and can be mastered only with the assistance of a more-skilled person.
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2 •
Vygotsky’s theory (cont)
Important concepts in Vygotsky’s theory: – Scaffolding - changing the level of support: • For instance, over the course of a teaching session, a more-skilled person adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child’s current performance level. When the task the student is learning is new, the more-skilled person may use direct instruction. As the student’s competence increases, less guidance is given. – Private speech - language and thought are closely linked: • young children use language to plan, guide, and monitor their behaviour • private speech represents an early transition in becoming more socially communicative.
In moving from Piaget (cognitive constructivist) to Vygotsky (social constructivist), the conceptual shift is from the individual to collaboration, social interaction, and sociocultural activity (Gauvain, 2013). Piaget’s cognitive development theory and Vygotsky’s sociocultural cognitive theory have provided important insights about the way young children think and how this thinking changes developmentally.
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Comparison of Piaget & Vygotsky’ ’s Theories
Vygotsky
Piaget
Socio cultural context
Strong emphasis
Little emphasis
Constructivism
Social
Cognitive
Stages
No general stages
4 stages
Key processes
ZPD, Language, Dialogue, Cultural Tools
Schema, assimilation, accommodation, operations, conservation, classification
Role of language
Major role
Minimal role
View on education
Central role
Refines the cognitive of the child
Teaching implications
Teacher is facilitator and guide
Teacher is facilitator and guide
Source: John, W. Santrock (2013). Life-Span Development (14h ed.). New York, McGraw-Hill. ©2013 SIM UNIVERSITY. All rights reserved.
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Information Processing
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Another way of exploring the cognitive development in children is through the study of their cognitive processes.
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Two important aspects of preschool children’s thinking are attention and memory.
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Attention can be defined as the focusing of cognitive resources.
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The child’s ability to pay attention changes significantly during the pre-school years in three ways: control of attention salient versus relevant dimensions ‘planfulness’
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Memory refers to the retention of information over time.
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It is the central process in children’s cognitive development.
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Experts argue that conscious memory comes into play as early as 7 months of age, although children and adults have little or no memory of events experienced before the age of 3.
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Check out your textbook for more details on developmental changes in memory.
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Information Processing Theory
Information processing theory views human cognition as comprising of 3 memory storage: 1
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The Sensory memory (SM)
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Short-term Memory (STM)
Long-term Memory (LTM)
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During the early childhood years, the development of STM is of particular interest.
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Research with the memory-span task suggests that STM increases during early childhood.
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For example, in one investigation, memory span increased from about 2 digits in 2- to 3-year-old children to about 5 digits in 7-year-old children, yet 7 and 13 years of age memory span increased only by 1½ digits (Dempster, 1981).
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One important determinant of memory span is the process of ‘rehearsal’.
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Older children rehearse the digits more than younger children.
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Speed and efficiency of processing information are also important, especially the speed with which memory items can be identified (Schneider, 2011).
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Language Development
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It is believed that young children’s understanding sometimes gets way ahead of their speech.
These rule systems include: • Phonology (sound system). • Morphology (rules for combining minimal units of meaning).
Many of the oddities of young children’s language sound like mistakes to adult listeners. However, from the children’s point of view, they are not mistakes.
• Syntax (rule for making sentences). • Semantics (the meaning system).
For example, a 2½ year old may be heard saying “I want to jump the ball.” What he actually meant is “I want to bounce the ball.” This represents the way young children perceive and understand their world at that point in their development. •
As children go through the early childhood years, their grasp of the rule systems that govern language increases.
• Pragmatics (rule for use in social settings).
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The advances in language that take place in early childhood lay the foundation for the later development in the elementary school years.
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Implication in Early Childhood Education Child-centred Kindergarten Education that involves the whole child by considering both the child’s physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development and the child’s needs, interests, and learning styles.
The Montessori Approach
Developmentally Appropriate Practice
An educational philosophy in which children are given considerable freedom and spontaneity in choosing activities and are allowed to move from one activity to another as they desire.
Education that focuses on the typical developmental patterns of children (ageappropriateness) and the uniqueness of each child (individualappropriateness).
Refer to textbook, chapter 7, on recommendations by NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) for developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs serving children from birth through age 8. Compare this the practices in the local context. Useful website on early childhood education: • Seed Institute
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Reflective Questions
Certainly nature and nurture play equally important roles in child development.
• How are nature and nurture likely to be involved in the dramatic increase in young children’s spoken vocabulary? • What are the implications in early childhood education?
Explanation Click the button to listen to the explanation.
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Reflective Questions - Explanation
Certainly nature and nurture play equally important roles in child development.
• How are nature and nurture likely to be involved in the dramatic increase in young children’s spoken vocabulary? • What are the implications in early childhood education?
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Summary
In this topic, you learnt that:
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While the body height and weight slows down compared to the infancy stage, the brain is the most important physical development during early childhood.
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There are 3 main perspectives to cognitive development; with Piaget describing the preoperation stage, Vygotsky on the importance of social context in learning, and information processing on the importance of attention and memory.
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Language development is dependent on both nature and nurture.
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A good early childhood education should take into consideration all the developmental changes and needs of the child at this stage.
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References and Additional Learning Resources
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Santrock, J. W. (2013). Life-Span Development (14th Edition), McGraw-Hill International (Chapter 7).
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Note: All references not listed here are based on the text in Santrock (2013).
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