EXAM 2 LECTURE DISCUSSION

1. EXAM 2 LECTURE DISCUSSION CHAPTERS 5, 6, 7 8

2. CHAPTER 5 LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENT Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

3. How does the Italian city of Reggio Emilio approach educating young children ? • Extra credit opportunity to use in GEC activity.

4. What are some physical changes occurring in early childhood? • Physical growth is most obvious • Percentage of increase in height and weight decrease with each passing year • By end of preschool years, lose top-heavy appearance of toddlers • Body fat percentage decreases

5. What are features of brain development during preschool years? • Continuing development of brain and nervous system • Changes - • begin to plan actions, pay attention more effectively • Improve language and ability

6. Dramatic anatomical changes in • amount of brain cells in some areas of the brain and • not others • Early childhood increases in prefrontal area of brain-

7. responsible for • a)planning and organizing new actions • b)maintaining and sustaining attention

8. Continuing 2 changes: • A)increase in number and size of dendrites • B)myelination – covering of fat cells • results in increased speed and efficiency of information processing

9. What are features of motor development in early childhood? • Gross motor skills become more automatic • By age 3, hopping, jumping, running and exploring • By age 4-5, more adventurous and exploratory

10. Fine motor skills: • age 3, can pick up very small objects • age 4, fine motor coordination increases, more precise • age 5, interest in building actual structures such as churches and houses

11. Describe features of developing handedness in early childhood • Begin to show preferences for using right or left hand • Genetic influence on preference

12. Implications of handedness preferences: • Left preference results in • a)more reading problems; • 2)better visual-spatial skills, • 3)more common in mathematicians, artists and musicians

13. What are important aspects of nutrition in early childhood? • Obesity in children: • categories developed for childhood and adolescence • Defined in terms of body mass index (BMI) • Obesity becoming more serious problem

14. How can parents prevent or remedy obesity in preschool children? • must view food as way to satisfy hunger and nutritional needs • avoid using food as proof of love or reward for good behavior

15. What are some consequences of malnutrition in early childhood? • Poor nutrition mostly affects children from low-income families • Link to cognitive deficiencies, physical growth and complex thinking skills • associated with hyperactivity and aggressive behavior

16. What are some issues associated with illness and death among preschool children? • In US, accidents leading cause of death in young children • Also cancer and cardiovascular • Parents smoking is additional health hazard for children

17. Discuss cognitive changes occurring in early childhood • Piaget’s preoperational stage (ages 2-7) • Begin to represent the world in words, images, and drawings • Develop understanding and use of stable concepts or abstract ideas

18. Use reasoning skills • Egocentrism and magical beliefs • In preoperational stage, do not yet use operations or reversible mental actions

19. 2 sub-stages in preoperational stage • Symbolic function (2-4 years) • ability to represent objects not physically present

20. limitations: • egocentrism – unable to distinguish your perspective from that of someone else • animism – believing inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action

21. intuitive thought: • use primitive reasoning • want to know answers to questions • emerging interest in reasoning and problem solving • intuitive – child seems sure about knowledge and unaware how they know

22. Centration and limits of preoperational thought • pay more attention to a single obvious feature of a situation and ignore others • evidence of not understanding conservation •  awareness that changing appearance of objects does not change other qualities or properties, such as number, volume or mass

23. failure at liquid and beaker task indicates • thinking at preoperational level (unable to reverse action mentally) and • centration (focus on single obvious feature)

24. What is Vygotsky’s social constructivist approach? • may be completed for extra credit as part of the GEC bonus activity

25. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development: • range of tasks too difficult for child to master alone • can be learned with guidance of adults and more skilled children

26. zpd: • lower level can be achieved by working independently • upper level - achieved with guidance and skilled assistance

27. scaffolding (part of Vygotsky’s approach): • changing level of support • adjusting guidance to fit current performance

28. Describe developing use of language and thinking in early childhood • child begins to - • use speech to solve problems and complete tasks • use speech to plan, guide and monitor actions, • use private speech for self-regulation

29. use language to communicate with others before focusing inward with inner speech • communicate externally as practice before transition to internal speech (form of thinking

30. What are 5 teaching strategies based on Vygotsky’s theory? • How would you evaluate Vygotsky’s theory, comparing and contrasting it with Piaget’s approach? • may be completed for extra credit as part of GEC bonus activity

31. Information Processing • Attention – focusing cognitive resources • 2 ways to develop attention skills

32. 1)salient (obvious, easy to perceive) and relevant (important to solve problem or complete a task) dimensions • 2)Planfulness – how systematic or haphazard a child is when completing a complex task

33. child’s ability to control attention related to level of • -achievement skills and • -social skills

34. Memory – • encoding information • retaining information over time • retrieving information when needed

35. can distinguish implicit and explicit memory • implicit – automatic and intuitive • explicit – conscious and purposeful

36. Short-term memory • remembering information (5-9 items; 20-30 seconds without rehearsal) • short-term memory span increases during early childhood --

37. how do we increase short-term memory skills in early childhood? • rehearsal • increased speed and efficiency of thought

38. increased accuracy of short-term memory • what influences on increased accuracy of short-term memory in early hood? • type of post-event information and guidance • misleading or incorrect information can affect preschool child’s short-term memory

39. Describe preschool child’s theory of mind • awareness of one’s own mental processes and those of others • changes occur at identifiable age levels: • 2-3 • 4-5 • 5+

40. 2-3 years • beginning to understand 3 mental states -

41. 1)perceptions – realizes that another person sees what is in front of her and not necessarily what the child sees (Piaget’s mountain task) • 2)emotions – can distinguish between positive and negative emotions • 3)desires – understands if someone wants something, he will try to get it; usually refer to desires earlier than cognitive states

42. 4-5 years • begin to understand mind can represent objects, actions and events accurately or inaccurately • realize people can have false beliefs develops at about 5 years

43. 5+ years • increasing appreciation of mind itself • mid- to late childhood – begin to see mind as active constructor of knowledge • Show belief that same event can be interpreted in different ways

44. Children see – Children do

45. Bandura’s Social Learning Theory

46. What are features of language development in early childhood? • Understanding phonology and morphology • phonology – sound system of language, sounds used and how combined • morphology – units of meaning involved in forming words

47. preschool children begin • using plural and possessive language forms • using prepositions, articles and different verb forms

48. may be completed for extra credit as part of GEC bonus activity • Jean Berko’s famous study of how a child begins to understand morphological rules • What was Dr. Berko’s research approach? • What were Dr. Berko’s results? • What conclusions did Dr. Berko make as a result of her research?

49. What did Dr. Berko’s research demonstrate? • - children rely on rules, abstracted from what they hear and applied to new situations • example of wugs

50. Changes in syntax and semantics • syntax – rules about how words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences • semantics – meaning of words and sentences