CHAPTER 6

Early Childhood:
Physical and Cognitive Development

A H S 1 0 5 3 / A H B S 1 3 1 6 D E V E L O P M E N TA L P S Y C H O L O G Y
F O R H E A LT H S C I E N C E
A H S C 1 3 1 4 D E V E L O P M E N TA L P S Y C H O L O G Y I N
H E A LT H S C I E N C E S
MUHAMAD ARIFF IBRAHIM, PHD
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

- BODY GROWTH AND

CHANGE
- MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
- NUTRITION
BODY GROWTH AND CHANGE

 Height:
 The average child grows 2 1/2
inches a year.
 Weight:
 They gain between 2.25-3.15 kg
a year in early childhood.
 Girls are only slightly smaller
and lighter than boys, but they
have more body fat while boys
have more muscle tissue.
 Anthropometric Measurements

 Weight estimation for children (in Kg):

 Infants: (Age in months x 0.5) + 4

 Children 1-10 years (Age in years + 4) x 2

 Individual Differences

 Much of the variation in

body size is due to
heredity.

 The 2 most important

contributors to the height
and weight differences are :
 Ethnic origin.
 Nutrition.
 Contributions to Short Height

 Congenital Factors (genetic or prenatal problem)

- Preschool children whose mothers smoked regularly during
pregnancy are shorter than their counterparts whose mothers
did not smoke.

 Physical Problem or an Emotional Difficulty

- Children are shorter than their counterparts if:
* children are chronically sick
* children have been physically abused
 Contributions to Short Height

 Growth Hormone
Deficiency
- It is the absence of
growth hormone
produced by pituitary
gland to stimulate the
body to grow.
- It occurs during
infancy or later in
childhood.
MOTOR DEVELOPMENT

Motor
Development
 Development of Gross Motor Skills in Early
Childhood
At 3 years of age At 4 years of age At 5 years of age

•Enjoy simple •Kicks ball toward •Begin to perform

movement like target. extraordinary stunts
jumping and •Carries object on everything they
running. •Bounces ball under can climb on.
•Catches large and control. •Kicks rolling ball
bounced ball •Roller skates
•Skips rope
•Rides bike with
training wheels
 Development of Fine Motor Skills in Early
Childhood

At 3 years of age At 4 years of age At 5 years of age

•Can build block •Uses kiddie scissors •Uses scissors and

towers but the to cut following a pencil well
blocks are usually line •Folds paper in
not in a perfectly •Draws rectangle, halves and quarters.
straight line. circle, square, and •Traces around
•Play with a simple triangle, following hand.
jigsaw puzzle the dots. •Writes some
letters/numbers
 !RED FLAGS!

By age 2, child cannot:

By age 3-5, child cannot:

 Handedness
 Preference for one hand is linked with the dominance of
one brain hemisphere with regard to motor performance:
 Right-handers have a dominant on left hemisphere
 Left-handers have a dominant on right hemisphere

 Evidence of handedness is present in infancy.

 The origin of hand preference is influenced by:

 Genetic inheritance
 Environmental experiences
 NUTRITION

 Children are often fed too much salt and sugar.

 Food preferences are somewhat environmental.

 Repeated exposure to a food increases the liking of it.

 Parents are the role model for which types of food a child will
like to eat.
 Obesity in Childhood

 Being overweight can be a serious problem in childhood.

 Overweight preschool children are usually not

encouraged to lose a great deal of weight but to slow
their rate of weight gain so they will grow into a more
normal weight for their height.

 Prevention of obesity in children includes helping children

and parents see food as a way to satisfy hunger and
nutritional needs, not as proof of love or a reward.
 Iron Deficiency

 One of the most common nutritional problems in early

childhood is iron deficiency (anemia), which results in
chronic fatigue.

 This problem results from the failure to eat adequate

amounts of quality meats and dark green vegetables.

 Usually occurs to children from low-income families.

 COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

- P I AG E T ’ S P R E O P E R AT I O N A L
S TAG E
- V Y G OT S K Y ’ S T H E O RY O F
DEVELOPMENT
 Characteristics of the Preoperational Stage

 The preoperational stage starts from 2-7 years old.

 Preoperational thought has 2 sub-stages:

 Symbolic function
 Intuitive thought

 During this time, children begin to

represent the world with words,
images and drawings.
 Definition of Operations

 The label ‘preoperational’ emphasizes that the child does

not yet perform operations.

 Operations are internalized sets of actions that enable

children to do mentally what they formerly did physically.
 Symbolic Function Substage

 It is the 1st sub-stage of preoperational thought (2 to 4 years)

 During this sub-stage:

 Children are able to picture, remember, understand and
replicate objects in their minds that are not immediately in
front of them. In other words, children can create mental
images of objects and store them in their minds for later use.

 Two important limitations in thought at this stage are:

 Egocentrism
 Animism
 Egocentrism

 Children’s thoughts and communications are typically

egocentric (self-centered).

inability to distinguish between ones

 Egocentrism is the
own perspective and someone else’s perspective.

 Child assumes that other people see, hear, and feel exactly
the same as the child does.
 Egocentrism

 For examples:
 A child who has learned the right and left sides of their body
cannot point them out on a person facing them.

 Children are playing right next to each other, one playing with
a colouring book and the other with a doll. They are talking to
each other like,
Jiha: "I love my dolly, her name is Lisa"
Hani: "I'm going to colour the sun yellow"
Jiha "She has long, curly hair like my auntie"
Hani: "Maybe I'll colour the trees yellow, too"
 Animism

 Animism is the belief that:

 Inanimate objects have “lifelike” qualities and are capable of action.
 Things are alive or have human characteristics because they move or
grow.

 For examples:
 A child may draw suns or flowers with faces
 A child might say that the raindrops from clouds are tears because
the sky is sad.
 If a child were to trip over a chair, he may comment that the "chair"
was mad at him and made him fall.
 Intuitive Thought Substage

 It is the second substage of preoperational thought.

 It occurs roughly between the ages of 4 to 7.

 Piaget labeled this "intuitive thought" because he believed that children

at this stage tend to be so certain of their knowledge and
understanding that they are unaware of how they gained this
knowledge in the first place (i.e., knowing by intuition).

 For example:
 If you ask a child how does a plane fly, they might tell you that it flaps its
wings like a bird. The child may have never seen a plane flaps it wings but
the child can not think of any other reasoning
 Centration

 Centration is the focusing or centering of attention on one

characteristic to the exclusion of all others.

 For example:
 A child may complain that there is little ice cream left in a big bowl.
The child will be satisfied if the ice cream is transferred to a little
bowl, even though nothing is added, because he only considers how
full the bowl appears to be.

 It is a major characteristic of preoperational thought,

evidenced in young children’s lack of conservation.
 Conservation

 Conservation refers to an awareness that altering an

object’s or substance’s appearance does not change its
basic properties.

 A lack of conservation not only demonstrates the

presence of centration but also inability to mentally
reverse actions.
 VYGOTSKY’S THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT
(The Zone of Proximal Development)

 According to Vygotsky, cognitive development and learning arise from

social interaction with knowledgeable person such as parents, peers or
adults.

 Vygotsky sees the Zone of

Proximal Development (ZPD) is
where the learning occurs.

 ZPD is the range of tasks that a

child can perform with the help
and guidance from other
people, but yet to perform it
independently.
 Scaffolding

 Within the ZPD, there are some skills or tasks which are too difficult
for the child to perform, however it can be done with guidance and
encouragement from more skillful person (scaffolding).

 Scaffolding refers to the process of supporting the child across

the ZPD.

 Example of scaffolding:
 A child is struggling to learn how to read. By teaching the child
on how to sound out words and use other word recognition
strategies, the child is able to learn to read.
INFORMATION PROCESSING
 Attention

 The child’s ability to pay attention changes significantly

during the preschool years.

 Preschool children are influenced strongly by the features

of a task that stand out.

 By age 6 or 7, children attend more efficiently to the

dimensions of a tasks that are relevant.

 This is believed to reflect a shift in cognitive control of

attention.
 Memory

 Short-Term Memory
 How Accurate Are Young Children’s Long-Term
Memories?
 Short-Term Memory

 In short-term memory, individuals retain information for up

15-30 seconds, assuming there is no rehearsal.

 Memory span task suggests that STM increases during early

childhood.

 Differences in memory span occur across the ages due to:

- Rehearsal : older children rehearse items more than
younger children.
- Speed and efficiency of processing information : the
speed with which a child process information is an
important aspect of the child’s cognitive abilities.
 How Accurate Are Young Children’s Long-Term
Memories?

 Young children can remember a great deal of information

if they are given appropriate cues and prompts.

 Sometimes the memories of preschoolers seem to be

unreliable, but this inconsistencies may be to some degree
the result of inadequate prompts and cues.
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
 Language Development

 By about 2 ½ years of age, children have the ability to

produce more complex sentences (four or more words
per sentence).

 A 1 ½-year-old might say “kick ball” but a 3-year-old

would be more likely to say “I am kicking the ball”

 As children go through early childhood, their grasp of the

rules of language increases (phonology, morphology,
semantic, pragmatics).
 Language Development

o Phonology : The study of the sound of a word

o Morphology: The study of word structures

 Semantics: The study of words and their meaning

 Pragmatics: The study of how people use language to

communicate effectively
 Phonology

 The study on how children develop their understanding

and use of sounds in a language, focuses on phonemes.

 Phoneme is the smallest unit of sound

 For example: ba..na..na..

 Morphology

 As children move beyond two-word utterances, they

know morphology rules.

 They begin using plurals and possessive forms of nouns

(such as cat and cat’s).

 They put appropriate endings on verbs (such as –ed for

the past tense).

 They use prepositions, articles, and various forms of the

verb to be.
 Semantics

 As children move beyond the two-word stage, their

knowledge of meanings rapidly advances.

 The speaking vocabulary of 6-year-old ranges from 8,000

to 14, 000 words.

 According to some estimates, the average child of this age

is learning about 22 words a day!
 Pragmatics

 It refers to the use of

language in social situations.

 It is concerned with how

people use language in within
a context, in real-life
situations.

 Children demonstrate the use

of pragmatics in a
conversation with another
person.
 EARLY CHILDHOOD
EDUCATION

- THE CHILD-CENTERED
K I N D E R G A RT E N
- - T H E M O N T E S S O R I A P P R OAC H
- D O E S P R E S C H O O L M AT T E R ?
 THE CHILD-CENTERED KINDERGARTEN

 Education involves the whole child and includes concern

for the child’s physical, cognitive and social development.
 Instruction is organized around the child’s needs,
interests and learning styles.
 Focus on the process of learning, rather than what is
learned:
 Experimenting, exploring, discovering, trying out, restructuring,
speaking and listening are all part of an excellent kindergarten
program.
 THE MONTESSORI APPROACH

 The Montessori approach is a philosophy in education in

which children are given considerable freedom and
spontaneity in choosing activities.
 In early childhood, Montessori students learn through:
 Sensory-motor activities
 Working with materials that develop their cognitive powers through direct
experience: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and movement.
 Multiage groupings:
 Younger children learn from older children
 Older children reinforce their learning by teaching concepts they have
already mastered.
 This arrangement also mirrors the real world, where individuals work and
socialize with people of all ages and dispositions.
 Montessori VS Traditional

Montessori Approach Traditional Approach

Allow the students to Adhere to timetable
explore the activity with
their preferred time.

The teacher facilitates the The teacher rules the

learning activities, mowing learning activities; the teacher
around the room and talking. teaches and children sit and
listen

Outdoor learning is essential Learning activities occur in a

classroom
 DOES PRESCHOOL MATTER?

 Preschool matters if parents do not have the

commitment, time, energy, and resources to provide
young children with an environment that approximates a
good early childhood program.

 If parents have the competence and resources to provide

young children with a variety of learning experiences and
exposure to other children and adults, along with
opportunities for extensive play this may be sufficient.
End of Chapter 6