Unit IV- Physical, Cognitive, Social and Personality

Development in Preschool Years

1. GROWING BRAIN

§ Brain grows fastest relative to any other body parts

§ At age 5 yrs Brain weight is 90% of adult brain weight
§ Reasons for rapid growth: increase in interconnections between neurons – better
communication
§ Myelination completes ensuring speedy transmissions
§ Corpus Callosum-present between two hemispheres- becomes thicker by 800 million
individual fibers helps coordination between hemispheres
§ Malnourished children: brain development & myelination slower

• Brain Lateralization
- The process in which certain functions are located more in one hemisphere than the
other- it become more pronounced
- Left Hemisphere: verbal competence, such as, speaking, Reading, thinking, reasoning-
information processed sequentially
- Right Hemisphere: comprehension of spatial relationship, Recognition of patterns &
drawings, music, emotional Expressions-information processed in more global fashion
- Both hemispheres are interdependent; each can take others
Functions
- Brain has remarkable resiliency- if there is brain damage to one part, other part takes
over its functions
- 10% of left-handed or ambidextrous people- language center either in Right Hemisphere
or spread over both the hemispheres
 o Gender Differences in Brain Lateralization:
- Girls: language center spread across both hemispheres; language development
proceeds faster
- Boys: language center more on the left hemisphere
- Autism Spectrum Disorder: exhibit language deficits & can’t interact with others, poor
in understanding emotions of other & expressing empathy: also called ‘ extreme male
brain’ (Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen)
- Extent of gender difference in brain lateralization minor, but still exists
- Female Brain is genetically structurally different than male brain, corpus callosum
bigger & thicker in women; even in primates, rats, hamsters
- Environmental factors also play a role
- Equally plausible alternative: female children receive verbal stimulation & interactions
more; helps in advancing language development

• Links between Brain Growth and Cognitive Development

Myelin- protective insulation that surrounds parts of neurons

- Max growth spurt in brain: 1 ½ -2 Years: language abilities developing

- Myelination in Reticular Formation completed by the time child is 5: associated with
attention, concentration
- Myelination in Hippocampus completed during preschool: associated with Memory
- Improved nerve connections in Cerebellum: controls balance and movement
- Cerebral Cortex: sophisticated information processing, advances in motor skills
- Growth in these fibers is related to the significant advances in motor skills and cognitive
processing during preschool yrs.
- Still undecided whether cognitive advances fuels brain growth or vice versa
 2. MOTOR DEVELOPMENT

• Gross Motor Skills

- Preschoolers seem to be perceptually in motion
- By the age of 3 children masters - jumping, skipping, hopping and running.
- By the age of 4-5 gains increasing control over muscles; by 4 throws ball with enough
accuracy and by 5 can toss ring toss rings 5 feet away and can learn to ride bike, climb
ladder and ski – activities requiring coordination.
- Brain aids better muscle control & coordination,
- Spend considerable time practicing it
- Boys: muscular strength better- jump higher
- Girls: better at coordination of limbs

• Potty War
- There are many disagreement regarding ideal age for potty training
- Some say flexible- depending on child’s receptivity(Pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton);
others maintain a rigid conservative approach & say potty training as early as possible
(Psychologist John Rosemond).
- In 1957: 92% of 18 months potty trained
- Current trend: potty training at 30 months
- Flexible approach better- look for signs in preschoolers: staying dry for 2 hours, getting
up dry after naps, predictable bowel movements, able to go to washroom & undress,
discomfort at soiled /wet clothes, asking to use potty chair, wanting to change
underwear
- 12 months old: some bowel control; 18-24 months much better
- Child should be emotionally & Physically ready
- Even after required controls, night times control might be lost
- Save them from ridicule, criticism, over-focus
- Use battery operated devices in underwear triggers when detects urine, stool

• Fine Motor Skills

- Emergence of fine motor skills shows clear developmental patterns.
- Children can make smaller and finer movements.
- Can use fork & knife, cutting from scissors, play piano.
- 3 yr: able to draw a circle, undo their clothes, do simple jigsaw puzzles, fit blocks
- 4 yr: draw human face, fold papers in triangular design.
- 4yrs: manipulate & hold thin pencils

• Handedness
- Choice of hand made after birth itself
- Early infancy- 7 month olds preference of handedness very apparent
- End of preschool stage: clear preference of one hand over another 90% right handed,
10% left handed
- More boys are left handed
- Some findings suggests children who are ambidextrous; said to be best in academic skills
- Some research finds that left handedness linked to higher achievements
- Jury not out linking achievement to handedness

3. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

• Piaget’s Stage of Preoperational Thinking

The preoperational stage is the second stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive

development. This stage begins around age two and lasts until approximately age seven.
During this period, children are thinking at a symbolic level but are not yet using
cognitive operations.

- Preoperational Stage (2-7years)

- Pre=before, operational=logical thinking
- Preoperational thinking = thinking without logical rules
- Children have mental pictures in their minds, they don’t use sensorimotor input
- Use language to represent the world symbolically
- Symbolic thought – thinking in which symbols/internal images are used to represent
objects, persons, and event that are not present.
- Eg- dog(pet dog, plastic dog, imagined dog) , flag(symbolizes a country)

o Rudimentary Concept Formation

- Children begin to classify things in certain classes because of their similarities, but they
make a number of mistakes because of their concepts
- All men are “Daddy”, all women are “Mommy”, and all toys they see are “mine”

o Relation between Language and Thought

- Language and thinking highly interconnected
- Advances in language during reflect several improvements over the type of thinking
possible during earlier sensoimotor period.
- Thinking embedded in sensorimotor activities is relatively slow because it depends on
actual movements of the body that are bound by human physical limitations.
- Piaget’s - language grows out of cognitive advances rather than the other way around.
He argues that improvements during the earlier sensorimotor period are necessary for
language development and that continuing growth in cognitive ability during the
preoperational period provides the foundation for language ability.
- Cognitive development promotes language development, not vice versa.

o Centration
- Key element, and limitation, of the thinking of children in the preoperational period.
- The process of concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus and ignoring other
aspects, unable to consider all available information about a stimulus.
- Focus on superficial, obvious elements that are within their sight.
- External elements come to dominate preschoolers’ thinking, leading to inaccuracy in
thought.
- 4-5yr old chose the row with 8buttons with wider gap than row of 10 buttons spaced
closely when asked which row consisted more buttons.
- To a preschooler, appearance is everything.
o Conservation
- The knowledge that quantity is unrelated to the arrangement and physical appearance
of objects.
- Because they are unable to conserve, preschoolers can’t understand that changes in
one dimension (such as a change in appearance) do not necessarily mean that other
dimensions (such as quantity) change
- Cow-in-the-field -- Children who have not mastered conservation usually say that the
cow in the field with the adjacent barns has more grass to eat than the cow in the field
with the separated barn.

o Incomplete Understanding of Transformation

- the process in which one state is changed into another
- If a pencil that is held upright is allowed to fall down, it passes through a series of
successive stages until it reaches its final, horizontal resting spot.
- Children in the preoperational period are unable to envision or recall the successive
transformations that the pencil followed in moving from the upright to the horizontal
position.
- If asked to reproduce the sequence in a drawing, they draw the pencil upright and lying
down, with nothing in between. Basically, they ignore the intermediate steps.

o Egocentrism
- Egocentric thought is thinking that does not take into account the viewpoints of others.
- Preschoolers do not understand that others have different perspectives from their own.
- Two forms: the lack of awareness that others see things from a different physical
perspective and the failure to realize that others may hold thoughts, feelings, and points
of view that differ from theirs.
- In a game of hide-and-seek, three-year-olds may attempt to hide by covering their faces
with a pillow—even though they remain in plain view. Their reasoning: If they cannot
see others, others cannot see them. They assume that others share their view

o Emergence of Intuitive thought

- Primitive reasoning
- Constantly ask ‘Why? Who? What? Where?’
- They also think they know everything & are ultimate authority on various topics
- There is little or no logical basis for their confidence
- Functionality: by end of this stage understand functionality, the idea that actions, events
& outcomes are related to one another in fixed patterns
E.g. to ride bike faster, they have to push at pedals harder
E.g. to change channels they have press buttons on the remote
- Identity: later understand that some things stay the same regardless of changes in
shape, size & appearance
E.g. clay amount bis same even though its shape changes
o Animism is the belief that inanimate objects have “lifelike” qualities and are capable of
action. • A child may believe that the sidewalk “made” him trip and fall down.
o Magical and transductive thinking- child sees connection between unrelated instances.
E.g. ‘I have not had my nap. So it’s not afternoon’

o Evaluating Piaget’s Concept

Transformation & Reversibility:

- Piaget: children have not mastered it

- Rochel Gelman: 3 year olds able to report that rows of same number of animals,
differently spaced – their total number is the same; slightly older children can
understand rudimentary mathematical concepts of addition, subtraction children have
innate ability to count, ability to use language
- Others: Development is continuous, only quantitively changes happen;
- Piaget- development in spurts, qualitatively stages are different
- Others: conservation can be taught at this stage with training & experiences; Piaget: it
will happen in the next stage
- Piaget: used complex language & looked at deficiencies in cognitive processes
- Others: focused on children’s competencies

• Vygotsky’s View of Cognitive Development Taking Culture into account

o Russian Psychologist who belived that child development is the result of interactin
between children and their social environment.
o Developed the Zone of Proximal Development and sociocultural approach to cognitive
development
o Leadr in the development of social constructivism but his work was not published until
after his death in the 1960’s.
o Rejected Piaget’s assumption that it is possible to separate learning from its social
context
o Viewed language as most important psychological tool

- Other researchers applied Vygotsky’s social focus on learning to the development of a

child’s memory for personal events-called Autobiographical Memory
- Parents speak to their children about stories concerning the child. Child in turn listens &
learns from them & creates a personal story entirely- this ‘private speech’ is a way for
the child ‘to think aloud’ & advance cognitively- similar to way adults talk to themselves
to solve problems
- In education Vygotsky’s idea has been applied to
a)Cooperative Learning- in this children work together in groups to achieve a common
goal
b)Reciprocal Learning-in this the teachers leads students through the basic strategies of
reading until the students themselves become capable of teaching the strategies to
others
o Cognitive development theory
- Cognitive development involves theactive internalization of problem solving processes
as aresult of mutual interaction between children and others.
- Had profound influence on school curriculum in Russia
- For Cognitive Development in children: Stressed the importance of ‘others’, interactions
with objects, interactions bound by one’s social & cultural factors
- Learning in children happens when someone helps them by asking leading questions &
providing them examples of concepts: called Scaffolding
- Scaffolding: the highly skilled person gives the learner help at the beginning of the
learning process & withdraws help as the learner’s skills improve
- Zone of Proximal Development: Each child has a ZPD- the difference between what a
child can do alone versus what a child can do with the help of a teacher
Eg: child A can do Std 4th math problems, but requires help to do math problems of Std
6th . So the ZPD is 2 years
E.g. child B can do Std 4th math problems, but requires help to do math problems of Std
5th . So the ZPD is 1 years. This child will require greater help
The greater the improvement that comes with Scaffolding, the larger is the child’s ZPD
- Nature & Scaffolding differs among cultures:
1. Mexican mothers provide more scaffolding than fathers
2. Cultural tools differ: alphabetical & numerical schemes, mathematical & scientific
systems, religious systems, physical items offered (pens, paper, calculators, computers,
cars), distance related items (yards, blocks, time taken to travel)

o Evaluating Vygotsky’s Contribution

- Most of 20th Century his work was unknown as translations of Russian work was not
possible
- Break-up of Soviet Union ensured that Vygotsky’s work was open to the world
- Merits: Multicultural & Cross-cultural researches supported his propositions that
children’s comprehension of the world is an outcome of their interactions with their
parents, peers & other members of society
- Demerits: ZPD lacked precision, did not explain how cognitive processes, like, attention
& memory, develop & unfold; as focus was on cultural influences, he did not focus on
how individual bits of information are processed & synthesized
 4. FRIEND& FAMILY: PRESCHOOLERR’S SOCIAL LIVES

• The Development of Friendships

- At 3 years: genuine friendships emerge with peers involving companionship, play, fun,
joint activities
- Older preschoolers: pay more attention to abstract concepts, like, trust, support, shared
interests
- See friendship as continuing state, stable relationships

• Play
- Helps develop social, cognitive, and physical aspects.
- Important role in growth and development.
- Learn to cooperate with others

o Categorizing Play of Preschoolers

- Functional Play: at 3 year: simple, repetitive activities of 3 yr olds. May involve objects
or repetitive muscular movements. E.g. moving cars, dolls, skipping, jumping. For sake
of being active rather than creating end product.
- Constructive Play: at 4 year: manipulate objects to produce or build something; test
their cognitive & physical skills & practices fine muscle movements. E.g. building doll
house, lego puzzles, making animals from clay. Not necessary aimed at creating
something.

o Social Aspects of play

1. Parallel play Children use similar toys in a similar manner at the same time, but do not
interact with each other. Typical of children during the early preschool years. Children
sitting side by side, each playing with his or her own toy car, putting together his or her
own puzzle, or making an individual clay animal.
2. Onlooker play Children simply watch others at play, but do not actually participate.
They may look on silently or they may make comments of encouragement or advice.
Common among preschoolers and can be helpful when a child wishes to join a group
 already at play. One child watches as a group of others plays with dolls, cars, or clay;
builds with Legos, or works on a puzzle together.
3. Associative play Two or more children interact, sharing or borrowing toys or materials,
although they do not do the same thing. Two children, each building his or her own Lego
garage, may trade bricks back and forth.
4. Cooperative play Children genuinely play with one another, taking turns, playing games,
or devising contests. A group of children working on a puzzle may take turns fitting in
the pieces. Children playing with dolls or cars may take turns making the dolls talk or
may agree on rules to race the cars.

o Solitary & Onlooker plays: more common in early preschool stage: can prolong too as
‘pretend play’- Vygotsky considers it important for cognitive development where the
child ‘practices culture specific activities & broadens her understanding of the world’;
also use it when child is new to a social group
o With age advancing Pretend play becomes more unrealistic & symbolic- a stick can
signify a father
o Associative & Cooperative plays: end of preschool years
o Play helps in Brain development.

o EXPERIMENT BY PELLIS
- Demonstrated that brain development slowed in babies of animals if they were
deprived of play activities – prefrontal cortex showed deficiencies in development
- Control group: juvenile rat placed with three young female rats- all carried our rat-paly
- Experimenter Group: juvenile rat placed with three adult female rats- faced lack of rat-
plays: juvenile rat’s brain development was adversely effected

o Cultural differences in Play

- Korean Americans: Parallel Play
- Anglo-Americans: Pretend play
 5. AGGRESSION AND VIOLENCE IN PRESCHOOLERS

§ Aggression is quite common- verbal hostility, shoving, minor scuffles, kicking, other
forms of true aggression
§ Addressed to attain a desired goal; declines as child moves to end of preschool years;
this is because children practice Emotional Self-regulation, self-talk, develop social
strategies to control their emotions, better negotiation skills & language skills
§ Extreme & sustained aggression is rare & cause of concern
§ Remains stable over time- most aggressive preschoolers remain most aggressive during
school years too; most aggressive preschoolers remain most aggressive during school
years too; least aggressive preschoolers remain least aggressive during school years too
§ Boys: show higher levels of physical, Instrumental aggression which is motivated by the
desire to obtain a concrete goal E.g. to get a desired toy
Girls: lower levels of aggression; practice Relational Aggression- non-physical, intended
to hurt another person’s feelings, involves name-calling, withholding friendship, saying
mean, hurtful things that make recipient feel bad

• The Roots of Aggression:

1. Humans are governed by sexual & aggressive instincts
2. Lorenz: humans & animals share a fighting instinct that stems from primitive urges to
preserve territory, maintain a steady supply of food, weed out weaker animals
3. Evolutionary theorists & Sociobiologists: aggression leads to increased chance to
survive, mate, pass one’s genes, strengthen one’s gene pool & species

• Social Learning Approaches to Aggression

- Bandura: social & environmental conditions teach individuals to be aggressive.
- Exp: Preschoolers watched models either hitting & punching bobo dolls or playing
sedately with tinkertoys. The children emulated same behaviors of adults when they
were allowed to play with bobo dolls / tinkertoys
- Aggression can also be learnt from direct reinforcement; E.g. watching aggressive role
models getting their ways due to aggression
- Having aggressive role models in neighborhood increases aggression in others too
- Children’s TV shows show twice more aggressive content than other programs
- Laboratory experiments have clearly established the link between viewing highly
aggressive content & increase in aggression; however such studies cannot be performed
in natural settings
- Longitudinal studies: preference for aggressive content at 8 years related to serious
criminal convictions at 30 years of age. Media violence leads to greater readiness to act
aggressively, bullying, insensitivity towards of victims of violence
- Similar effects observed when children play aggressive Video games. 14% 3 yr olds &
younger ones , 50% 4-6 yr olds play these games

o Solutions
- Make children view aggression skeptically, critically, negatively
- Teach them that such acts don’t represent real world
- Monitor & moderate the effects of aggressive role models
- Introduce non-aggressive role models

• Cognitive Approaches to Aggression: The Thoughts Behind Aggression

- E.g. two children in the game of kickball, bang against each other. One apologizes &
other responds ‘cut it out’!
- The aggressive child has misinterpreted the behavior of other as deliberately
aggressively motivated & hostile; they pay attention to inaccurate environmental cues
- The theory does not explain why this happens, why some children inaccurately interpret
situations & actions of others
- This theory can be used to reduce aggression by making children learn to accurately
interpret situations, people’s actions & learn to respond without aggression