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• Preschool years, boys and girls slim down; trunk of the body lengthens
• Head is still large for the body, by the end of the preschool years most children have lost the top-heavy
look
• Body fat shows a slow, steady decline during the preschool years
• Middle and late childhood involves slow, consistent growth
• Elementary school years, children grow an average of 5 to 7.5 cm a year until, at the age of 11, the average
child is just under 1.5 m tall
• Muscle mass/strength increase with improved muscle tone
• Research found less diffusion and more focal activation in prefrontal cortex between 7 and 30
years of age
• Shift in activation accompanied by increased efficiency in cognitive performance,
especially cognitive control
• Myelination in areas of the brain related to hand-eye coordination complete approx. age 4
• Myelination related to areas focusing attention complete approx. end of middle or late childhood.
• Myelination of many aspects of prefrontal cortex, especially those involving higher-level thinking skills, is not
complete until late adolescence or emerging adulthood
Growing children show greater capacity for learning, focused attention, memory, executive function
Preoperational stage (Piaget) -(app. 2 – 7 yr.)
• Children represent the world with words, images, and drawings
• Form stable concepts and begin to reason
• Reasoning skill still not fully developed
• Centration, - focusing of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others
• Egocentrism - inability to distinguish one’s own perspective and someone else’s
• Animism - belief that inanimate objects have life-like qualities, capable of action
• Conservation - lack awareness that altering an object or substance’s appearance does not change its basic
properties.
© 2020 McGraw-Hill Education Ltd.
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM (Vygotsky)
Zone of proximal development (ZPD) - task range too difficult for child to master alone; can be learned with
guidance/assistance of adults or more skilled children
Lower limit of the ZPD - level of skill reached by the child working independently
Upper limit - level of additional responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor
Closely linked to the ZPD is the concept of scaffolding.
• Scaffolding - changing support level; adjusting amount of guidance to fit the child
• Scaffolding techniques that heighten engagement encourage direct exploration and facilitate “sense-making”
The ability to pay attention improves significantly during the preschool year, especially in two aspects:
Executive attention - involves planning actions, allocating attention to goals, detecting and compensating for
errors, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances
Sustained attention (vigilance) - focused, extended engagement with task
Planfulness - elementary-school-age children are more likely to systematically compare the details, one detail
at a time
3. Long-term Memory - relatively permanent and unlimited type of memory that increases with age during middle and
late childhood
• Children actively construct their memory forming knowledge, expertise which influence long-term memory
• Knowledge and expertise - experts have acquired extensive knowledge about particular content which influences
what they notice and how they organize, represent, interpret information
MEMORY Continued…
Autobiographical Memory: Developing a sense of self requires building a story of one’s life, or an
autobiography, based on memory of significant events and experiences in life.
Fuzzy trace theory - memory is understood best by two types of memory representations:
1. Verbatim memory trace - precise details of the information
2. Gist - refers to the central idea of the information.
• Self-control/inhibition - need to develop self-control that allows them to concentrate on and persist in
learning tasks
• Working memory - need effective working memory to mentally work masses of information
• Flexibility - need to be flexible in thinking to consider different strategies and perspectives
Thinking is manipulating and transforming information in memory. There are two important aspects of thinking:
2. Creative Thinking - ability to think in novel/unusual ways and come up with unique solutions to problems
• convergent thinking - produces one correct answer
• divergent thinking - which produces many different answers to the same question and characterizes
creativity
Intelligence
• ability to solve problems; adapt and learn from experiences
• focused on individual differences/assessment
• individual differences are the stable, consistent ways people differ from each other
Stanford-Binet Test: administering test to numerous people of different ages (preschool - late
adulthood), different backgrounds; scores on the Stanford-Binet test approximate a normal distribution
• normal distribution is symmetrical; majority of the scores falling in the middle of possible range of scores and a
few scores appearing toward the extremes of the range
Wecshler Scales: another set of tests widely used to assess students’ intelligence at various ages
• subscales provide an overall IQ score, but yield several composite indexes, such as the Verbal Comprehension
Index, the Working Memory Index, and the Processing Speed Index
Phonology - sound system of a language, including sounds used and how they may be combined (p, h, ph)
Morphology - units of meaning involved in word formation (e.g. children begin using the plural and
possessive forms of nouns)
Syntax - way words are combined to form acceptable phrases/sentences
Semantics - aspect of language that refers to the meaning of words and sentences (early childhood)
Pragmatics - appropriate use of language in different contexts