6
Early Childhood
Physical, Cognitive,
and Language Development
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Early Childhood
Physical, Cognitive, and Language Development
• Physical Development
• Motor Skills Development
• Cognitive Development
• Language Development
• Play and Learning
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Early Childhood
• Ages 2 to 6 involve a time of remarkable growth
and achievement
• Accompanying physical development are rapid
changes in children’s thinking
• Neurological development underlies much of
early childhood development, including
advances in:
– Thinking, memory, problem solving, language,
physical coordination, and social and emotional
development
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Physical Development
• Physical development is the result of interaction
of genetics, experience, nutrition, care, play, and
exercise
• Changes in Body
– Age 2 to 6 is a time of rapid physical growth
– Bodies become longer, more slender, less-top-heavy
– Bones harden
• Brain Development
– Rapid growth spurt
– Myelinization and lateralization occur
– Neural impulses become faster and more precise
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X-ray of a 2-year-old’s and
a 6-year-old’s hand and wrist
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Changing Body Proportion in Girls
and Boys from Birth to Maturity
SOURCE: FromMoving and learning: The elementary school physical education experience (3rd ed.), by B. Nichols, copyright ｩ 1994. Reprinted by
permission of the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Handedness
• A function of brain lateralization
• May have a genetic basis
• Preference for hand develops by 20
months, but may be seen in developing
fetus (sucking dominant thumb)
• Only 10% of children are left-handed
• Left-handed people are more likely to be
ambidextrous
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Brain Development
and Early Intervention
• Remediation for developmental problems
should begin by age 3
• High-risk children benefit from educational
programs and other interventions targeting
nutrition, health needs, social and cognitive
development, and family needs
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Development:
Interactive and Individual
• Brain development and other aspects
of development interact
• Generalized statements about growth
may or may not apply to individual
children
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Motor Skills Development
• Gross Motor Skills
– Develop automaticity, ability to perform without thinking
– Become able to integrate separate, simple actions into more
complex patterns—functional subordination
• Fine Motor Skills between 2 and 6:
– Grasping
– Fastening and unfastening clothing
– Using scissors and eating utensils
– Tying knots
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Motor Development in Early
Childhood
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Learning and Motor Skills
• Motor development requires readiness to
learn
• Practice is essential to motor development
• Motor learning is enhanced by attention
• Feedback helps children acquire and
refine their skills
• Children’s behaviors may be extrinsically
or intrinsically motivated
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Cognitive Development
• Piaget’s Preoperational Period (ages 2-7)
– Cognitive development builds on schemes developed
in the sensorimotor stage
– Two parts:
• Preconceptual period – age 2 to 4 or 5
• Intuitive or transitional period – age 4 or 5 to 7
• Limitations on realistic thinking
– Animism
– Reification
• Young children are also egocentric
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Characteristics of Preoperational
Thought
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Cognitive Development
• Symbolic representation – use of actions,
images, words, to represent past and
present events, experiences, and
concepts
• Limitations of Preoperational Thinking
– Lack of conservation
– Thinking is perception-based, rather than
logic-based
– Preoperational children can’t think backwards
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Limitations of Preoperational
Thinking
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Conservation of Mass Problems
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A Conservation of Number Problem
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The Classic Liquid-Beakers
Problem
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Video Clip
Piaget’s three mountains task
demonstrating preoperational egocentrism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OinqFgsIbh0
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Video Clip
Demonstration of conservation tasks with
preoperational child
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLj0IZFLKvg
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Video Clip
Funny Piaget conservation tasks video:
Piaget teaches Stewie from Family Guy,
Kenny from South Park, and Michael
Jackson conservation of number and
volume
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYGMDNKzSI0
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Video Clip
Demonstration of liquid conservation task
with concrete operational child
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA04ew6Oi9M
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Video Clip
Deductive reasoning demonstration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjJdcXA1KH8
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
• Critics say that children’s thinking is not as
limited as Piaget described
• Children may be able to use more logic than he
gave them credit for, if they can relate to the
problem
• Piaget underemphasized the role of social
aspects of learning, which Vygotsky advanced
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Beyond Piaget: Social Perspectives
• Lev Vygotsky’s concept of zone of proximal
development means children’s achievement can be
optimized by adult guidance
• The most effective guidance, or instruction, involves
scaffolding, the progressive structuring of tasks so
that the level of difficulty is appropriate to the child’s
ability
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The Role of Memory
• Memory is central to cognitive development
• Memory processes reach nearly adult
capabilities by the age of 7
• Two different types of information retrieval:
– Recognition
– Recall
• Memory is improved with effective strategies for
encoding and retrieval
– For instance, children learn scripts, or sequences, for
routine activities
– Scripts form the beginnings of the historical self
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Language Development
• In early childhood, children learn that words can
be used to express concepts
• Children learn the rules of grammar in an orderly
sequence, but sometimes apply them
inappropriately (e.g., overregularization)
• Children develop private speech, the language
they use to talk to themselves
• They learn to talk to each other:
– Collective monologues
– Pragmatics
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Stages of Grammar Acquisition
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Language Development
• Parents teach children about categories and
symbols and how to translate children’s worlds
into ideas and words
• Assumptions about gender are often embedded
in parents’ language
• Young children may become bilingual when
different languages are used at home and at
school
• Being bilingual enhances cognitive development
and flexibility
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Play and Learning
• Play is the work of childhood
• Play’s many forms promote cognitive development
• Children learn about physical laws and properties
by playing with objects
• Young children are too egocentric to engage in
social play, but engage in parallel play
• Social play and dramatic play develop at age 3 or 4
• Play with peers
– Promotes social and personality development and
– Cognitive and motor skills
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Kinds of Play
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Summary
• Early childhood—from age 2 to 6—is a period of
remarkable growth and achievement
• Physical and cognitive development is rapid,
and is most dependent on the developing brain
• The ways children behave and think—and the
ways their brains develop—for an integrated,
interactive, and dynamic system
• Connections continue to be made between the
neurons, unneeded connections are pruned, and
cells become coated in myelin, a sheathing that
makes the neurons function more precisely
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Summary
• Physical development involves the child’s ability
to perform increasingly complex motor activities
without thinking about them (automaticity)
• They learn motor skills with practice and they
learn most easily when their brains are ready
• Piaget called this stage of cognitive development
the preoperational period, when children are
developing language and thinking skills
• Piaget believe that children actively construct
their view of the world by assimilating and
accommodating new experiences
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Summary
• Cognitive ability at this stage, however, has
many limits. This stage of thinking is
characterized by egocentrism and lack of
conservation
• Vygotsky felt that children learn best when they
are guided by a competent adult or older child
• At this stage children’s memory develops and
improves
• Language development at this stage is rapid,
particularly the explosion of vocabulary
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Summary
• Girls and boys develop language skills at different rates
• Play is the work of childhood. Children become more
social and interactive in their play at this stage
• They move from parallel play to dramatic play
• Play with other children promotes social and personality
development, as well as cognitive and motor skills
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.