CHAPTER 7: Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood (Textbook)

Nutrition

As growth rates slow, preschooler's appetites decline. Although they eat less, they still require a high-quality diet, including the same nutrients adults need. Repeated, unpressured exposure to new foods promote healthy, varied eating. Children tend to imitate the food choices of people they admire, both adults and peers. Serving broccoli or tofu increases children's liking for these healthy foods Offering sweet fruit drinks or soft drinks promotes "milk avoidance" Offering bribes—"Finish your vegetables, and you can have an extra cookie"—leads children to like the healthy food less and the treat more Coercing children to eat results in withdrawal from food, whereas food restriction leads to excessive eating.

Mayan children

In contrast to U.S. communities, Mayan children spent their days close to—and frequently observing—adult work, which often took place in or near the Mayan family home. when young children are legitimate onlookers and participants in a daily life structured around adult work, their competencies differ from those of Western preschoolers When not participating, they are expected to be self-sufficient. Making many nonwork decisions for themselves—how much to sleep and eat, what to wear, and even when to start school. As a result, Mayan preschoolers are highly competent at self-care. Mayan parents rarely converse or play with preschoolers or scaffold their learning. By age 5, Mayan children spontaneously take responsibility for tasks beyond those assigned

Immunization

In the U.S., immunization rates are lower than in other industrialized nations because many low-income children lack access to health care. Parents with stressful daily lives often fail to schedule vaccination appointments Parents with misconception about vaccine safety. Some parents have been influenced by media reports—now widely discredited—suggesting a link between a mercury-based preservative used for decades in vaccines and a rise in the number of children diagnosed with autism. In areas where many parents have refused to immunize their children, disease outbreaks have occurred, with life-threatening consequences.

Infectious Disease and Malnutrition

Throughout childhood and adolescence, a nutritionally deficient diet is associated with shorter stature, attention and memory difficulties, poorer intelligence and achievement test scores, and hyperactivity and aggression. In developing countries, where many children live in poverty and do not receive routine immunizations, illnesses such as measles and chickenpox, which typically do not appear until after age, occur much earlier. Poor diet depresses the body's immune system, making children far more susceptible to disease. Disease, in turn, reduces appetite and limits the body's ability to absorb foods, especially in children with intestinal infections. Most developmental impairments and deaths due to diarrhea can be prevented with oral rehydration therapy(ORT), in which sick children are given a glucose, salt, and water solution that quickly replaces fluids the body loses.

Project Head Start

US federally funded preschool program for low income children. A typical Head Start center provides children with a year or two of preschool, along with nutritional and health services. Two years' exposure to cognitively enriching preschool was associated with increased employment and reduced pregnancy and delinquency rates in adolescence. Parent involvement is central to the Head Start philosophy. Early intervention for at-risk preschoolers. High quality preschool intervention results in immediate IQ and achievement gains and long-term improvements in school adjustment. Head Start is highly cost-effective when compared to the price of providing special education, treating criminal behavior, and supporting unemployed adults

academic programs

teachers structure children's learning, teaching letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and other academic skills through formal lessons, often using repetition and drill. Emphasizing formal academic training undermines young children's motivation and negatively influences later achievement. Young children who spend much time in large-group, teacher-directed academic instruction—as opposed to being actively engaged in learning centers—display more stress behaviors (such as wiggling and rocking), have less confidence in their abilities, prefer less challenging tasks, and are less advanced in motor, academic, language, and social skills at the end of the school year

Cerebral Cortex

1) Between ages 2 and 6, the brain increases from 70 percent of its adult weight to 90 percent. 2) Neural fibers in the brain continue to form synapses and to myelinate, followed by synaptic pruning and increasing localization of cognitive capacities in regions of the cerebral cortex. 3) Pre-frontal-cortical areas devoted to various aspects of executive functions develop rapidly. 4)The left hemisphere is especially active, supporting the preschooler's expanding language skills. 5)Spatial skills (usually located in the right hemisphere), such as giving directions, drawing pictures, and reading maps, develop gradually over childhood and adolescence.

Cerebellum

Aids in balance and control of body movement. Fibers linking the cerebellum to the cerebral cortex grow and myelinate from birth through the preschool years contributing to dramatic gains in motor coordination and it also supports thinking. Children with damage to the cerebellum usually display both motor and cognitive deficits, including problems with memory, planning, and language.

Brain structures - "Other Advances in Brain Development"

Besides the cerebral cortex, several other areas of the brain undergo considerable development that involve establishing links between parts of the brain and increasing the coordinated functioning of the central nervous system. Cerebellum Reticular formation Amygdala Hippocampus Corpus callosum

Reticular formation

Maintains alertness and consciousness, generates synapses and myelinates from infancy into the twenties.

Amygdala

Plays a central role in processing of novelty and emotional information. It is sensitive to facial emotional expressions, especially fear. It also enhances memory for emotionally salient events, ensuring that information vital for survival—stimuli that signify danger or safety—will be retrieved on future occasions.

Hippocampus

Plays a vital role in memory and spatial understanding (images of space that help us find our way). Undergoes rapid synapse formation and myelination in the second half of the first year, when recall memory and independent movement emerge.

Vygotsky's ZPD

Vygotsky believed that children's learning takes place within the zone of proximal development—a range of tasks too difficult for the child to do alone but possible with the help of others. Consider the joint activity of Sammy and his mother as she helps him put together a difficult puzzle

Piaget's Theory-Preoperational Stage

Which spans the years 2 to 7, the most obvious change is an increase in representational, or symbolic, activity. According to Piaget, young children are not capable of operations—mental representations of actions that obey logical rules. Rather, their thinking is rigid, limited to one aspect of a situation at a time (centration), and strongly influenced by the way things appear at the moment.

Egocentrism

a failure to distinguish others' symbolic viewpoints from one's own. When children first mentally represent the world, they tend to focus on their own viewpoint and simply assume that others perceive, think, and feel the same way they do. As a result, they fail at accommodation, conservation and hierarchical classification tasks.

corpus callosum

large bundle of fibers connecting the two cerebral hemispheres. Production of synapses and myelination of the corpus callosum peak between 3 and 6 years, continuing at a slower pace through adolescence. It supports smooth coordination of movements on both sides of the body and integration of many aspects of thinking, including perception, attention, memory, language, and problem solving.

child-centered programs

teachers provide activities from which children select, and much learning takes place through play

Animistic

the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities, such as thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions.