CHD2220 Exam #3

Parents influence the development of social competence by establishing high-quality interpersonal relationships with their children. This involves two major challenges:

(1) establishing a secure attachment relationship in infancy and early childhood and (2) developing a positive approach to socialization and discipline of their children.

inner speech

- that is, thinking in words and sentences. Vygotsky's concept has received some support from studies of private speech, which have shown a developmental trend from talking out loud to muttering to oneself during the preschool years

Educators have traditionally divided children's reading problems into two categories:

1) garden variety reading problems associated with a general pattern of academic underachievement and 2) dyslexia, a more specific reading disability that is independent of aptitude or intelligence

process of evaluation in two distinct ways:

1. reflective reasoning: children consciously and deliberately search their repertoire for the best solution 2. automatic reasoning: children respond impulsively, selecting the first thing that comes to mind or the solution that requires the least mental effort.

three-stage developmental progression:

1.) Stage 1 children (5 years-old and younger) had no overall plan for sorting, but produced graphic collections , or pictures made with objects. For instance, a child might arrange several of the forms into a rectangle and refer to it as a house. 2.) Stage 2 children (6-8 years) sorted in a more organized way, producing a series of collections of objects, each based on a different dimension of similarity. Piaget called these non-graphic collections. 3.) Stage 3 children (later childhood to early adolescence) understood the relationship the rule of class inclusion. Children at this stage successfully classified using multiple dimensions - for example, separating small, red squares large from large blue circles.

Oedipal Complex

A male child desires his mother

metacognition

A second important factor is that older children are better able than younger children to conceptualize their own cognitive processes; Metacognition includes knowing how much you know, and knowing how to improve what your knowledge.

1:1 correspondence

According to Piaget, children's responses showed a consistent developmental trend: Young preoperational children show no understanding of 1:1 correspondence, responding only to the physical appearance of the rows: if one row is spread out, it is judged to have more beans; if compressed, it is judged to have fewer beans. Slightly older children show some understanding of 1:1 correspondence, but continue to be confused by the surperficial appearance of the rows. Piaget tells us that conservation of number is not achieved until the stage of concrete operations, at 7-8 year of age.

coercion theory

Aggressive children's interactions with peers or with parents tend to escalate into chains of aversive events. One child's aggression against another elicits retaliation by the victim. If the retaliation is successful in terminating the attack - and it often is (Patterson et al, 1976) - the victim's aggression is reinforced. If it is not successful, the original attacker - who is now the victim - retaliates for the retaliation, and so on

masking

Although children have no control over what they feel, they can learn to control how they express their emotions to others; In some instances, children simply put on a "poker face" to hide their feelings. A physically abused child, for example, may hide his pain to defy his abuser or out of a sense of guilt or fear of retribution.

utilization deficiency

Although many children begin to use strategies spontaneously in second or third grade, their use of strategies often fails to improve their performance; Thus, while younger children may employ strategies just as spontaneously as older children, the older children profit more by using the strategies more effectively

LANGUAGE DELAY

Although most children learn language without difficulty, some children experience delay in various aspects of language function. This may be due to lack of appropriate language stimulation in the home or some physical problem. One of the leading causes of language delay results from a disorder of the inner ear known as otitus media.

Sequencing and Socialization of Pretend Episodes

Although pretense begins with single acts, children coordinate such acts into sequences of increasing length and complexity through the preschool years (Piaget, 1962; Nicolich, 1977). For instance, a 2-year-old's hair combing may expand into the 4-year-old's sequenced grooming: washing, putting on makeup, combing hair, and dressing.

conservation of matter, number, and length

As children gradually develop concrete operations, they begin to show consistent conservation of matter, number, and length

production deficiency

By kindergarten or first grade, children can be taught simple strategies to facilitate attention and memory, but they typically stop using the strategies shortly after training is terminated. That is, they know the strategy but they do not use it spontaneously, even when it would help them to solve problems

three-mountain problem

Children between 4 and 12 years of age were shown a three-dimensional model of a mountain scene. Each mountain had its own unique color, size, and shape and a unique object (a cross, a snowcap, or a tiny house) on its peak. Piaget asked each child to examine the model from different visual perspectives. He then moved a doll to various vantage points around the model, and asked the child to select a picture that represented the doll's point of view at each location.

Substituting Objects

Children often substitute one object for another in their pretend play. From 14-19 months toddlers act out pretense on realistic dolls, with little use of unrealistic or ambiguous substitute objects such as blocks or sticks

popular

Children who are clearly more liked than disliked are classified

average

Children who do not fall neatly into one of these subgroups

Extrinsically-oriented

Children who perform in school but with little spontaneous interest in learning; children participate in school activities only to earn rewards or to avoid punishment. When teachers fail to use rewards and punishments effectively, "extrinsics" show little involvement in school activities and little learning.

negative attributional bias

Dodge found that aggressive-rejected school-age boys were 50% more likely to attribute hostile intent than non-aggressive, popular boys. Dodge referred to the tendency to assume hostile intent

As children develop during the preschool years their attachment relationship to their parents changes for two reasons:

First, advances in language ability enable children and parents to communicate effectively at greater distances, decreasing the need for close proximity. Second, mental representations of the attachment relationship (or internal working models) allow children to feel secure as they explore farther and farther from the attachment figure.

elaborated knowledge base

For example, once a child has memorized the names of all of her classmates, she may organize the names by gender, where they sit in class, who is friends with whom, their respective reading groups, and so on; inter-connected body of facts;

mediational deficiency

If a child has no strategies and does not profit from training to promote the use of strategies

effortful

Mental activities that require more resources

The stable-order principle

Number names must be assigned in a stable, repeatable order. This principle is being followed as long as a sequence of number names is applied consistently across different arrays of items. While most preschoolers recognize this principle, some have their own idiosyncratic but stable order system, such as one three-year-old's repetitive use of the sequence "one, two, three, five, eleben, forby-two."

The one-to-one principle

One and only one distinctive number name must be assigned to each item in the array. No item should be counted more than once and no number used more than once.Although preschool children seem to understand the principle, they tend to make more errors as the number of items grows larger.

COGNITIVE AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN SOCIAL CONTEXT

Parents must adjust their expectations to the differences in their offspring's rates of development; day care workers must be flexible in their expectations for young children's mastery of self-help skills; and kindergarten and first grade teachers must cope with the vast differences between high- and low-achieving students in a single classroom

autonomous moral reasoning

Piaget believed that late in the middle childhood years and in early adolescence children gradually come to realize that rules are not irrevocably set by external authorities, that rules can be changed through negotiation, and that an individual's intentions must be considered in judging whether a behavior is right or wrong

transduction

Piaget believed that preoperational children are incapable of thinking inductively or deductively; reasoning within the unsystematic collections of images which constitute their preconcepts. Lashonda believed that Little Red Riding Hood took the fine red hat from the wolf because he had been "so bad." Her logic is transductive: private and meaningful only within her preconceptual understanding of the story.

centration

Piaget believed that preschool-age children tend to focus their attention on minute and often inconsequential aspects of their experience; For instance, a three-year-old may remember nothing about his babysitter other than her bright-colored earings.

period of concrete operations

Piaget believed that, by age 7 or 8

social status subgroups

Positive and negative preferences have been used to classify children

Five aspects of children's social relationships have profound impact on their social and emotional development during the preschool years:

SOCIAL PREFERENCE FRIENDSHIPS CONFLICTS AGGRESSION DOMINANCE

gossip

School-age children, particularly those in the upper grades, exchange social comparisons; the informal sharing of information and opinion on peers' strengths and shortcomings. Gossip, by its nature, is a synthesis of truths and untruths, elaborated and distorted by the emotions and biases of the participating children

dyscalcula

Severe disability in learning mathematics;

Cooperative play

The child plays with other children in an organized manner, with roles differentiated to accomplish some goal or to act out some agreed upon play theme.

Associative play

The child plays with other children, sharing materials and conversing, but there is no consistent theme to the play or division of roles.

ego ideal

The ego ideal becomes a permanent component of personality, providing a prescription for gender-appropriate role behavior

The cardinal principl e

The final number in a counting sequence gives the total number of items in the array. Preschool children appear to follow this principle for arrays up to 19 items; Many young children show that they follow this principle by consistently offering the last number name they assign when asked "How many are there?" This is true even when they count items incorrectly

The order-irrelevance principle

The order in which objects are counted is irrelevant. For instance, if a child were counting the stuffed animals in her room, the bear could be counted first or second or third -- as long as it is eventually assigned a number

phonics

The second approach to reading instruction; Proponents of this approach accept the so-called Simple View of reading as an integration of decoding and comprehension

reinforcement trap

The trap begins when a mother issues a command such as "Clean your room!" The child responds with an aggressive behavior, such as throwing a tantrum or repeatedly hitting a sibling. The mother eventually gives in, saying, "OK, OK, forget about cleaning the room. Just cut that out." The child then stops the aggression.

social learned helplessness .

They called the tendency to attribute failures to internal, stable, and uncontrollable causes

COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE

This theory portrays children as active agents in the learning of gender roles. Children begin to label themselves accurately as boys or girls during the second or third year of life. According to one theorist (Maccoby, 1988), the gender label works like a magnet, helping children to organize information about the world by sorting new experiences into sex-appropriate and sex-inappropriate categories

language development

Toward the end of the second year of life, children have mastered many of the fundamental components of language: their vocabulary is expanding rapidly, their pronunciation is improving, and they are forming two-word utterances for the first time.

Shifting Context

Two- and three-year-old children typically require support from the play setting to initiate and sustain their pretense. A toddler, for example, is more likely to pretend to eat in a setting such as a kitchen than in the back yard.

The abstraction principle

Virtually anything can be counted: tangibles such as objects and events, and intangibles such as ideas, values, or emotions. This appears not to be a problem for young children, at least with respect to tangible items. When young children begin to play with number sequences, they count just about any set of objects they encounter.

latchkey or self-care children

We refer to children who are left to care for themselves for extended periods of time before or after school; refers to the fact that most unsupervised children must carry a key to enter their homes after school). By one estimate (US Bureau of the Census, 1987), over two million American children (1% of 5-year-olds and 14% of 13-year olds) may be classified as latchkey, and approximately 60% of these children receive no adult supervision after school on a regular basis. These estimates are undoubtedly quite conservative, since few families would admit to practices that might suggest neglect of their children.

Substituting Other Agents for Oneself

When pretense first appears early in the second year, toddlers are the agents of their own acts of pretense. For instance, a child may pretend to feed herself by bringing an empty spoon to her mouth, or pretend to go to sleep by putting her head down on a table. Later in the second year, children begin to use dolls in pretend play, but only as passive agents. For example, the child may talk to the doll, but does not imagine the doll talking back to the child or to other dolls. By the beginning of the third year most children use dolls as active agents, pretending that dolls initiate and sustain their own behavior as in talking, running, or playing with other dolls. When the doll becomes its own agent, the child "pulls the strings" as the doll assumes a human-like (or sometimes super-human-like) role in the pretense.

reactive aggression

a child is provoked by the behavior an instigator (or aggressor), and the child responds defensively or in retaliation to that provocation. Typically, one child frustrates, annoys, teases, or physically assaults another child, and the child responds aggressively to that provocation

personality

a child's unique pattern of relating socially and emotionally to other human beings. Some personalities seem to be far more successful than others in achieving personal and social goals

gender schema

a cognitive structure with which the child actively searches for gender-related information from the environment. When a child enters a new experience - such as the first day in a new day care center - the gender schema searches for information that helps the child define the situation in terms of femaleness or maleness.

Electra Complex

a female child desires her father

counting-on

a more advanced addition strategy that eliminates the need to recount everything. They begin counting-on by saying the number of the first addend out loud, then counting from that number through the numbers of the second addend. They keep track of the count by raising one finger for each number named while counting through the second addend.

dominance hierarchy

a systematic ordering of power relationships from the most to the least powerful member. When firmly established, the dominance hierarchy minimizes aggression by allowing each member of the group to anticipate the outcome of potential aggressive interactions with each member of the group. For example, when one monkey encounters a higher ranked monkey, fighting is unnecessary since both already know the winner.

intuitive

a term that implies noticeable improvement over preoperational thought, but with lingering lapses in logic. With intuitive reasoning, children often get the right solutions to problems, but without understanding the underlying principles

Gender schema theory

accounts for gender-typing by combining the concept of an active role for the child from cognitive-developmental theory, and the concept of environmental influence from social learning theory

Stage 4

adolescents embrace a law and order orientation, believing dogmatically that laws define what is right or wrong; Conventional moral reasoning predominates from late childhood, through adolescence, and into the young adult years (Colby et al, 1983). Kohlberg believed that this is likely to be the highest level of moral reasoning achieved by most people.

Counting-all

an accurate but rather inefficient strategy, particularly when applied to bigger numbers, such as 15 + 17 = ?.

friendship

an enduring close, mutual relationship between two individuals, expressed by a tendency to spend a disproportionate amount of play time together. Most important, friendship involves reciprocity--the idea that the relationship is shared and of mutual interest to both parties

math anxiety

an extreme lack of confidence in one's ability to learn and to perform mathematics (Resnick, 1989). Research has indicated that children show increasing math anxiety as they get older, with predictable effects on their self-perception and achievement in math

moral realism

an inflexible view that behaviors are either right or wrong, with no in-between. Laws are created by the absolute authority of adults, and that authority cannot be questioned. The child as a "moral realist" decides the rightness and wrongness of behaviors--his or her own or those of others--strictly by their consequences, irrespective of the person's intentions

phonemic awareness

an understanding that spoken words are composed of sequences of sounds (called phonemes). For example, the word bat has three identifiable sounds: /b/, /a/, and /t/. Kindergarten teachers promote phonemic awareness with simple games and activities that encourage children to break down spoken words into their constituent sounds, and to blend those sounds back together to reconstruct the original words. Rhyming and nursery rhymes enhance phonemic awareness by helping children recognize that certain sounds and combinations of sounds are common to many words.

Conflict

any situation in which children find themselves opposing one another: They want the same toy at the same time; they vie to be first in line at recess; they argue over who can do something better or who is smarter.

Strategies

are goal-directed mental operations that individuals use to deliberately facilitate their memory, attention, and problem solving (Harnishfeger & Bjorkland, 1990). For example, children can repeat a series of numbers over and over to facilate memory, scan a visual display to systematically gather information, and count on their fingers to solve math problems.

preconventional moral reasoning

at stages 1 & 2; believing that the rightness or wrongness of a behavior is determined solely by its consequences.

hedonistic and instrumental orientation (stage 2)

believing that behaviors are "good" if they meet one's personal needs. The emphasis is on behaving to gain rewards, rather than to avoid punishments. While children remain egocentrically involved in meeting their own needs, they begin to recognize that they may have to please others in order to please themselves, as in "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine."

5-to-7 shift

between ages 5 and 7, children go through a gradual period of transition from the illogical and unsystematic reasoning of the preoperational period to the more logical and systematic reasoning of middle childhood

self-managed

by altering her study environment to reduce distraction, and by enacting specific information-gathering strategies to compensate for her deficiencies: listing the words she did not know, and using the text's glossary and the chapter introduction.

identification

by incorporating characteristics of the same-sex parent and. to a lesser extent, the opposite-sex into the personality as an ego ideal

self-appraised

by recognizing that she had not learned the concepts required to complete her assignment, by assessing what concepts she needed to know, and by sensing when her self-study had adequately prepared her to tackle the problems

By the 3rd birthday, we begin to see social pretend play

children acting out roles and themes associated with stories, television cartoon shows, or common family events such as "supper time" or "bathing baby". Social pretend play increases through the preoperational period; declines at 6 or 7 years, as games-with-rules begin to dominate children's social play.

Stage 3

children adopt the good boy, good girl orientation, engaging in "good" behavior to gain adult approval or to avoid disapproval.

obedience and punishment orientation (stage 1)

children believe that behaviors that avoid punishment must be "good" or "right.";

conventional level of moral reasoning (Stages 3 and 4)

children develop internal standards that reflect society's values of what is right and wrong.

deferred imitation

children observe the behavior of a model and imitate that behavior when the model is no longer present.;The child maintains modeled behavior in symbolic form over relatively long periods of time, imitating the behavior only when it becomes adaptive to do so. For example, after watching parents using eating utensils for several months, a toddler makes his first spontaneous attempts to use a spoon. Deferred imitation greatly expands children's repertoire for solving everyday problems.

symbolic or pretend play

children pretend that an object is something other than what it really is. For instance, an 18-month-old lifts an empty cup to his face, tips it as if to drink, licks his lips, and looks at his mother with that telltale grin that indicates he knows he did not really drink.

monologue

children simply talk to themselves, seemingly oblivious to anyone around them. For example, Heather, all alone in her room, narrated a brief segment of her block play: "Gonna put this here -- oops, don't fit on top. But I can break it. No, no, it's too big and fat. OOPS, I make it fall down."

controversial

children who are simultaneously liked by some children and disliked by others

intrinsic motivation

children who are spontaneously involved in learning; an urge to learn and to achieve that comes from within

phallic stage

children's destructive impulses are directed increasingly toward the same-sex parent, who is perceived as a rival for the affection of the opposite-sex parent.

Piaget's preoperational stage have described the centrated, egocentric, transductive, and irreversible qualities of preoperational thought.We will examine how these limitations affect children's reasoning in specific content domains:

classification quantitative reasoning distinguishing between appearance and reality

enrichment approach

classroom teachers try to broaden the gifted child's learning with more challenging experiences than provided to other children, but the gifted children remain at the grade level consistent with their chronological age. These enrichment experiences can be provided by the regular classroom teacher or by special education teachers in learning centers.

conflicts center on two issues:

control of objects and social influence

collective monologue

conversation-like turn-taking between egocentric speakers, with little or no transfer of meaning.

preconcepts

disorganized, illogical representations of the child's experiences; Carlos's representation of "zoo" is a prime example. Whereas his preconcept included images relevant to the concept of zoo, such as a lion and a cage, it also included irrelevant images of visitors and events unique to his family's experience

compensatory preschools

early childhood education programs designed to compensate for risks associated with growing up poor, neglected, or abused. The largest and most widely known of these efforts is Project Head Start , a federally-funded program serving approximately one million children a year, at a cost of six billion dollars a year.

Stage 6

embrace the universal principles orientation, believing that universal moral principles (justice, equality, human rights) transcend laws made by man

(Stages 5 and 6), postconventional moral reasoning

enables the individual to think beyond specific laws to abstract principles, such as justice, equality, and human rights.

symbolic function

end of the second year of life; the ability to use symbols to represent or stand for perceived objects and events. The symbolic function takes several distinct forms as the child moves into the third year of life: deferred imitation, symbolic or pretend play, mental images, and language.

whole-word

first grade teachers; instruction by showing children printed words (such as cat or sit) and pronouncing each word out loud. The children are then asked to look at the word and say it. Teachers make no effort to teach children to associate particular letters with individual sounds; in look-say, letters are merely elements of word-pictures.

acceleration approach

gifted children are either grouped together in a special accelerated learning track--for example, completing 3 school years in 2--or "skipped" to a more advanced grade to study with older, non-gifted children. Although some parents express concern that skipping places children at a social disadvantage with older classmates, research has shown that accelerated children show equal social adjustment and better academic achievement than children who are not accelerated

Authoritative parents

have expectations for their children's behavior, firmly enforce rules and standards, but allow children some say in the development of rules. Parents and children communicate openly, encouraging each to express their points of view and affirming the rights of both parents and children. While authoritative parents expect children to be responsive to their demands, they reciprocate by being responsive to their children's needs.

sociometric procedure,

individual children are asked to nominate three children they most like to play with and three that they least like to play with

Stage 5

individuals adopt a social contract orientation, believing that laws should be respected as the best way to balance individual interests against the needs of the group. People should obey the law because it is the best way for everyone to live harmoniously. Heinz knows that society cannot survive if individuals can break the laws at their convenience.

grammatical morphemes

inflections such as - ing , - ed , and - s which modify nouns, verbs, and adjectives. (Remember that a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language.)

DISTAR

integrates behavior modification strategies to control classroom behavior and highly structured, sequentially-organized lessons to promote the "match" in language, arithmetic, and reading.

mental images

internal representations of external objects or events. Mental images free children from the here and now, enabling them to think about objects when the objects are not physically present, and to think about events before, during, and after their occurrence. For the first time, the child can integrate experiences from the past into the present to plan for the future.

concrete operation

is a new form of cognitive ability that enables the child to adapt to his or her environment with systematic logic. For the first time, children begin to understand relationships among objects and events in their environment: that objects can be systematically related in classes, that quantities can be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided, and rules can be systematically combined to organize games and other activities.

Rehearsal

is a relatively simple strategy that involves repeating items over and over--aloud or to oneself--to facilitate storage of information for later retrieval. For example, children learn that they are less likely to forget someone's phone number if they repeat it several times immediately after hearing it.

Mindreading

is the cognitive process by which we attribute desires and beliefs to other individuals in order to explain and predict their behavior; The first mindreading takes place during the early preschool years (Wellman, 1991) when children start to talk about their own and other's desires and beliefs

egocentric speech

language that fails to consider the viewpoint of the listener

superego

mental structure that unconsciously guides a child's behavior. The superego contains both a conscience that prohibits certain behaviors and an ego ideal that provides the child with an internal image that the child strives to become. Violating the conscience or not living up to the ego ideal is punished by unconscious guilt, a debilitating psychological state that undermines the child's ability to think or behave rationally. Once formed at age 5 or 6, the superego remains unchanged throughout life, unconsciously motivating the individual to moral behavior.

THE GROWTH OF VOCABULARY

nine new words per day; Their new vocabulary grows as they come to understand relationships among objects and events in their experience. For instance, children learn words that reflect their understanding of concepts of time, such as before , now , and after , and concepts of space, such as under , over , far , and near .

Social learning theory provides two complementary perspectives on children's aggression

observational theory and coercion theory. The first perspective applies the principles of observational learning to the development of aggression: Children acquire aggressive responses by observing the aggressive behavior of models and produce aggressive responses when the situation suggests that such behavior will not be punished or possibly even reinforced

Information processing theory

offers a useful alternative by describing cognitive development as a more continuous process of increasing ability throughout development and by demanding far more precise definitions of terms.

Sympathy

on the other hand, is an emotional response where one feels sorrow or concern for another's welfare. Thus, in both empathy and sympathy the focus is on the other person rather than on the self

over-regularize

once they learn a rule, For instance, having first learned the - ed rule, a child may add - ed to all verbs - both regular and irregular forms - to indicate past occurrence: "The boy kicked the ball," "The boy ranned home,"

egocentrism

one of the major limitations of preoperational thought is the child's inability to conceptualize the perspective of other individuals; major impediment to mastering the pragmatics of conversation

Neglectful

parents are uninvolved in their children's lives and consider parenting a burden. They emotionally distance themselves from their children and minimize the time and effort devoted to child care.

Indulgent-permissive

parents are very accepting of their children's impulses, avoid setting rules, and assert very little authority over their children's behavior. They defer to their children's inclinations with respect to time schedules (bedtime, mealtime) and avoid making demands for compliance.

Authoritarian

parents assert great power over their children, setting strict limits and standards on children's behavior. Rules are set by parental edict, with no room for negotiation or compromise. These parents interpret deviations from the rules as challenges to their authority, frequently responding with moderate to severe punishment.

Bullying or hostile aggression

person-oriented acts aimed at forcefully gaining social control over another child. This may involve threatening by gesture or word, or actually striking a child to persuade or intimidate. It typically appears in the form of verbal teasing, taunting, or threatening and, in more often than not, direct physical attack.

amoral

preoperational children; unable to reason logically about rules and concepts of right and wrong. They may, of course, behave morally, but only in response to the rewards and punishments presented by adults.

cognitive stimulation approach

promotes cognitive development by challenging children within the zone of proximal development at every possible turn

strategies

purposeful efforts to facilitate memory; Although some young children show temporary ability to employ such strategies when told to do so, they rarely use them spontaneously and stop using them soon after being prompted. As children mature into the elementary school years, they become increasingly strategic in their problem solving

aggression

purposeful efforts to inflict pain or injury on another child. As the following incidents suggest, aggression has highly varied emotional consequences on its victims.

operational

refer to the logical systems of thought which emerge in middle childhood. For example, by age 7 or 8, most children understand that while all horses are animals, all animals are not necessarily horses.

Proactive aggression

refers to a child's unprovoked, voluntary efforts to cause harm to a selected victim. For example, a child approaches another child and hits the child for no apparent reason

Empathy

refers to an emotional state that results from vicariously experiencing the emotions of another individual--that is, we feel what they feel.

Relational aggression

refers to behavior that is designed to inflict harm by undermining or damaging relations with peers; A child relationally aggresses by excluding another child from a playgroup ("You can't play with us.") or by threatening to sever an existing friendship ("I m not gonna be your friend anymore.")

Instrumental aggression

refers to object-oriented struggles between children over possession, territory, and privilege. This may involve grabbing a toy from another child, tugging for possession, chasing a child who has a desired object, or striking a child while fighting over a disputed object.

Quantitative reasoning

refers to the ability to estimate the amount of things and changes in the amounts of things in terms of number, size, weight, volume, speed, time, and distance. For instance, when a 3-year-old tries to throw a ball, he must try to estimate how much force is needed to project the ball a certain distance.

Decoding

refers to the ability to interpret printed letters as a code for spoken words

comprehension

refers to the ability to understand words that have been decoded.

Distinguishing appearance and reality

refers to the fact that adults generally sense that appearances do not always reflect reality: that people do not necessarily mean what they say, intend what they do, or feel the emotions implied by the look on their face. But young children often appear confused by discrepancies between appearance and reality

hierarchy

refers to the fact that any given object can be classified in a series of increasingly inclusive levels. For example, apples are included in the class of fruits, which can be included in the class of foods.

Classification

refers to the tendency to group objects on the basis of particular sets of characteristics. For instance, adults maintain distinct categories for fruits and vegetables, indoor and outdoor sports, automobiles and airplanes, to name just a few. Adult classification systems are organized on the basis of class inclusion

elaboration

relating objects to one another with absurd or fanciful visual images. For example, if a child were asked to memorize the following items: book, boy, horse, field, and rain she could "elaborate" by generating a visual image such as "A boy was riding his horse across a field, reading his book in the rain."

automatic mental activities

require less resources; are highly efficient, freeing up resources for other purposes

socio-dramatic play

requires that children learn to negotiate and communicate about the roles, objects, settings, and actions that will be employed in any given "pretend engagement"

gender segregation

rough and tumble behavior among the boys, highly verbal and polite behavior among the girls, and considerable antagonism between members of the respective groups

two major components of metacognition

self-appraisal and self-management

rule of class inclusion

states that any class of objects must be smaller than the inclusive class in which it is contained.

An effective school must have:

strong leadership provided by a principal who actively and energetically organizes the activities of the school. The principal's leadership style must engender the trust and respect of teachers, parents, children, and the community. an orderly atmosphere that provides a sense of direction and momentum to the learning process, without being oppressive. There must be clear lines of authority and sanctions for dealing with those who choose to jeopardize the learning process. teachers who actively participate in the school's decision making processes, representing the best interests of the children. a principal and teachers with consistently high expectations for the learning of all children, and a relentless commitment to academic excellence. consistent monitoring of children's performance, with strategies for dealing assertively with children who work below their potential.

SOCIAL LEARNING PERSPECTIVE

that children learn gender roles the same way they learn any other behavior: They observe how same-sex peers and adults behave, imitate what they see, and are reinforced or punished depending on whether their behaviors are gender-appropriate

limited capacity

that each individual is constrained by a finite pool of mental resources that can be allocated to various thought processes (Shiffrin & Schnieder, 1977), and that total mental capacity is a constant throughout development (Case, 1985). In practical terms, there is only so much mental resource to go around; investment in one mental activity means less available for other activities. For example, a child may be unable to study effectively for an exam if she is preoccupied thinking about her friends

social information processing

that include separate components for how children encode and interpret social events; how they generate, evaluate, and select responses to those events; and how they enact the responses they select

prosocial behavior

that is, behavior that shows concern for the welfare of others. Prosocial behaviors include helping, caring, sharing, rescuing, protecting, and donating. Researchers have shown that children respond to other people's distress before the end of the second year

min strategy

that is, by always beginning counting-on with the larger of the two addends.; The efficiency of "min" is even more obvious when the addends are very different in size, as in 17 + 3 = ?.

attributional style

that is, in the characteristic way that they attribute intent to explain their own and other's social behavior. Children's attributions vary on three important dimensions: locus, stability, and control. Locus is the degree to which children take credit (or blame) for their social outcomes. Stability refers to whether children view the causes of their behavior as consistent over time. Control refers to the degree to which they believe that they can change their behavior to alter their social outcomes.

private speech

that is, speech with no apparent communicative purpose. Research has shown that the form and function of private speech vary widely during the preschool years. For example, some children characteristically mutter softly to themselves only in the privacy of their rooms, while others speak audibly to themselves, even in the presence of others.

gender identity

that is, the ability to classify oneself and others by sex - appears in the third year of life. Girls begin to identify with the label girl by their second birthday; boys identify with the label boy approximately a year later

gender roles

that is, the behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs that a particular culture considers appropriate for males and females

deception

that is, their ability to generate false beliefs in other individuals; Children as young as 2 1/2 used used deceptive strategies to create false beliefs.

conserve

that is, they do not recognize that the amount of a substance remains unchanged despite changes in the shape of the container in which it is held

self-regulate

that is, to control the intensity and duration of their emotional reactions to conform to the requirements of challenging situations. Children learn to achieve self-regulation by refocusing their attention, controlling distance from the source of arousal, and by self-soothing behaviors. In some instances children are required to reduce their negative emotions.

emotional reactivity

that is, variations in thresholds for specific emotions and the intensity and duration of emotional reactions.

social comparison

the ability to describe, rate and rank peers on various traits and attributes. School-age children spend extraordinary amounts of time socially comparing their peers, using increasingly complex trait descriptions as they get older (Rogosch & Newcomb, 1989). While young children focus on observable features in their ratings and rankings, such as peers' physical appearance, older children emphasize more abstract qualities, such as peers' likes and dislikes, thoughts, and feelings

social competence

the ability to establish and maintain satisfying social interaction and relationships with peers and with adults.

prosocial moral reasoning

the ability to think about conflicts in which they must choose between satisfying their own needs or those of other persons (Eisenberg, Lennon, & Roth, 1983). These include situations in which helping or sharing with someone else means some sacrifice or loss for the helper. It seems likely that children who show more-sophisticated moral reasoning about sharing and helping would be more likely than less-sophisticated children to share and help others in real-life situations.

Unoccupied behavior (least)

the child is not involved in play and does not interact with other children or teachers.

Onlooker behavior

the child observes the play of other children with obvious interest but makes no effort to become involved in any way.

Parallel Play

the child plays beside other children with toys that are similar to those used by those children. There is no social contact with other children nor any effort to coordinate play.

Solitary play

the child plays independently with toys that are unlike those played with by other children. There is no social contact or apparent interest in what other children are doing.

gender constancy

the concept that gender does not change regardless of how one behaves or what clothes one wears

prosocial behavior

the intentional helping or caring for others--during the preschool years

conservation

the notion that certain attributes of objects and events may remain unchanged, despite transformations or changes in other attributes

irreversibility

the notion that preschoolers cannot mentally reverse their transductive sequences of thought; Irreversibility is the inability of the mind to mentally undo or reverse a sequence of thought.

immanent justice

the notion that you always get punished for behaving inappropriately and rewarded for behaving appropriately, and conversely, that if you get punished, you must have done something bad, or, if you get rewarded, you must have done something good. This belief causes some young children to blame themselves when something unfortunate happens to them or to members of their family

preoperational stage

the period from 3-6 years of age

organization

the purposeful attempt to identify conceptual relationships among items to be remembered

peer reputation

the relatively stable characterization of a child shared by members of the peer group. As with adults, children's reputations tend to precede them in social settings, with powerful effects on their acceptance/rejection among their peers (Rogosch et al., 1989). Thus, reputation-whether deserved or not--can make or break a child in the pursuit of friends and social acceptance.

grammar

the system of rules that structures how to combine words into meaningful sequences. John Flavell suggested that young children approach this learning as if they expect the language to be governed by rules

information processing theory

this theory views cognitive development as a continuous process of change in children's information-processing capabilities; These theories generally reject the idea of "stages" of child development.; children's memory and attention.

rejected

those who are clearly more disliked than liked

neglected

those who are neither liked or disliked

theory of mind

use to explain and predict human behavior. For example, when one child wants to make friends with a peer, it helps that child to know what how the potential friend feels about her. Some children are more skilled at this ability than others and such skills can place children at considerable advantage in challenging social situations.

induction

we derive general principles from particular examples. For example, an eight-year-old boy who observes that teachers have favored girls in each of his classes, might induce the general principle that girls are teacher's pets.

deduction

we use general principles to predict particular outcomes: The same child could use his general principle to deduce that when he enters his next grade, his new teacher will be likely to favor girls.

rejected children

who are disliked by most peers and liked by very few

average-status children

who are liked by a few peers and disliked by some others

controversial children

who are liked by many of their peers and disliked by many others

popular children

who are liked by most of their peers and disliked by no one

neglected children

who are neither actively liked nor disliked by anyone

attention

young children have difficulty sustaining attention on play materials for long periods of time. Moreover, their approach to gathering information tends to be unsystematic. The ability to pay selective attention to objects in the environment improves gradually with age, as children master strategies paying attention to task-relevant objects