Physical and Cognitive Development in Early …...Physical and Cognitive Development in Early...

©2013 SIM UNIVERSITY. All rights reserved.

Physical and Cognitive

Development in Early Childhood

Study Unit 2, Chapter 1, Topic 1

Learning Outcomes

• Identify and describe the milestones in physical development of

preschoolers.

• List milestones in cognitive development of preschoolers.

• Identify the main characteristics of Piaget’s preoperational stage of

cognitive development.

• Explain the language development and its importance in learning

based on Vygotsky’s Social Constructivism view.


At the end of the study topic, you will be able to:


childhoodearly

Physical Development in Early Childhood

Body Growth and Change

• Height and Weight (grows 6cm, 2.5kg a year).

• Losing the baby fat, getting more slender.

• Do you notice that girls are only slightly smaller and lighter than boys during these

years? These small differences continue until puberty.

• Contributors to height differences: ethnic origin and nutrition.

• Why are some children unusually short?

– The culprits are congenital factors (genetic/prenatal problem), growth hormone

deficiency, a physical problem that develops in childhood, or an emotional

difficulty.

– For instance, preschool children whose mothers smoked regularly during

pregnancy are half an inch shorter than their counterparts whose mothers did

not smoke.

• Brain - most important physical development during early childhood.

• The changes in the brain that occur during early childhood enable children to plan

their actions, attend to stimuli more effectively, and make considerable strides in

language development.


Motor Development

Think of a child in his/her pre-nursery years (3 to 4 years of age). What are their favourite

activities? Do you find them ‘hyperactive’? Running as fast as they can, building towers

with blocks, scribbling, cutting paper with scissors, are but just some activities that you

might be thinking of.

Gross Motor Skills1

Fine Motor Skills2

Click the buttons to read more information.


Motor Development - Gross Motor Skills


• 3 yrs - children enjoy simple movements

such as hopping and jumping.

• 4 yrs - they enjoy the same kind of

activities, but they have become more

adventurous; e.g., coming down stairs.

• 5 yrs - even more adventuresome – can

run hard, hop on one leg.

Gross Motor Skills Fine Motor Skills1 2






Motor Development - Fine Motor Skills

• 3 yrs - still emerging from the infant

ability to place and handle things - cut

paper.

• 4 yrs – improved and more precise -

cuts following a line.

• 5 yrs - cuts interior piece from paper.


Gross Motor Skills Fine Motor Skills21






Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

How would you describe a pre-schooler? Are they creative? Are they imaginative? These

amazing cognitive abilities are characterised of their fast maturing brain and reasoning

capabilities.

• In this section, we will be looking at 3 perspectives on cognitive development in early

childhood:


Piaget’s Pre-

operational

Thought

Vygotsky’s

Theory

Information

Processing

1 2 3

Recall Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development.

Preoperational(2-7 yrs)

Concrete Operational(7-11 yrs)

Formal Operational(>11 yrs)

Piaget’s Perspective


Sensorimotor

(0-2yrs)

4 stages of

Development

(qualitatively

different)

1

Piaget’s Perspective


• Early childhood = 2 to 7 years.

• Preoperational stage of cognitive

development.

• Understanding the world with words,

images and drawings.

• Egocentrism and magical beliefs.

• Pre-operational thought = the beginning of

the ability to reconstruct in thought what

has been established in behaviour. Two

sub-stage of preoperational thought are:

– Symbolic function substage.

– Intuitive thought substage.

• The label preoperational emphasises that

the child cannot yet think something

through without acting it out.

1

A story of childhood “egocentrism”


• Occurs roughly between 2 and 4 years old, in which a young child gains the ability to

mentally represent an object that is not present.

• However, the child’s thought still has several limitations - egocentrism and animism.

• Egocentrism – the inability to distinguish own perspective from another’s.

� ‘The three mountain task’ is the popular task used to study egocentrism among

young children. E.g., Doll’s view of mountain versus the child’s view.

� Experiment of egocentrism with children:

� Have you ever encounter a child around this age nodding silently during

a telephone conversation; having failing to consider that the other party’s

perspective.

• Animism – inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action:

� E.g. “Chair hurt me.”

� A young child may say, “That tree pushed the leaf off, and it fell down.”

Symbolic Function Sub-stage - 1


Learning Activity

1. Go to http://www.youtube.com

2. Search for : Egocentrism

3. Watch the video entitled “Egocentrism” duration: 1:29 min uploaded

by jenningh

1

Photo 4 (View from D)Photo 3 (View from C)

Photo 2 (View from B)

Symbolic Function Sub-stage - 2


1

Photo 1 (View from A)

Intuitive Thought Sub-stage

• Occurs between approximately 4 and 7 years of age.

• Often referred to as “why-4”.

• Children may begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all

sorts of questions.

• It is ‘intuitive’ because, on the one hand, young children seem so sure about their

knowledge and understanding, yet they are so unaware of how they know what they

know.

• Their knowledge seems to be intuitive without the use of rational thinking.


1

Centration and Conservation

An important characteristic of preoperational thought is centration – the focusing, or

centering, of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others. Centration is

most clearly evidenced in young children’s lack of conservation – the awareness that

altering an object’s or a substance’s appearance does not change its quantitative

properties. There are many types or dimensions of conservation. Check out your

textbook (Figure 7.7) for the examples of conservation of number, matter, quantity, mass,

area, weight, volume, and length.


Learning Activity

Watch the following video on Centration

1. Go to http://www.youtube.com/

2. Search for : Piaget - Stage 2 - Preoperational - Lack of Conservation

3. Watch video entitled “Piaget - Stage 2 - Preoperational - Lack of Conservation”

duration: 2:16 min uploaded by Fi3021

1

Vygotsky’s Theory

Contrasting to Piaget’s cognitive constructivist theory, Vygotsky’s is a social constructivist

approach - emphasises the social contexts of learning and that knowledge is mutually

built and constructed.

• Important concepts in Vygotsky’s theory:

– zone of proximal development (ZPD) - the range of tasks that are too difficult

for a child to master alone but that can be learned with the guidance and

assistance of adults or more-skilled children.

• For example, an adult helping a child put together a jigsaw puzzle falls into

the ZPD.

• The ZPD captures the child’s cognitive skills that are in the process of

maturing and can be mastered only with the assistance of a more-skilled

person.

Copyright ©2013 SIM UNIVERSITY. All rights reserved.

2

Vygotsky’s theory (cont)

• Important concepts in Vygotsky’s theory:

– Scaffolding - changing the level of support:

• For instance, over the course of a teaching session, a more-skilled person

adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child’s current performance level.

When the task the student is learning is new, the more-skilled person may

use direct instruction. As the student’s competence increases, less guidance

is given.

– Private speech - language and thought are closely linked:

• young children use language to plan, guide, and monitor their behaviour

• private speech represents an early transition in becoming more socially

communicative.

In moving from Piaget (cognitive constructivist) to Vygotsky (social constructivist), the

conceptual shift is from the individual to collaboration, social interaction, and sociocultural

activity (Gauvain, 2013). Piaget’s cognitive development theory and Vygotsky’s

sociocultural cognitive theory have provided important insights about the way young

children think and how this thinking changes developmentally.

Copyright ©2013 SIM UNIVERSITY. All rights reserved.

2

Comparison of Piaget & Vygotsky’’’’s Theories

Vygotsky Piaget

Socio cultural context Strong emphasis Little emphasis

Constructivism Social Cognitive

Stages No general stages 4 stages

Key processes ZPD, Language, Dialogue,

Cultural Tools

Schema, assimilation,

accommodation,

operations, conservation,

classification

Role of language Major role Minimal role

View on education Central role Refines the cognitive of the

child

Teaching implications Teacher is facilitator and

guide

Teacher is facilitator and

guide

Source:

John, W. Santrock (2013). Life-Span Development (14h ed.). New York, McGraw-Hill.

2


Information Processing

• Another way of exploring the cognitive development in children is through the study of

their cognitive processes.

• Two important aspects of preschool children’s thinking are attention and memory.

• Attention can be defined as the focusing of cognitive resources.

• The child’s ability to pay attention changes significantly during the pre-school years in

three ways:

� control of attention

� salient versus relevant dimensions

� ‘planfulness’

• Memory refers to the retention of information over time.

• It is the central process in children’s cognitive development.

• Experts argue that conscious memory comes into play as early as 7 months of age,

although children and adults have little or no memory of events experienced before

the age of 3.

• Check out your textbook for more details on developmental changes in memory.


3

Information Processing Theory

• Information processing theory views human cognition as comprising of 3 memory

storage:

• During the early childhood years, the development of STM is of particular interest.

• Research with the memory-span task suggests that STM increases during early

childhood.

• For example, in one investigation, memory span increased from about 2 digits in 2- to

3-year-old children to about 5 digits in 7-year-old children, yet 7 and 13 years of age

memory span increased only by 1½ digits (Dempster, 1981).

• One important determinant of memory span is the process of ‘rehearsal’.

• Older children rehearse the digits more than younger children.

• Speed and efficiency of processing information are also important, especially the

speed with which memory items can be identified (Schneider, 2011).


The Sensory

memory (SM)

Short-term

Memory (STM)

Long-term

Memory (LTM)

1 2 3

3

Language Development

• It is believed that young children’s

understanding sometimes gets way ahead

of their speech.

• Many of the oddities of young children’s

language sound like mistakes to adult

listeners. However, from the children’s

point of view, they are not mistakes.

� For example, a 2½ year old may be

heard saying “I want to jump the ball.”

What he actually meant is “I want to

bounce the ball.” This represents the

way young children perceive and

understand their world at that point in

their development.

• As children go through the early childhood

years, their grasp of the rule systems that

govern language increases.


• The advances in language that take place

in early childhood lay the foundation for

the later development in the elementary

school years.

These rule systems include:

• Phonology (sound system).

• Morphology (rules for combining

minimal units of meaning).

• Syntax (rule for making

sentences).

• Semantics (the meaning

system).

• Pragmatics (rule for use in

social settings).

Implication in Early Childhood Education

Refer to textbook, chapter 7, on recommendations by NAEYC (National Association for

the Education of Young Children) for developmentally appropriate practice in early

childhood programs serving children from birth through age 8. Compare this the practices

in the local context.

Useful website on early childhood education:

• Seed Institute


The Montessori ApproachChild-centred Kindergarten

Developmentally Appropriate Practice

Education that involves the

whole child by considering

both the child’s physical,

cognitive, and

socioemotional

development and the

child’s needs, interests,

and learning styles.

An educational philosophy

in which children are given

considerable freedom and

spontaneity in choosing

activities and are allowed

to move from one activity

to another as they desire.

Education that focuses on

the typical developmental

patterns of children (age-

appropriateness) and the

uniqueness of each child

(individual-

appropriateness).

Reflective Questions

Certainly nature and nurture play equally important roles in child development.


• How are nature and nurture likely to be involved in the

dramatic increase in young children’s spoken vocabulary?

• What are the implications in early childhood education?

Click the button to listen to the explanation.

Explanation

Reflective Questions - Explanation

Certainly nature and nurture play equally important roles in child development.


• How are nature and nurture likely to be involved in the

dramatic increase in young children’s spoken vocabulary?

• What are the implications in early childhood education?

Summary


• While the body height and weight slows down compared to the infancy

stage, the brain is the most important physical development during

early childhood.

• There are 3 main perspectives to cognitive development; with Piaget

describing the preoperation stage, Vygotsky on the importance of

social context in learning, and information processing on the

importance of attention and memory.

• Language development is dependent on both nature and nurture.

• A good early childhood education should take into consideration all the

developmental changes and needs of the child at this stage.

In this topic, you learnt that:

References and Additional Learning Resources

• Santrock, J. W. (2013). Life-Span Development (14th Edition),

McGraw-Hill International (Chapter 7).

• Note: All references not listed here are based on the text in Santrock

(2013).


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