Child Development and Memory Concepts

Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

• Children's bodies and brains change between ages 3 and 6. Sleep problems and motor achievements are common.
• Major health and safety risks for young children should be considered.
• Typical cognitive advances and immature aspects of preschool children's thinking are important.
• Memory abilities expand in early childhood.
• Preschoolers' intelligence is measured, and various influences on it.
• Language improves during early childhood and issues with delayed language development.

Bodily Growth and Change

• Around age 3, children lose "baby roundness." Height increases as limbs lengthen.
• Cartilage turns to bone faster.

Physical Growth: Ages 3 to 6

• Detailed charts listing average height and weight for boys and girls from ages 3 to 6 are provided.

Sleep Patterns

• By age 5, most children average about 11 hours of sleep per night, and give up naps.
• Bedtime varies among cultures (e.g., Zuni, Canadian Hare Indians).

Typical Sleep Requirements

• Detailed chart illustrating typical sleep hours, both nighttime and daytime, for children from infancy to age 18.

Sleep Disturbances

• Night terrors involve abrupt awakening with extreme fear.
• Nightmares are common.
• Walking and talking, and bed-wetting (enuresis) are fairly common, especially in younger children.

Brain Development

• By age 6, the brain is at 95% of its peak volume.
• The corpus callosum, which connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain, improves functioning.
• Most rapid growth takes place in areas supporting thinking, language, and spatial relations.

Motor Skills

• Gross motor skills involve large muscle groups, like jumping and running.
• Fine motor skills use eye-hand and small muscle coordination, such as buttoning a shirt or drawing.

Handedness

• Handedness is usually evident by age 3.
• Heritability of handedness.
• Right-handedness is the dominant allele, comprising 82% of the population.

Artistic Development

• Children's artistic development progresses through stages, from simple shapes to designs to more pictorial representations.

Preventing Obesity

• Over 10% of 2- to 5-year-olds are overweight.
• Low-income children of all ethnicities are at the greatest risk.
• Heredity and learned eating habits also contribute to obesity, especially as junk food becomes more prevalent in developing countries.
• Approximately 15% of 2- to 5-year-olds are obese.
• Overweight children often become overweight adults. Various examples of cognitive advances in early childhood.

Malnutrition

• Globally, almost 30% of children are underweight, some severely.
• 10.3% of Turkish children under age 5 live in food-insecure households (2008 data).
• Malnutrition negatively affects long-term cognitive development, which can be mitigated with improved diet and early education.

Deaths and Accidental Injuries

• 1.33% of children under age 5 in Turkey die annually from illnesses and accidents.

Low SES and Health

• Lower socioeconomic status (SES) increases the risk of injury, illness, and death in children.
• Poor children face risk of minority status, chronic health problems, lack of health insurance, vision and hearing loss, and, if homeless, are at greater risk for health problems and depression.

Exposure to Pollutants

• Exposure to parental smoking increases the risk of asthma and bronchitis in children.
• Air pollution raises the likelihood of chronic respiratory diseases.
• Pesticide poisonings disproportionately affect young children.

Exposure to Lead

• Dangerous lead levels are found in nearly 8% of children, mostly in poor families.
• Lead exposure occurs through contaminated food, water, and dust from lead paint in homes and schools.

Cognitive Development: Symbolic Function

• The ability to use symbols with meaning: words, numbers, images.

• Examples include deferred imitation and pretend play.

Understanding Objects in Space

• Young children (under 3 years) struggle with understanding scale models and maps due to the need to simultaneously hold multiple mental representations.
• Spatial thinking develops and understanding simple maps and models becomes easier with age.

Causality

• Transduction, where children mentally link phenomena even when there is no logical connection.
• Familiar settings become more significant in determining causality for preoperational children.

Animism

• A tendency to attribute life to inanimate objects (e.g., "The cloud is smiling").
• Familiarity helps children distinguish between animate and inanimate objects.

Numbers: Five Counting Principles

• Ordinality: understanding number knowledge,
• Cardinality, Counting, Number patterns, and Abstraction.

Immature Aspects of Preoperational Thought

• Centration: focusing on one aspect of a situation and neglecting others.
• Egocentrism.
• Decentering: understanding multiple aspects of a situation.

Piaget's Approach: The Preoperational Stage

• YouTube video link provided.

Conservation

• Understanding that something remains the same even if its appearance changes (matter, liquid, length, number, area, volume).

Irreversibility

• Failure to grasp that a process can go in multiple directions and be reversed (e.g., pouring juice into different glass shapes).

Egocentrism: The Three Mountain Task

• A task illustrating egocentrism, where the child struggles to understand perspectives different from their own.

Theory of Mind

• Children develop awareness of their own and others' mental processes.
• Preschoolers may believe mental activity starts and stops.
• By middle childhood, children understand mental activity is continuous.

False Beliefs and Deception

• Example tasks demonstrating false belief understanding.

Appearance vs. Reality

• Understanding that something can appear one way but be different in reality.

Fantasy vs. Reality

• Distinguishing between real and imaginary events, and understanding magical thinking, like beliefs about witches or dragons.

Influences on Theory-of-Mind Development

• Heredity and environment influence theory of mind development. Social skills, talking to children about mental states, and cultural attitudes all have a role.

Three Steps of Memory

• Encoding: preparing information for long-term memory.
• Storage: retaining information in memory for later use.
• Retrieval: accessing information from memory storage.

Types of Memory

• Sensory, Working memory (executive function, central executive), Short-term, Long-term memory.

Types of Memory Retrieval

• Recognition: identifying something encountered before.
• Recall: reproducing information from memory.

Three Types of Childhood Memories

• Generic memories: general outlines of familiar events.
• Episodic memories: recalling specific events occurring at a specific time.
• Autobiographical memories: forming a person's life history, specific and long-lasting.

Social Interaction Model of Memory

• Children collaborate with parents and adults in constructing memories particularly autobiographical memories.
• Low versus High Elaborative memories.
• Culture greatly influences what is remembered.

Intelligence: Psychometric Measures

• Verbal tests are more reliable than nonverbal tests for younger children.
• Standardized intelligence scales, such as the Stanford-Binet and WPPSI-R, are used to test intelligence.

Intelligence: Vygotsky's Theory

• "Scaffolding" is the temporary support children receive from adults during learning.
• Assess potential with dynamic tests.
• Zone of proximal development (ZPD) to consider potential.

Language Development: Vocabulary

• Fast mapping: quickly learning the meaning of words after hearing them.
• Theory of mind plays a role.
• Expanding vocabulary from 900-1000 words at age 3 to 2600 plus at age 6, and grasping over 20,000 words.

Grammar and Syntax

• Using plurals, possessives, and past tense correctly.
• Understanding the difference between pronouns like I, you, and we.
• Structure of declarative sentences.
• Errors in irregular verbs like "holded," instead of "held".

Pragmatics and Social Speech

• Understanding and using language to communicate effectively.
• Knowing how to ask questions.
• Communicating clearly.

Box 7.2: Private Speech

• Talking aloud without an intended listener.
• Piaget views it as a sign of cognitive immaturity; Vygotsky sees it as a self-conversation contributing to learning.

Delayed Language Development

• About 3% of preschool-age children experience delayed language development.
• Problems with fast mapping can contribute to difficulties.
• Comprehension is crucial; dialogic reading can help.

Emergent Literacy

• General linguistic skills (vocabulary, syntax).
• Specific skills like phonemic awareness (understanding sounds in words) are important.
• Social interaction and reading aloud to children are essential for emergent literacy.

Types of Preschools

• Child-centered preschools (common in the U.S.) emphasize social and emotional development through child-directed activities.
• Academically-focused preschools, as seen in China, put more emphasis on structured learning and academic skills.

Compensatory Preschools

• The goal is to improve: physical health, cognitive skills, self-assurance, social interactions between children, social responsibility, self-worth of the child, and the family.

Transitioning to Kindergarten

• Modern kindergartens are increasingly similar to first grade.
• Preschool experience makes the transition smoother.
• Factors easing transition include prosocial behavior, cognitive maturity, and supportive family background.

This quiz explores key concepts in child development, focusing on themes such as appearance vs. reality, factors influencing Theory-of-Mind, memory processes, and magical thinking in children. Test your understanding of these fundamental ideas.