Child Development Overview

Overview of Child Development

• Development is a pattern of biological, cognitive, and socioemotional changes
• Development begins at conception and continues through the life span

Developmental Processes

• Biological processes involve physical changes and genetic inheritance
• Cognitive processes involve changes in thinking, intelligence, and language
• Socioemotional processes involve changes in relationships, emotions, and personality

Intertwined Processes

• A child's smile in response to a parent's touch depends on biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes
• Biological processes involve the physical nature of touch and responsiveness
• Cognitive processes involve the ability to understand intention
• Socioemotional processes involve the smile reflecting positive feelings and connecting the child with others

Emerging Fields

• Developmental cognitive neuroscience explores links between development, cognitive processes, and the brain
• Developmental social neuroscience examines connections between socioemotional processes, development, and the brain

Periods of Development

• Infancy lasts from birth to 18-24 months, involving language and sensorimotor development
• Early childhood extends from infancy's end to about age 5, with increased self-sufficiency
• Middle and late childhood extends from about 6-11 years, focusing on fundamental skills
• Adolescence starts around ages 10-12 and ends in the late teens, involving physical changes and abstract reasoning

Developmental Issues

• Nature-nurture, continuity-discontinuity, and early-later experience are all key issues in development.

Development and Education

• Developmentally appropriate teaching is pitched at a level that avoids difficulty, stress, boredom and being too easy
• Splintered development means students can have knowledge in one area, like math, but be under developed in others, such as writing

Brain Development

• Myelination increases information speed through the nervous system.
• Middle and late childhood brain development stabilizes the total brain volume
• Middle and late childhood brain development continues to increase in prefrontal cortex pathways and circuitry
• Middle and late childhood sees advances in prefrontal cortex connected to child's improved attention, reasoning, & cognitive control
• Adolescents have fewer, more selective, and more effective connections between neurons when compared to children
• Adolescents’ activities choice to engage in or not influence neural connections
• Lateralization occurs in some verbal and nonverbal functions, but functioning often links to both hemispheres
• Brain plasticity is considerable, and learning environments influence brain development

Brain impact on Children's Education

• Early and later experiences play an important role in brain development
• Dramatic changes occur in synaptic connections in the brain
• Prefrontal cortex develops into adolescence
• Adolescence brings challenges in cognitive control
• Brain functions along specific pathways and integrates functions

Piaget's Cognitive Processes

• Schemas organize knowledge through actions or mental representations
• Assimilation incorporates new information into existing schemas
• Accommodation adjusts existing schemas to fit new information and experiences
• Organization groups isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher-order system
• Equilibration explains the shift from one stage to the next, resolving conflict to reach balance

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

• Sensorimotor stage involves the infant building understanding of the world through coordinating sensory experiences with physical actions, from birth to 2 years
• Preoperational, ages 2-7, involves the child using words and images to represent the world
• Concrete Operational stage involves logical reasoning about concrete events and classifying objects, ages 7-11
• Formal Operational stage involves adolescent reasoning more abstractly, idealistically, and logically from age 11

Piaget's Preoperational Stage

• Symbolic Function Substage: A child gains the ability to represent mentally an object that is not present
• Egocentrism limits being able to distinguish between one's own perspective and someone else's perspective
• Intuitive thought involves primitive reasoning
• Centration focuses attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of others
• Lack of conservation is the idea that some characteristics of an object stay the same even when the object might change in appearance

Piaget's Operations

• Logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning in concrete situations only
• Concrete operations enable children to coordinate multiple characteristics rather than focusing on a single object property
• Seriation involves ordering stimuli along a quantitative dimension
• Transitivity is the ability to reason about and logically combine relationships

Piaget's Formal Operational Stage

• Hypothetical-deductive reasoning: Adolescents develop hypotheses to solve problems
• Adolescents will systematically reach a conclusion
• Adolescent egocentrism is an adolescent's heightened self-consciousness and sense of personal uniqueness

Best Practices for Formal Operational Thinkers

• Need to realize many adolescents are not fully formal operational thinkers
• Students should form hypotheses to problems to invite solutions
• Suggest several approached when presenting a problem
• Develop projects and investigations for students to carry out
• Students can create hierarchical outlines when writing papers

Piaget's Theory: Criticisms

• Cognitive abilities may emerge earlier or later than Piaget’s timings
• The concept that some concrete operational concepts do not appear at the same time
• Training may be ineffective unless the child is at a maturational transition point
• Culture and education may exert a stronger influence on a child's development than Piaget anticipated

Vygotsky's Theory

• Zone of proximal development represents tasks too difficult for a child to master alone
• The assistance of adults or skilled children can help learning
• Scaffolding involves adjusting the level of support as performance varies
• Language and thought merge and develop independently, originating socially

Piaget & Vygotsky's Theories Comparison

• Both are constructivist
• Vygotsky's social constructivist approach focuses on the social learning contexts and the construction of knowledge through interactions
• Piaget focuses on the individual while Vygotsky focuses on collaboration, social interaction, and sociocultural activity

Vygotsky's Theory: Criticisms

• Age-related changes may not be specific enough
• How socioemotional changes contribute to cognitive development may not be adequately described
• The role of language in thinking may be overemphasized
• Collaboration and guidance have possible problems

Language Development

• Language is a communication form based on symbols: spoken, written, or signed

Elements of Language

• Phonology is a language's sound system
• Morphology comprises word formation's meaning units
• Syntax are ways of combining words into phrases and sentences
• Semantics is the meaning of the words and sentences
• Pragmatics is the appropriate use of language in different contexts

Biological and Environmental Factors

• Children are not exclusively biological linguists or social architects of language
• Interactionists emphasize biology and experience contributions in language development

Language Development in Infancy

• Babbling occurs in the middle of the 1st year
• Infants say their first words at about 10-13 months
• Infants string two words together at about 18-24 months

Language Development in Early Childhood

• Transition from simple to complex sentences occurs between 2 and 3 years of age, continuing to elementary school years
• Children understand morphological rules and master complex word order rules after two-word utterances

Vocabulary in Early Childhood: Key Principles

• Children must learn:
• What words they hear most often
• What words for the things and events that interest them
• Words better in responsive and interactive contexts than passive contexts
• Words best in meaningful contexts
• Words best when they can access clear information about word meaning
• Words best when grammar and vocabulary are both considered

Early Literacy

• Needed are teachers and parents that provide young children with a supportive environment for literacy skills to be developed
• Children should be active participants in experiences of a wide range like listening, talking, writing, and reading
• Instruction should build on what children already know about language, reading, and writing
• Early precursors of literacy success include linguistic skills, letter identification, and love of works

Language Skills in Middle and Late Childhood

• Children gain new school skills to learn to read and write
• Language must talk about things that are not physically available, learning what a word is, and learning sounds must all be increased in use
• Alphabetic principle means letters represent language sounds
• Vocabulary mental organization changes

Language Development in Middle and Late Childhood

• Logical reasoning skills aid the appropriate use of comparisons & subjects
• Advances in vocabulary and grammar accompany the development of metalinguistic awareness
• Metalinguistic awareness is knowledge of language
• Children improve in understanding to use culturally suitable ways of language-pragmatics

Advancements in Language Development in Adolescence

• A more sophisticated use of words,
• A greater understanding of metaphors, satire, and complex literary works
• Better writers compared to children