1. PSYC 50
Developmental Psychology
SECTION 4: EARLY CHILDHOOD
Chapter 8: Physical and Cognitive Development in
Early Childhood
PHYSICAL CHANGES
Body Growth and Change – is the obvious physical change that
characterizes early childhood.
 Height and Weight
o The average child grows 2 ½ inches in height and
gains between 5 and 7 pounds a year during
early childhood.
o Girls are only slightly smaller and lighter than
boys.
o During the preschool, both boys and girls slim
down as the trunks of their bodies lengthen.
o Body fat also shows a slow, steady decline.
o Girls have more fatty tissue than boys; boys have
more muscle tissue.
o Growth patterns vary individually.
o The two most important contributors to height
differences are ethnic origin and nutrition.
o Why are some children unusually short? The
culprits are congenital factors (genetic or
prenatal problems), growth hormone deficiency,
a physical problem that develops in childhood,
or an emotional difficulty.
o Growth hormone deficiency is the absence or
deficiency of growth hormone produced by the
pituitary gland to stimulate the body to grow.
o Children who are chronically sick are shorter.
o Children who have been physically abused or
neglected may not secrete adequate growth
hormone, which can restrict physical growth.
 The Brain – the changes in the brain that do occur enable
children to plan their actions, attend to stimuli more
effectively, and make considerable strides in language
development.
o Some of the brain’s increase in size is due to the
increase in the number and size of nerve endings
within and between areas of the brain.
Continues to grow until adolescence.
o The concentration of the neurotransmitter
dopamine increases considerably from 3 to 6
years of age.
o The brain’s increase in size also is due to an
increase in myelination, the process by which
nerve cells are covered and insulated with a
layer of fat cells.
o Myelination in the areas of the brain related to
focusing attention is not complete until the end
of the middle or late childhood.
o Children’s brains undergo dramatic anatomical
changes between the ages of 3 and 15.
o The amount of brain material in some areas can
nearly double in as little as a year, followed by a
drastic loss of tissue as unneeded cells are
purged and the brain continues to reorganize
itself.
o 3 – 6 years, the most rapid growth takes place in
the frontal lobe areas.
o From age 6 to puberty, temporal and parietal
lobes, especially areas that play major roles in
language and spatial relations.
o The brain is organized in many neural circuits,
which consists of neurons with certain functions.
o One neural circuit has an important function in
attention and working memory. This neural
circuit involves the prefrontal cortex and the
neurotransmitter dopamine.
Motor Development
 Gross Motor Skills
o 3 years, simple movements, such as hopping,
jumping, and running back and forth.
o 4 years, still enjoying the same kind of activities,
but more adventurous.
o 5 years, even more adventuresome.
 Fine Motor Skills
o At 3 years, children are still emerging from the
infant ability to place and handle things.
o 3 years old can build surprisingly high block
towers, each block placed with intense
concentration but often not in a completely
straight line.
o By 4 years, has improved substantially and
become much more precise.
o By age 5, hand, arm, and body all move together
under better command of the eye.
The Development of Gross Motor Skills in Early Childhood
37 to 48 months
Throw ball
underhanded (4 feet)
Pedals tricycle 10 feet
Catches large ball
Completes forward
somersault (aided)
Jumps to floor from
12 inches
Hops 3 hops with
both feet
Steps on footprint
pattern
Catches bounced ball
49 to 60 months
Bounces and catches
ball
Runs 10 feet and
stops
Pushes/pulls a
wagon/doll buggy
Kicks 10-inch ball
toward target
Carries 12-pound
object
Catches ball
Bounces ball under
control
Hops on 1 foot 4
hops
61 to 72 months
Throws ball (44 feet,
boys; 25 feet, girls)
Carries a 16-pound
object
Kicks rolling ball
Skips alternating feet
Roller skates
Skips rope
Rolls ball to hit
object
Rides bike with
training wheels

2. The Development of Fine Motor Skills in Early Childhood
37 to 48 months
Approximates a circle
in drawing
Cuts paper
Pastes using pointer
finger
Builds three-block
bridge
Builds 8-block tower
Draws 0 and +
Dresses and
undresses doll
Pours from pitcher
without spilling
49 to 60 months
Strings and laces
shoelace
Cuts following a line
Strings 10 beads
Copies figure X
Opens and places
clothespins (one-
handed)
Builds a 5-block
bridge
Pours from various
containers
Prints first name
61 to 72 months
Folds paper into
halves and quarters
Traces around hand
Draw rectangle,
circle, square, and
triangle
Cuts interior piece
from paper
Uses crayons
appropriately
Makes clay object
with two small parts
Reproduces letters
Copies two short
words
 Handedness
o Genetic inheritance seems to be a strong
influence.
o Right-handedness is dominant in all cultures (it
appears in a ratio of about 9 right-handers to 1
left-hander).
o Fetal thumb sucking showed that 9 of 10 fetuses
were more likely to be sucking their right hand’s
thumb.
o Newborns also show a preference for one side of
their body over the other. 65% turned head to
the right, while they were lying on their back in a
crib; 15% toward left; and 20% no preference.
o 95% of right-handed individuals primarily
process speech in the brain’s left hemisphere.
o More than half of left-handers process speech in
their left hemisphere, however, ¼ of left-handers
process speech equally in both hemispheres.
o Left-handers are more likely to have reading
problems.
o Left-handedness is more common among
mathematicians, musicians, architects, and
artists.
Nutrition
 Energy Needs
o What children eat affects their skeletal growth,
body shape, and susceptibility to disease.
o Energy requirements for individual children are
determined by the basal metabolism rate
(BMR), which is the minimum amount of energy
a person uses in a resting state.
o An average preschool child requires 1,700
calories per day.
 Eating Behavior
o The American Heart Association recommends
that the daily limit for calories from fat should be
approx. 35%, and many fast-food meals have fat
content that is too high for good health.
o Childhood obesity contributes to a number of
health problems.
o The girls who were overweight had lower body
self-esteem than those who were not
overweight. Thus, as early as 5 years old, being
overweight is linked with lower self-esteem.
o Prevention of obesity in children includes
helping children and parents see food as a way
to satisfy hunger and nutritional needs, not as
proof of love or as a reward for good behavior.
o One of the most common nutritional problems in
early childhood is iron deficiency anemia, which
results in chronic fatigue. Failure to eat adequate
amounts of quality meats and dark green
vegetables.
Illness and Death
 The disorders most likely to be fatal during early childhood
today are birth defects, cancer, and heart disease.
 In the US, accidents are the leading cause of death in
young children (2001). Motor vehicle accidents, drowning,
falls, and poisoning are high.
 Today, a special concern about children’s illnesses and
health is exposure to parental smoking. In one study, if the
mother smoked, her children were twice as likely to
develop respiratory problems.
 In a recent study, when parents smoked at home, their 4 –
to 18-year-old children and adolescents had significantly
lower levels of vitamin C.
 Poor health status of many young children from low-
income families.
 An estimated 3 million children under 6 years of age are
thought to be at risk for lead poisoning.
 Lead can get into the bloodstreams through food or water
that is contaminated by lead.
 The negative effects of lead in children’s blood are lower
intelligence and achievement, and attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder.
COGNITIVE CHANGES
Piaget’s Preoperational Stage – 2 to 7 years of age; stable concepts
are formed, mental reasoning emerges, egocentrism begins strongly
and then weakens, and magical beliefs are constructed.
Preoperational – emphasizes that the child cannot yet think
something through without acting it out. Ex. Mentally adding and
subtracting.
Operations – internalized sets of actions that allow children to do
mentally what they formerly did physically.
Two substages of preoperational stage:
 Symbolic Function Substage – occurs between 2 and 4
years of age, in which the child gains the ability to mentally
represent an object that is not present.

3. o Egocentrism – the inability to distinguish
between one’s own perspective and someone
else’s.
o Animism – the belief that inanimate objects have
“lifelike” qualities and are capable of action.
 Intuitive Thought Substage – children begin to use
primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all
sorts of questions. (4 and 7 years of age).
o 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 (without
rational thinking).
o Centration – the focusing of attention on one
characteristic to the exclusion of all others.
o Conservation – awareness that altering an
object’s or a substance’s appearance does not
change its quantitative properties.
o The preoperational child fails to show
conservation not only of liquid but also of
number, matter, length, volume and area.
o Another characteristic is that they ask a barrage
of questions. Children’s earliest questions
appear around the age of 3, and by the age of 5
they have just about exhausted the adults
around them with “why” questions.
o These questions signal the emergence of the
child’s interest in reasoning and figuring out why
things are the way they are.
Vygotsky’s Theory
 The Zone of Proximal Development – term for tasks too
difficult for children to master alone but that can be
mastered with assistance.
o Vygotsky’s emphasis on the ZPD underscores the
importance of social influences, especially
instruction, on children’s cognitive development.
o 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.
 Scaffolding – changing the level of support.
o Over the course of a teaching session, a more-
skilled person adjusts the amount of guidance to
fit the child’s current performance level. As the
student’s competence increases, less guidance is
given.
 Language and Thought
o Young children use language to plan, guide, and
monitor their behavior. This use of language for
self-regulation is called private speech.
o Children must use language to communicate
with others before they can focus inward on
their own thoughts.
o Children must also communicate externally and
use language for a long period of time before
they can make the transition from external to
internal speech. This transition period occurs
between 3 and 7 years of age and involves
talking to oneself.
o Private speech represents an early transition in
becoming more socially communicative.
o Children use private speech more when tasks are
difficult, when their errors have been pointed
out to them, and when they are not sure how to
proceed.
 Teaching Strategies
o Use the child’s zone of proximal development in
teaching. Offer just enough assistance. Offer
encouragement to practice the skill.
o Use more skilled peers as teachers. Children also
benefit from the support and guidance of more-
skilled children.
o Monitor and encourage children’s use of private
speech.
o Effectively assess the child’s ZPD. The skilled
helper presents the child with tasks of varying
difficulty to determine the best level at which to
begin instruction.
o Place instruction in a meaningful context. Ex.
Instead of just teaching children to memorize
math formulas, students work on math problems
with real-world implications.
o Transform the classroom with Vygotskian ideas.
Ex. Children might read a story and then
interpret its meaning.
Social Constructivist Approach – emphasizes the social contexts of
learning and that knowledge is mutually built and constructed.

4. Sociocultural
Context
Constructivism
Stages
Key Processes
Role of Language
View on Education
Teaching
Implications
Vygotsky
Strong emphasis
Social Constructivist
No general stages of
development
proposed.
ZPD, language,
dialogue, tools of
the culture
A major role;
language plays a
powerful role in
shaping thought.
Education plays a
central role, helping
children learn the
tools of the culture
Teacher is a
facilitator and guide,
not a director;
establish many
opportunities for
children to learn
with the teacher and
more skilled peers.
Piaget
Little emphasis
Cognitive
constructivist
Strong emphasis on
stages
Schema,
assimilation,
accommodation,
operations,
conservation,
classification,
hypothetical-
deductive reasoning
Language has a
minimal role;
cognition primarily
directs language.
Education merely
refines the child’s
cognitive skills that
have already
emerged.
Also views teacher
as a facilitator and
guide, not a
director; provide
support for children
to explore their
world and discover
knowledge.
Information Processing
 Attention – focusing of cognitive resources
The child’s ability to pay attention changes significantly
during the preschool years in three ways:
1. Control of attention – visual attention to television
dramatically increased during preschool years.
2. Salient versus relevant dimensions – one deficit in
attention during the preschool years concerns those
dimensions that stand out, or are salient, compared
with those that are relevant to solving a problem or
performing well on a task.
3. Planfulness – not examining all of the details before
making a judgment.
 Memory – the retention of information over time.
o 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.
o Short-term memory – the memory component in
which individuals retain information for up to 30
seconds, assuming there is no rehearsal of the
information.
o One method of assessing short-term memory is
the memory-span task.
o Short-term memory increases during early
childhood.
How accurate are young children’s long-term memories?
1. Age differences in children’s susceptibility to suggestion –
preschoolers are more suggestible than older children and
adults.
2. Individual differences in susceptibility – some preschoolers
are highly resistant to interviewer’s suggestions, while
other succumb immediately to the slightest suggestion.
3. Young children’s accuracy as eyewitness – children are
more likely to accurately recall an event when the
interviewer has a neutral tone, does not use misleading
questions, and they are not motivated to make a false
report.
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
 Their grasp of the rule systems that govern languages
increases.
 Phonology. They can even produce complex consonant
clusters such as str- and –mpt-.
 Morphology. Begins using the plural and possessive forms
of nouns (dogs and dog’s). Put appropriate endings on
verbs. Use prepositions (in, on). Use articles (a, the).
 The changes in children’s use of morphological rules occur
in their overgeneralization of the rules. (foots, feet); (goed,
went)
 The speaking vocabulary of 6-year old ranges from 8,000
to 14, 000 words.
 At about 3 years of age, children improve in their ability to
talk about things that are not physically present.
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
Variations in Early Childhood Education
 The Child-Centered Kindergarten – education that
involves the whole child by considering both the child’s
physical, cognitive, and social development and the child’s
needs, interests, and learning styles.
o The process of learning, rather than what is
learned is emphasized.
o Play is extremely important in the child’s total
development.
o Experimenting, exploring, discovering, and trying
out are all words that describe excellent
kindergarten programs.

5.  The Montessori Approach – 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.
o Patterned after the educational philosophy of
Maria Montessori, an Italian physician-turned-
educator, who crafted a revolutionary approach
to young children’s education at the beginning of
the 20th century.
o The teacher acts as a facilitator.
o The teacher shows the child how to perform
intellectual activities, demonstrates interesting
ways to explore curriculum materials, and offers
help when the child requests it.
 Developmentally Appropriate and Inappropriate Practice
in Education
o Developmentally appropriate practice –
education that focuses on the typical
developmental patterns of children (age-
appropriateness) and the uniqueness of each
child (individual-appropriateness).
o Direct teaching largely through abstract paper-
and-pencil activities presented to large groups of
young children is believed to be developmentally
inappropriate.
Appropriate Practice Inappropriate Practice
Curriculum Goals
Experiences are provided in all
developmental areas—physical,
cognitive, social, and emotional
Individual differences are
expected, accepted, and used to
design appropriate activities
Interactions and activities are
designed to develop children’s
self-esteem and positive feelings
toward learning.
Experiences are narrowly
focused on cognitive
development without
recognition that all areas of the
child’s development are
interrelated.
Children are evaluated only
against group norms, and all are
expected to perform the same
tasks and achieve the same
narrowly defined skills.
Children’s worth is measured by
how well they conform to rigid
expectations and perform on
standardized tests.
Teaching Strategies
Teachers prepare the
environment for children to
learn through active exploration
and interaction with adults,
other children, and materials.
Children select many of their
own activities from among a
variety the teacher prepares.
Children are expected to be
mentally and physically active.
Teachers use highly structured,
teacher-directed lessons almost
exclusively.
The teacher directs all activity,
deciding what children will do
and when.
Children are expected to sit
down, be quiet, and listen or do
paper-and-pencil tasks for long
periods of time. A major portion
of time is spent passively sitting,
watching, and listening.
Guidance of Socioemotional
Development
Teachers enhance children’s
self-control by using positive
guidance techniques, such as
modeling and encouraging
expected behavior, redirecting
children to a more acceptable
activity, and setting clear limits.
Children are provided many
opportunities to develop social
skills, such as cooperating,
helping, negotiating, and talking
with the person involved to
solve interpersonal problems.
Teachers spend considerable
time enforcing rules, punishing
unacceptable behavior,
demeaning children who
misbehave, making children sit
and be quiet and refereeing
disagreements.
Children work individually at
desks and tables most of the
time and listen to the teacher’s
directions to the whole group.
Education for Children Who Are Disadvantaged
Project Head Start – a government-funded program that is designed
to provide children from low-income families the opportunity to
acquire the skills and experiences important for school success.
- Began in the summer of 1965.
Issues in Early Childhood Education
 Curriculum Controversy
o Child-centered, constructivist approach
o Academic, instructivist approach – teachers
directly instruct young children to learn basic
academic skills, esp. in reading and math.
 Does Preschool Matter?
o The issue is not whether preschool is important
but whether home schooling can closely
duplicate what a competent preschool program
can offer.
References:
Kail, R. V. and Cavanaugh, J. C. (2013). Human Development: A Life Span View. 6th
edition. Cengage Learning Asia Pte Ltd.
Santrock, J.W. (2006). Life-Span Perspective.10th Edition. McGraw-Hill. New York.
Prepared by:
Mrs. Maria Angela L. Diopol
Instructor