PSYC20008 Lecture 8: Lecture 8 - Early to Middle Childhood
14 Jun 2018
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Lecture 7 - Tuesday 21 March 2017
PSYC20006 - DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURE 8
EARLY TO MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
BACKGROUND INFO
•Growth averages 6 cm per year
•Weight gain averages 2.25 kg per year
•Muscle mass and strength gradually increase; baby fat decreases
•Boys have a greater number of muscle cells and are typically stronger than girls.
MOTOR GROWTH AND CHANGE
•Gross motor skills become smoother and more coordinated
•Boys usually outperform girls on gross motor skills (football etc).
•Improvement of fine motor skills during middle childhood
•Increased myelination of the central nervous system
•Girls usually outperform boys on fine motor skills (playing with beads etc).
EXERCISE AND SPORT
•Exercise plays an important role in growth and development
•Involvement in daily sport in US schools decreased from 80% (1969) to 20% (1999)
•Likely contributors to low activity and obesity in children:
•Computer/electronic games
•Television
•Little exercise going to/from school
OBESITY IN CHILDREN
•Overweight as a child is a risk factor for adult obesity
•Raises risks for many medical and psychological problems:
•Pulmonary problems, diabetes, high blood pressure
•Low self-esteem, depression, exclusion from peer groups
•How does this affect how we interact with the world?
BACKGROUND
•In the preoperational stage (2 years – 5 years) children’s thinking is limited.
•Children can have only a single focus or centre.
•Around 5 years, children’s thinking begins to shift to include more than one dimension.
CONSERVATION TASKS
CONSERVATION OF NUMBER
•Preoperational phase cannot do this task.
CONSERVATION OF VOLUME
•Beakers
CONSERVATION OF MASS
•If you cannot do this task, you may have problems with
arithmetic.
CONCRETE OPERATIONS
•Decline in egocentricism
•AND Decentration + Reversibility → Conservation
•Transformations Classification Seriation
Lecture 7 - Tuesday 21 March 2017
PSYC20006 - DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
•Deductive reasoning
DECLINE IN EGOCENTRISM
•Differentiation of one’s own perspective from the perspectives of others:
•The realization that one’s own thoughts and feelings are not necessarily shared by others.
TRANSFORMATION
•Reasoning about transformations:
•The ability to think and reason about change processes.
CLASSIFICATION
•Multiple classification:
•The ability to classify objects as belonging to two or more categories at the same time.
SERIATION
•The ability to put things into series/order/sequence. 4 year olds can’t do this task.
•Eg. ‘here’s a bunch of sticks, can you order them from smallest to largest.’
DEDUCTIVE REASONING
•The ability to draw a logical inference from two or more pieces of information.
•The above examples are components of deductive reasoning.
DEVELOPMENT OF TOOLS FOR THINKING
NONLINGUISTIC SYMBOLS
•A. Using Symbols as Information
•B. Drawing
USING SYMBOLS AS INFORMATION
•Involves mastery of symbolic creations of others and creation of new symbolic representations.
•To use symbolic information like maps, children must acquire dual representation; understanding
that information can be represented mentally in two ways at the same time, both as a real object
and as a symbol for something other than itself.
SCALE MODELS
•Very young children have great difficulty with dual representation, as demonstrated in tasks in
which a child is asked to use a scale model to locate a hidden toy in a room.
•Although 3-year-olds typically succeed in such tasks, 2 1⁄2 year olds rarely do.
•However, if it is not necessary to form a symbol- referent relationship between
the model and the room, as was the case when children were led to believe that
the room had been shrunk, young preschoolers can perform the task.
SCALE MODEL TASK
•In a test of young children’s ability to use a symbol as a source of information, a
3-year-old child watches as the experimenter (Judy DeLoache) hides a miniature
troll doll under a pillow in a scale model of an adjacent room.
•The child searches successfully for a larger troll doll hidden in the corresponding
place in the actual room, indicating that she appreciates the relation between the
model and room.
•The child also successfully retrieves the small toy she originally observed being
hidden in the model.
•In the simplest of situations, even2/3 year olds have difficulty with this.
Document Summary
Background info: growth averages 6 cm per year, weight gain averages 2. 25 kg per year, muscle mass and strength gradually increase; baby fat decreases, boys have a greater number of muscle cells and are typically stronger than girls. Exercise and sport: exercise plays an important role in growth and development, involvement in daily sport in us schools decreased from 80% (1969) to 20% (1999, likely contributors to low activity and obesity in children, computer/electronic games, television, little exercise going to/from school. Background: in the preoperational stage (2 years 5 years) children"s thinking is limited, children can have only a single focus or centre, around 5 years, children"s thinking begins to shift to include more than one dimension. Conservation of number: preoperational phase cannot do this task. Conservation of mass: if you cannot do this task, you may have problems with arithmetic. Concrete operations: decline in egocentricism, and decentration + reversibility conservation, transformations classification seriation.
