psychology test thursday (ch. 7-10 & readings c-d) – Flashcards

- what is the state of children's bodies and overall health during the preschool years? - how do preschool children's brains and physical skills develop? - how does Piaget interpret cognitive development during the preschool years? - how do other views of cognitive development differ from Piaget's? - how does children's language develop in the preschool years? - what effects does television have on preschoolers? - what kinds of preschool educational programs are available?

- the preschool period is marked by steady physical growth - preschoolers tend to eat less than they did as babies, but generally regulate their food intake appropriately, given nutritious options and the freedom to develop their own choices and controls - brain growth is rapid during the preschool years; the brain develops lateralization, a tendency of the two hemispheres to adopt specialized tasks - the preschool period is generally the healthiest time of life, with only minor illnesses threatening children; accidents and environmental hazards are the greatest threats to preschoolers' health; parents and caregivers need to be aware of steps they can take to keep preschoolers healthy and prevent injuries - gross and fine motor development also advances rapidly during the preschool years; boys' and girls' gross motor skills being to diverge, and children develop handedness

- according to Piaget, children in the preoperational stage develop symbolic function, a qualitative change in their thinking that is the foundation of further cognitive advances - peroperational children use intuitive thought to explore and draw conclusions about the world, and their thinking begins to encompass the important notions of functionality and identity - recent developmentalists, while acknowledging Piaget's gifts and contributions, take issue with this emphasis on children's limitations and his underestimation of their capabilities - proponents of information processing approaches argue that quantitative changes in children's processing skills largely account for their cognitive devleopment - Vygotsky believed that children develop cognitively within a context of culture and society; his theory includes the concepts of the zone of proximal development and scaffolding

- in the preschool years, children rapidly increase in linguistic ability, developing an improved sense of grammar and shifting gradually from private to social speech - poverty can affect children's language development by limiting the opportunities for parents and other caregivers to interact linguistically with children - preschoolers watch television at high levels; the effects of television on preschoolers are mixed, with benefits from some programs and clear disadvantages due to other aspects of viewing - preschool educational programs are beneficial if they are of high quality, with trained staff, good curriculum, proper group sizes, and small staff-to-student ratios - preschool children are likely to benefit from a developmentally appropriate, individualized, and supportive environment for learning

- in addition to gaining height and weight, the bodies of preschool children undergo changes in shape and structure; children grow more slender, and their bones and muscles strengthen - children in the preschool years are generally quite healthy; obesity in these years is caused by genetic and environmental factors; the greatest health threats are accidents and environmental factors

- brain growth is particularly rapid during the preschool years, with the number of interconnections among cells and the amount of myelin around the neurons increasing greatly; the halves of the brain begin to specialize in somewhat different tasks- lateralization - both gross and fine motor skills advance rapidly during the preschool years; gender differences begin to emerge, fine motor skills are hones, and handedness begins to assert itself

- during the stage that Piaget described as preoperational, children are not yet able to engage in organized, formal, logical thinking; their development of symbolic function permits quicker and more effective thinking as they are freed from the limitations of sensorimotor learning - according to Piaget, children in the preoperational stage engage in intuitive thought for the first time, actively applying rudimentary reasoning skills to the acquisition of world knowledge

- a different approach to cognitive development is taken by proponents of information processing theories, who focus on preschooler's storage and recall of information and on quantitative changes in information processing abilities - Lev Vygotsky proposed that the nature and progress of children's cognitive development are dependent on the children's social and cultural context

- children rapidly progress from two-word utterances to longer, more sophisticated expressions that reflect their growing vocabularies and emerging grasp of grammar - the development of linguistic abilities is affected by socieconomic status; the result can be lowered linguistic-and academic- performance by poorer children

- the effects of television are mixed; preschoolers' sustained exposure to emotions and situations that are not representative of the real world raised concerns; on the other hand, preschooolers can derive meaning from targeted programs such as Sesame Street that are designed to bring about cognitive gains

- early childhood educational programs, offered as center-based or school-based child care or as a preschool, can lead to cognitive and social advances - the US lacks a coordinated national policy on preschool education; the major federal initiative in US preschool education has been the Head Start program, which is yielding mixed results

- how do preschool-age children develop a concept of themselves? - how do children develop their sense of racial identity and gender? - in what sorts of social relationships and play do preschool-age children engage? - what kinds of disciplinary styles do parents employ, and what effects do they have? - what factors contribute to child abuse and neglect? - how do children develop a moral sense? - how does aggression develop in preschool-age children?

- according to Erikson's psychological development theory, preschool-age children move from the autonomy-versus-shame-and-doubt stage to the initative-versus-guilt stage - during the preschool years, children develop their self-concepts, beliefs about themselves that they derive from their own perceptions, their parent's behaviors, and society - racial and ethnic awareness begins to form in the preschool years - gender awareness also develops; explanations of this phenomenon include biological, psychoanalytical, learning, and cognitive approaches

- in the preschool years, children develop their first true friendships on the basis of personal characteristics, trust, and shared interests - the character of preschooler's play changes over time, growing more sophisticated, interactive, and cooperative, and relying increasingly on social skills - there are several distinct childrearing styles, including authoritarian, permissive, authoritative, and uninvolved - childrearing styles show strong cultural influences - some children suffer abuse from their own family members

- Piaget believed that preschoolers are in the heteronomous morality stage of moral development, in which rules are seen as invariant and unchangeable - social learning approaches to moral development emphasize the importance of reinforcement for moral actions and the observation of models of moral conduct; psychoanalytical and other theories focus on children's empathy with others and their wish to help others so they can avoid unpleasant feelings of guilt themselves - aggression typically declines in frequency and duration as children become more able to regulate their emotions and to use language to negotiate disputes - ethologists and sociobiologists regard aggression as an innate human characteristic, while proponents of social learning and cognitive approaches focus on learned aspects of aggression

- according to Erik Erikson, preschool-age children initially are in the autonomy-versus-shame-and-doubt stage (18 months to 3 years) in which they develop independence and mastery over their physical and social worlds or feel shame, self doubt, and unhappiness; later, in the initiative-versus-guilt stage (ages 3 to 6), preschool-age children face conflicts between the desire to act independently and the guilt that comes from the unintended consequences of their actions - preschoolers' self-concepts are formed partly from their own perceptions and estimations of their characteristics, partly from their parents' behavior towards them, and partly from cultural influences

- preschool-age children form racial attitudes largely in response to their environment, including parents and other influences; gender differences emerge early and conform to social stereotypes about what is appropriate and inappropriate for each sex - the strong gender expectations held by preschoolers are explained in different ways by different theorists; some point to genetic factors as evidence for a biological explanation of gender expectations; Freud's psychoanalytic theories use a framework based on the subconscious; social learning theorists focus on environmental influences, including parents, teachers, peers, and the media, while cognitive theorists propose that children form gender schemas, cognitive frameworks that organgize information that the children gather about gender

- preschool social relationships begin to encompass genuine friendships, which involve trust and endure over time - older preschoolers engage in more constructive play than functional play; they also engage in more associative and cooperative play than younger preschoolers, who do more parallel and onlooker playing

- disciplinary styles differ both individually and culturally; in the US and other Western societies, parent's styles tend to be mostly authoritarian, permissive, uninvolved, and authoritative; the authoritative style is regarded as the most effective - children of authoritarion and permissive parents may develop dependency, hostility, and low self-control, while children of uninolved parents may feel unloved and emotionally detached; children of authoritative parents tend to be more independent, friendly, self assertive, and cooperative

- child abuse, which may be either physical or psychological, occurs especially in stressful home environments; firmly held notions regarding family privacy and the use of physical punishment in childrearing contribute to high rate of abuse in the US; the cycle of violence hypothesis points to the likelihood that persons who were abused as children may turn into abusers as adults

- Piaget believed that preschool-age children are in the heteronomous morality stage of development, characterized by a belief in external, unchangeable rules of conduct and sure, immediate punishment for all misdeeds - in contrast, social learning approaches to morality emphasize interactions between environment and behavior in moral development, in which models of behavior play an important role - some developmentalists believe that moral behavior is rooted in a child's development of empathy; other emotions, including the negative emotions of anger and shame, may also promote moral behavior

- aggression, which involves intentional harm to another person, begins to emerge in the preschool years; as children age and improve their language skills, acts of aggression typically decline in frequency and duration - some ethologists, such as Konrad Lorenz, believe that aggression is simply a biological fact of human life, a belief that held also by many sociobiologists, who focus on competition within species to pass genes on to the next generation - social learning theorists focus on the role of the environment, including the influence of models and social reinforcement as factors influencing aggressive behavior - the cognitive approach to aggression emphasizes the role of interpretations in the behavior of others in determining aggressive or nonaggressive responses

- in what ways do children grow during the school years, and what factors influence their growth? - what are the main health concerns of school-age children? - what sorts of special needs may become apparent in children at this age. and how can they be met? - in what ways do children develop cognitively during these years, according to major theoretical approaches? - how does language develop during the middle childhood period? - what are some trends in schooling today? - how can intelligence be measured, and how are exceptional children educated?

- during the middle childhood years, the body grows at a slow but steady pace that is influenced by both genetic and social factors - adequate nutrition is important for physical, social, and cognitive development, but overnutrition may lead to obesity - children substantially improve their gross and fine motor skills during the school years, with muscular coordination and manipulative skills advancing to near-adult levels - the incidence of asthma and childhood depression has increased significantly over the last several decades - many school-age children have special needs, particularly in the areas of vision, hearing, and speech; some also have learning disabilities - attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, marked by attention, organization, and activity problems, affects between 3 and 5 percent of the school-age population; treatment through the use of drugs is highly controversial

- according to Piaget, school-age children are in the concrete operational stage, characterized by the application of logical processes to concrete problems - information processing approaches focus on quantitative improvements in memory and in the sophistication of the mental programs that school-age children use - according to Vygotsky's approach, children in the school years should have the opportunity to experiment and participate actively with their colleagues in their educational experiences - the memory processes - encoding, storage, and retrieval - come under increasing control during the school years, and the development of metamemory improves cognitive processing and memorization - language development is characterized by improvements in vocabulary, syntax, and pragmatics; by the growth of metalinguistic awareness; and by the use of language as a self-control device - bilingualism can produce improvements in cognitive flexibility and metalinguistic awareness

- the development of reading skills generally occurs in several stages; a combination of elements from code-based approaches and whole-language approaches appears to offer the most promise - multicultural education is in transition from a melting-pot model of cultural assimilation to a pluralistic society model - the measurement of intelligence has traditionally been a matter of testing skills that promote academic success - recent theories of intelligence suggest that there may be several distinct intelligences or several components of intelligence that reflect different ways of processing information - US educators are attempting to deal with substantial numbers of exceptional persons whose intellectual and other skills are significantly lower or higher than normal

- the middle childhood years are characterized by slow and steady growth; weight is redistributed as baby fat disappears; in part, growth is genetically determined, but societal factors such as affluence, dietary habits, nutrition, and disease also contribute significantly - during the middle childhood years, great improvements occur in gross motor skills; cultural exceptions appear to underlie most gross motor skill differences between boys and girls; fine motor skills also develop rapidly

- adequate nutrition is important because of its contributions to growth, health, social and emotional functioning, and cognitive performance - obesity is partially influenced by genetic factors, but is also associated with children's failure to develop internal controls, overeating, overindulgence in sedentary activities such as television viewing, and lack of physical exercise - asthma and childhood depression are fairly prevalent among children of school age

- visual, auditory, and speech impairments, as well as other learning disabilities, can lead to academic and social problems and must be handled with sensitivity and appropriate assistance - children with ADHD exhibit another form of special need; ADHD is characterized by inattention, impulsiveness, failure to complete tasks, lack of organization, and excessive amounts of uncontrollable activity; treatment of ADHD by drugs is highly controversial because of unwanted side effects and doubts about long-term consequences

- according to Piaget, school-age children enter the concrete operational period and for the first time become capable of applying logical thought processes to concrete problems - according to information processing approaches, children's intellectual development in the school years can be attributed to substantial increases in memory capacity and the sophistication of the "programs" children can handle - Vygotsky recommends that students focus on active learning through child-adult and child-child interactions that fall within each child's zone of proximal development

- the language development of children in the school years is substantial, with improvements in vocabulary, syntax, and pragmatics; children learn to control their behavior through linguistic strategies, and they learn more effectively by seeking clarification when they need it - bilingualism can be beneficial in the school years; children who are taught all subjects in the first language, with simultaneous instruction in English, appear to experience few deficits and attain several linguistic and cognitive advantages

- schooling, which is available to nearly all children in most developed countries, is not as accessible to children, especially girls, in many less developed countries - the development of reading skills, which is fundamental to schooling, generally occurs in several stages: identifying letters, reading highly familiar words, sounding out letters and blending sounds into words, reading words with fluency but with little comprehension, reading with comprehension and for practical purposes, and reading material that reflects multiple points of view - multiculturalism and diversity are significant issues in US schools, where the melting-pot society, in which minority cultures are assimilated to the majority culture, is being replaced by the pluralistic society, in which individual cultures maintain their own identities while participating in the definition of a larger cuture

- intelligence testing has traditionally focused on factors that differentiate successful academic performers from unsuccessful ones; the intelligence quotient, or IQ score, reflects the ratio of a person's mental age to his or her chronological age; other conceptualizations of intelligence focus on different aspects of the information processing task - in today's schools, exceptional children-including children with intellectual deficits- are to be educated in the least restrictive environment, typically the regular classroom; if done properly, this strategy can benefit all students and permit the exceptional student to focus on strengths rather than weaknesses - gifted and talented children can benefit from special educational programs, including acceleration programs and enrichment programs

- in what ways do children's views of themselves change during middle childhood? - why is self-esteem important during these years? - how does children's sense of right and wrong change with age? - what sorts of relationships and friendships are typical of middle childhood? - how do gender and ethnicity affect friendships? - how do today's diverse family and care arrangements affect children? - how do children's social and emotional lives affect their school performance?

- according to Erikson, children in the middle childhood years are in the industry-versus-inferiority stage - in the middle childhood years, children begin to use social comparison and self-concepts based on psychological rather than physical characteristics - during the middle childhood years, self-esteem is based on comparisons with others and internal standards of success; if self-esteem is low, the result can be a cycle of failure - according to Kohlberg, moral development proceeds from a concern with rewards and punishments, through a focus on social conventions and rules, toward a sense of universal moral principles; Gilligan has suggested, however, that girls may follow a somewhat different progression of moral development

- children's understanding of friendship changes from the sharing of enjoyable activities, through the consideration of personal traits that can meet their needs, to a focus on intimacy and loyalty - friendships in childhood display status hierarchies; improvements in social problem solving and social information processing can lead to better interpersonal skills and greater popularity - boys and girls engage increasingly in same-sex friendships, with boys' friendships involving groups of relationships and girls' friendships characterized by pairings of girls with equal status - interracial friendships decrease in frequency as children age, but contact as peers among members of different races can promote mutual acceptance and appreciation - many children are the victims of bullies during their school years

- self care children may develop independence and enhanced self esteem from their experience - how divorce affects children depends on such factors as financial circumstances and the comparative levels of tension in the family before and after the divorce - the effects of being raised in a single parent household depend on financial circumstances, the amount of parent-child interaction, and the level of tension in the family - attributional patterns differ along individual, cultural, and gender dimensions - emotional intelligence= the skills that underlie the accurate assessment, evaluation, expression, and regulation of emotions- is becoming accepted as an important aspect of social intelligence

- according to Erikson, children in the middle childhood years are in the industry-versus-inferiority stage, focusing on achieving competence and responding to a wide range of personal challenges - children in the middle childhood years begin to view themselves in terms of psychological characteristics and to differentiate their self-concepts into separate areas; they use social comparison to evaluate their behavior, abilities, expertise, and opinions

- children in these years are developing self esteem; those with chronically low self esteem can become trapped in a cycle of failure in which low self esteem feeds on itself by producing low expectations and poor performance

- according to Kohlberg, people pass from preconventional morality (motivated by rewards and punishments), through conventional morality (motivated by social reference), to post conventional morality (motivated by a sense of universal moral principles); Gilligan has sketched out an alternative progression for girls, from an orientation toward individual survival, through goodness as self-sacrifice, to the morality of nonviolence

- children's friendships display status hierarchies, and their understanding of friendship passes through stages, from a focus on mutual liking and time spent together, through the consideration of personal traits and the rewards that friendship provides, to an appreciation of intimacy and loyalty - popularity in children is related to traits that underlie social competence; because of the importance to social interactions and friendships, developmental researchers have engaged in efforts to improve social problem solving skills and the processing of social information

- boys and girls in middle school increasingly prefer same gender friendships; male friendships are characterized by groups, status hierarchies, and restrictive play; female relationships tend to involve one or two close relationships, equal status, and a reliance on cooperation - cross race friendships diminish in frequency as children age; equal status interactions among members of different racial groups can lead to improved understanding, mutual respect and acceptance, and a decreased tendency to sterotype

- children in families in which both parents work outside the home generally fare well; self care children who fend for themselves after school may develop independence and a sense of competence and contribution - immediately after a divorce, the effects on children in the middle childhood years can be serious, depending on the financial condition of the family and the hostility level between spouses before the divorce - the consequences of living in a single parent family depend on the financial condition of the family and, if there had been two parents, the level of hostility that existed between them; blended families present challenges to the child but can also offer opportunities for increased social interaction - children in group care tend to have been victims of neglect and abuse; many can be helped and placed with their own or other families, but about 25% of them will spend their childhood years in group care

- people attach attributions to their academic successes and failures; differences in attributional patterns are not only individual, but appear to be influenced by culture and gender as well - emotional intelligence is the set of skills that permits people to manage their emotions effectively

- suggests that the preschool years fit into single stage of development: preoperational stage: - from age 2 to 7 in which children's use of symbolic thinking grows, mental reasoning emerges, and the use of concept increases - children become better at representing events internally, and they grow less dependent on the use of direct sensorimotor activity to understand the world around them - key aspect of preoperational thought is symbolic function: the ability to use a mental symbol, a word, or an object to stand for or represent something that is not physically present - still not capable of operations: organized, formal, logical mental processes that characterize school-age children - centration: what you see is what you think - the process of concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus and ignoring other aspects - put a dog mask over a cat and they think it's a dog - conservation: the knowledge that quantity is unrelated to the arrangement and physical appearance of objects - have not mastered this - transformation: the process in which one state is changed into another - egocentrism- the ability to take others perspectives thinking that does not take into account the viewpoints of others - intuitive thought: thinking that reflects preschoolers' use of primitive reasoning and their avid acquisition of knowledge about the world concrete operational stage: the period of cognitive development between 7 and 12 years of age, characterized by the active, and appropriate, use of logic - decentering: the ability to take multiple aspects of a situation into account

- believes that people pass through a series of stages as their sense of justice evolves and in the kind of reasoning they use to make moral judgments - suggests that people's responses to moral dilemmas reveal the stage of moral development they have attained page 323