CC-BY-SA 3.0 slides from Laura Overstreet's Lifespan Development Course from the Open Course Library: http://opencourselibrary.org/econ-201/

1. Early Childhood

2. Physical Growth in Early
Childhood

3. Proportions From 2 to 6
 Toddlers have large heads and stomachs and
short arms and legs
 Six year olds have longer torsos

4. Overall Physical Growth
 Grow 3 inches in height per year
 Gain 4 ½ pounds in weight per year
 Average 6 year old is 46 inches tall and
weighs 46
 Small appetites between ages 2 and 6
years

5. Nutritional Concerns
 Preschoolers and iron deficiency anemia
 Children and high fat, high sugar diets
 Setting up food preferences

6. Avoiding Eating Problems
 Don’t force feed or fight
 Appetite varies
 Keep it pleasant
 No short order chefs
 Limit choices
 Serve balanced meals
 Don’t bribe

7. Brain Maturation
 Brain weight
 Changes in
emotional control
and coordination
 Visual pathways
 Growth of
hemispheres
 Corpus callosum

8. Motor Skill Development:
Gross Motor Skills
 Running
 Jumping
 Swinging
 Bicycling
 Songs and motion

9. Motor Skill Development:
Fine Motor Skills
 Pouring
 Using Scissors
 Coloring
 Songs and fine
motor skills activities

10. Sexual Development in
Childhood
 Infancy
 Early childhood

11. Cognitive Development
Thought and Language

12. Piaget’s Preoperational
Intelligence
 Learning to use
symbols
 Becoming ‘mental’

13. PRETEND PLAY
Imagination and

14. Syncretism
Photo Courtesy ReservasdeCoches.com

15. EGOCENTRISM

16. ANIMISM
What’s alive?

17. Classification Errors

18. Conservation Errors

19. Theory of Mind
 Established at around 4
 Knowledge of others’ mental states
 Everyday mindreading
 Theory of mind and autistic spectrum
disorders

20. Language Development
 Vocabulary growth (10-20 words per
day)
 Understanding incomplete
 Preference for nouns
 Over-regularization: “I goed there. I
doed that!”

21. Impact of Training on
Cognitive Development
 Vygotsky’s zone of
proximal
development
 Do you talk to
yourself? Why?
 Combining language
and thought:
egocentric and
private speech

22. Psychosocial Development
A Look at Self-Concept, Gender
Identity and Family Life

23. Self-Concept
 What is a self-concept?
 One’s image of oneself
 Develops through interactions with others

24. Self-Concept
 Cooley’s looking-glass self
 We judge our performance based on the reactions
of others
 Inaccuracies in our self-concept?

25. Mead’s “I” and the “me”
 “I” spontaneous self
 “me” socialized self
 Taking the role of the other
 Taking the role of a significant other
 Taking the role of the generalized other

26. Mead’s Development of Self
 Imitation
 Play
 Game

27. Self-Concept
 Early childhood-exaggerated sense of
self
 School-aged children: more realistic
sense of self

28. INITIATIVE VS. GUILT
Erikson

29. Gender Identification
 Freud: The Phallic Stage
 Chordorow: Mothering
 Cognitive Theory and gender schema
 Learning Theorists: Reinforcement and
Modeling

30. Ways In Which Gender is
Taught
 Socialization in infancy
 Parenting sons and daughters
 Teachers and schools
 Friends

31. Which explanation is best?
 Is gender taught or do children seek
out how to behave based on their sex?
 Probably both.

32. Parenting Styles
The key is to match expectations
with maturity

33. Parenting Styles: Baumrind’s
Model
 Authoritarian-children should be seen and not heard!
 Permissive-let the kids rule
 Authoritative-strictness with affection
 Uninvolved-disengaged

34. LeMaster’s and DeFrain’s
Model
 Martyr
 Pal
 Police Officer/Drill Sergeant
 Teacher-Counselor
 Athletic Coach

35. WARM, CARING, SUPPORT
What really matters?

36. Childcare
 How many mothers work outside of
home?
 64.2 percent with children under 6
 77.3 percent with children 6-17
 What about childcare?
 Global Concerns
 Example: Liberia’s Market Women

37. Stress and Development
 Normal vs. toxic stress
 Stress hormones
 Brain circuitry
 The impact of social support