Early ChildhoodChapter 5EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPANJanet Bel

Early Childhood
Chapter 5
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN
Janet Belsky | Fifth Edition
Setting the Context (part 1)
Stages
Early childhood: age 3 through kindergarten
Middle childhood: elementary school years
Uniquely human social cognitive skills
Complex ability to reflect on own actions
Ability to read mind of others
Age of exploration: Erikson
Early childhood
3 to 6 years
Initiative versus guilt
Involves skill testing
Middle childhood
7 to 12 years
Industry versus inferiority
Following adult reality and working toward desired wants
Principles of physical growth

Cephalocaudal principle
Mass-to-specific principle
Physical Development (part 1)
Two types of physical skills
Fine motor skills
Gross motor skills
Physical Development (part 2)At age 2 At age 4 Picks up small
objects with thumb and forefinger, feeds self with spoon Cuts
paper, approximates circle Walks unassisted, usually by 12
months Walks down stairs, alternating feet Rolls a ball or flings
it awkwardly Catches and controls a large bounced ball across
the body At age 5 At age 6 Prints name Copies two short words
Walks without holding onto railing Hops on each foot for 1
meter but still holds railing Tosses ball overhand with bent
elbows Catches and controls a 10-inch ball in both hands with
arms in front of body
Threats to preschool physical skills
Lack of outdoor play
Internet access
High-tech educational toys
Lack of food; undernutrition
Stunting
Impairment of fine and gross motor skills
Fatigue that limits engagement

Cognitive Development: Piaget
Preoperational thinking
3 to 7 years
Locked into immediate appearances and inability to step back
and think conceptually
Concrete operational thinking
8 to 11 years
Marked by ability to logically reason
8
Cognitive Development (part 1)
Strange ideas about substances
Conservation tasks
Changing shape of substances to determine if children believe
substance shape changes cause amount changes
Conservation types
Number
Mass
Volume or liquid
Matter
9
Four Piagetian Conservation Tasks

Why can’t young children conserve?
Inability to understand reversibility
Using centering to interpret things
Impairs class inclusion
11
How are their perceptions about people different?
Lack of identity constancy
Animistic thinking
Use of artificialism in conceptualization nature
Egocentrism
12
Evaluating Piaget
Minimization of what young children know
Overstatement of their egocentrism
Presence of early mindreading abilities and longer animism
Lack of attention to culture variations in conservation task
performance

13
Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development
Child learning occurs best when adult creates instruction that
matches child’s capacities
Scaffolding
Adult uses scaffolding to promote independent performance
Education
Education viewed as collaborative, bidirectional learning
experience
Interventions: Cognitive Development
Vygotsky
Language scaffolds all learning
Everything learned using inner speech
Becoming an effective scaffolder
Fostering a secure attachment
Breaking a larger cognitive challenge into manageable steps
Continuing support until concept mastered before moving on
See Table 5.5 for a comparison of the Vygotskian and Piagetian
perspectives.
15

Language
Developing speech
Phonemes
Morphemes
Syntax (grammar)
Semantics
Overregulation
Over-/underextension
Emotional Development (part 1)
Constructing a personal past
Autobiographical memories involve reflection on life history.
Past-talk conversations are used to scaffold personal child
autobiography.
Toddler: parents do remembering
Preschooler: parent–child partnership in mutual stories
Adolescent: memories linked together and construction of life
timeline
Making sense of other people’s minds
Theory of mind
Understanding that other people have different perspectives
from their own
Typically achieved around age 4 or 5 years (universally)
Measured by false-belief task
In this classic test for theory of mind, children under age 4 are

likely to say that Ms. X will look for the toy under the bed,
even though Ms. X could not possibly know the toy was moved
to this new location.
18
Brain-Imaging Theory-of-Mind and Autobiographical Memory
Thinking about ourselves and decoding other people’s emotions
involves distinctive (but closely aligned) brain areas.
This thinking is also influence by worldview.
Separate brain areas light up when reflecting on self, liked or
disliked others.
Attitudes about self in relationship to others are mirrors in the
brain’s physical architecture.
Theory of mind may be strengthened through specific strategies.
Social Development (part 1)
Play: the work of early childhood
Exercise play
Running and chasing behavior
Exercises physical skills
Rough-and-tumble play
Excited shoving and wrestling
Biologically built into being male
20
Pretending (fantasy play)
Beginning pretending
Emerges in later infancy
Facilitated by mothers
Collaborative pretend play

Starts around age 4
Involves fantasizing together with other child
Can continue until early adolescence
21
Purposes of pretending
Allows adult role practice
Allows sense of control
Furthers social norm understanding
Girls’ and boys’ play worlds
Gender-segregated play development
Toddlers: limited
Preschoolers: beginning sex-segregated groups
Age 5 or 6: entrenched gender-segregated play and friendships
Gender-segregated play differences
Boys compete in groups and live in more exclusionary, separate,
and more rigid world.
Girls play collaboratively in smaller, more intimate groups.
Causes of gender-stereotyped play
Biology
In utero testosterone levels epigenetically affect DNA to
program brain

Socialization
Gender-role displays, social sanctions, and attitudes in wider
world
Peer play
Cognitions
Gender schema theory
Social Development: Hot in Developmental Science
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs)
Impairment in theory of mind
Persistent, severe, widespread social and conversational deficits
Lack of interest in people and their feelings
Repetitive, restricted behavior patterns
Ritualized behavior
Hypersensitivity to sensory input
Fixation on inanimate objects
True or False … What Do You Think?
Vaccinations cause autism spectrum disorders.
Henry’s Post
According to the text, even from a very young age, boys and
girls are drawn to play with the same sex and play in different
ways from each other. By age 5, boys are excitedly running
around as a large group while girls are calmly talking with a
collaborative small group. Boys tend to be more aggressive in
their play compared to girls, expressing their gross motor skills
while girls are expressing their fine motor skills. While girls
don’t mind playing with the boys, boys can be very exclusive.

They don’t let girls join their play and they wouldn’t associate
themselves with dolls or anything pink. These observations beg
the question, why do children play and act in such gender-
stereotyped ways? Is it biological or environmental?
Interestingly, the author poses that three forces are at play here:
biology, socialization, and cognition.
Nature, biological sex, appears to have a strong influence on
our gendered behavior across cultures and even in rhesus
monkeys. Even boy monkeys engage in exclusive, rough-and-
tumble play. Even though it is evident across the globe, the
hormone testosterone provides more biological evidence. The
higher naturally occurring amount of testosterone in babies
predicts more male play behaviors in toddlerhood. Girls with
higher testosterone levels may be prone to more rough-and-
tumble play like the boys.
Nurture, or socialization, has a strong effect on our gendered
behavior as well. We naturally give boys boy toys and girls girl
toys, and naturally parent our boys a little differently from our
girls (I have seen this in real life as my parents raised my sister
and I very differently from my two brothers). Beyond parental
effects, once little girls are in their established same sex play
groups, they socialize each other by agreeing to like dolls or
other feminine things and vice versa for boys.
Finally, our thoughts are at play in our gendered behavior too,
even as young children. Once a little boy understands the
category he’s been placed in (boy, masculinity), he will likely
select activities that fit into his newly understood gender
schema. This happens as early as 2.5 years! It’s shocking how
soon we are aware of our sex differences. The author sums this
up nicely with the example of her niece, saying that her niece’s
“beauty shop activities had a biological basis, although nurture
prices greatly accelerated this process almost from birth”.
As for the video, I thought that it tried to answer a lot of
questions that have very nuanced answers beyond “yes raise
your child as feminine as possible because she’s biologically
female” vs “no don’t gender your child at all”. I think that there

should be no issue with a little boy who wants to dress up as a
princess, especially if it’s not forced on him by parents trying to
make a statement of some sort. It’s just a child exploring the
world, there’s no need to attach sexuality assumptions to it until
he’s old enough to even understand that. I do take some issue
with a parent raising a child with absolutely no gender. In that
case, we don’t really know what the child wants or feels. The
clinical psychologist brought up a good point, that by leaving a
small child out of his biological sex group, he may be worse off
and feel very left out if he/she has to make that decision for
himself at such a young age. In my opinion, the best thing you
can do is raise a child as a child, acknowledging his or her
biological sex, but not making such a big deal about it. Yes,
give your children non-gendered toys and show them atypical
gender role models, but maybe taking away the child’s gender
from birth is making too much of something that the child may
never struggle with! Children have their whole lives to figure
out gender identity and sexuality, and it seems unfair to do that
at such a young age.
Alice’s Post:
This post comes with the big, huge caveat that my comments are
based on my current thoughts and feelings about gender. Many
of my viewpoints have evolved over time and it is likely this
one may continue to as well.
My grandma told my younger sister and me that if we could kiss
our elbow, we would turn into boys. How great that sounded!
Boys got to have all the fun! They got to do all the rowdy,
adventurous, and cool things. My older brother and his friends
built forts, did crazy bike stunts, had rodeos, and generally just
had a rip-roarin’ good time! I didn’t realize at the time that I
basically did all the same things, just on a different level
because I was younger and because of my temperament, not
because I wasn’t a boy. Nevertheless, my sister and I tried
desperately to get our elbows to reach our lips to no avail. We
were so disappointed. We laugh at it now, grateful that we grew

up to be strong, capable women.
In the textbook, Belsky (2019) cites numerous references that
support the generalized depiction of differences in how boys
and girls play and relate. According to the author, boys tend to
be more rambunctious, loud, and competitive. They tend to play
in bigger groups. Girls, on the other hand, tend to be more calm,
nurturing and collaborative while tending to play in smaller
groups. Belsky asserts that gender-stereotyped play is
biologically programmed, amplified by socialization, and
reinforced by cognition (once they know their gender label, they
model their own sex). Ultimately, she recommends encouraging
less stereotyped play.
For some time, I have thought it ironic that the social media
“gender reveal” (which in actuality, is reporting of the primary
anatomical sex characteristics, not the gender) has become a big
deal at the exact same time that gender neutrality and
transgender issues have come to the forefront. Perhaps it is not
so coincidental.
The video reports on a Canadian couple who challenged society
to examine the obsession with gender by raising their baby
gender-free. I tend to agree with Dr. Lisa Boesky, clinical
psychologist, that it is an extreme social experiment which
makes gender a bigger deal than it necessarily needs to be and
could backfire on the child.
I do think we as society need to consider how we may at times
weaponize a child’s gender against them. We tell males that
“boys don’t cry” and to be tough instead of allowing them to
fully experience their emotions. We tell females that something
is “not ladylike” and there is undue emphasis on appearance and
being pretty. These (antiquated?) gender roles that have been
shaped through the millennia of hunter-gatherer and agrarian
societies may no longer fit an industrialized society where little
children can grow up to be anything they want to be.
Indeed, children are biologically wired to behave certain ways.
We also need to allow them the freedom to express themselves
in ways that may not conform to OUR expectations.

I have a sibling who is well-known in their field for promoting
and developing gender-inclusive design. In some aspects of
their life, particularly in media articles, they prefer being
referred to by the gender neutral pronoun “they.” I recently
asked my sibling if they preferred that I refer to them as my
sibling rather than my brother. They responded, “I think feeling
understood and seen is what matters more than words. And I
feel seen and loved by you so that’s all that matters.”
Perhaps that is the simplest answer. Let people be who they are
and just love them.
Early Childhood
Chapter 5
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN
Janet Belsky | Fifth Edition
Stages
Early childhood: age 3 through kindergarten
Middle childhood: elementary school years
Uniquely human social cognitive skills
Complex ability to reflect on own actions
Ability to read mind of others
Age of exploration: Erikson

Early childhood
3 to 6 years
Initiative versus guilt
Involves skill testing
Middle childhood
7 to 12 years
Industry versus inferiority
Following adult reality and working toward desired wants
Principles of physical growth
Cephalocaudal principle
Mass-to-specific principle
Two types of physical skills
Fine motor skills
Gross motor skills
Physical Development (part 2)At age 2 At age 4 Picks up small
objects with thumb and forefinger, feeds self with spoon Cuts
paper, approximates circle Walks unassisted, usually by 12
months Walks down stairs, alternating feet Rolls a ball or flings
it awkwardly Catches and controls a large bounced ball across
the body At age 5 At age 6 Prints name Copies two short words
Walks without holding onto railing Hops on each foot for 1
meter but still holds railing Tosses ball overhand with bent
elbows Catches and controls a 10-inch ball in both hands with

arms in front of body
Threats to preschool physical skills
Lack of outdoor play
Internet access
High-tech educational toys
Lack of food; undernutrition
Stunting
Impairment of fine and gross motor skills
Fatigue that limits engagement
Cognitive Development: Piaget
Preoperational thinking
3 to 7 years
Locked into immediate appearances and inability to step back
and think conceptually
Concrete operational thinking
8 to 11 years
Marked by ability to logically reason
8
Strange ideas about substances
Conservation tasks
Changing shape of substances to determine if children believe

substance shape changes cause amount changes
Conservation types
Number
Mass
Volume or liquid
Matter
9
Four Piagetian Conservation Tasks
Why can’t young children conserve?
Inability to understand reversibility
Using centering to interpret things
Impairs class inclusion
11
How are their perceptions about people different?
Lack of identity constancy
Animistic thinking
Use of artificialism in conceptualization nature
Egocentrism

12
Evaluating Piaget
Minimization of what young children know
Overstatement of their egocentrism
Presence of early mindreading abilities and longer animism
Lack of attention to culture variations in conservation task
performance
13
Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development
Child learning occurs best when adult creates instruction that
matches child’s capacities
Scaffolding
Adult uses scaffolding to promote independent performance
Education
Education viewed as collaborative, bidirectional learning
experience
Interventions: Cognitive Development
Vygotsky

Language scaffolds all learning
Everything learned using inner speech
Becoming an effective scaffolder
Fostering a secure attachment
Breaking a larger cognitive challenge into manageable steps
Continuing support until concept mastered before moving on
See Table 5.5 for a comparison of the Vygotskian and Piagetian
perspectives.
15
Language
Developing speech
Phonemes
Morphemes
Syntax (grammar)
Semantics
Overregulation
Over-/underextension
Constructing a personal past
Autobiographical memories involve reflection on life history.
Past-talk conversations are used to scaffold personal child
autobiography.
Toddler: parents do remembering
Preschooler: parent–child partnership in mutual stories
Adolescent: memories linked together and construction of life
timeline

Making sense of other people’s minds
Theory of mind
Understanding that other people have different perspectives
from their own
Typically achieved around age 4 or 5 years (universally)
Measured by false-belief task
In this classic test for theory of mind, children under age 4 are
likely to say that Ms. X will look for the toy under the bed,
even though Ms. X could not possibly know the toy was moved
to this new location.
18
Brain-Imaging Theory-of-Mind and Autobiographical Memory
Thinking about ourselves and decoding other people’s emotions
involves distinctive (but closely aligned) brain areas.
This thinking is also influence by worldview.
Separate brain areas light up when reflecting on self, liked or
disliked others.
Attitudes about self in relationship to others are mirrors in the
brain’s physical architecture.
Theory of mind may be strengthened through specific strategies.
Play: the work of early childhood
Exercise play
Running and chasing behavior
Exercises physical skills
Rough-and-tumble play
Excited shoving and wrestling

Biologically built into being male
20
Pretending (fantasy play)
Beginning pretending
Emerges in later infancy
Facilitated by mothers
Collaborative pretend play
Starts around age 4
Involves fantasizing together with other child
Can continue until early adolescence
21
Purposes of pretending
Allows adult role practice
Allows sense of control
Furthers social norm understanding
Girls’ and boys’ play worlds
Gender-segregated play development
Toddlers: limited
Preschoolers: beginning sex-segregated groups

Age 5 or 6: entrenched gender-segregated play and friendships
Gender-segregated play differences
Boys compete in groups and live in more exclusionary, separate,
and more rigid world.
Girls play collaboratively in smaller, more intimate groups.
Causes of gender-stereotyped play
Biology
In utero testosterone levels epigenetically affect DNA to
program brain
Socialization
Gender-role displays, social sanctions, and attitudes in wider
world
Peer play
Cognitions
Gender schema theory
Social Development: Hot in Developmental Science
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs)
Impairment in theory of mind
Persistent, severe, widespread social and conversational deficits
Lack of interest in people and their feelings
Repetitive, restricted behavior patterns
Ritualized behavior
Hypersensitivity to sensory input
Fixation on inanimate objects
True or False … What Do You Think?

Vaccinations cause autism spectrum disorders.
Gender free children?
For this discussion assignment, I am going to have you
summarize the text in relation to gender of children, including
gender-stereotyped play, biological differences, physical
differences and what the author has to say about it all.
(Please look at the lecture slide file before you find more
information online to make sure that you are on the right track)
Next, I'm going to have you view the video below, which is
actually about 9 years old now, but was kind of the beginning of
the whole gender debate. Please watch the video and tell us
your thoughts and feelings on it all from the text and the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4olXHq5Xe78&t=69s
One and Half page Essay
For this assignment, I would like you to outline the "theory of
mind" and include variations from child tochild AND I want
you to look at table 5.7 and include a little summary of that as
well.
NEXT, I would like you to share your earliest memory and
WHY you think it made an impression on you that you would
remember it.
To receive full credit you will....
1. organize your paper well so that it's easy to read and spelling
and grammar mistakes will be VERY few if any.
2. Include all of the information in the text to summarize this
theory and if you include any outside material, please cite your
reference

3. Include examples and any personal experiences you've had
with this concept. If you haven't had any personal experiences
in working with or talking with children, you can talk to a child
and take notes, or you can look up examples of these things on
line or talk to others who have experiences.

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