Chapter 7: Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)

Chapter 7:Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)

Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)

• Chapter Objectives– To describe the expansion of motor skills

during toddlerhood, indicating their importance for the child’s expanding capacity to explore the environment and experience opportunities for mastery

– To document accomplishments in language development and describe the influences of interactive experiences and the language environment for gaining communicative competence


• Chapter Objectives (cont.)– To describe the development of fantasy play

and its importance for cognitive and social development

– To examine the development of self-control, especially impulse management and goal attainment, highlighting strategies young children use to help them regulate their actions


• Chapter Objectives (cont.)– To analyze the psychosocial crisis of

autonomy versus shame and doubt, to clarify the central process of imitation, and to describe the prime adaptive ego strength of will and the core pathology of compulsion

– To apply a psychosocial analysis to the topic of day care, emphasizing the impact of the social environment on patterns of development during toddlerhood


• Case Study: Alice Walker Goes To The Fair– Thought Questions

• What is the spirit of toddlerhood that is captured in this case?

• How does the case relate to the tasks of locomotion, language, fantasy play, and self-control?

• What aspects of Alice’s self-concept appear to be forming in this episode?

• What images of her mother and father are being established at this age?


• Elaboration of Locomotion– Plays a central role in the toddler’s

psychosocial development, facilitating the transformation of ideas into action, and prompting new types of interactions with the social and physical environment

– Caregivers must limit locomotion to protect child’s safety

– Advances occur in walking and running; jumping; hopping; throwing and catching; pedaling and steering


• Language Development: Semiotic Thinking – Piaget describes the years from about 2 to 5

or 6 as the stage of preoperational thought or a transitional period during which the schemes that were developed during infancy are represented internally

– The most significant achievement of this new stage of cognitive development is the capacity for semiotic or representational thinking - understanding one thing can stand for another through signs and symbols

– Symbols are usually related in some way to the object for which they stand


• Language Development: Semiotic Thinking (cont.)– Signs stand for things in a more abstract,

arbitrary way (e.g., words)


• Language Development: Communicative Competence– Children become adept at using all the

aspects of language that permit effective participation in the language environment of their culture


Figure 7.1 Three Areas of the Brain That Are Intimately Related to Speech: Broca’s Area, Wernicke’s Area, and the Arcuate Fasciculus, a Bundle of Nerve Fibers That Connects the Two


• Language Development: Communication Accomplishments in Infancy– Language Perception: capacity to recognize

language sounds, including phonetic combinations of letters and words and the intonation of sentences

– Babbling: characterized by sounds of connecting consonants and vowels and repeating these combinations occurs around 6 to 10 months

– Communication with Gestures: by 8 months infants use gestures to achieve a goal


• Language Development: Communication Accomplishments in Infancy (cont.)– Early Grammar: refers to rules that guide

combination of words and phrases in order to preserve meaning and is apparent by 7 or 8 months


• Language Development: Communication Accomplishments in Infancy (cont.)– First Words

• Receptive language: around 8 months of age infants understand the meanings of some individual words and phrases

• A significant event in the development of language production is the naming of objects

• Holophrases are single-word utterances accompanied by a gesture, action, vocal intonation, or emotion


• Language Development: Communicative Competence in Toddlerhood– Vocabulary: during the period form 12 to 16

months, infants make significant progress in learning the names of objects and applying them to pictures or real examples

– The average toddler of 30 months has a spoken vocabulary of 570 words. In order to accomplish this feat, children seem to fast-map new meanings as they experience words in conversation


• Language Development: Communicative Competence in Toddlerhood (cont.)– Two-word sentences, or telegraphic speech,

occurs from 16 to 30 months of age


• Language Development: Communicative Competence in Toddlerhood (cont.)– Grammatical Transformations: by the age of

4, children appear to be able to structure their sentences using most grammatical rules without instruction

• Once children learn the rule for expressing the past tense by adding ‘ed’, they occasionally overregularize this rule and begin to make errors (e.g., runned)

• Grammatical errors children make alert us to the fact that they are working to figure out a system of rules with which to communicate meaning


• Language Development: Language Development Beyond Toddlerhood– Although fundamentals of language are well

established by age 4, there are still some things that toddlers cannot achieve with language

– Important language functions develop more fully during early and middle childhood

– Language becomes a vehicle for creative expression


• Language Development: Language Development Beyond Toddlerhood (cont.)– Language plays a critical role in the resolution

of subsequent psychosocial crises, especially the establishment of group identity, intimacy, and generativity



• Language Development: The Language Environment– When speaking to toddlers, adults and older

children adjust their spoken language in the following ways:

• They simplify utterances to correspond with the toddler’s interests and comprehension level

• They emphasize the here and now• They use a more restricted vocabulary• They do a lot of paraphrasing• They use simple, well-formed sentences• They use frequent repetitions• They use a slow rate of speech with pauses

between utterances and after the major content words


• Language Development: The Language Environment (cont.)– Scaffolding occurs in which children try to

match the verbal expressions used by adults– Adults use expansion to help clarify a child’s

meaning of speech– Adults also use prompting, often in the form of

a question, to help with the child’s language development and communication skills

– Reading and language games also enhance language development


• Fantasy Play: The Nature of Pretend Play– The worlds of make-believe, poetry, fairy

tales, and folklore, the domains we often associate with childhood, open up to the toddler as the ability for symbolization expands

– Sensorimotor play consists of the repetition of motor activity

– Symbolic play, or pretend play, appears around 2 years of age. A vivid mental image of an action permits them to copy what they recall rather than what they see


• Fantasy Play: The Capacity for Pretense– Pretense, whether through symbolic play,

symbolic drawing, or telling make-believe stories, requires that children understand the difference between pretend and reality


• Fantasy Play: Changes in Fantasy Play During Toddlerhood– Children engaged in solitary pretense are

involved in their own fantasy activities– Children engaged in social play join with other

children in some activity– In social pretend play, children have to

coordinate their pretense


• Fantasy Play: Changes in Fantasy Play During Toddlerhood– Play changes in 4 ways during toddlerhood

• The action component becomes more complex as children integrate a sequence of actions

• Children’s focus shifts from the self to fantasies that involve others and the creation of multiple roles

• The play involves the use of substitute objects, including objects children only pretend to have, and eventually the invention of complex characters and situations

• The play becomes more organized and planned, and play leaders emerge


• Fantasy Play: The Contributions of Fantasy Play to Development – Children use fantasy play to experiment with

and understand their social and physical environments and to expand their thinking

– Vygotsky viewed fantasy play as a zone of proximal development of the child in which a range of potential could be reached


• Fantasy Play: The Contributions of Fantasy Play to Development (cont.)– Adults and more advanced peers promote

development by enabling children in activities and problem-solving tasks that draw children into their zone of proximal development, the new directions along which their capacities are moving


• Fantasy Play: The Role of Play Companions– Play companions can elaborate a child’s

capacity for fantasy, legitimize fantasy play, and help the child to explore new domains of fantasy


• Self-Control – Language and Fantasy as Strategies for

Controlling Impulse: talking about and acting out feelings and needs enables adults to help children understand more about their emotions and to help them devise strategies for self-regulation


• Self-Control – Language and fantasy as strategies for

controlling impulses• Parents articulate the family or cultural rules of

emotional expression• Adults help modify the intensity of emotions

through reassuring or distracting talk• Adults give children ideas for ways to manage their

impulses• Children listen to and imitate adults who talk about

their own strong emotions and impulses


• Self-Control: Control of Impulses– Increasing sensitivity to the distress of others– Disciple strategies

• Power assertion• Love withdrawal• Inductions

– Parental modeling and reinforcement of acceptable behaviors are also associated with the development of impulse control


• Self-Control: Control of Impulses (cont.)– Discipline that is immediate or as close in time

to the situation as possible, and is appropriately firm, but not overreactive helps develop self-control

– Individual differences in the ability to control impulses

– Toddlers differ in their capacity to emphasize with the distress of others


• Self-Control: Control of Impulses (cont.)– Differences in temperament affect self-control

• Effortful control: a child’s ability to suppress a dominant response and perform a subdominant response instead

– Capacity for self-regulation may depend on the quality of the mother-infant attachment

• Delay gratification: a child must exert willpower in order to resist a strong immediate pull or temptation


Figure 7.3 Factors Associated with the Ability to Control Impulses


• Self-Control: Control of Impulses (cont.)– Self-regulated goal attainment, or a toddlers

feelings that they can direct their behavior and the behavior of others to achieve intended outcomes, is also associated with the development of self-control

– Agency - view of themselves as the originators of action—expands to include a broad array of behaviors

– Speech plays a central role in self-directed goal attainment and practical problem solving


• The Psychosocial Crisis: Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt– Autonomy: the ability to behave

independently, to perform actions on one’s own

– Shame and Doubt: some children fail to emerge from toddlerhood with a sense of mastery

• Shame: an intense emotion that can result from social ridicule or criticism and internal conflict

• Doubt: a lack of self-confidence and worth and have a constant sense of failure


• The Central Process: Imitation– The primary mechanism by which toddlers

emerge as autonomous individuals is imitation– Once toddlers succeed in imitating a certain

skill, that still belongs to them and they can use it for any purpose they like


• The Prime Adaptive Ego Quality and The Core Pathology– Will: capacity of the mind to direct and control

action– Compulsion: repetitive behaviors that are

motivated by impulse or restriction on the expression of it

– Children in this stage devise some well-oriented rituals

• Obsessions are persistent, repetitive thoughts that serve as mechanisms for binding anxiety

• Compulsions are repetitive-ritualized actions that serve the same function


• The Impact of Poverty on Psychosocial Development in Toddlerhood– 17 percent of children under age 18 are poor

according to federal standards– Poverty is often associated with conditions

that are disruptive to optimal development, including poor nutrition, inadequate health care, limited parental education, unstimulating parent-child interactions, and harsh punishment

– Parents living in poverty emphasize obedience and are less likely to use reasons and explanations in their discipline practices


• The Impact of Poverty on Psychosocial Development in Toddlerhood (cont.)– Poor families are more likely to live in high-

risk neighborhoods where children are likely to be exposed to violence


• Applied Topic: Child Care– The impact of child care on intelligence and

academic achievement– The impact of child care on social

competence– The impact of child care on peer relations– Directions for the future of child care in the

United States


Documents

Chapter 7: Toddlerhood (Ages 2 and 3)