Major theories of early childhood

Psychoanalysis & Language

Agenda

Today

  • Current Events
  • Psychoanalytic perspectives
  • Language Development
  • Social deprivation
  • Presentations

Early Childhood and Psychoanalysis

  • Sexual development in Early Childhood
    • Emergence of self-stimulation for comfort or tension relief
    • Exploration with others is common
  • Psychosexual Development (Freud)
    • Phallic Stage (3-6) - focus on anatomical sex differences
    • Identification with anatomically similar parent (Oedipus/Electra complex)
    • Genital anxieties (castration anxiety/penis envy)
  • Little to no support of Freud's Phallic stage, but prevalent in folk psychology

Early Childhood and Psychoanalysis

  • Psychosocial Development (Erickson)
    • Initiative vs. Guilt

VS

  • Self-concept: How do you describe yourself?
  • Self-esteem: How do you evaluate yourself?
  • Generally, children at this stage have positive self-image.
    • Fewer social comparisons?

Language Development

Major theories:

  • Behaviorist- acquired through conditioning and imitation
    • Scale with complexity?
  • Nativist- innate "universal grammar", we have a Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
    • Early mistakes?
  • Constructionist- Social interaction + Statistical learning produce internalized templates

Chomsky

Parallels with prefigurative Politics

What makes humans unique?

Language Development

  • (IPT) Emergent Literacy- search for familiar/memorized
  • Vocabulary
    • fast-mapping
    • Learn Objectives... Verbs... Modifiers/Adjectives (in English)
  • Grammar
    • Subject--Verb--Object Grammatical structure
    • Overregularization ("The cup breaked")
    • recasts- parental feedback
  • Conversation
    • Pragmatics - Social, practical language use
  • Majority of children are bilingual, when balanced improves language cognition

Role of Theory-Theory?

Supporting Early Language

Sensitive Period for Social Interaction

Socially-deprived Romanian Orphans

  • Orphans adopted before 6 months of age “caught up” to peers
  • Orphans adopted after 6 months showed intellectual deficits and autism-like symptoms

The “Video Deficit Effect”

  • Studies find that children under 2.5 years of age consistently learn better from a live person than a video
  • Live Mandarin-Chinese lessons for English-speaking infants allowed children to perceive the sound contrasts in Mandarin;
    • Same lesson on videotape did not
  • Baby Einstein videos
  • Educational Apps

Copy of deck

By cypurr

Copy of deck

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