Four Developmental Domains

In early childhood research, there are four developmental domains that researchers highlight: Physical, psychosocial, creative, and cognitive. In this paper, I will be exploring the four developmental domains using Nicolson et al (2002) who defines and provides examples of these four domains and associated concepts in her book “Through the Looking Glass.” Furthermore, I will be concentrating on the cognitive development of preschool age children (4-5 years old). The first developmental domain is physical development. Physical development sheds light on the growth of the body, brain, and motor development. With that said, keep in mind other variables, such as genetic makeup, that can play a major role in a child’s growth. For example, Nicolson
discussed how a child can be well nourished but the growth rate of that child can be below average in height and weight because of their personal genetic makeup. When a toddlers body starts to grow, they begin to lose the top heavy look (i.e. appearance of a big head on a little body ) as their torsos stretch. As the child progresses on, the brain, a flexible ever-growing organ that plays a huge role in every developmental domain, grows tremendously. Moreover, when focusing on preschool age children, the brain is a huge sponge that is absorbs and utilizes any information. As a effect of the brains retention of motor skills, or movement behavior, is uniquely refined through practice and memory. There are two different types of motor skill development. The first motor skill is gross motor development, which is defined as “maturity and capabilities of large muscles such as arms and legs,” (Nicolson, 2002, p. 36). An example of a preschooler building gross motor skills would be the ability to run in a forward heel-to-toe pattern. The second motor skill is fine motor development, which is defined as “maturity and capabilities of small muscles, such as fingers,” (Nicolson, 2002, p. 36). An example of a preschooler developing fine motor skills would be the ability to button up a shirt.
Psychosocial development is a key factor in a child's development of social emotional behavior such as self-concept, aggression, fears, and impulses. Self-concept is defined as, “[The sense of] physical self that takes up space and has unique physical attributes and a psychological self that is not visible from the outside,” (Nicolson, 2002, p. 60). On the other hand, fear “might lie within as preschoolers’ representational though, which provides entry to a world of imagination, may feature frightening creatures or experiences,” (Nicolson, 2002, p. 62). For example, a child might not like the sound of thunder and lightening because it sounds like “the sky is falling.” Furthermore, there are two types of Aggression, instrumental aggression and hostile aggression. With Instrumental aggression, the child is self-centered with what they want, there is no intent to harm or hurt. For example, child one pushes child two out of his way to get on the slide first. On the other hand, hostile aggression is the intent to hurt or dominate by physical or verbal means, (Nicolson, 2002, p. 64). An example of that would be if child one pushes child two because that is “his swing.” Often times related, Impulses is the capability to “act before thinking and responding immediately to interesting or exciting objects, people and events,” (Nicolson, 2002, p. 65). All of these concepts ties into relationship building between adults and peers.
Creative development looks at the different ways a child thinks, acts, or makes of something that is original. By using the trait and process approach, researchers can observe, manipulate, and measure creativity. The trait approach is creativity that comes on its own, for example, a teacher gives a child a blank paper and crayons and observes what the child will draw without instruction. On the other hand, the process approach is the construction of behavior as an effect of the surrounding environment. For example, a mother signs her 4 year old son up for T-Ball and music lessons; therefore, putting the child in an environment where creativity is forced.
Now that we have discussed three of the four developmental domains, I will now focus on cognitive development which features a continuum of skills such as representational abilities, language, reasoning, social cognition, classification, seriation, number development, and memory; meanwhile, highlighting the developmental norms of a preschool age child. To determine and understand the features of cognitive development, as well as determine the developmental norms of preschool age children, we need to define the concepts associated with cognitive development.
Representational abilities is the idea of using words, gestures, pictures, or actions to represent ideas, things, or behavior (Nicolson, 2002, p. 45). The use of representational abilities plays a great role in memory, interpretation, recognition, and problem solving. For example, a preschooler developing representational abilities might use blocks to represent buildings or cars. Furthermore, they might associate words with people, places, and things. Language plays a key role in a preschooler’s development because, even though they have not yet learned how to use letters and symbols for words, their vocabularies skyrocket as they use representational thought to fast map. Fast mapping is defined as the “mental maps of interconnected categories, sometimes after only one exposure,” (Nicolson, 2002, p. 47). For example, an uncle might ask a child “Do you want a knuckle sandwich?” The child, thinking he will receive an actual sandwich, agrees and the uncle proceeds to rub the child’s head with his knuckles, tousling the hair. The child is then confused and/or realized he has been tricked. The child will then fast map this experience for a later time, knowing that he will not actually receive a sandwich. In the scholarly article, Effects of Phonotactic and Orthotactic Probabilities During Fast Mapping on 5-Year-Olds’ Learning to Spell, reveals that fast mapping can be effective way to build oral and written language. “Our study also found that children’s fast-mapping abilities were demonstrated more prominently in word recognition or comprehension tasks than in generation or naming tasks...the most accurate fast mapping occurred when both phonotactic and orthotactic mapping were high,” (Apel et al, 2006, p. 38). In other words, when using both phototactic and orthotactic to measure fast mapping, the probability of retention was high. This accentuates the idea that fast mapping is an effective way that children learn at such a young age.
At a preschool age, a child is at a beginning stage to develop a full understanding of problem solving and reasoning.
For example, if a parent gave child one a whole graham cracker and child two received the same cracker but broken in two, child one would proceed to ask why child two received more crackers. As a result of limited reasoning abilities, it is the job of adults, such as parents and teachers, to interact, nourish, and guide a child so their reasoning development can grow. Furthermore, as a child grows, he/she begins to classify a large number of objects. Nicolson (2002) states, “[a child’s] mental flexibility enables them to select classifying attributes that guide their sorting and then abandon these attributes and begin again. For example, a teacher gives a child a number of different colored and shaped blocks. The child sorts them first by shape and then by color. Another concept associated with classification is seriation, which is arranging and organizing objects by one characteristic (i.e. sorting the blocks by color). Number development also comes into play as a child’s number development process begins; for a preschool age child, the number development would be to visually and mentally understand the number count represents the total number of
objects.
Memory is a big attribution to all these cognitive concepts.
Recognition and recall memory begins in early childhood. An example of recognition and recall memory would be a child hearing a song and doing the dance most associated with the song . In the scholarly article, Children’s Memory for General and Specific Learning Episodes, experimenters explore the relationship cues of generality that may affect a child's’ memory. Researchers found that generic language does affect young children more than older children. “We found that young children remember properties presented generically and using category labels more than equivalent properties… young children also exhibited better memory for the people displaying properties when learning about individuals, rather than categories,” (Riggs et al, 2014, p. 1658). In other words, children were able to recognize and recall an overall whole of an individual rather than specific details. For example, a child might remember that Bob wore a red shirt but can’t remember that Bob’s favorite color is red. Furthermore, the study also found that older children remembered specific details (i.e. that Bob's favorite color is red). This study plays a great role in the study of recognition and recall of memory in early
childhood.