1. Chapter Two
Reading Guide

2. Development: A Definition
The orderly, durable changes in learners resulting from a combination of experience, learning, and maturation.
Development: A Definition
Development
Experience
Learning
Maturation
Practice, trying out something over and over again.
PE: shoot baskets
Math: multiplication worksheets
Gaining knowledge about something
PE: learn rules, teacher demonstrates techniques
Math: use manipulatives to learn how multiplication works
Genetically controlled, age-related changes in individuals: Body and brain grow older and more capable
PE: grow taller, become more coordinated
Math: brain becomes more able to deal with abstract information

3. Facets and types of development
Physical development—changes in the body
Personal development—changes in personality (psychology)
Social development—changes in the way a person interacts with other people
Cognitive development—changes in the way a person thinks.
Maturation—changes which are genetically programmed—such as most forms of physical development and a lot of cognitive development.

4. Principles of Development
Influences
Principles
Learning
Experience
Development is continuous & orderly
Development is gradual.
Development
Social
interaction
Maturation
Language
Each person develops at a different rate.

5. The Human Brain and Cognitive Development
What:
Environments matter—rich learning environments lead to more complex physical brain development.
When:
Early (pre-school years)
Critical periods: time spans that are optimal for the development of certain capacities in the brain.

6. This and the next three slides are from a power point by Bonnie Sachs, M.S., January, 2006
Anatomy of the Brain
Different areas of the brain have different functions and/or perceive and process different types of information.

7. (Lateral geniculate nucleus)
Functional Anatomy of Brain-Behavioral Relationships
Notice how the information from the right eye goes to the left side of the brain.
Visual System
Visual information is sent from the retina through the thalamus (LGN) to the primary visual cortex.
Visual information from the left and right visual fields split into separate contralateral inputs to the cortex.
Optic nerve
Optic chiasm
Optic tract
Thalamus
(Lateral geniculate nucleus)
Optic radiation
Primary visual cortex
This is just one example of how the brain works.

8. (Medial geniculate nucleus)
Functional Anatomy of Brain-Behavioral Relationships
Auditory System
Information is sent from the cochlea through the thalamus (MGN) to the primary auditory cortex.
There are both ipsilateral and contralateral inputs to the cortex from each ear.
Left
Auditory
cortex
Right
Auditory
cortex
Thalamus
(Medial geniculate nucleus)
Inferior colliculus
Cochlea
Auditory
nerve fiber
Superior
Olivary
nucleus
Ipsilateral
Cochlear
nucleus
Here’s another system.

9. Functional Anatomy of Brain-Behavioral Relationships
The “Homonculus”
This model represents how our bodies are proportionately processed in the sensory and motor cortices of the brain.
In other words, big portions of our brains are devoted to our hands and mouth—more so than to our legs and feet. Think about how we use our hands and our mouths, not only for tool use (hands) but for language (mouth).

10. Neurons Neurons transmit and store information.

11. Synapse The synapse allows communication between neurons.
Synapse
The synapse allows communication between neurons.

12. The Developing Brain All the neurons we need develop before our birth.
By age 2 or 3, each neuron has 15,000 synapses, far more than we actually need.
As we experience living in our particular circumstances, the synapses we don’t need are “pruned.”

13. The Developing Brain
Some synapses “expect” stimulation (“experience expectant”)—such as those involved in seeing and hearing. Children who are born deaf lose the synapses that are involved in hearing.
Some synapses are “experience dependent”—they develop as a result of experiences a child has. A child in a musical family will develop more synapses dealing with music than a child in a family that emphasizes something else.

14. The Developing Brain
Babies need stimulation in order to develop their synapses.
Plasticity—the brain of a young child is adaptable. If damage occurs to one area, other areas of the brain may be able to compensate.
Myelin is the coating on the neuron fibers. When the brain goes through a process of myelination, that coating gets thicker and the information goes through better, as a result.

15. Cerebral Cortex
The cerebral cortex is a brain structure in vertebrates. In non-living, preserved brains, the outermost layers of the cerebrum has a grey color, hence the name "grey matter". Grey matter is formed by neurons and their unmyelinated fibers while the white matter below the grey matter of the cortex is formed predominantly by myelinated axons interconnecting different regions of the central nervous system. The human cerebral cortex is 2-4 mm ( inches) thick and plays a central role in many complex brain functions including memory, attention, perceptual awareness, "thinking", language and consciousness.

16. Cerebral cortex
Different parts of the cerebral cortex mature at different times.
The areas that control physical movement mature first, then the senses (vision, hearing, etc.), then higher order thinking.
This is what childhood is all about—children can move around, often like adults, but they cannot think like adults because their brains are not mature. They need mature people to keep them safe, help them, and teach them so they can mature.

17. More on the brain
Lateralization: the specialization of the two sides of the brain. Yet, both sides have to work together in complex tasks.
Different parts of the brain have different functions.
If the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handed people are in their right minds!

18. The brain and learning
Experience and direct teaching affect the brain.
Anxiety and fear can get in the way of learning.
Some people believe in brain-based learning and others don’t. If you are interested, look it up on the web and figure out your perspective on it.

19. Vocabulary Accommodation Concrete operational stage Adaptation
Conservation
Funds of
knowledge
Neo-Piagetian
theories
Preoperational stage
Social
development
Adolescent
egocentrism
Compensation
Heritage
language
Neurons
Private
speech
Social experience
Assimilation
Cultural tools
Holophrases
Object permanence
Reversability
Sociocultural theory of development
Assisted
learning
Decentering
Identity
Organization
Scaffolding
Synapses
Centration
Development
Lateralization
Over-generalization
Schemes
Syntax
Classification
Disequilibrium
Maturation
Personal
development
Semiotic
function
Systematic reasoning
Co-constructed
process
Egocentrism
Metalinguistic
awareness
Physical
development
Sensori-motor stage
Transformation
Cognitive
development
Equilibrium
Myelination
Plasticity
Seriation
Under-
generalization
Collective
monologue
Formal operational stage
Nativist theory
Pragmatics
Shared understanding
Zone of proximal development