Child Psychology & Development
Growth Chart (Preschoolers)
3 to 4 years
Young preschoolers make comments and requests, and tell others what to do. They can talk about things that happened and make up stories. They listen attentively to stories and retell stories themselves. They enjoy books that tell about real things as well as make-believe. They may revert to toddler behavior when feeling upset or shy. They make shapes such as circles and squares and pretend to write the way they have seen adults write. If your 3-to-4-year-old does not use language freely, experiment with verbal sounds, and begin to use language to solve problems and learn concepts.
4 to 5 years
Preschoolers know the names and sex of family members and other personal information. They play with words and make up silly words and stories. They are beginning to draw figures that represent people, animals, and objects. They understand that pictures, numbers, words, and letters are symbols of real things and ideas. They "write" as a way to tell stories and offer information. They enjoy "reading" on their own. They may recognize a few words such as their name or words on signs. If your child is embarrassed and disturbed by his or speech, or if you or your child's caregiver have concerns about your child's language skills.
5 to 6 years
Children can recognize and reproduce many shapes, letters, and numbers. They are gaining control over writing and drawing tools. They understand that letter written on a page represent spoken words. They use invented spelling (tp for top, Mry for Mary). They dictate stories for others to write. They enjoy using computers. Work with your child's teacher to assess his or her language skills through the elementary school system.
source: http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content4/growth.chart/page1.html
General Developmental Sequence Toddler through Preschool
Age 3
Physical Development
Runs well, marches, stands on one foot briefly, rides tricycle, imitates cross, feeds self well, puts on shoes and stockings, unbuttons and buttons, build tower of 10 cubes. Pours from pitcher.
Emotional Development
Likes to conform, easy going attitude, not so resistive to change, more secure, greater sense of personal identity, beginning to be adventuresome, enjoys music.
Social Development
Parallel play, enjoys being by others, takes turns, knows if he is a boy or girl, enjoys brief group activities requiring no skill, likes to "help" in small ways --responds to verbal guidance.
Intellectual Development
Says short sentences, 896 words, great growth in communication, tells simple stories, uses words as tools of thought, wants to understand environment, answers questions, imaginative, may recite few nursery rhymes
Age 4
Physical Development
Skips on one foot, draws "Man", cuts with scissors (not well), can wash and dry face, dress self except ties, standing broad jump, throws ball overhand, high motor drive.
Emotional Development
Seems sure of himself, out-of bounds behavior, often negative, may be defiant, seems to be testing himself out, needs controlled freedom.
Social Development
Cooperative play, enjoys other children's company, highly social, may play loosely organized group games - tag, duck-duck-goose, talkative, versatile.
Intellectual Development
Uses complete sentences, 1540 words, asks endless questions, learning to generalize, highly imaginative, dramatic, can draw recognizable simple objects.
Age 5
Physical Development
Hops and skips, dresses without help, good balance and smoother muscle action, skates, rides wagon and scooter, prints simple letters, handedness established, ties shoes, girls small muscle development about 1 year ahead of boys.
Emotional Development
Self-assured, stable, well-adjusted, home-centered, likes to associate with mother, capable, of some self-criticism, enjoys responsibility. Likes to follow the rules.
Social Development
Highly cooperative play, has special "friends", highly organized, enjoys simple table games requiring turns and observing rules, "school", feels pride clothes and accomplishments, eager to carry out some responsibility.
Intellectual Development
2,072 words, tells long tales, carries out direction well, reads own name, counts to 10, asks meaning of words, knows colors, beginning to know difference between fact and fiction-lying, interested in environment, city, stores, etc.
source: http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/devsequence.shtml
Interactive Design for children
Navigation for children
The biggest navigation obstacles were inability to read, poor mouse control and problems with the interface design. Children did not use search, map, index or help tools if they were available. Children did not scroll or use the back or forward arrows in the Web browser. Age, gender, previous Internet experience, siblings, computer configurations and poor ergonomics affected usability. Examples of design features (and their engaged intelligence) that positively affected usability were: sound effects (musical), characters that interacted with the children (interpersonal), audio instructions (linguistic), large clickable areas (kinesthetic), limited choices (logical), positive reinforcement (intrapersonal) and navigation metaphors (spatial). Results suggest that simpler navigation schemes, interface designs that engage spatial rather than linguistic intelligence, and features that positively engage a variety of intelligence types will make Web sites easier for children to use.
source: http://home.utad.pt/~leonelm/children/resources.html
Designing for children
+ Adult interaction techniques and child interaction techniques are two different things!
+ Limited cognition, motor skills and spatial awareness all need to be taken into consideration.
+ Metaphors
+ Children relate better to and engage better with interfaces that communicate via a character
+ Children nowadays are generally technology savvy and their valuable experience can provide innovative ideas.
source: Suzanne Waugh Beng (Hons) http://www.scottishupa.org.uk/Designing%20For%20and%20With%20Children.pdf
Interactive learning can be fun for kids of all ages
Educational games can also entertain. Just don't tell the kids they're learning.“I ran a "how low can you go" experiment on my 12-year-old daughter, presenting to her some grade 2 maths games. Such simple additions and subtractions would normally be boring, but because this was about making the bee drop the right number into the right flower - while avoiding the dragonfly - it wasn't a problem. Apparently this was a fun game, not maths revision.”
source: Eric Wilson http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/19/1082326137220.html
Immersion Factor: Sound
Sound effects are often helpful to the gameplay. They (1) highlight when changes in the environment have happened whether or not the person is ‘looking’ in the direction of the change, as well as (2) punctuate actions such as hitting, crashing, passing, or some other form of action leading to an impact. Also, (3) sound effects can provide instruction, direction, helpful hints, and/or serve as additional identifying information for a character or place.
Similarly, music can be helpful to gameplay. It can highlight changes in the environment.
source: Sean M. Zehnder Ph.D. Candidate Media, Technology and Society Program School of Communication Northwestern University
Kids' Corner: Website Usability for Children
Kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation.
Usability Problems Hurt Kids
- Poor usability, combined with kids' lack of patience in the face of complexity, resulted in many simply leaving websites.
- Children don't like slow downloads any more than adults do. As one first-grade girl said, "Make it go faster! Maybe if I click it, it will go faster..."
- Young children often have hand-me-down computers
Usability problems
- Inconsistent navigation options
- Lack of perceived clickability affordances, such as overly flat graphics, caused users to miss features because they overlooked the links
- Fancy wording in interfaces confused users and prevented them from understanding the available choices
Differences between Children and Adult Users
- Animation and sound effects were positive design elements for children; they often created a good first impression that encouraged users to stay with a site.
- Children were willing to "mine-sweep," scrubbing the screen with the mouse either to find clickable areas or simply to enjoy the sound effects that different screen elements played.
- Geographic navigation metaphors worked: Kids liked the pictures of rooms, villages, 3D maps, or other simulated environments that served as an overview and entry point to various site or subsite features.
- Children rarely scrolled pages and mainly interacted with information that was visible above the fold
- Half of our young users were willing to read instructions; indeed, they often preferred to read a paragraph or so of instructions before starting a new game.
Cool Content, Simple Interaction
Children want content that is entertaining, funny, colorful, and uses multimedia effects. However, for homepage design and navigation systems, the user interface should be unobtrusive and let kids get to the content as simply as possible.
source: Jakob Nielsen http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020414.html
Children & Computers
1. Get a Small Mouse.
2. Make Things Bigger and Bolder
3. Program the Mouse for “One-Click” Operation
source: http://www.soundfeelings.com/free/toddlers_computers.htm
1. Make computer time shared time
2. Make fun and computer exposure your goal, not academic learning
maintain your child's enthusiasm for learning and computers if skill-building is incidental to a good story, song, or game
3. Select programs with big, easy-to-see images
source: http://www.babycenter.com/refcap/toddler/toddlerdevelopment/6811.html
Make sense to start a child on computers at 2½
What should I look for in a computer game?Of course, a game must be good for your child to enjoy and learn from it.
1. Think amusement first.
2. Choose games that encourage more than one person to play the game and reward interaction.
3. Look for games that give kids ways to "accidentally succeed" — in other words, the computer doesn't demand a precise response to move the game along, but provides instant feedback to keep a child engaged.
source: http://parentcenter.babycenter.com/preschooler
