Lecture Notes/Chapter Outine Chapter 8: Middle Childhood

Chapter Eight
Middle Childhood: Physical and Cognitive Development

I. Physical and Motor Development
A. Physical growth and change
1. Not all children mature at the same rate
2. Girls tend to be shorter and lighter than boys until age 9
3. Boys and girls are equally strong during middle adulthood
4. There are substantial individual differences in body size and proportion

B. Internal changes
1. Brain development
a. Neural plasticity remains high
b. Surface area of frontal lobes increases slightly
c. Lateralization of the brain becomes more pronounced during school years
d. Corpus callosum become mature in both structure and function
2. Skeletal maturation
a. Periods of rapid growth may produce growing pains – episodes of stiffness and aching that are particularly common at night
b. Overly stringent physical training can cause injuries

C. Motor skills development
1. Gross motor skills
a. Locomotor skills are well in place and expanded upon
b. Children grow stronger and are more capable
c. Boys are more athletic than girls
2. Fine motor skills
a. Also develop rapidly during middle childhood
b. Complex skills like writing and hand/eye coordination improve with practice
c. Developing mastery over their bodies can help children gain feelings of competence and self worth

D. Health, fitness, accidents
1. Physical fitness
a. Defined as the optimal functioning of the heart, lungs, muscles, and blood vessels
b. Classes in school should aim to not only increase the children’s skill and overall level of physical activity, but also aim to establish healthy active patterns or behavior that will carry through into adulthood
2. Obesity
a. Obesity is associated with serious social and psychological consequences
b. Peers may reject or stereotype overweight children
c. This can result in a negative self image
3. Accidents and injuries
a. Motor vehicle accidents cause more child deaths than the six other major causes of death combined
b. Half of all childhood deaths result from injuries and accidents
c. As children grow, they engage in increasingly dangerous activities

II. Cognitive Development
A. Piaget and concrete operational thinking
1. CONCRETE OPERATIONAL PERIOD – for Piaget, the third stage of cognitive development; begins at age 5 to 7 and allows the child to perform mental operations, such as conservation, decentration, and reversibility, on objects that are concrete and that can be directly experienced
2. Comparing preoperational and concrete operational thinking
a. preoperational
i. From age 2 to 5 or 7
ii. Thinking style is rigid and static, irreversible, focused on the here and now, centered on one dimension, egocentric, and focused on perceptual evidence
b. concrete operational
i. From age 5 to 7 to age 12
ii. Thinking style is reversible, flexible, not limited to the here and now, multidimensional, less egocentric, marked by the use of logical inferences, and marked by the search for cause and effect relationships
3. Piaget and education
a. Children’s learning can be accelerated through instruction, but Piaget believed that children are better off when they learn at their own pace
b. He also thought learning is best when children are intrinsically motivated rather than explicitly rewarded for success

B. Memory and metacognition
1. CONTROL PROCESSES – strategies and techniques that enhance memory
2. METACOGNITION – the intellectual process that enables people to monitor their thinking and memory; thinking about thinking

C. Language and literacy development
1. Language
a. Language learning is not complete
b. School assists and structures some of the child’s language development
c. Language used at schools more formal
d. Children’s habits of thinking and speaking are applied more generally to other areas of their daily life
2. Literacy
a. Skills in reading and writing
b. Natural outgrowths of the child’s growing language skills
c. The skills associated with oral and written language develop in infancy and improve over the years

D. Individual differences in intelligence
1. Measuring intelligence
a. STANFORD BINET INTELLIGENCE SCALE – the revised version of Binet’s original intelligence test that is widely used in the United States today
b. INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT – an individual’s mental age divided by chronological age, which is multiplied by 100 to eliminate the decimal point
c. DEVIATION IQ – the approach used today that assigns an IQ score by comparing an individual’s test score with the scores of the other people in the same age range
2. The nature of intelligence
a. Gardner’s eight types of intelligence
i. Linguistic – sensitivity to the sounds, rhythms, and meaning of words and the function of language
ii. Logical mathematical – facility for logical and numerical operations and complex reasoning
iii. Spatial – ability to perceive the visual spatial world accurately and to manipulate those perceptions
iv. Bodily kinesthetic – ability to control one’s body movements and to handle objects skillfully
v. Musical – ability to produce and appreciate the characteristics of music, such as rhythm, pitch and timbre
vi. Interpersonal – ability to correctly interpret and appropriately respond to the moods, temperament, and motivations of the other people
vii. Intrapersonal – ability to correctly understand one’s own feelings and moods and to appreciate one’s own strengths, weaknesses, desires, and intelligence
viii. Naturalist – ability to classify plants, animals, and features of the natural environment and to make appropriate responses to each
b. Elements of Sternberg’s successful intelligence
i. Definition as the ability to achieve success in life according to one’s personal standards within one’s sociocultural context
ii. Types of processing skills contributing to successful intelligence
· Analytical
· Creative
· Practical
iii. Uses of processing skills for successful intelligence
· Adaptation to environments
· Shaping of environments
· Selection of environments
iv. Mechanisms for utilization of processing skills in successful intelligence
· Capitalization on strengths
· Correction of weaknesses
· Compensation for weaknesses
3. Cultural issues in intelligence testing
a. Minority groups tend to score lower on traditional intelligence tests
b. When children move to environments with more opportunity and when families emphasize school success, children’s academic performance generally improves

III. Learning and Thinking in School
A. New demands and expectations
1. The greater the gap between what is expected at home and what is expected in the classroom, the more difficult the child’s adjustment will be
2. Success depends on their family background, the school environment, and their own individuality
3. Children are expected to learn the complex social rules that govern the social life of the classroom
4. Teachers spend time on the following activities
a. Teaching facts or concepts
b. Giving direction for a particular lesson
c. Stating general rules of behavior
d. Correcting, disciplining, and praising children
e. Miscellaneous activities

B. Developing competent learners and critical thinkers
1. Greater emphasis on teaching learning and thinking skills
2. Remembering – recalling a fact, idea, or concept
3. Repeating – following a model or procedure
4. Reasoning – applying a specific instance to a general principle or concept
5. Reorganizing – extending knowledge to new contexts and devising original solutions to problems
6. Relating – connecting newly acquired knowledge with past or personal experience
7. Reflecting – exploring the though itself and how it occurred

C. Success in school
1. ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION – an internalized need to persist toward success and excellence
2. Gender differences and school success
a. Girls tend to outperform boys in verbal skills and boys do better in quantitative and spatial tasks
b. Could be due to brain development
c. Social expectations influence their behavior
d. Mathematics and science have been traditionally viewed as male subjects while literature and language as female subjects
3. Parental influences on school success
a. Parents who provide support and guidance while emphasizing their expectations produce academically successful children
b. Children raised in overcrowded or unstable, conflict laden homes are at special risk for school failure

IV. Developmental disorders
A. MENTAL RETARDATION – disorder that is characterized by significantly subaverage intellectual functioning and self help skills, with onset prior to age 18

B. LEARNING DISORDERS – disorders that are associated with difficulty in acquiring some specific academic skills but not others despite normal intelligence and the absence of sensory or motor disabilities, may occur in areas such as reading, writing, or math
1. A reading disorder: dyslexia
a. Involves incorrectly perceiving letters and words
b. Children with dyslexia remain stuck in the early stages of reading
2. Helping children with learning disorders
a. More effective if it begins early in life
b. Includes carefully sequenced tutorial instruction
c. Improvement of the child’s confidence is necessary

C. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
1. ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER – disorder that involves the inability to keep focused on something long enough to learn it, which often is accompanied by poor impulse control
2. Treating children with ADHD
a. Respond to stimulant drugs
b. Also respond to modification of the environment to make it less confusing
c. Programs applied consistently by loving, concerned, responsible caregivers generally produce better outcomes