Desiree

• Growth during middle childhood


  • Growth slows considerably
  • Children grow about 2-3 inches each year between ages 6-11
  • Children approximately double their weight during this period
• Tooth decay remains one of the most common chronic untreated conditions
• Nutrition requirements for school children

  Average of 2,400 calories per day to support their consistent growth and exertion—more for older children and fewer for smaller ones
• Recommended diet for school children

  Diversified diet rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and complex carbs
• Sleep requirements in middle childhood

  Decrease from 11 hours a day at age 5 to slightly more than 10 hours at age 9 and approximately 9 hours by age 13
• Factors that affect children's sleep

  • Exposure to media screens
  • Physical inactivity
  • Secondhand smoke
  • Poor housing
  • Vandalism
  • Lack of parks and playground
• Brain development in middle childhood

  • Brain reaches adult size around age 7
  • Frontal lobes grow more developed between 10 and 12 years of age
  • Increases in reasoning, planning, and memory are visible

  
• Gray matter maturation in the cerebral cortex

  Losses in gray matter density reflect maturation of various regions of the cortex, permitting more efficient functioning
• The overall volume of gray matter, linked in IQ, increases pre-puberty and declines post-puberty
• Decline in gray matter volume

  • Due to loss in the density of gray matter
  • Gray matter volume peaks 1 to 2 years earlier in girls than boys
• The loss in density of gray matter with age is balanced by a steady increase in white matter
• Motor development in middle childhood

  • Motor skills continue to improve
  • Children play games during recess which usually involves socialization
  • Boys typically play physically (running), whereas girls love games that involve verbal expression or counting out loud jump rope, hopscotch
• Body image


  Descriptive and evaluative beliefs about one's appearance
• Causes of obesity


  • Overweight parents or other relatives
  • Poor nutrition
  • Eating fast food
  • Sugar
  • Inactivity
• Concrete operational cognitive stage


  Children at this age (7 years old) can use mental operations, such as reasoning, to solve concrete (actual) problems
• Cognitive advances in concrete operational stage

  • Better understanding than pre-operational children of spatial concepts, causality, categorization inductive and deductive reasoning, conversation, and number
• Cognitive advances in concrete operational stage

  • Seriation- Ability to order items along a dimension
  • Transitive Inferences- Understanding the relationship between two objects by knowing the relationship of each to a third object
  • Class inclusion (age 7 or 8)- Understanding of the relationship between a whole and its parts
• Why concrete operational thinkers succeed at conversational tasks


  • The principle of identity
  • The principle of reversibility
  • Decentering
• Number skills in concrete operational stage

  • Computational estimation- ex. estimating the sum in an addition problem
  • Numerosity estimation- ex. estimating the number of candies in a jar
  • Measurement estimation- ex. estimating the length of a line
• Executive function development


  • The skills develop over time with practice and experience, helping you become better at managing your thoughts, actions, and emotions as you grow up
  • Development of prefrontal cortex - planning, judgment, decision making, working memory, and self-regulation
• Pruning


  Leads to faster reaction time
• Selective attention


  The ability to deliberately direct one's attention and shut out distractions, may hinge on the executive skill of inhibitory control
• Memory strategies


  • Metamemory - Understanding of processes of memory
  • Mnemonic device - Strategy to aid memory
  • External memory aids
  • Rehearsal
  • Organization
  • Elaboration
• Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV)

  Individual intelligence test for school-age children, which yields verbal and performance scores as well as a combined score
• Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT8)


  A popular group test for kindergarten through Grade 12
• Critics claim that intelligence tests underestimate the intelligence of children who are in ill health or do not do well on tests
• IQ tests do not directly measure native ability, instead, they infer intelligence from what children already know
• Sternberg's Triarchic theory of Intelligence

  • Componential (Analytical) Element- the analytical aspect of intelligence
  • Experiential (Creative) Element- the insightful or creative aspect of intelligence, approaching novel task
  • Contextual (Practical) Element- It is the ability to size up a situation and decide what to do
• Language and literacy development in middle childhood


  • Children use increasingly precise verbs, similes, and metaphor
  • Rarely use passive voice
  • Understanding of rules of syntax becomes more sophisticated with age
  • Sentence structure continues to become more elaborate
  • Boys tend to use more controlling statements, negative interruptions, and competitive statements
  • Girls phrase their remarks in a more tentative, conciliatory way and more polite and cooperative
• Self-efficacy


  An individual's belief that they can execute
• Doing well in school increases self-efficacy
• Girls tend to do better in school than boys
• Children who are disliked by their peers tend to do poorly in school
• Many educators argue that smaller classes benefit students
• Special needs in middle childhood

  • Intellectual Disability - significantly subnormal cognitive functioning
  • Learning Disabilities - difficulty in learning that involves understanding or using spoken or written language, and the difficulty can appear in listening, thinking, reading, writing, and spelling
  • Dyslexia - severe impairment in the ability to read and spell
  • Dysgraphia - difficulty in handwriting
  • Dyscalculia - developmental arithmetic disorder
  • ADHD - most common mental disorder in childhood
  • Autism Spectrum Disorder - Pervasive Developmental Disorder
  • Autistic Disorder - severe developmental ASD that has onset during the first 3 years of life
  • Asperger Syndrome - mild ASD
• Creativity


  The ability to see things in a new light, produce something never seen before or discover problems others fail to recognize and find new and unusual solutions
• Convergent Thinking


  Seeks a single correct answer
• Divergent Thinking


  Involves coming up with a wide array of fresh possibilities
• Industry vs. Inferiority


  Erikson's fourth stage of psychosocial development, in which children must learn the productive skills their culture requires or else face feelings of inferiority
• Representational systems


  Broad, inclusive self-concept that integrate various aspects of the self