DEVPSY Middle Childhood

• Body growth


  • Slow and steady
• Body structure


  • No dramatic changes, motor control and coordination
• Individual differences


  • Girls age 10-12 taller and mature faster than boys, experience adolescents' growth spurt earlier
• Brain development


  1. Increase in myelination and lateralization

  -More efficient processing of information

  - Higher cognitive functions

  - Enhanced self-regulation

  - Better able to integrate past/present experiences

  - Improved problem, memory, language skills
• 
  

  Brain development affects learning; learning affects brain structures
• Emotions, stress, lack of sleep/exercise

  Negatively affect brain development and learning
• Motor development


  • Gross motor skills developed; fine motor skills improve
  • Hand-eye coordination improves, hand-writing and drawing
  • Boys: upper body strength
  • Girls: more agile
  • Athletic abilities seen as measure of competence
• Recess


  Children's brain needs recess, 8-9 (over 15 minutes/day recess)
• Advantages of recess


  • Better behavior, better academic success
  • Promotes socialization with peers
• Rough-and-tumble play


  Vigorous play involving wrestling, hitting, and chasing, often accompanied by laughing and screaming
• Concrete operational child


  • Better understanding than preoperational
  • Improves in spatial concepts, causality, categorization, inductive and deductive reasoning, conservation, and number
• Advances in selected cognitive abilities during middle childhood

  • Spatial thinking - uses maps and estimate distances
  • Cause-and-effect - physical attributes of objects will affect the result
  • Categorization - sort objects into categories
  • Seriation - arrange group of sticks in order, shortest to longest
  • Inductive and deductive reasoning - inductive conclusions are less certain than deductive conclusions
  • Conservation - 1 kg of clay and 1 kg of sausage weigh the same
  • Number and mathematics - can count, add and solve problems
• Cognitive advances (Piagetian)


  • Seriation - Ability to order items along a dimension
  • Transitive inferences - Understanding the relationship between two objects by knowing the relationship of the third object
  • Class inclusion (7-8) - Understanding of the relationship between a whole and its part
• Reasons why operational thinkers succeed at conservation task

  • Principle of identity
  • Principle of reversibility
  • Decentering
• Number


  • Computational estimation
  • Numerosity estimation
  • Measurement estimation
• Executive function


  • Conscious control of thoughts, emotions, and actions to accomplish goals or solve problems
• Development of prefrontal cortex

  • Planning, judgment, decision making, working memory, self-regulation
• Pruning


  • Faster reaction time
• Selective attention


  • The ability to deliberately direct one's attention and shut out distractions - may hinge on the executive skills of inhibitory control, the voluntary suppression of unwanted responses
• Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences


  Each person has several distinct forms of intelligence
• Culture-free tests


  Possible to design with no culturally linked content
• Culture-fair tests


  Deal with experiences common to various cultures, in an attempt to avoid cultural bias
• Eight intelligences (Gardner)


  • Linguistic - use and understand words and nuances of meaning
  • Logical-mathematical - manipulate numbers and solve logical problems
  • Spatial - find one's way around in an environment; judge relationships between objects in space
  • Musical - perceive and create patterns of pitch and rhythm
  • Bodily-kinesthetic - move with precision
  • Interpersonal - understand and communicate with others
  • Intrapersonal - understand the self
  • Naturalist - distinguish species and their characteristics
• Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence

  • Componential element - analytic aspect of intelligence; how efficient people to process information: solve problems, monitor solutions and evaluate results
  • Experiential element - insightful or creative; approach novel or familiar tasks: think originally
  • Contextual element - practical; deal with their environment. Size up a situation and decide what to do
• Tacit knowledge


  Information that is not formally taught or openly expressed but is necessary to get ahead
• Kaufman assessment battery for children (K-ABC-II)


  Tests based on Vygotsky's theory that emphasize potential rather than past learning
• Dynamic tests


  Non-traditional individual intelligence test designed to provide fair assessments of minority children and children with disabilities
• Influences on school achievement

  • Self-efficacy beliefs
  • Gender
  • Parenting practices
  • Socioeconomic status
  • Peer acceptance
  • Class size
• Intellectual disability


  Significantly subnormal cognitive functioning. It is indicated by an IQ of about 70 or less, coupled with a deficiency in age-appropriate adaptive behavior
• Dyslexia


  Developmental disorder in which reading achievement is substantially lower than predicted by IQ or age. Dyslexia is the most commonly diagnosed of a large number of learning disabilities (LDs)
• Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)


  Syndrome characterized by persistent inattention and distractibility, impulsivity, low tolerance for frustration, and inappropriate overactivity
• Inclusion programs


  Programs in which children with special needs are included in the regular classroom
• Giftedness


  IQ or 130 higher; More of a nature than nurture
• Enrichment programs


  Educating the gifted that broaden and deepen knowledge and skills through extra activities, projects, field trips, or mentoring
• Acceleration programs


  Educating the gifted that move them through the curriculum at an unusually rapid pace
• Self-concept


  Ideal self and real self
• Representational systems (age 7-8)

  • Broad, inclusive self-concepts that integrate various aspects of the self. Good in certain things, bad in the others
• Industry vs. inferiority


  Fourth stage of psychosocial development, in which children must learn the productive skills their culture requires or else face feelings of inferiority
• Coregulation


  Transitional stage in the control of behavior in which parents exercise general supervision and children exercise moment-to-moment self-regulation. Uses inductive techniques
• Adjusting to divorce


  • Stressful for children
  • May not fully understand what is happening
  • Relationship with the noncustodial parent may suffer
  • Remarriage or second divorce can increase stress
  • Children do better with joint custody (living part time with both parents)