CHAPTER 6

• Body growth in middle childhood

  • Growth rate slows down
  • Height and weight increase steadily
  • Gross and fine motor performance improve as strength, coordination, balance and flexibility increase
  • Physical activity is important for healthy growth and development
• Motor development in middle childhood

  1. Growth spurts occur around age six and age ten

  2. New synapses develop

  3. Myelination continues

  4. Increased coordination between the frontal lobes and other brain areas contributes to improved attention and more organised and complex thinking
• Piaget's concrete operational stage


  • Children can think LOGICALLY if the problem or object they are thinking about is real/concrete
  • Become capable of decentration and conservation
  • Learn important mathematical principles like identity, reversibility, and compensation
• Why older children can learn faster and remember more than younger children

  • Changes in working memory capacity
  • Changes in memory strategies like rehearsal, organisation, and elaboration
  • Increased knowledge about memory and the world
• Siegler's 'rule assessment' approach

  1. Children of all ages use a variety of problem-solving strategies when faced with a problem

  2. As they get older, children use less adaptive strategies less, and more adaptive strategies more
• Other cognitive advances in middle childhood

  • Improvements in attention, planning, metacognition, language, and classification skills
• Effect of schooling on cognitive development

  Schooling has little effect on concrete operations, but improves logic, memory, metacognitive skills, and career opportunities
• Factors influencing school achievement

  • School characteristics like clear goals, good control, communication, high expectations, caring about overall well-being, strong leadership, teacher collaboration, and high parent involvement
  • Child characteristics like learning disabilities, malnutrition, stunting, FASD, beliefs about own abilities
  • Parenting practices like authoritative parenting that supports and encourages academic learning without being over controlling
• Problems in South African schooling

  • Large numbers of unqualified and under-trained teachers
  • Lack of resources and facilities in poor schools
  • High levels of violence, sexism and racism
  • The language of teaching and learning
• Authoritative parenting


  • Tends to be associated with good cognitive and social skills
  • Control of the child's behaviour relies increasingly on cooperation and a sharing of responsibility between parents and children (coregulation)
• Sibling relationships


  • Often ambivalent ('love-hate')
  • Direct influences like emotional support, caregiving services, and teaching
  • Younger siblings growing up with aggressive older siblings are more likely to develop problems
  • Indirect influences through parents' experiences and differential treatment
• Most individuals develop in families other than the idealised 'nuclear' one
• Why children may do worse in single-parent families

  • Less effective parenting
  • Economic hardship
  • Exposure to stress
• What can improve outcomes for children in single-parent families

  • Positive family relationships including authoritative parenting and cooperation/low conflict between parents
  • Adequate finances
  • Social support
• Aspects of peer relationships that become increasingly significant in middle childhood

  • Peer acceptance and popularity
  • Friendship
  • Bullying
• Peer acceptance and popularity

  • Studied using sociometric techniques
  • Popular children tend to be socially skilled, friendly and cooperative
  • Rejected children are often aggressive and disruptive
  • Neglected children are often passive and unassertive
  • Controversial children tend to combine characteristics of popular and rejected children
• Importance of peer acceptance

  • Peer rejection in childhood is associated with a greater likelihood of emotional and behavioural problems later in life
  • Explanations include family stress, temperament, and a negative reputation that becomes self-fulfilling
• Bases of friendship

  • Before age 8: common activity, similarity in observable characteristics
  • Age 8-10: mutual loyalty, respect, kindness, affection, psychological similarity
• Bullying

  • Repeated, intentional and organised acts of physical, verbal and/or relational aggression directed towards particular peers
  • Bullies act aggressively to dominate others, often due to exposure to violence, lack of parental limits, and a strong need to feel powerful
  • Victims tend to be anxious, insecure, lacking in self-esteem, and socially isolated
  • Effects include increased risk of depression, low self-esteem, and criminal behaviour for bullies
• The whole school approach has led to important reductions in bullying, but is not always effective
• Kohlberg's theory of moral development

  • Level 1 (Preconventional): Personal consequences determine right/wrong
  • Level 2 (Conventional): Moral reasoning guided by family, society, or authority expectations
• Criticisms of Kohlberg's theory include it being too rigid, having gender bias, and failing to explain the relationship between moral reasoning and behaviour
• Changes in self-concept in middle childhood


  • Children describe themselves in more general, stable traits and make social comparisons
  • Self-esteem drops to more realistic levels and self-evaluations become more differentiated and integrated
• How parents can promote self-esteem

  • Acceptance, clearly defined limits, and respect for individuality
  • Experiences that develop a sense of competence and self-worth as well as sensitivity to others' needs