middle and late childhood

• Faster and more efficient information processing


  • Increased ability to ignore distractions
• Gray matter


  Linked with IQ
• Changes in gray matter volume

  1. Increases pre-puberty

  2. Declines post-puberty
• Decline in gray matter density

  • Balanced by increase in white matter
• Gray matter volume peaks

  1 to 2 years earlier in girls than boys
• Motor skills


  • Continue to improve in middle childhood
• Games children play during recess


  • Physically active games (running) for boys
  • Verbal/counting games (jump rope, hopscotch) for girls
• Rough-and-tumble play


  Wrestling, kicking, tumbling, grappling, and chasing, accompanied by laughing and screaming
• Needs of 6-9 year olds

  • More flexible rules
  • Shorter instruction time
  • More free time to practice
• Older children


  • Able to process instruction and learn team strategies
• Body image


  How one believes one looks
• Body image becomes important early in middle childhood

  Especially for girls, which could lead to eating disorders during adolescence
• Playing with unrealistic dolls like Barbie


  May influence body image
• Concrete operations stage


  Children can now think logically because they can take multiple aspects of situations into account, but their thinking is still limited to real situations in the here and now
• Spatial concepts


  • Allows to interpret maps and navigate environment
• Causality


  • Makes judgement about cause and effects
• Categorization


  • Seriation
  • Transitive inferences/transivity
  • Class inclusion
• Inductive reasoning


  Making observations about particular members and drawing conclusions about the class as a whole
• Deductive reasoning


  Starting with a general statement about a class and applying it to particular members
• Conservation


  • Principle of identity
  • Principle of reversibility
  • Decentering
• Language development


  • Use of precise verbs, simile and metaphor
  • Rarely use passive voice
  • More sophisticated understanding of syntax
  • More elaborate sentence structure
• Language differences between boys and girls

  • Boys use more controlling statements, negative interruptions, and competitive statements
  • Girls phrase remarks in a more tentative, conciliatory way and are more polite and cooperative
• Self-efficacy


  An individual's belief that they can execute behaviors necessary to attain specific performance
• 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