MIDDLE AND LATE CHILDHOOD

• Body growth and change

  slow, consistent growth
• Proportional changes 


  most pronounced physical changes in middle and late childhood
• Brain


  total brain volume stabilizes by the end of late childhood
• Prefrontal cortex


  continue to increase during mid to late childhood
• Advances in the prefrontal cortex


  children's improved attention, reasoning, cognitive control
• Cortical thickness


  thickness of the cerebral cortex
• Physical change @ 7


  hands have become steadier
• Physical change @ 8 - 10


  the hands can be used independently with more ease and precision
• Physical changes @ 10 -12 


  children begin to show manipulative skills similar to the abilities of adults
• Aerobic exercise


  benefit's speed, attention, memory, effortful, goal-directed thinking, behavior, creativity
• Sustained physical activity


  improves children's attention, executive function, and academic achievement
• Screen time - low activity, obesity, worse sleep patterns in children
• Accidents and injuries


  leading cause of death during middle and late childhood
• Overweight 


  increasingly prevalent health problem in children
• Leukemia - most common cancer in children
• Learning disabilities


  difficulty in learning that involves understanding or using spoken or written language and can also appear in listening, thinking, reading, writing, and spelling
• Learning disabilities 


  difficulties integrating information from multiple brain regions or subtle impairments in brain structures and functions
• Dyslexia


  severe impairment in their ability to read and spell
• Dysgraphia


  involves difficulty in handwriting
• Dyscalculia


  difficulty in math computation
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) - children diagnosed have an increased risk of lower academic achievement, problematic peer relations, school dropout, adolescent pregnancy, substance use problems, and antisocial behavior
• Emotional and behavioral disorders


  consists of serious, persistent problems that involve relationship, aggression, depression, and fears
• Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD or Pervasive Developmental Disorders) - problems in social interaction, in verbal and nonverbal communication, and in repetitive behaviors
• ASD 


  show atypical responses to sensory experiences
• Autistic disorder 


  has its onset in the first three years of life and includes deficiencies in social relationships, abnormalities in communication, restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior
• Asperger syndrome - relative mild autism spectrum disorder in which the child has relative good verbal language skills, milder nonverbal language problems, and a restricted range of interests and relationships
• ASD


  deficits in cognitive processing of information ; intellectual disability in others show average of above-average intelligence
• Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory


  preschool child's thought is preoperational ; they can form stable concepts but their thinking is flawed be egocentrism and magical belief system
• Concrete Operational Stage 


  lasts from 7 - 11 yrs old ; children can perform concrete operations and can reason logically
• Operations 


  mental actions that are reversible
• Concrete Operations 


  operations that are applied to real, concrete objects
• Concrete operational stage 


  ability to classify or divide things into different sets or subsets and to consider their interrelationships
• Information Processing 


  children dramatically improve their ability to sustain and control attention ; they pay more attention to task- relevant stimuli
• Information Processing


  changes involve memory, thinking, metacognition, and executive function
• Long-term memory - relatively permanent and unlimited type of memory ; children's increased knowledge and their use of strategies
• Working memory


  mental "workbench" ; where individuals manipulate and assemble information when they make decisions
• Working memory 


  bringing information to mind and mentally working with or updating it
• Thinking

  three important aspects - executive function, critical thinking, and creative thinking
• Self-control / inhibition - allow them to concentrate and persist on learning task to inhibit their tendencies to repeat incorrect responses
• Executive function 


  Self-control/ inhibition, Working memory, Flexibility