Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood

1
Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle
Childhood
2
Body Growth

• 2 to 3 inches in height
• 5 pounds in weight each year
• girls are slightly shorter than boys from 6 to 8
  then trend reverses
• girls have slightly more body fat
• lowest portion of body growing the fastest during
  this time frame
• between 6 and 12 years, all 20 primary teeth are
  replaced with permanent teeth

3
Health Problems

• common vision problem-myopia-nearsightedness
  nearly 25 children affected
• Myopia is affected by heredity ad experience
• less ear infections-Eustachian tube becomes
  longer and narrower
• malnutrition-prolonged affects can cause physical
  growth problems, low test scores, poor motor
  coordination, inattention and distractibility

4
Obesity

• About 25 of American children
• greater than 20 over average body weight based
  on age, sex and physical build of child
• Causes
• genetics
• low-cost, high fat foods, and family stress
• food as a reward system
• lack of physical activity

5
Obesity

• children that are obese have lower self-esteem,
  report feeling more depressed and display more
  behavioral problems than their peers
• There is an increase in type II diabetes in
  children in recent years
• Treatment for obesity should be a family program
  and focus on changing behaviors

6
Bedwetting

• Nocturnal enuresis -bedwetting that occurs during
  the night
• most cases cause is failure of muscular responses
  that inhibit urination or hormonal imbalance that
  permits too much urine to accumulate during the
  night
• treatment-urine alarm special pants (underwear)

7
Illnesses

• higher range of illnesses during the first 2
  years of elementary school exposure to more sick
  children and immune system is still developing
• Asthma-most frequent cause of school absence
• boys, African American children and children that
  were LBW, smoking parents, parents that have had
  asthma and children that live in poverty have the
  greatest risk

8
Injuries

• Common in middle childhood
• auto and bicycle accidents very common
• school-based safety programs a must at this age
• be careful of toy related injuries

9
Motor Development and Play

• running, jumping, hopping, and ball skills more
  refined
• fine motor skills improve-writing (starts off
  larger ad gradually decreases in size)
• drawings show gains in organization, detail ad
  representation of depth
• games with rules are more common-children have a
  better concept of fairness, and justice
• PE classes very important-builds self esteem, and
  physical activity

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COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

• Piagets Concrete Operational Stage
• 7 to 11 years
• thought process is more logical, flexible and
  organized that in early childhood

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Conservation

• children can conserve at this stage-one of the
  most important developments
• clear evidence of operations-mental actions that
  obey logical rules
• Decentration-focus on several aspects of problem
  at once and relate to them
• Reversibility-the ability to mentally go through
  the series of steps in a problem and then reverse
  the direction returning to the starting point

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Hierarchical Classification

• now can group objects into hierarchies of classes
  and subclasses
• collections are common in middle childhood
• Seriation-order items in length and weight and
  height
• Transitive inference-ability to perform seriation
  mentally

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Spatial Reasoning

• 7 to 8 years-mental rotations-align selfs frame
  to match that of a person in a different
  orientation identity left and right for
  positions that they do not occupy
• 8 to 10 years-can give clear, well-organized
  directions for how to get from one place to
  another using mental walk strategies.

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Limitations of Concrete Operational Thought

• Children still need concrete information for the
  most part
• abstract concepts are still difficult
• Horizontal decalage-conservation problems in
  certain ordernumber first than length than mass
  than liquid