Cognitive Dev Middle

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Cognitive Dev Middle Late Childhood

• Lecture 13
• C6035 Human Development

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Cognition

• Piagets Theory - preschool childs thought is
  preoperational which involves formation of stable
  concepts, emergence of mental reasoning,
  prominence of egocentrism, construction of
  magical belief systems
• Concrete Operational Thought - mental operations
  that allow children to do mentally what they had
  done physically before - mental actions that are
  reversible allow child to coordinate several
  characteristics rather than focus on single
  property of object

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Task of Concrete Operational Thought

• A task of concrete operational thought is
  seriation, which involves ordering of stimuli
  along a quantitative dimension (such as length)
• Another aspect is transitivity involving the
  ability to combine logically different relations
  to understand certain conclusions

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Piaget and Education

• In teaching, applications of Piagetian thought
  would take constructivist approach emphasizing
  children learn best when active seeking
  solutions for themselves
• Other strategies include
• facilitating rather direct learning
• considering childs knowledge level of thinking
• using ongoing assessment
• promoting students intellectual health
• classroom is setting of exploration discovery

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Evaluating Piagets Theory

• Criticisms about his theory concern estimates of
  childrens competence as many believe that
  cognitive abilities emerge earlier than Piaget
  thought
• Piaget conceived of stages, but it is noted that
  some concrete operational concepts do not appear
  in synchrony
• Training children to reason at higher levels is
  possible, but Piaget found such training as
  ineffectual and superficial
• Culture education exert stronger influences on
  childrens development than Piaget believed

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Information Processing Memory

• Information Processing - Among the highlights of
  changes in information processing during middle
  and late childhood are improvements in memory,
  schemas, scripts, scientific thinking
• Memory - While short-term memory increases
  considerably during early childhood, after age of
  7 it does not show as much an increase
• Long-term memory increases with age during middle
  and late childhood

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Strategies to Improve Childrens Memory

• encouraging close attention minimize
  distraction
• motivating remember by understanding it, rather
  than rotely memorizing it
• helping organize what they put into memory
• helping learn how to take good notes
• giving opportunities to practice PQ4R method
  (Preview, Question, Read, Recite Review)
• giving mnemonic strategies - use of specific
  memory aids for remembering information
• encouraging spread out consolidate learning
• getting them to ask themselves questions

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Teaching Strategies for this Age Group

• Cognitive Monitoring - process of taking stock of
  what you are currently doing, what you will do
  next, how effectively mental activity is
  unfolding
• Reciprocal Teaching - instructional procedure
  used by Brown Palincsar requiring students take
  turns in leading group in use of strategies for
  comprehending remembering text content that
  teacher models for class

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Cognitive Concepts for this Age Group

• Schemas - come from prior encounters with
  environment influence way children encode, make
  inferences about retrieve information
• Script - is schema for an event. Childrens
  scripts appear perhaps as early as first year,
  but by age 4 their scripts become quite
  sophisticated
• Critical Thinking - involves grasping deeper
  meaning of ideas, keeping an open mind about
  different approaches perspectives, deciding
  for oneself what to believe or do.

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Intelligence

• Unlike such characteristics as height, weight,
  and age, intelligence cannot be directly measured
• You can evaluate students intelligence only
  indirectly
• One definition of intelligence is a verbal
  ability, problem-solving skill ability to adapt
  to learn from lifes everyday experiences

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The Binet Tests

• In 1904, the French Ministry of Education asked
  psychologist Alfred Binet to devise method of
  identifying children who were unable to learn in
  school
• Binet developed the concept of Mental Age (MA)
  individuals level of metal development relative
  to others
• In 1912, William Stern created the concept of
  intelligence quotient (IQ), which is mental age,
  MA, divided by chronological age, CA, times 100

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The Binet Tests

• The Binet test has been revised to incorporate
  advances in understanding of intelligence and
  intelligence tests. These revisions are called
  the Stanford-Binet tests
• A normal distribution is symmetrical, with a
  majority of the scores falling in middle of the
  possible range of scores and few scores appearing
  toward the extremes of a range (the bell curve)

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Sternbergs Triarchic Theory

• Intelligence comes in three forms
• Analytical involving ability to analyze,
  evaluate, compare contrast
• Creative consisting of ability to create,
  design, invent, originate imagine
• Practical ability to use, apply, implement put
  into practice

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Gardners Frames of Mind

• Seven types of intelligence
• verbal skills
• mathematical skills
• ability to spatially analyze the world
• kinesthetic skills
• interpersonal skills
• intrapersonal skills
• musical skills
• Each of the seven involves unique cognitive
  skills shows up in exaggerated way in both
  gifted idiot savants

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Ethnicity and Culture

• In the U.S. - children from African-American
  Latino families score below children from White
  families on standardized intelligence tests
• Yet, estimates are that 15-25 of all
  African-American schoolchildren score higher than
  half of all White schoolchildren
• Consensus is that these differences are based on
  environment over heredity
• Between 1977 1996, as African-Americans gained
  more educational opportunities, gap between their
  SAT scores and those of their White counterparts
  shrank 23

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Creativity

• Ability to think about something in novel
  unusual ways to come up with unique solutions
  to problems
• J.P. Guilford distinguished between
• Convergent thinking produces one correct answer
  is characteristic of kind of thinking required
  on conventional intelligence tests
• Divergent thinking produces many different
  answers to same question is more characteristic
  of creativity

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Language Development

• Vocabulary and Grammar - During middle and late
  childhood, children become less tied to actions
  and perceptual dimensions associated with words
  become more analytical in their approach to
  language
• The increasing ability of elementary school
  children to analyze words helps them understand
  words that have no direct relation to their
  personal experiences

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Reading

• Whole-language approach reading instruction
  should parallel childrens natural language
  learning reading materials should be whole
  meaningful
• Basic-skills-and-phonetics reading instruction
  should teach phonetics its basic rules for
  translating written symbols into sounds
• Each reading instruction should involve
  simplified materials
• Researchers have not been able to document
  consistently that one approach is better than
  other, but some experts believe that combination
  of both approaches should be followed

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Bilingualism

• Aims to teach academic subjects to immigrant
  children in their native languages (most often
  Spanish) while slowly simultaneously adding
  English instruction
• Proponents argue that teaching immigrants in
  native language values their family and community
  culture, but by contrast, critics stress that
  bilingual education harms immigrant children by
  failing to instruct them adequately in English,
  which will leave them unprepared for workplace
• There is no evidence that children's use of their
  native language should be restricted because it
  might interfere with learning a second language

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Bilingualism

• The United States is one of few countries in the
  world in which most students graduate from high
  school knowing only their own language
• Childrens ability to pronounce a second language
  with an accent decreases with age, with an
  especially sharp decline occurring after age of
  about 10 to 12
• Adolescents can become competent in a second
  language, but this is a more difficult task than
  learning as a child

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Achievement

• Need for Achievement - Some are highly motivated
  to succeed spend much effort striving to excel
  - Others are not as motivated to succeed dont
  work as hard
• Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
• Intrinsic internal desire to be competent to
  do something for its own sake
• Extrinsic influence of external rewards
  punishments
• Some of most achievement-oriented children are
  those who have a high personal standard for
  achievement but who are also highly competitive

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Mastery Orientation vs Helpless Performance
Orientations

• Mastery orientation task-oriented instead of
  focusing on ability, concerned about learning
  strategies process of achievement rather than
  outcomes
• Helpless orientation trapped by experience of
  difficulty attribute difficulty to lack of
  ability
• Performance orientation concerned with
  achievement outcome winning is what matters
  happiness is thought to result from winning

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Goal Setting, Planning, and Self-Regulation

• Performance goals likely are established in
  elementary school years become increasingly
  common in adolescence
• Self-regulation self-generation self-monitoring
  of thoughts, feelings behaviors to reach a goal
  
• Researchers have found that high-achieving
  students often engage in self-regulatory
  activities, such as setting specific learning
  goals, self-monitoring their learning
  systematically evaluating their progress

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Ethnicity

• Diversity that exists among ethnic minority
  children evident in their achievement
• Achievement of ethnic minority students has been
  interpreted as deficits by middle-socioeconomic-st
  atus White standards, when they simply are
  culturally different distinct
• A special challenge for many ethnic minority
  students, especially those living in poverty, is
  dealing with racial prejudice, conflict between
  the values of their group and those of the
  majority lack of high-achieving adults in their
  cultural group who can serve as positive role
  models

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Culture

• In past decade poor performance of American
  children in math and science has become well
  publicized.
• Harold Stevensons research explores reasons for
  poor performance of American children compared to
  those of other nations, especially Asian
• He found Asian teachers spent more time teaching
  math than did American teachers Asian students
  were in school an average of 240 days a year,
  compared with 178 in U.S.
• American parents had much lower expectations for
  their childrens education achievement than did
  Asian parents

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Children and Computers

• Positive Influences of Computers on Children
• usefulness as a personal tutor
• functions as a multipurpose tool
• motivational and social effects
• Computer-assisted instruction uses computer to
• individualize instruction
• present information
• give students practice
• assess their level of understanding
• provide additional instruction if needed

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Negative Influences of Computers on Children

• Skeptics worry computers will
• Bring a much greater regimentation
  homogenization of classroom learning experiences
• Ultimately increase inequality in educational
  outcomes - School funding in middle-class
  neighborhoods is usually better than in
  low-income areas
• Inadvertently inappropriately shape curriculum
  in direction of science math because these
  areas are more easily computerized

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Classroom Recommendations for Technology

• Make judgments about whether technology is age
  appropriate, individually appropriate
  culturally appropriate
• Recognize technology can enhance childrens
  cognitive social skills
• Integrate appropriate technology into regular
  learning environment
• Promote equitable access to technology for all
  children
• Teachers parents should advocate for more
  appropriate technology to all children
• Recognize potentials of technology are
  far-reaching ever-changing