Development Through the Lifespan 2nd edition Laura E' Berk

1
Development Through the Lifespan 2nd edition
Laura E. Berk

• Chapter 9

Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle
Childhood
PowerPoint Presentations Produced by
Joe Rizzo - Professor of Behavioral Sciences Rick
Lizotte - Curriculum Developer Felix Rizvanov -
Instructional Designer
Northern Essex Community College
2
Chapter 9Physical and Cognitive Development in
Middle Childhood

• Development Through the Lifespan 2nd edition Berk

3
BODY GROWTH
Figure 9.1

• Add 2 to 3 inches in height and 5 pounds each
  year
• Girls slightly shorter and lighter than boys at
  ages 6 to 8 by age 9 this trend is reversed.
• Girls have more body fat and boys more muscle.
• After 8, girls accumulate fat at a faster rate.

Height
Weight
4
BODY GROWTH

• Bones lengthen and broaden ligaments not firmly
  attached
• From 6 to 12, primary teeth are replaced with
  permanent.

5
COMMON HEALTH PROBLEMS

• Poverty is a predictor of ill health.
• Myopia (nearsightedness) common
• Prolonged malnutrition retards physical growth
  and intelligence.
• Poor coordination
• Inattention and distractibility

6
Obesity

• Obesity
• Greater than 20 percent increase over average
  body weight
• 25 percent of American children suffer from
  obesity.
• Obese children are at risk for health problems.

7
Causes of Obesity

• Overweight parents
• Identical twins more likely than fraternal twins
• Low-SES more likely to be overweight
• Parents use food as a reward and to relieve
  anxiety.
• More cued to external stimuli
• Less active
• TV time correlated with obesity

8
Psychological Consequences of Obesity

• Less accepted
• Low self-esteem, depressed, and more behavior
  problems
• Difficult to treat as it is a family disorder.
• Effective interventions are family based and
  focus on changing behaviors.

9
Bedwetting Nocturnal enuresis

• Failure of muscular responses that inhibit
  urination
• Hormonal imbalance permits urine to accumulate.
• Treated by urine alarm
• Wakes the child at sign of dampness
• Conditioning principles

10
Illnesses

• Higher rate of illness in first 2 years of
  elementary school
• Immune system is still developing.
• Asthma
• Most frequent cause of absence and
  hospitalization
• Increased by 40 over the last decade.
• Greatest risk for
• Boys
• African Americans
• Those with low birth weight
• Those with parents who smoke
• Poor

11
Unintentional Injuries

• Increase over middle childhood into adolescence
• Higher rate for boys
• Mostly auto and bicycle collisions
• Risk takers parents
• Do not act safely
• Use punitive or inconsistent discipline
• School-based safety programs help.

Figure 9.3
12
MOTOR DEVELOPMENT AND PLAY

• Gross Motor Development
• Motor skills improve in flexibility, balance,
  agility, and force.
• Improvement in reaction time

13
Fine Motor Development

• Improves steadily
• Girls ahead in fine motor-balance and agility
• Boys outperform girls on other gross motor tasks.
  
• Environment plays a large role in motor
  development.

14
Fine Motor Development (cont.)

• Gains in writing and drawing

Figure 9.4
15
Organized Games With Rules

• Gains in perspective allow understanding of
  several players.
• Organized games help concepts of fairness.
• Adult-structured athletics may impede development.

16
Physical Education

• Regularly scheduled exercise and play
• Average is only 20 minutes a week.
• National children and youth fitness study
• 2/3 of 10- to 12-year-old boys
• 1/2 of 10- to 12-year-old girls meet fitness
  standards
• Informal games and individual exercise most
  likely to last into later years.

17
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
18
PIAGET'S THEORYCONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

• 7 to 11 years
• Thought is more logical, flexible, and organized.

19
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (cont.)

• Conservation
• Clear evidence of operations
• Mental actions that obey logical rules
• Decentration
• Focus on several aspects of a problem at once
• Reversibility
• Mentally go through steps in a problem and then
  return to the starting point

20
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (cont.)

• Hierarchical classification
• Group objects into hierarchies
• Collections common
• Seriation
• Order items by dimension
• Transitive inference
• Ability to perform seriation mentally

21
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (cont.)

• Spatial Reasoning
• More accurate understanding of space
• 7 and 8, perform mental rotations
• Identify left and right for positions they do
  not occupy
• 8 to 10, give clear directions using "mental
  walk

22
Limitations of Concrete Operational Thought

• Think logically only when dealing with concrete
  information
• Horizontal décalage
• Gradual development occurs within stage
• Conservation of number, length, mass, and liquid
  grasped in this order

23
Research on Concrete Operational Thought

• Cultural and school practices impact mastery.
• To master conservation etc., must take part in
  activities that promote thinking.
• School promotes mastery of tasks.
• Logic is often socially generated .

24
Information-Processing View

• Operational thinking due to gains in processing
  capacity
• Schemes repeated
• Demand less attention, become automatic more
  working memory space results
• Coordinate specific skills into logical principle

25
INFORMATION PROCESSING

• Brain development contributes to two changes in
  processing.
• Increase in information-processing capacity
• Gains in cognitive inhibition
• Ability to resist interference

26
Attention

• Attention more selective, adaptable, and planned
• Flexibly adjust attention
• Scan details for similarities and differences
  more thoroughly
• Make decisions in an orderly fashion
• Learning and behavior problems can be ADHD.

27
Memory Strategies

• Deliberate mental activities to store and retain
  information
• Rehearsal
• Repeating information over and over again
• Organization
• Grouping together related items
• Elaboration
• Creating a relation between two or more items
• Organization and elaboration combine into
  meaningful chunks.

28
Knowledge Base and Memory Performance

• Increasingly elaborate, hierarchically structured
  networks
• Knowledge makes new information more meaningful
  and familiar.

29
Culture and Memory Strategies

• Non-Western cultures with no formal schooling do
  not use memory strategies.
• Western children use memory strategies.
• Do not refine other techniques
• Memory strategies are a product of demands and
  culture.

30
School-Age Child's Theory of Mind

• School-age children have an improved ability to
  reflect.
• Older children know doing well depends on focus.
• Studying least-known for later recall
• Take account of interactions among variables

31
Cognitive Self-regulation

• Continuously monitoring progress toward goal
• Not well developed until adolescence predicts
  academic success
• Providing instructions to monitor progress has
  impact.
• Self-regulatory skills develop confidence.

32
Application to Academic Learning

• Reading
• Whole-language approach
• Parallels children's natural language
• Basic-skills approach
• Phonics
• Rules for translating written symbols into
  sounds.
• Neither approach is proven superior some believe
  a mixture is best.

33
Application to Academic Learning(cont.)

• Mathematics
• Understand multiplication as repeated addition
• School may not make use of children's grasp of
  number concepts.
• Blend of drill and conceptual understanding works
  best.

34
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

• By 6, IQ becomes more stable and correlates with
  academic achievement.
• Intelligence tests provide score (IQ),
  representing general intelligence.
• Intelligence is many capacities, not all on
  tests.
• Factor analysis determines sets of items that
  correlate.

35
Intelligence Tests

• Group administered tests
• Large numbers tested at once
• Individually administered tests
• Demand considerable training to administer

36
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale

• For individuals between 2 years and adulthood
• Verbal and quantitative factors
• Culturally loaded
• Fact-oriented
• Spatial reasoning factor
• Tests ability to see complex relationships and is
  less culture biased

37
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III

• WISC-III for 6- through 16-year-olds
• Assesses general intelligence
• Verbal and performance
• Non-English-speaking and children with speech
  disorders can demonstrate intellectual strengths.

38
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III
Figure 9.6
39
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III
Figure 9.6
40
RECENT ADVANCES IN DEFINING INTELLIGENCE

• Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence
• Three interacting subtheories
• Componential subtheory
• Information-processing skills that underlie
  intelligence
• Experiential subtheory
• Processing skill
• Contextual subtheory
• Adapting information-processing skills

Figure 9.7
41
Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

• Eight independent intelligences
• Emphasizes education required to transform raw
  potential
• Helpful to understand children's special talents

Table 9.1
42
Explaining Individual and Group Differences in IQ

• American black children on average score 15
  points below American white average.
• 9 point gap between middle-SES and low-SES
• Nature versus Nurture?
• Identical twins have more similar IQs than
  fraternal twins.
• About half the differences among children in IQ
  can be traced to their genetic makeup.
• Research indicates poverty depresses
  intelligence.

43
Cultural Influences

• Language Customs
• Subcultures often foster language skills that do
  not fit the expectations of testing.
• Familiarity with Test Content

44
Reducing Cultural Bias in Intelligence Tests

• IQ scores can underestimate intelligence of
  children of other cultures.
• Dynamic testing
• Introducing teaching into testing situation
  minorities do better.
• Intelligence tests are useful if interpreted in
  culturally-sensitive ways.

45
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

• Vocabulary
• Recognition vocabulary reaches about 40,000 words
  by the end of school years.
• Grasp double meanings of some words,
  understanding of metaphors and puns

46
Grammar

• Passive voice expands during middle childhood.
• Infinitive phrases are understood.
• Grammatical distinctions improved by gains in
  analysis
• Improvements in pragmatics

47
Learning Two Languages

• 6 million American children speak another
  language at home.
• Bilinguals do better on tests of
• Selective attention
• Analytical reasoning
• Concept formation
• Cognitive flexibility
• Ability to reflect on language

48
Bilingual Education

• Critics claim time spent communicating in native
  language detracts from English.
• Bilingual education
• Develops native language while fostering English
• Prevents semilingualism
• Inadequate proficiency in both languages

49
LEARNING IN SCHOOL

• Class size influences learning.
• Educational philosophies
• Traditional versus Open Classrooms
• Vygotsky
• Social origins of higher cognitive processes
• Inspire new educational themes

50
Children with Special Needs

• Mainstreaming
• Integrating pupils with learning difficulties
  into classrooms for part or all of the school day
• Resource room
• Special attention part of day
• Mildly mentally retarded
• IQ 55 70 problems with adaptive behavior
• Learning disabilities
• Learning disorders despite average or higher IQ
• Achievement differences for mainstreamed and
  those in self-contained classrooms is not great.

51
Gifted Children
Figure 9.8

• Exceptional intellectual strengths
• Divergent thinking
• Creativity
• Convergent thinking
• Correct answer to a problem
• Giftedness includes specialized talents.

52
Educating the Gifted

• Foster creativity and talent
• Multiple intelligence theory inspired model
  programs for all students.

53
How Well Educated Are America's Children?

• American children fare poorly when compared other
  industrialized nations.
• Families, schools, and society must work to
  upgrade American education.