Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood

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Cognitive Development inMiddle Childhood

• Chapter 12

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PIAGETS THEORY CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

• The concrete operational stage spans the years
  from 7 to 11 during this period thought is more
  logical, flexible, and organized than it was
  during early childhood.

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Conservation

• The ability to pass conservation tasks provides
  clear evidence of operationsmental actions that
  obey logical rules.
• Decentration is the ability to focus on several
  aspects of a problem at once and relate to them.
• Reversibility is the ability to mentally go
  through a series of steps in a problem and then
  reverse the direction, returning to the starting
  point.

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Classification

• By the end of middle childhood, children pass
  Piagets class inclusion problem.
• They can now group objects into hierarchies of
  classes and subclasses.
• Collections become common in middle childhood.

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Seriation

• Seriation is the ability to order items along a
  quantitative dimension, such as length or weight.
• Transitive inference is the ability to perform
  seriation mentally.

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Spatial Reasoning

• Piaget found that school-age children have a more
  accurate understanding of space than they had.
• Distance
• Middle childhood brings improved understanding of
  distance.
• By the early school years, children understand
  that a filled-up space has the same value as an
  empty space.
• Directions
• Between 7 and 8 years, children start to perform
  mental rotations, in which they align the selfs
  frame to match that of a person in a different
  orientation. As a result, they can identify left
  and right for positions they do not occupy.
• Around 8 to 10 years, children can give clear,
  well-organized directions for how to get from one
  place to another by using a mental walk
  strategy in which they imagine another persons
  movement along a route.

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Limitations of Concrete Operational Thought

• Children think in an organized, logical fashion
  only when dealing with concrete information that
  they can perceive directly.
• Their mental operations work poorly when applied
  to abstract ideas.
• Horizontal décalage is gradual development that
  occurs within a Piagetian stage. For example,
  children usually grasp conservation problems in a
  certain order first number then length, liquid,
  mass and finally weight.

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Evaluation of the Concrete Operational Stage

• Debate about this stage centers on whether
  development is a continuous improvement in
  logical skills or a discontinuous restructuring
  of childrens thinking.
• From early to middle childhood, children apply
  logical schemes to a much wider range of tasks.
  In the process, their thought seems to undergo
  qualitative change toward a more comprehensive
  grasp of the underlying principles of logical
  thought.
• Some blend of Piagetian and information
  processing ideas holds greatest promise for
  understanding cognitive development in middle
  childhood.

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INFORMATION PROCESSING

• Brain development contributes to two basic
  changes in information processing.
• Increase in information-processing capacity. A
  fairly rapid decline in time needed to process
  information occurs during middle childhood, with
  this decline trailing off around age 12.
• Gains in cognitive inhibition. Cognitive
  inhibitionthe ability to resist interference
  from irrelevant information makes great strides
  during middle childhood.

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Attention

• During middle childhood, attention becomes more
  controlled, adaptable, and planful.
• Selectivity and Adaptability
• Through the elementary years, children become
  better at deliberately attending to just those
  aspects of a situation that are relevant to task
  goals.
• Older children can flexibly adjust their
  attention to the momentary requirements of
  situations.
• Attention strategy development follows a
  predictable, four-step sequence
• Production deficiencypreschoolers fail to
  produce strategies when they could be helpful.
• Control deficiencyyoung elementary school
  children fail to control, or execute, strategies
  effectively.
• Utilization deficiencyslightly older children
  apply strategies consistently, but their
  performance does not improve.
• Effective strategy useby mid-elementary school
  years, children use strategies consistently, and
  performance improves.

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Memory Strategies

• Memory strategies are the deliberate mental
  activities we use to store and retain
  information.
• Rehearsal and Organization
• Rehearsal involves repeating information to
  oneself over and over again.
• Organization is grouping together related items.
• Memory strategies require time and effort to
  perfect. At first, control deficiencies are
  evident.
• Although younger school-age childrens use of
  multiple strategies has little impact on
  performancea utilization deficiencytheir
  tendency to experiment is adaptive.
• Older children organize more skillfully and use
  organization in a wider range of memory tasks.

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Memory Strategies cont.

• Elaboration
• Elaboration is the strategy of creating a
  relationship, or shared meaning, between two or
  more items that are not members of the same
  category. Children start to use this strategy by
  the end of middle childhood.
• Organization and elaboration combine items into
  meaningful chunks and permit children to retain
  more information.
• When children store a new item in long-term
  memory by linking it to information they already
  know, they can retrieve it easily by thinking of
  other items associated with it.

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The Knowledge Base and Memory Performance

• During middle childhood, children arrange the
  vast amount of information in their memories into
  increasingly elaborate, hierarchically structured
  networks.
• Knowing more about a particular topic makes new
  information more meaningful and familiar so it is
  easier to store and retrieve.
• Children who are expert in a particular area
  acquire knowledge more quickly and actively use
  what they know to add more.
• By the end of the school years, knowledge
  acquisition and use of memory strategies are
  intimately related and support one another.

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Culture, Schooling, and Memory Strategies

• A repeated finding of cross-cultural research is
  that people who have no formal schooling do not
  use or benefit from instruction in memory
  strategies.
• Western children get so much practice using
  memory strategies that they do not refine other
  techniques for remembering that rely on spatial
  location and arrangement of objects.
• Development of memory strategies is a product not
  just of a more competent information-processing
  system but also of task demands and cultural
  circumstances.

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The School-Age Childs Theory of Mind

• Childrens theory of mind a set of beliefs about
  mental activitiesbecomes more elaborate and
  refined during middle childhood. This awareness
  of cognitive processes is called metacognition.
• School-age children have an improved ability to
  reflect on their own mental life, which accounts
  for some of the advances in thinking and problem
  solving that take place at this time.

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The School-Age Childs Theory of Mind cont.

• Knowledge of Cognitive Capacities
• Unlike preschoolers, who view the mind as a
  passive container, older children regard it as an
  active, constructive agent capable of selecting
  and transforming information.
• Six- and 7-year-olds know that doing well on a
  task depends on focusing attention.
• They also grasp the interrelatedness of memory
  and understanding.

• Knowledge of Strategies
• School-age children are also aware that in
  studying material for later recall, it is helpful
  to devote most effort to items that you know
  least well.
• They can take account of interactions among
  variableshow age and motivation of the learner,
  effective use of strategies, and nature and
  difficulty of the task work together to affect
  cognitive performance.

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Cognitive Self-Regulation

• Cognitive self-regulation is the process of
  continuously monitoring progress toward a goal,
  checking outcomes, and redirecting unsuccessful
  efforts.
• Self-regulation is not well developed until
  adolescence, when it becomes a strong predictor
  of academic success.
• Parents and teachers can foster self-regulation
  by pointing out the special demands of tasks,
  encouraging the use of strategies, and
  emphasizing the value of self-correction.
• Children who acquire effective self-regulatory
  skills develop confidence in their own abilities.
• Learned helpless youngsters receive messages from
  parents and teachers that seriously undermine
  their academic self-esteem and self-regulatory
  skills.

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Applications of Information Processing to
Academic Learning

• Reading
• A whole language approach to beginning reading
  parallels childrens natural language learning
  and keeps reading materials whole and meaningful.
• A basic-skills approach emphasizes training in
  phonicsthe basic rules for translating written
  symbols into soundsand simplified reading
  materials.
• Research does not show clear-cut superiority for
  either of these approaches.

• Learning the basicsrelations between letters and
  soundsenables children to decode, or decipher,
  words they have never seen before. Research
  shows that phonological awarenessthe ability to
  segment, blend, and manipulate the sound
  structure of wordspredicts early reading
  success.
• If practice in basic skills is overemphasized,
  children may lose sight of the goal of
  readingunderstanding.
• As decoding and comprehension skills reach a high
  level of efficiency, older readers can become
  actively engaged with the text.

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Applications of Information Processing to
Academic Learning cont.

• Mathematics
• Over the early elementary school years, children
  acquire basic math facts through a combination of
  frequent practice and reasoning about number
  concepts.
• Research indicates that conceptual knowledge
  serves as a vital base for the development of
  accurate, efficient computation in middle
  childhood.
• In Asian countries, pupils receive a variety of
  supports for acquiring mathematical knowledge
  that are not broadly available in the United
  States.

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INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

• Around age 6, IQ becomes more stable and it
  correlates well with academic achievement.

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Defining and Measuring Intelligence

• Virtually all intelligence tests provide an
  overall score (the IQ), which is taken to
  represent general intelligence or reasoning
  ability, and an array of separate scores
  measuring specific mental abilities.
• Intelligence is a collection of many mental
  capacities, not all of which are included on
  currently available tests.
• The statistical technique called factor analysis
  determines which sets of items on an intelligence
  test correlate strongly with one another.

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Defining and Measuring Intelligence cont.

• Representative Intelligence Tests
• Group administered tests permit large numbers of
  pupils to be tested at once and require little
  training of teachers who give them.
• Individually administered tests demand
  considerable training and experience to give
  well.

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Defining and Measuring Intelligence cont.

• The StanfordBinet Intelligence Scale
• The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale is
  appropriate for individuals between 2 years of
  age and adulthood.
• The latest version measures both intelligence and
  four intellectual factors verbal reasoning,
  quantitative reasoning, abstract/visual
  reasoning, and short-term memory.
• The verbal and quantitative factors emphasize
  culturally loaded, fact-oriented information.
• The abstract/visual reasoning factor tests
  childrens ability to see complex relationships
  and is believed to be less culturally biased.

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Defining and Measuring Intelligence cont.

• The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for ChildrenIII
• The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for ChildrenIII
  (WISCIII) is appropriate for 6- through
  16-year-olds.
• The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of
  Intelligence-Revised (WPPSI-R) is appropriate for
  children 3 through 8.
• Both tests measure two broad intellectual
  factors verbal and performance scores. Each
  contains 6 subtests, yielding 12 separate scores
  in all.

• The Wechsler tests provided one of the first
  means through which non-English-speaking children
  and children with speech and language disorders
  could demonstrate their intellectual strengths.
• The Wechsler tests were the first to be
  standardized on samples representing the total
  population of the U. S., including ethnic
  minorities.

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Defining and Measuring Intelligence cont.

• Recent Developments in Defining Intelligence
• Some researchers conduct componential analyses of
  childrens IQ scores by looking for relationships
  between aspects of information processing and
  intelligence test scores.
• One disadvantage of the componential approach is
  that it regards intelligence as entirely due to
  causes within the child.

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Defining and Measuring Intelligence cont.

• Gardners Theory of Multiple Intelligences
• Identifies at least eight independent
  intelligences on the basis of distinct sets of
  processing operations that permit individuals to
  engage in a wide range of culturally valued
  activities.
• Gardner argues that each intelligence has a
  unique biological basis, a distinct course of
  development, and different expert performances.

• Cultural values and learning opportunities have a
  great deal to do with the extent to which a
  childs intellectual strengths are realized.
• Gardners theory has yet to be firmly grounded in
  research.
• Nevertheless, Gardners theory highlights several
  intelligences not measured by IQ scores, such as
  emotional intelligence.
• Gardners theory has been helpful in efforts to
  understand and nurture childrens special talents.

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Explaining Individual and Group Differences in IQ

• American black children score, on the average, 15
  IQ points below American white children, although
  this difference is shrinking.
• The gap between middle-SES and low-SES children
  is about 9 points.
• There is considerable variation within each
  ethnic and SES group.

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Explaining Individual and Group Differences in IQ
cont.

• Nature versus Nurture
• Identical twins have more similar IQ scores than
  do fraternal twins.
• On the basis of twin studies and other kinship
  information, current researchers estimate that
  about half the differences among children in IQ
  can be traced to their genetic makeup.
• Adoption research confirms the balanced position
  that both heredity and environment affect IQ
  scores.
• Research on black children adopted by well-off
  white homes during the first year of life
  indicates that poverty severely depresses the
  intelligence of large numbers of ethnic minority
  children.
• In addition, unique cultural values and practices
  do not prepare these children for the kinds of
  tasks that are sampled by intelligence tests and
  valued in school.

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Explaining Individual and Group Differences in IQ
cont.

• Cultural Influences
• Language Customs
• Ethnic minority subcultures often foster unique
  language skills that do not fit the expectations
  of most classrooms and testing situations.
• Anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath observed that
  black adults asked children very different kinds
  of questions than is typical in white middle-SES
  families.
• Children of Hispanic immigrants are taught to
  respect adult authority rather than express their
  own knowledge and opinions. Yet teachers may
  equate this silence with having a negative
  attitude toward learning.
• Familiarity with Test Content
• Evidence indicates that the amount of time a
  child spends in school is a strong predictor of
  IQ.
• Teaching children the factual knowledge and ways
  of thinking valued in classrooms has a sizable
  impact on their intelligence test performance.

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Explaining Individual and Group Differences in IQ
cont.

• Reducing Cultural Bias in Intelligence Tests
• Many experts do acknowledge that IQ scores can
  underestimate the intelligence of culturally
  different children.
• In a testing approach called dynamic testing, the
  adult introduces purposeful teaching into the
  testing situation to see what the child can
  attain with social support. This approach is
  consistent with Vygotskys concept of the zone of
  proximal development.
• Many minority children perform more competently
  after adult assistance.
• Intelligence tests are useful measures when
  interpreted carefully by examiners who are
  sensitive to the impact of culture on test
  performance.

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LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

• Vocabulary
• By the end of the school years, recognition
  vocabulary reaches about 40,000 words.
• School-age children enlarge their vocabularies
  through analyzing the structure of complex words.
• As their knowledge base becomes better organized
  school-age children think about and use words
  more precisely.
• School-age children grasp the double meanings of
  some words, which leads to the understanding of
  metaphors and the use of riddles and puns.

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Grammar

• Use of the passive voice expands during middle
  childhood.
• Another grammatical achievement is the
  understanding of infinitive phrases.
• Appreciation of subtle grammatical distinctions
  is supported by metalinguistic awareness.

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Pragmatics

• Improvements in pragmatics, the communicative
  side of language, take place in middle childhood.
• Children become better at adapting to the needs
  of listeners in challenging communicative
  situations.
• Conversational strategies also become more
  refined. For example, older children are better
  at phrasing things to get their way, and they are
  sensitive to subtle distinctions between what
  people say and what they really mean.

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CHILDRENS LEARNING IN SCHOOL

• Class Size
• Small class sizes are beneficial because teachers
  spend less time disciplining and more time giving
  individual attention, and childrens interactions
  with one another are more positive and
  cooperative.
• Also, when class size is small teachers and
  pupils are more satisfied with school
  experiences. Learning advantages of small classes
  are greatest in the early years.

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TeacherStudent Interaction

• A disappointing finding is that American teachers
  emphasize rote, repetitive drill more than
  higher-level thinking.
• Well-behaved, high-achieving pupils experience
  positive interactions with their teachers.
• The educational self-fulfilling prophecy is the
  idea that children may adopt teachers positive
  or negative attitudes toward them and start to
  live up to these views.

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Grouping Practices

• Often pupils are assigned to homogenous groups or
  classes in which children of similar achievement
  levels are taught together.
• Ability grouping of students widens the gap
  between high and low achievers.
• Another approach to grouping is to increase the
  heterogeneity of pupils. In multigrade
  classrooms, pupils who would otherwise be
  assigned to different grades are taught together.

• Peer tutoring is an aspect of mixed-age
  classrooms that makes them particularly
  cooperative.
• For collaboration between heterogeneous peers to
  succeed, children need extensive training and
  guidance in cooperative learning.

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How Well Educated Are Americas Children?

• American children fare unevenly when their
  achievement is compared to that of children in
  other industrialized nations.
• A variety of social forces combine to foster a
  much stronger commitment to learning in Asian
  families and schools.
• Families, schools, and the larger society must
  work together to upgrade American education.
• Achievement of U.S. elementary and secondary
  students has improved over the past decade in
  reading, math, and science.