Cog Dev in Middle Childhood Psych Exam 4

cognitive shifts from 5 to 7 years old

• refinements in cognitive skills

• thought become more logical, flexible, and organized

• domain specific knowledge or expertise

Piaget’s concrete operational stage (7-11)

• characterized by changes in

• conservation

• seriation

• hierarchical classification

• spatial reasoning

decentration

• focus on several aspects of a problem at once and relate them

reversibility

• mentally go through a series of steps in a problem and then reverse the direction

• return to the starting point

Hierarchical classification

• can group objects into hierarchies of classes and subjects

• e.g when shown a family tree of four generations, the child can classify the members vertically, horizontally, and obliquely

• collections become common in middle childhood

• e.g. dolls, baseball cards, stamps

seriation

• ability to order items along a quantitative dimension, such as length or width

• 6-7 years of age

• organize physically

transitive interference

• ability to perform seriation mentally

• 9-10 years of age

• organize mentally (abstract)

spatial reasoning

• increase understanding of orientation of objects in space

• between 7 and 8 years, children can start to perform mental rotations

• better understand locations on a map between 8-10 years

metalinguistic awareness

• ability to think about language as a system (think about sounds in a word)

• predicts spelling and reading success

• development begins at the end of early childhood and develops rapidly in middle childhood

jokes in early childhood

• like slapstick humor

• potty words

jokes in middle childhood

• like slapstick humor but also like jokes and riddles based on language

Phonological ambiguity

• words that sound identical but have different meanings

Lexical ambiguity

• the presence of two or more possible meanings within a single word

limitations of thought in middle childhood

• think logically only when dealing with concrete information (thinks they can perceive directly)

• Lack broad based knowledge that adults possess (informal operational)

• trouble using skills to solve problems

• can take another’s perspective but don’t use that information when trying to beat another person in a game

• struggle with abstract ideas or hypotheticals

• lack propositional thought

• show horizontal decalage

propositional thought

• evaluate the logic of verbal statements without making references to a real world circumstance

• don’t need to see something to answer questions

Horizontal Decalage

• gradual development of a skill

• order of conservation

• number, length, liquid, mass (6-7 years)

• area, weight (9-10 years)

Weschler intelligence

• Intelligence is the capacity to understand the world and the resourcefulness to cope with it’s challenges

Raymond Cattell Intelligence

• Two types of intelligence:

• Fluid: basic cognitive processes

• e.g. figuring out rules and relationships

• Crystalized: acquired knowledge and skills

• e.g. what is steam made out of

Sternberg’s intelligences

• analytic intelligence

• practical intelligence

• creative intelligence

Analytic Intelligence

ability to reason logically, or “book smarts”

practical intelligence

• ability to solve real-world problems “street smarts”

creative intelligence

• ability to come up with novel and effective answers

Gardner’s intelligences

• linguistic

• logical

• spatial

• musical

• interpersonal

• intrapersonal

• bodily kinesthetic

• naturalistic

Emotional intelligence

• Type of social intelligence that involves the ability to:

• monitor ones own and others’ emotions

• to discriminate among emotions

• to use the information to guide one’s own thinking and actions

• may be better predictor of success in life than IQ

Intelligence testing binet

• can french children doing poorly in school be indentified

• Developed a set of intellectual tasks that become model for current intelligence tests

• Binet’s assumptions

• reasoning, thinking, and problem solving all depend on intelligence

• children’s mental abilities increase with age

Intelligence Quotient

• Stern (1914) converted Binet’s “mental age” measure to a ratio

• allows children of different ages to be compared

Reliability

• person produces similar scores when taking the test more than once

validity

• degree to which a test measures what it is supposed to measure

• validity is theory dependent

Standardized

• conditions surrounding the test are as similar as possible for everyone who takes it

• scoring procedures are the same for everyone

normed

• established standards of performance for a test

• developmentally appropriate

Characteristics of IQ decliners

• parents make little effort to stimulate intellectually

• under-stimulating environments in general

• e.g. don’t have age-appropriate toys

• severe or lax discipline

• cumulative deficit hypothesis effects of under privileged rearing conditions worsen the longer the child is in them

Characteristics of IQ gainers (parents)

• parents are interested in intellectual achievements

• parents apply greater (but not too great) pressure to succeed

• parents use rational discipline

• parents that explain things to kids had higher scores

Characteristics of IQ gainers (children)

• independent

• competitive about doing well in school