9- Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood

The Growing Body

• Slow and steady - Both boys and girls gain around five to seven

pounds a year.

• Lowest body mass index (BMI) during this time

• Boys slightly taller and more muscular

• Most height and weight variations in the United States are due

to genetics.

Childhood Obesity

• Obesity: a body mass index (BMI) at or above the 95th percentile for children

of the same age and sex

• Overweight: BMI over 18

• Obesity: BMI over 21

• More common in low-income families.

• More likely to be overweight as adults.

• Most common causes:

• Genetic risk factors

• Poor diets

• Lack of exercise

Fine Motor Skills

• Fine motor skills are necessary for a wide range of school-related tasks.

• Ages 6 and 7: Children tie shoes and fasten buttons.

• Age 8: Use each hand independently.

• Ages 11 and 12: Manipulate objects with almost as much capability as in

adulthood

Gross Motor Development in Middle Childhood

• Gross Motor Development and Physical Activity

• Advancement occurs in balance, strength, coordination, agility, and

reaction time

• Involvement in games and organized sports

• Boys more likely to participate in sports teams

• Children do not get as much gross motor activity as they should

Psychological Disorders

• About one in six children experience a psychological disorder, such as

depression or anxiety, annually.

• Optimal treatment is not always apparent, and use of antidepressant

drugs to treat children is controversial.

• Child Mind Institute Symptom Checker

Anxiety affects about 10% of children (lifetime prevalence of 32%); depression

affects about 1.7% of children during middle childhood

• Comorbidity – cooccurring disorders

• Children’s disorders often overlooked because they don’t exhibit the

same symptoms as adults.

•

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD):

a learning disability

marked by inattention, impulsiveness, a low tolerance for frustration, and

generally a great deal of inappropriate activity

• 11.5% of kids aged 6-11 diagnosed with ADHD

• There is no simple test for ADHD.

• Boys diagnosed more frequently than girls.

• Overall prevalence is increasing.

• Causes are not clear

Concrete operational stage:

the period of cognitive development between

ages 7 and 12, characterized by the active, and appropriate, use of logic

• Children can apply logical operations to concrete problems, such as

conservation questions.

Decentering

he ability to take multiple aspects of a situation into account

Advances in Concrete Operations

• Can perform conservation

• Can perform classification mentally

• Seriation – ability to arrange things in a logical order; improves between

ages 5 and 7

Control strategies:

conscious, intentionally used tactics to

improve cognitive processing

Mnemonics

formal techniques for organizing information in a

way that makes it more likely to be remembered

Key word strategy:

pairing similar-sounding words

Rehearsal

consistent repetition of information

Organization

placing material into categories

Cognitive elaboration:

linking mental images with information

Vygotsky’s Approach to Cognitive

Development

• Cognitive advances occur through exposure to information within

a zone of proximal development (ZPD), when a child can almost

perform a task.

Cooperative learning:

children work together in groups to

achieve a common goal

Reciprocal teaching:

students taught to skim the content of a

passage, raise questions about its central point, summarize, and

predict what will happen next

Guided Participation

• Barbara Rogoff’s extension of

Vygotsky’s theory

• Teaching interaction between two

people as they participate in a

culturally valued activity

• Can be direct or indirect

• Emphasis on culture and role of values

Scaffolding

temporary assistance

that is gradually removed as the

learner becomes more competent

Language Development: What Words

Mean

Learning the Mechanics of Language

• Vocabulary continues to increase.

• Proficiency with grammar improves.

• Understanding of syntax (forming sentences) grows.

• Certain phonemes (units of sound) remain troublesome.

• Decoding difficulties can result when the meaning depends on

intonation (tone of voice).

• Competence in pragmatics (rules for using language in a social

setting) increases.

The Benefits of Raising Bilingual Children

• Around 350 languages are spoken in the United States.

• Bilingualism provides advantages across various developmental domains:

• Bilingual children outperform monolingual children in awareness of

language characteristics.

• They are better at learning new words.

• They have better representational flexibility and more advanced

memory skills.

• Learning two languages takes a lot of time and support.

Reading Stages

• Stage 0: essential prerequisites for reading (birth to start of first

grade)

• Stage 1: phonological recoding skill (first and second grades)

• Stage 2: reading aloud with fluency (second and third grades)

• Stage 3: reading as means to an end (fourth to eighth grades)

• Stage 4: read and process information with multiple points of

view (eighth grade and beyond)

Alfred Binet’s test

• Mental age (MA): age of children who, on average, received a certain score

• Chronological (or physical) age (CA): age of child taking the test

• Intelligence quotient (IQ score) = (MA/CA) x 100

• IQ scores today are calculated in a more mathematically sophisticated manner and are

known as deviation IQ scores.

Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition (SB5):

consists of a series of items

that vary according to the age of the person being tested

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fifth Edition (WISC-V):

provides measures

of verbal and performance (or nonverbal) skills, as well as a total score

Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, Second Edition (KABC-II):

measures

children’s ability to integrate different stimuli simultaneously and to use step-by-step

thinking

Alternative

Conceptions of Intelligence

• The g factor is the unitary mental ability assumed to underlie

performance on every aspect of intelligence.

Fluid intelligence:

intelligence that reflects information-

processing capabilities, reasoning, and memory

Crystallized intelligence:

he accumulation of information,

skills, and strategies that people have learned through experience

and that they can apply in problem-solving situations