Ch 9 flashcards

A comprehensive vocabulary review of physical and cognitive development in middle and late childhood based on Dr. Corley's lecture notes, covering physical changes, brain maturation, motor skills, disabilities, special education law, concrete operational cognition, information processing, intelligence theories, language, literacy, and bilingual education.

Physical Changes Domain

The developmental domain encompassing physical growth, brain maturation, motor skill development, physical activity, and childhood health and illness.

Disabilities Domain

The developmental domain focused on disability categories, educational inclusion, classroom accommodations, and individualized educational planning.

Cognition Domain

The developmental domain encompassing concrete operational thinking, attention mechanisms, memory processes, intelligence, and giftedness.

Language Domain

The developmental domain covering vocabulary expansion, grammatical refinement, reading, writing, and bilingual language development.

Body Growth and Change (Middle Childhood)

A pattern where physical growth is slower and more consistent than during infancy, height and weight increase steadily, body proportions become more adult-like, and strength, coordination, and stamina improve.

Determinants of Growth Timing

Hereditary factors, nutritional intake, and overall physical health that cause the timing and pace of physical growth to vary across individual children.

Pubertal Changes (Late Childhood)

Biological maturation processes and physical developments that may begin for some children toward the end of the middle and late childhood period.

Myelination (Brain Development)

A neural maturation process involving the coating of axons that enhances structural connectivity and the efficiency of brain network communication in middle childhood.

Experience-Dependent Brain Change

The structural and connectivity maturation of the brain that develops in direct response to environmental opportunities, learning, and daily experiences.

Prefrontal Systems

Frontal brain networks that increasingly mature during middle childhood to support executive functions including planning, behavioral inhibition, attention, and flexible problem-solving.

Cognitive Control

The capacity to coordinate and regulate thought and action in accordance with internal goals, supported by the improved integration of distributed brain networks.

Brain Maturation Timetable

The developmental principle that brain maturation does not follow a rigid, fixed timetable, meaning that environmental opportunities and supportive experiences matter.

Gross Motor Skills (Middle Childhood)

Large-muscle physical actions—such as running, jumping, balancing, throwing, and coordinated sports skills—that become smoother, faster, and more precise.

Fine Motor Skills (Middle Childhood)

Intricate small-muscle coordination that improves significantly to support handwriting, drawing, playing musical instruments, handling tools, and complex construction.

Influences on Motor Performance

A combination of practice, environmental opportunities, disability, physical health, cultural background, and personal motivation that produces individual differences in motor skill execution.

Benefits of Regular Movement

Positive outcomes of physical activity that support cardiovascular fitness, bone health, motor competence, and psychological well-being.

Organized Sports and Free Play

Two complementary modalities of physical movement that both build motor and social skills when accompanied by personal enjoyment and equitable access.

Athletic Safeguards (Middle Childhood)

Age-appropriate protective guidelines and measures required to mitigate overtraining, physical injury risks, and excessive performance pressure in youth sports.

Determinants of Child Health

A composite of biological conditions and consistent access to nutritious food, adequate sleep, preventive medical care, and safe physical environments.

Chronic Pediatric Health Conditions

Long-term health conditions—such as asthma, diabetes, and obesity—that can impact a child's active participation and daily school experiences.

Pediatric Preventive Health

Essential proactive healthcare measures during middle childhood, including injury prevention, routine vaccination schedules, and effective management of chronic illness.

Avoidance of Weight Stigma

An educational and healthcare approach that avoids shaming around weight by emphasizing healthy lifestyle behaviors, supportive environments, and individualized care.

Childhood Disability

A condition that can affect a child's learning, communication, movement, attention, behavior, or sensory access.

Disability vs. Intelligence Distinction

The foundational principle that having a disability is not synonymous with low intelligence or low overall developmental potential.

Co-Occurring Needs

The simultaneous presence of multiple developmental, physical, or academic challenges alongside personal strengths within the context of environmental barriers.

Person-Centered Language

Respectful, individualized communication that honors a child's dignity, personal preferences, and holistic identity rather than defining them solely by a diagnosis.

Learning & Attention Disabilities Category

A broad disability category encompassing conditions such as specific learning disabilities and ADHD that can directly affect classroom performance.

Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD)

Neurologically based conditions that affect classroom performance in specific academic domains such as reading, writing, or mathematics.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

A neurodevelopmental condition characterized by persistent challenges with attention regulation, impulse control, or hyperactivity that affect classroom functioning.

Developmental & Communication Category

A disability category encompassing autism, intellectual disability, and speech/language differences that may require tailored educational supports.

Autism

A neurodevelopmental condition characterized by differences in communication, social interaction, and behavior that may require tailored classroom supports.

Intellectual Disability

A condition characterized by significant limitations in intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior with onset during the developmental period.

Speech and Language Differences

Expressive, receptive, or articulation variations that impact verbal communication and may require tailored instructional supports.

Physical & Sensory Category

A disability category encompassing mobility, hearing, vision, and chronic medical impairments that can affect physical access and academic participation.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

United States federal legislation establishing a legal framework for special education eligibility and individualized services in public schools.

Individualized Education Program (IEP)

A legally binding educational document under IDEA that specifies measurable learning goals, specialized services, and supports for an eligible student with a disability.

Section 504 Plan

A formal educational plan under civil rights law that provides accommodations to address access needs and ensure equal participation for students with disabilities.

Least Restrictive Environment (LRE)

The legal mandate under IDEA emphasizing that students with disabilities must be educated alongside their nondisabled peers to the maximum appropriate extent.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

An instructional design framework providing flexible goals, methods, materials, and assessments to reduce learning barriers for all students from the start.

Assistive Technology

Specialized equipment, software, or devices utilized to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of students with disabilities.

Special Education Collaboration

Coordinated teamwork and problem-solving among general educators, special educators, families, and related service providers to reduce learning barriers.

Accommodations

Instructional or environmental adaptations that change access or how learning is demonstrated without necessarily changing underlying learning expectations.

Modifications

Adjustments that alter learning expectations or lower the complexity of required academic content when appropriate.

Strength-Based Planning

An educational planning process that combines student strengths, family input, individualized assessment data, and measurable goals.

Concrete Operational Stage

Piaget's third cognitive stage (approximately ages $7\text{--}11$), during which children increasingly use logical operations with concrete information.

Logical Operations

Internalized, reversible mental rules and actions that allow concrete operational children to reason systematically about tangible, real-world objects and events.

Decentration

The cognitive ability to focus simultaneously on multiple dimensions or features of a problem rather than centering on just one attribute.

Reversibility

The cognitive capacity to mentally undo an action or understand that operations can be reversed to return an object or situation to its original state.

Concrete Information Constraint

A developmental limitation of concrete operational thinking where abstract or hypothetical problems remain difficult without concrete examples.

Conservation

The cognitive understanding that a quantity remains constant despite changes in its superficial physical appearance.

Classification

The cognitive ability to organize items into classes and subclasses and understand hierarchical class inclusion.

Class Inclusion

The logical understanding of the hierarchical relationship between a whole category and its subparts (e.g., recognizing that all dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs).

Seriation

The concrete operational skill of ordering objects systematically along a quantitative dimension such as size, length, or weight.

Transitivity

The cognitive ability to infer logical relationships across comparisons (e.g., recognizing that if $A > B$ and $B > C$, then $A > C$).

Active Construction of Knowledge

Piaget's foundational principle that children build cognitive understanding through dynamic physical and mental interaction with their environment.

Domain-Specific Cognitive Variability

The developmental finding that cognitive progress does not occur uniformly in a synchronized, stage-like manner across every domain or task.

Concrete Representations

Physical manipulatives, hands-on experiences, and visual models that ground abstract principles and support conceptual understanding.

Selective Attention

The cognitive ability to focus deliberate attention on task-relevant details while actively ignoring distracting or irrelevant stimuli.

Sustained Attention

The ability to maintain focused concentration and control over distraction across an extended duration, developing with age and practice.

Executive Attention

A higher-order attention system that coordinates cognitive resources, supporting task switching, response inhibition, and goal-directed behavior.

Working Memory Capacity

The mental workspace that temporarily holds and manipulates information, expanding in capacity and strategic deployment during middle childhood.

Strategic Memory Use

The deliberate deployment of intentional cognitive techniques to enhance information encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Domain Knowledge (Memory)

An established network of prior knowledge in a specific topic that facilitates the encoding, organization, and rapid retrieval of new information.

Metamemory

An individual's reflective knowledge and understanding of their own memory processes, capacities, and strategy effectiveness.

Rehearsal Strategy

A memory strategy that involves repeating information over and over (such as rehearsing a short list) to keep it active in working memory.

Organization Strategy

A memory strategy that groups information into meaningful categories or clusters (such as animals, foods, or tools).

Elaboration Strategy

A memory strategy that connects new information to a meaningful story, personal experience, or pre-existing base of knowledge.

Intelligence (Multifaceted Construct)

A multifaceted construct involving reasoning ability, learning capacity, problem-solving skills, and environmental adaptation.

Psychometric Approach to Intelligence

An empirical testing approach that uses standardized tests to estimate specific aspects of cognitive performance.

Standardized Testing Influences

Non-cognitive and contextual factors—including measurement error, opportunity, language proficiency, cultural background, and testing conditions—that influence scores.

Single-Score Placement Risks

The ethical and educational hazards of allowing a single test score to rigidly define a student's personal identity or dictate high-stakes educational decisions.

Spearman’s $g$ (General Intelligence)

A theoretical construct describing the shared variance and underlying commonality observed across many diverse cognitive tasks.

Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences

A theoretical model highlighting diverse human abilities, though not all are supported by research as distinct psychometric intelligences.

Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory

A cognitive framework emphasizing analytical, creative, and practical dimensions as the core components of successful intelligence.

Analytical Intelligence (Sternberg)

The dimension of Sternberg's triarchic model focused on analyzing, evaluating, judging, comparing, and contrasting information.

Creative Intelligence (Sternberg)

The dimension of Sternberg's triarchic model focused on inventing, designing, originating, and coping effectively with novel situations.

Practical Intelligence (Sternberg)

The dimension of Sternberg's triarchic model focused on applying knowledge, implementing solutions, and adapting to everyday, real-world contexts.

Successful Intelligence

Sternberg's concept of effectively balancing analytical, creative, and practical abilities to achieve personal and sociocultural goals.

Adaptive Functioning Assessment

The clinical evaluation of conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills alongside intellectual functioning to determine intellectual disability and support needs.

Giftedness

A condition involving unusually advanced intellectual performance, talent, or potential in particular academic or cognitive domains.

Twice-Exceptional (2e) Students

Learners who demonstrate intellectual giftedness while simultaneously having a disability, requiring educational attention to both strengths and needs.

Vocabulary Expansion (Middle Childhood)

Rapid lexical growth that occurs through independent reading, direct classroom instruction, conversation, and domain-specific learning.

Figurative Language Comprehension

The advancing developmental capacity to understand complex word meanings, multiple meanings, metaphors, and non-literal expressions.

Syntax and Grammatical Accuracy

The progressive mastery of sentence structures and grammatical rules that enables children to construct more elaborate explanations and narratives.

Metalinguistic Awareness

The cognitive ability to think about and reflect upon language as a formal structural object of analysis.

Linguistic Ambiguity

The conscious recognition that words, phrases, or sentences can carry multiple meanings, puns, rhymes, and differences between literal and intended meanings.

Dialect and Register Awareness

Metalinguistic understanding that enables children to adapt their vocabulary, syntax, and communication style to different audiences and social contexts.

Reading Decoding

The foundational literacy skill of connecting print with speech sounds and recognizing increasingly complex word patterns.

Reading Fluency

The ability to read text with increasing accuracy, automaticity, and appropriate vocal expression.

Reading Comprehension

The cognitive process of building meaning from text through vocabulary, inference, background knowledge, and active monitoring of understanding.

Writing Mechanics and Organization

Foundational writing skills—including handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, and text organization—that become increasingly proficient.

Writing Genre Progression

The developmental progression in writing from simple narratives toward more coherent descriptions, explanations, and persuasive arguments.

Writing Processes (Planning, Drafting, Revising)

Deliberate executive actions and audience awareness that increasingly support writing quality and composition in middle childhood.

Childhood Bilingualism

The successful acquisition and development of more than one language, which is not inherently confusing or harmful to a child's cognitive growth.

Setting and Domain Language Proficiency

The variation in a bilingual child's language proficiency across different environments and subject domains depending on exposure and opportunity.

Cross-Language Transfer

The developmental phenomenon where literacy skills and metalinguistic awareness developed in one language support learning and literacy in another.

Language Difference vs. Disability

A critical diagnostic distinction ensuring that typical second-language acquisition patterns are not misclassified as a language or learning disability.

Dual-Language Models

A bilingual education approach that teaches academic content through two languages with bilingualism and biliteracy as explicit goals.

Transitional Approaches (Bilingual Education)

A bilingual education approach that uses the child's home language initially while gradually increasing instruction in the societal language.

English-Language Support (Bilingual Education)

An educational approach that provides targeted language development assistance alongside full access to grade-level academic content.