Middle Childhood/FInal Exam Child Pysch

Q: How do expectations of children shift from early to middle childhood?

A: Parents expect more independence, rule-following, attention span, and ability to navigate peer relationships and school tasks.

Q: What are the four major features of Piaget’s cognitive development in middle childhood?

A: Conservation(Reversibility &Decentration), Perspective Taking, Classification, Class Inclusion 

Q: What is decentration?

A: The ability to focus on more than one part of a problem.

Q: What is reversibility?

A: Realization that things can be changed and returned to their original state.

Q: What is conservation and how does it change in middle childhood?

A: Children begin to understand conservation through decentration (focusing on multiple aspects) and reversibility (thinking backward through a process).

Q: How does classification change in middle childhood?

: Children can understand sets and subsets and reason about categories. They also combine classification with reversibility

Q: Do children in middle childhood still display egocentrism?

A: No. They develop perspective taking and understand others may have different viewpoints/ perspectives

Q: Why are maps difficult for younger children?

Maps may not be oriented to their perspective. Children in middle childhood can read rotated maps, give directions, and understand scale. (they dont understand/not well at perspective taking)

Q: What is deductive reasoning? How does it develop in middle childhood?

A: Drawing specific conclusions from general principles. Children rely on experience rather than pure logic early in development.

Logical Rule: All cats have fur.
Child's Reasoning: My cat has fur, so it must be a cat.
BUT: A child might reject the rule if they know a hairless cat or think another furry animal (like a dog) could also fit, showing their reasoning is still experience-based.

Q: What is selective attention and how is it measured?

A: Focusing on relevant info while ignroing distractions; measured using the Trail Making Test.

Example of Trail Making Test: The child is asked to connect numbers and/or letters in order (like 1 → A → 2 → B...) as quickly as possible, requiring focus and ignoring other distractors on the page.

Q: What is metacognition?

A: Being aware of your own thinking and learning processes.

Example: A student realizes they don’t understand a topic well, so they decide to re-read the chapter or use flashcards because they know those strategies help them learn better.

Q: How is semantic memory related to working memory strategies?

A: Semantic memory (knowledge about the world) supports working memory strategies like organization and elaboration.
Example: A child who knows a lot about animals (semantic memory) can group "lion, zebra, giraffe" as "safari animals" (organization), making it easier to remember them.

Q: What is cognitive flexibility?

A: Is the ability to switch between different thoughts or tasks effectively.
Example: During math class, a child can switch between addition and subtraction strategies depending on the problem type.

Q: Why is metacognition important for academic success?

A: It aids organization and elaboration, which helps expand working memory and learning efficiency.

Q: What memory strategies do children use in middle childhood?

• Rehearsal (repeating)

• Organization (chunking)

• Elaboration (linking ideas)

Q: How is semantic memory related to working memory strategies? No Example

A: Better semantic knowledge makes it easier to form meaningful chunks in working memory.

Q: How does episodic memory change in middle childhood?

A: Children provide more detailed and specific memories compared to early childhood.

Q: How do children’s personal narratives change in middle childhood?

A: They become more detailed, structured, and include more personal perspective and coherence.

Q: What difficulties might children have with executive function?

A: Trouble with focusing (selective attention), switching tasks (cognitive flexibility), organizing info, or using effective memory strategies.

Example: A child may get distracted during a reading task (poor selective attention), struggle to switch from math to writing (poor cognitive flexibility), forget their homework because they didn’t plan ahead (poor organization), or not know how to study for a test effectively (limited use of memory strategies).

Q: How does children’s vocabulary change in middle childhood?

Vocabulary becomes more complex; children begin using synonyms (e.g., doctor/physician) and understanding subtle differences in word meaning (e.g., topple, tumble, plunge).

Q: What are the two aspects of reading that children need to learn?

A:

1. Decoding – “Inside out” skill of sounding out words by connecting letters to sounds.

2. Conceptual – “Outside in” understanding of the meaning of text and story context.

Q: How are conversational and academic language different?

Conversational language is informal and used in everyday speech,

academic language is formal and used in essays, schoolwork, and structured communication.

Q: At what age can children typically write an academic-style essay with reasonable structure?

A: Around age 9–10, in middle childhood.

Q: What is the role of strategies in children’s math learning?

A: Strategies help children solve problems, such as:

• Counting on fingers

• Counting “on” from the larger number (e.g., starting at 5 and counting 3 more)

Q: How do children’s behavior and math knowledge diverge? Give an example.

A: A child might know the correct strategy but not use it.

Example: A child can explain how to solve 6+3 using counting-on but still counts all fingers from 1 instead of starting at 6.

Q: How does children’s number line performance change over time, and why?

A:

• Early: Children space early numbers too far apart and bunch later numbers.

• Later: They space numbers more equally, but still struggle with large ranges (e.g., 0–1000).
  Why? Likely due to strategies like finding the midpoint or estimating placement.

Q: What are the two types of motivation?

Intrinsic Motivation – Doing something because it’s enjoyable or interesting.

Extrinsic Motivation – Doing something for rewards or to avoid punishment.

Q: How do intrinsic and extrinsic motivation impact long-term behavior? Which is better?

A: Intrinsic motivation is better for long-term engagement. Overusing extrinsic rewards can undermine intrinsic interest once the rewards stop.

Q: What are the two theories of intelligence, and how do they relate to mindsets?

Incremental Theory: Intelligence can grow with effort. Related to a growth mindset.

Entity Theory: Intelligence is fixed and unchangeable. Related to a fixed mindset.

Q: How do parents influence their children's mindsets?

A: Through the type of praise they give. Praise focused on effort encourages a growth mindset, while praise focused on ability supports a fixed mindset.

Q: What’s the difference between process and person praise?

A:

• Process Praise: Focuses on effort.
  Example: “You worked really hard on that.”

• Person Praise: Focuses on traits.
  Example: “You’re so smart.”
  Process praise encourages persistence; person praise can reduce motivation after failure.

Q: What are some environmental influences on children’s learning?

A:

• Poverty

• Teacher quality

• Teacher expectations

• Classroom climate and class size (smaller = more supportive and effective)

Q: What factors influence teacher quality?

A:

• Content knowledge

• Use of challenging and engaging materials

• Variety in instructional methods (e.g., graphics, written text)

• Ability to adapt teaching to individual needs

Q: How do teacher expectations affect student achievement?

A: Teachers behave differently based on expectations, which can influence how well students perform.

Study Example:
Teachers were told randomly selected students were “rapid bloomers.” Those students actually improved more—possibly because of how the teachers treated them.

Q: What is the Pygmalion Effect?

A: The phenomenon where students rise or fall to meet the expectations set for them by others—especially teachers.

Q: What characterizes the self-conscious emotions of guilt, shame, and pride?

A: These emotions focus on self-evaluation and personal standards of right and wrong; they become more complex in middle childhood.

Q: What are the two kinds of pride and how do they differ?

Authentic Pride: Linked to hard work and success (e.g., “I studied hard and did well”). Associated with prosocial behavior.

Hubristic Pride: Linked to arrogance (e.g., “I’m the best”). Associated with antisocial behavior.

Q: How do guilt, shame, and pride change through middle childhood?

A: Children become more aware of others’ perspectives and social norms, leading to more refined emotional experiences and self-regulation.

Q: What are consequences of atypical experiences of shame and guilt?

A:

High shame → internalizing problems like depression/anxiety.

Low guilt → externalizing problems like aggression and disregard for rules.

Q: What are internalizing and externalizing behaviors?

Internalizing: Emotions turned inward (e.g., anxiety, depression).

Externalizing: Acting out (e.g., aggression).
Display rules influence both by regulating what emotions children show or suppress.

Q: What is social comparison and how does it change over childhood?

A: Judging yourself relative to others. In middle childhood, kids compare across multiple areas and groups (e.g., “I’m good at math but not as fast as my soccer teammates”).'

Q: What characterizes permissive parenting and how does it affect children?

A: High warmth, low control. Children may struggle with self-discipline and exhibit poor academic outcomes.

Q: What characterizes authoritarian parenting and how does it affect children?

A: Low warmth, high control. Children often show low self-esteem and social skills, and higher rates of anxiety or depression.

Q: What characterizes uninvolved parenting and how does it affect children?

A: Low warmth and low control. Children often feel neglected, struggle emotionally, and have poor academic/social outcomes.

Q: What characterizes authoritative parenting and how does it affect children?

A: High warmth and high control. Children tend to thrive academically, socially, and emotionally.

Q: How does attachment change in middle childhood?

A: Children rely less on parents in stressful situations, but still value parental availability. Insecure attachment may lead to internalizing problems.

Q: What factors influence children's friendships?

A: Similarities in age, gender, race, interests, behavior, and school engagement shape friendships.

Q: How does cyberbullying differ from traditional bullying?

A: Cyberbullying occurs online, can happen anytime, reaches wider audiences, and is harder to escape compared to in-person bullying.

What does it mean to describe development

It means identifying what changes occur duing childhood. It incudes noting whether changes are:

• Quantitative (ex. Increasing vocabulary size)

• Qualitative (ex. new types of reasoning)

How are describing and explaining development different?

• Describing focuses on what is changing.

• Explaining focuses on why it is changing.

They work together: first, you observe and describe a change, then you seek to understand the causes behind it.

What does it mean to explain development?

It means identifying why development changes occur in children

• Example (group): Why do children typically transition from babbling to talking?

Q: How do nature and nurture work together in explaining development?

They interact, genetic predispositions (nature) can shape how children respond to their environments (nurture), and environments can enhance or limit how genes are expressed

What is nature in developmental explaniations

It refers to a childs biological endowment; Genetics, personaility, apperance, temprement.

What is nuture in developmental explanations?

IT refers to the envriomental influences a child is exposed to:

• Culture

• Parenting

• Nutrition

What is a developmental cascade?

IT is a change in one domain that has long-term effects on other domains later in life.

Ex: A child motor skills improve → leads to object exploration → encoruages joint attention with caregivers (caregivers playing with them talking to them)

Q: How should we think about cultural variation in development?

IT shapes what is typical in development in development. Children in different cultures develop skills at diff. times due to cultrual enviroments.

Q: How does culture affect motor development?

A: Culture influences when skills like sitting or walking emerge.
Example: In some cultures, infants sit at 4 months; in others, not until 9 months.
→ This is not “better” or “worse”—it depends on cultural expectations and practices.

How should we interpret cultural diffrences in development?

By making explicit comparisons, development delay is relative to a specifc group. So, varitions in skill are normal within their cultural context.

Are children’s errors always a sign of poor development.

No. It often show that children are learning and applying rules.

Ex.) Overregularization in grammer (“goed. not went”) shows that kids are attempting to use language rules.

Are children’s sucesses always an indicator of good development?

Not always. A correct answer could result from guessing, memorization, or external help rather than deep understanding.

Ex: A child solving a math problem may have leanred a trick, not the underlying concept

How might Piaget interpret children’s errors vs Nativists ?

Errors as evidece of active learning & cognitve development through statges

Nativists: Will argue errors reflect innate strucutres still developing

Q: What are the different kinds of dependent variables used across development (infants, young children, older children)? Why do they vary by age?

• Infants: looking time, heart rate, sucking rate, head turning (non-verbal, physiological or reflexive responses)

• Young Children: simple verbal responses, choices (e.g., pointing, choosing objects), play-based tasks

• Older Children: complex verbal responses, standardized tests, questionnaires, interviews

They differ because of developmental abilites that are age appropiate

What are habituation paradigms and how are they used?

They involve repeatedly showing a stimulus an infant until their attention (looking time) declines, meaning they have processes it.

• It is used to study memory, percepton, infants will look at someting new

What is dishabituation?

It is when a new or changed stimukus re-captures an infatns attention, showing they notice the difference discriminating between stimuli

What’s different about typical Piaget or Kohlberg studies vs. looking time or habituation studies?

• Piaget and Kohlberg: Use explicit verbal responses or problem-solving tasks, suitable for older children.

• Looking time/habituation: Measure implicit, non-verbal behaviors, ideal for infants and very young children.

What are the four main stages of Piaget theory of cognitive development?

1. Sensorimotor (0–2 years)

2. Preoperational (2–7 years)

3. Concrete Operational (7–11 years)

4. Formal Operational (11+ years)

Q: What happens in the Sensorimotor stage (0–2 years)?

A: Infants experience the world through senses and actions. They develop object permanence and begin to form basic schemas.
Main Limitation: Lack of symbolic thought early in stage.

Q: What happens in the Preoperational stage (2–7 years)?

A: Children begin using mental representations and symbols (like language).
Failures: Egocentrism (can’t view other perspective), lack of conservation, centration
Successes: Use of symbols and improved language use

Q: What happens in the Concrete Operational stage (7–11 years)?

A: Children can think logically about concrete events, understand conservation, reversibility, and perspective-taking.
Limitations: Struggle with abstract and hypothetical reasoning.

Q: What happens in the Formal Operational stage (11+ years)?

A: Adolescents develop abstract reasoning, hypothetical thinking, and metacognition.
Success: Systematic problem solving
Limitation: Not all individuals fully reach this stage

Q: How do people move through Piaget’s stages of cognitive development?

• Assimilation: Fit new info into existing schemas

• Accommodation: Change schema to fit new info

• Equilibrium/Disequilibrium: Balance between current understanding and new experiences

What is an Example of assimilation?

A: Child sees a whale and calls it a fish because their schema says "things in water are fish."

What is an example of accommodation?

A: Child learns a whale is not a fish and updates their schema to distinguish mammals from fish.

What is disequilibrium in Piaget’s theory?

A mental discomfort when new info doesn’t fit existing schemas, prompting accommodation.

What is nativism in cognitive deveoplment?

A: The belief that humans are born with innate cognitive structures essential for learning and development.

What is core knowledge theory?

A: Suggests infants have domain-specific innate knowledge systems (e.g., number, object, space, agency).

How do nativist theories differ from Piaget?

They argue infants fail piagets task due to complexity rather than cognitve limits. By using looking-time studies, it shows early competence.

What is Information Processing Theory?

A: Views cognitive development as continuous improvement in attention, memory, and problem-solving, rather than stages.

Q: How does information processing theory differ from Piaget’s?

A: It sees development as gradual and quantitative, while Piaget saw it as discontinuous and qualitative.

Ex.) A child’s memory improves steadily with age (e.g., remembering more items in a list at age 7 than at age 5), rather than jumping from no memory ability to full memory use at a certain stage like Piaget might suggest.

What is Nativist vs. Connectionist views on langauge.

• Nativists: Language is innate (Chomsky’s LAD)

• Connectionists: Language is learned through pattern recognition and input exposure (domain-general learning)

Q: What is synaptogenesis?

It’s the creation of synapses connections between neurons for communication

Q: What is synaptic pruning and how is it related to synaptogenesis?

A: Removing unused or weak synapses to make the brain more efficient. It follows synaptogenesis to refine connections.

What is myelination and how does it contribute to brain development?

A: Myelination is the process of coating axons with myelin, which speeds up neural communication.

Example: It helps infants gradually respond faster and coordinate movements more smoothly (e.g., grabbing objects or walking).

Q: How does myelination affect the corpus callosum and brain coordination?

Myelination in the corpus callosum improves communication between brain hemispheres, enhancing coordination and lateralization.
Example: Around ages 3–6, kids show better hand-eye coordination and more specialized functions (like language on the left side).

Q: How does myelination affect development in early childhood?

Myelination contributes to the brain’s rapid growth—by age 2, the brain reaches about 80% of its adult weight, and between ages 2–6, it reaches about 90%.
Example: This increase supports improvements in motor skills, attention, language.

When do infants “know” about numbers?

Infants are born with core knowledge of number. They can distinguish between different number of dots on a screen and are surprised when the number of dots are different.

Q: When and how do young children learn about symbolic number?

Around 2–3 years old, children begin using number words like “one,” “two,” and “more”, “big” to describe quantities, though they may not fully understand what they mean.

Q: What characterizes academic math learning in middle childhood?

In middle childhood, math skills are shaped by formal education, teacher expectations, and use of strategies (like counting on fingers, number lines).

Q: What contributes to the development of gender stereotypes in infancy?

Gender stereotypes begin forming through socialization and parental expectations. Even in infancy, adults treat boys and girls differently in terms of play, clothing, and emotional expression.

Q: How do gender stereotypes develop in early childhood?

Children observe and imitate gendered behavior. They engage in rigid gendered play (e.g., girls wearing dresses), adopt essentialist beliefs about gender roles, and are influenced by media, parents, and caregivers

Q: What is gender identity and when does it develop?

Around age 3, children can label themselves and others as boys or girls. This is the first stage of gender understanding.

Q: What is gender stability and when does it develop?

Between ages 3–5, children understand that gender is stable over time, but may still believe it can change with superficial traits (e.g., playing with “boy” toys makes them a boy).

Q: What is gender consistency and when does it develop?

After age 5, children understand that gender remains the same over time and across situations. This leads to more flexible thinking about gender roles.

Q: How does gender development change in middle childhood?

A: Gender beliefs become more flexible. However, expectations and stereotypes still affect areas like academic self-concept, especially in STEM subjects.

Q: How does moral development change over time?

: It begins with attachment and early distinctions between helping and harming, then evolves into understanding retribution and fairness. Over time, children develop a self-identity, gain empathy, and show moral reasoning aligned with societal rules and justice.

Q: What core knowledge in infants is related to morality?

Infants can distinguish helping from hindering actions and show preferences for prosocial behavior, suggesting an innate moral foundation.(Helper-hinderer studies.)

What characterizes Kohlberg’s major levels of moral reasoning?

• Level 1 (Preconventional): Focus on punishment and self-interest.

• Level 2 (Conventional): Based on social approval and law/order.

• Level 3 (Postconventional): Recognizes abstract principles and individual moral reasoning, beyond societal rules.

Q: Is Kohlberg’s theory qualitative or quantitative?

A: Qualitative – it focuses on distinct stages of moral reasoning, not gradual changes.

Q: How does Kohlberg’s view compare to nativist/core knowledge theories?

Nativists believe morality has innate roots, visible in infancy, while Kohlberg sees moral understanding as developing through social experience and cognitive stages.

Q: What characterizes the Social Domain Theory?

It proposes three non-stage domains of moral reasoning:

• Moral Domain: Justice, rights, fairness

• Psychological Domain: Understanding emotions, intentions (needs Theory of Mind)

• Societal Domain: Social conventions, group norms