Chapter 12: Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood

Concrete operational stage

The period of cognitive development between ages 7-12

Characterized by the active and appropriate use of logic to concrete problems

For 2 years before moving firmly into the COS, children flip back and forth between COS and POS

Ex: they can answer a question correctly but can’t articulate how

Decentering

The ability to take multiple aspects of a situation into account

Reversibility

The notion that processes transforming a stimulus can be reversed, returning it to its original form

ex: understanding that a ball of clay that has been stretched can return to a ball

Limitation of concrete operational thinking

Children are tied to physical reality and cannot understand truly abstract or hypothetical questions

Memory

The ability to encode, store, and retrieve information

Sensory memory

The initial, momentary storage of information that lasts only an instant

It records an exact replica of the stimulus

Short-term memory (aka working memory)

Information is stored for 15-25 seconds

Improves significantly during middle childhood

Part of the reason young children struggle with conservation may be due to memory limitations

Long-term memory

Information is stored relatively permanently, although it may be difficult to retrieve

Metamemory

An understanding about the processes that underlie memory that emerges and improves during middle childhood

Control strategies

Conscious, intentionally used tactics to improve cognitive processing

Ex: school-age children are aware that rehearsal is a useful strategy and increasingly employ it over the course of middle childhood

They progressively make more effort to organize material into coherent patterns, use mnemonics, organization, and cognitive elaboration

Zone of proximal development

The level at which a child can almost, but not quite, understand or perform a task

According to Vygotsky, education should…

Focus on activities that involve interactions with others

Cooperative learning

Children work together in groups to achieve a common goal

• Benefit from others’ insights and can be kept on track by their peers

Reciprocal teaching

A technique to reach reading comprehension strategies in which students are taught to skim a passage, ask questions about the central point, summarize it, then predict what happens next

Over the course of middle childhood, the use of ___ and ___ increases

Passive voice (the dog was walked by John) and conditional sentences

Syntax

The rules that indicate how words and phrases can be combined to form sentences

Children’s understanding grows through middle childhood

Intonation

School-aged children have difficulty decoding sentences that depend on intonation

Ex: “George gave a book to David, and he gave one to Bill” vs “George gave a book to David, and he gave one to Bill”

Pragmatics

The rules governing the use of language to communicate in a given social setting

Increases with middle childhood, especially in regard to give-and-take conversation

Metalinguistic awareness

An understanding of one’s own use of language which becomes more explicit during middle childhood

Helps children achieve comprehension when information is fuzzy or incomplete

• Ex: preschoolers rarely ask for clarification when they’re confused because they blame themselves for not understanding. 7/8 year olds realize that miscommunication goes both ways

Children use “self-talk” to…

Regulate their own behavior and increase self-control

Benefits of bilingualism:

1. Greater cognitive flexibility

2. Ability to solve problems with greater creativity and versatility

3. Associated with higher self-esteem in minority students

US schools are experiencing a return to…

The 3 R’s reading, writing, and arithmetic, individual accountability

Emotional intelligence

The set of skills that underlie the accurate assessment, evaluation, expression, and regulation of emotions

Delaying a child’s entry into school…

Dores not provide an advantage and may be harmful

Reading stage 0

Birth - 1st grade

Children learn the prerecs for reading: identifying letters, writing their names, reading familiar words (ex: stop on a stop sign)

Reading stage 1

1st - 2nd grade

Phonological recoding skills

Sounding out words, names of letters, sounds of lettters

Reading stage 2

2nd - 3rd grade

Read aloud with fluency but not much attention to the meaning of the words

Reading stage 3

4th - 8th grade

Reading is a means to an end (way to learn), information can only be understood from 1 perspective

Reading stage 4

8th grade+

Process information that reflects multiple povs

Code-based approaches to reading

The belief that reading should be taught by presenting the basic skills that underlie it

Emphasizes phonics and that reading consists of processing words’ individual components, combining them into words, then using the words to derive meaning

Strongest option for teaching reading

Whole-language approach to reading

The view of reading as a natural process (like oral language) and that is should be taught through exposure to complete writings

Encouraged to make guesses about word meaning via context

Teacher expectancy effect

The phenomenon whereby an educator’s expectations for a given child actually bring about the expected behavior

Expectations are transmitted via complex verbal and nonverbal cues

Multicultural education

Education in which the goal is to help students from minority cultures develop competence in the culture of the majority group while maintaining positive group identities that build on their original cultures

Cultural assimilation model

The view of American society as a melting pot in which all cultures are amalgamated into a unique, unified American culture

Accepted until the early 1970’s

Pluralistic society model

The concept that American society is made up of diverse, coequal cultures that should preserve their individual features

Charter schools

Independently ran public schools that families can voluntarily choose for their children

Often small and sometimes have a particular focus (arts, sciences, a language, etc)

Intelligence

The capacity to understand the world, think with rationality, and use resources effectively when faced with challenges

Alfred Binet

Linked intelligence test scores to a mental age and school success

Defined intelligence as that which his test measured

Mental age

The typical intelligence level found for people of a given chronological age

Intelligence quotient

A score that expresses the ratio between a person’s mental and chronological age

Higher IQ is connected to finishing more years of school, but is not linked to income and life success

Not the primary measure of intelligence

Tend to be biased in favor of white, upper and middle class students

Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale

An oral test that varies according to the person’s age

Ex: children are asked about everyday activities while older people are asked to explain proverbs

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

A test for children that provides separate measures of verbal and performance (nonverbal) skills as well as a total score

Ex: understanding a passage vs copying a complex design

Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children

An intelligence test that measures children’s ability to integrate different stimuli simultaneously and use step-by-step thinking

It is more equitable to children with English as a second language

Fluid intelligence

Intelligence that reflects information-processing capabilities, reasoning, and memory

Ex: categorizing a series of letters or remembering a set of numbers

Crystallized intelligence

The accumulation of information, skills, and strategies learned through experience and people can apply in problem-solving situations

Ex: solve a puzzle or mystery

Henry Gardner’s 8 types of intelligence

Naturalist, intrapersonal, interpersonal, spatial, linguistic, logical mathematical, bodily kinesthetic, musical

Naturalist intelligence

The ability to identify and classify patterns in nature

Intrapersonal intelligence

Knowledge of the internal aspects of oneself and access to one’s own feelings and emotions

Interpersonal intelligence

Skills in interacting with others, such as sensitivity to the moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions of others

Spatial intelligence

Skills involving spatial configurations, such as those used by artists and architects

Vygotsky’s view of intelligence

It must be looked at through the lens of culture because it manifests differently in different cultures

Triarchic theory of intelligence

The belief that intelligence consists of 3 aspects of information processing: the componential, experiential, and contextual

• Componential: how efficiently information is processed and analyzed

• Experiential: comparing new vs old material and relating them

• Contextual: ways of dealing with the demands of everyday environment

Developed by Robert Sternberg