Child Development in Middle Childhood: Growth, Brain, and Social Skills

Body Growth

Growth slows considerably in middle childhood (ages 6-11). Children grow 2 to 3 inches and gain 5 to 8 pounds per year. Growth follows a cephalocaudal trend (head downward). Older children's bodies attain more adult-like proportion.

Brain Development

Synaptogenesis (increase in neural connections), pruning (elimination of unused synapses), and myelination continue. These processes lead to a streamlining of connectivity, resulting in more focused brain activity and improvements in working memory. The prefrontal cortex shows continued development.

Motor Development

Children show advances in flexibility, balance, agility, and force. Their body movements become more fluid and coordinated. Increases in fine motor skills (like penmanship or printing) are particularly important for academic achievement and developing new interests.

Physical Activity

Moderate physical activity is associated with positive physical, psychological, and cognitive health, but most children do not meet recommended guidelines.

Childhood Injuries

Injuries and mortality rates for ages 5-14 have declined over time. Motor vehicle accidents are the most common source of injury at all ages. Falls are the most common injury for children ages 5-9, while being struck by an object or person is common for ages 10-14. Children from low SES homes experience higher rates of injury due to poor access to healthcare, poor nutrition, and stressful environments.

Childhood Obesity

Obesity poses short- and long-term physical and psychological health problems. Effective programs reduce children's television/video game use, increase physical activity, and teach nutrition.

Developmental Disabilities (General)

Conditions due to impairments in physical functioning, learning, language, and behavior that begin early in life and are usually lifelong. While physical disabilities have declined, neurodevelopmental conditions have risen (e.g., ADHD, learning disabilities).

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Most commonly diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorder (about 10% of U.S. schoolchildren). Characterized by persistent difficulties with attention (e.g., failing to attend to details) and/or hyperactivity/impulsivity (e.g., frequent fidgeting, talking excessively) that interfere with performance.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

A family of disorders characterized by deficits in social communication and a tendency to engage in repetitive behaviors. Children with ASD often show difficulties with working memory.

Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Diagnosed when a child shows a measurable discrepancy between aptitude and achievement in a particular academic area.

Developmental Dyslexia

Reading

Dysgraphia

Writing

Discalculia

Mathematics

Piaget's Concrete Operational Stage

Occurs at about age 7-11. Permits children to use mental operations to solve problems and think logically. They gain classification skills and make advances in solving conservation tasks. Key concepts include decentration and spatial reasoning.

Information Processing

Brain maturation leads to improvements in executive functioning, attention, memory, and processing speed. Working memory advances significantly during the school year compared to the summer months.

Metacognition

Being mindful of one's thinking improves, enabling children to monitor, evaluate, and adjust their activity to complete tasks.

Metamemory

Improves steadily, enhancing memory efficiency.

Memory Strategies

Advances enable children to use mnemonic strategies: rehearsal (repeating information), organization (categorizing or chunking items), and elaboration (creating a story to link material).

Intelligence Tests (IQ)

Measure intellectual aptitude (capacity to learn). They predict school achievement and career attainment in adulthood. The WISC-V measures verbal comprehension, visual-spatial, fluid reasoning, working memory, and processing speed.

Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences

Proposes at least eight independent kinds of intelligence, defined as the ability to solve problems or create culturally valued products.

Vocabulary & Grammar

Vocabulary expands fourfold during the elementary school years. Children learn that words can have multiple meanings and begin to understand similes and metaphors. Understanding of complex grammatical structures, syntax, and pragmatics improves.

Metalinguistic Awareness

The understanding that language is a system and can be analyzed.

Bilingual Language Learning

Bilingualism is associated with cognitive benefits. Dual-language approaches are more effective than immersion approaches in teaching language and promoting academic achievement.

Psychosocial Task

Industry versus Inferiority. Children must master culturally valued skills (reading, math). Success leads to feelings of competence and motivation.

Self-Concept & Esteem

Self-conceptions become more sophisticated and organized, incorporating both positive and negative traits. Children engage in social comparison to derive a sense of self-esteem.

Achievement Motivation

Children who adopt a growth mindset (abilities are malleable) and show internal attributions for success/failure tend to have a mastery orientation.

Mastery orientation

Success is from effort; failure is controllable and is associated with academic success.

Learned helplessness orientation

Failure is uncontrollable and is associated with poor performance.

Piaget's Moral Theory

Progresses from Heteronomous Morality (rules are absolute and unalterable, preoperational stage) to Autonomous Morality (rules are products of group agreement used to improve cooperation, concrete operational stage, age 7+).

Kohlberg's Moral Theory

Moves from Preconventional Reasoning (decisions based on self-interest, rewards/punishments) to Conventional Moral Reasoning (guided by perspective-taking, reciprocity, and maintaining social order, late childhood).

Distributive Justice

Reasoning about fairness in dividing goods. Children ages 4-6 prefer distributions that maximize their own profit, but by 8 years of age, they tend to prefer fair allocation (equity).

Friendship

Transforms into a reciprocal relationship characterized by intimacy, loyalty, and commitment. Friendships are a source of companionship, support, and help children learn relationship skills.

Peer Acceptance

Predicts self-validation and self-esteem. Popular children are helpful, trustworthy, bright, and skilled in self-regulation and conflict resolution. Rejected children (aggressive-rejected and withdrawn-rejected) show poor emotion regulation and are at risk for problems.

Peer Victimization (Bullying)

Children who bully are often physically/verbally assertive and impulsive, while bullied children are typically inhibited, anxious, and have low self-esteem. Interventions must address bystanders, as they reinforce bullies' behavior if they do not act.

Parent-Child Relationships

Parents adapt to children's growing independence by granting increasing independence and shifting to shared power. They use less direct management and employ more reasoning and inductive discipline (pointing out consequences of behavior).

Family Structure

Research has failed to reveal important differences in the adjustment of children reared by same-sex parents compared to heterosexual parents. Children's adjustment is primarily influenced by socioeconomic status (SES) and family conflict rather than the specific structure (single, divorced, blended, etc.).

Risk and Protective Factors

Risk factors are individual/contextual variables associated with higher negative outcomes. Protective factors reduce the poor outcomes associated with adverse circumstances (e.g., parental incarceration, community violence).

Child Sexual Abuse

Prevention and early identification are essential. Teachers and professionals are mandated reporters. Children show fewer long-term consequences if the abuse is stopped and they have a nurturing home environment.

Self-Concept and Self-Esteem

Self-conceptions become more sophisticated and organized, integrating both positive and negative traits and recognizing that traits can vary by context.

Social Comparison

Children derive a sense of self-esteem through social comparison.

Piaget's Theory

Moral development shifts from Heteronomous Morality (rules are fixed) toward Autonomous Morality (rules are products of group agreement) around age 7.

Kohlberg's Theory

Children progress to Conventional Moral Reasoning, upholding rules to please others (Stage 3) and maintain social order (Stage 4, emerging in adolescence).

Gender Constancy

Children demonstrate gender constancy (awareness that sex is biological) by around age 7, and gender rigidity tends to decline afterward.

Rejected Children

Aggressive-rejected or withdrawn-rejected children show poor emotion regulation skills and are at risk for problems.

Bullying (Peer Victimization)

Bullies are often assertive/impulsive; bullied children are inhibited, anxious, and have low self-esteem.

Bystanders

Interventions must address bystanders to prevent them from reinforcing the bully's behavior.

Risk Factors

Risk factors increase the likelihood of negative outcomes (e.g., parental incarceration, community violence).

Protective Factors

Protective factors reduce the poor outcomes associated with adversity.

Puberty

The biological transition to adulthood, beginning in late childhood (earlier for girls). It involves the growth spurt and the maturation of primary sex characteristics (reproductive organs) and secondary sex characteristics (e.g., breast growth, body hair).

Pubertal Timing

Early maturation poses challenges for both boys and girls, with more dramatic effects for girls.

Health Concerns

Adolescence is generally healthy, but mortality rises substantially, largely due to risky behavior associated with neurological development.

Delayed phase preference

Shift in preferred sleep schedule means adolescents get less sleep than needed.

Brain Changes

Characterized by a second burst of synaptogenesis followed by accelerated pruning (thinning the prefrontal cortex).

White matter

Myelinated neurons that increase linearly, improving speed and efficiency of thought.

Dual Systems Model

Explains 'typical' adolescent behavior by noting the limbic system (emotion/reward) undergoes a burst of development earlier than the prefrontal cortex (reasoning/control).

Cognitive-Developmental

Adolescents become capable of Formal Operational Reasoning, enabling hypothetical-deductive reasoning and propositional logic (scientific thinking).

Adolescent Egocentrism

Manifests as the imaginary audience (belief that others are watching them) and the personal fable (belief that they are unique and invulnerable).

School Transitions

Transitions (elementary to middle school, middle to high school) are often stressful and associated with declining academic achievement.

Stage-Environment Fit

Challenges are amplified by the mismatch between adolescents' developmental needs (e.g., independence) and the school environment.

Self-Concept

Becomes more abstract, complex, and differentiated.

Identity Formation

Identity achievement is the central task of adolescence, often involving a psychosocial moratorium (active exploration).

Identity Statuses

Individuals move through four statuses: Identity Diffusion, Identity Foreclosure, Psychosocial Moratorium, and Identity Achievement.

Moral Reasoning (Kohlberg)

Adolescents become capable of Postconventional Moral Reasoning (decisions based on universal principles/ethics).

Critical Consciousness

Becoming aware of and taking action against systems of oppression and challenging social inequities.

Conflict

Rises in early adolescence, peaks in middle adolescence, but usually revolves around minor details.

Parenting Style

Authoritative parenting fosters autonomy and competence.

Parental Monitoring

Promotes well-being and is a protective factor against risky behavior.

Friendships

Characterized by increased intimacy, self-disclosure, trust, and loyalty.

Peer Influence

Resistance to peer influence tends to increase from middle to late adolescence. Peer pressure is highly influential, especially during transitions.

Peer Groups

Cliques are close-knit friend groups; Crowds are larger, reputation-based groups (e.g., jocks, nerds).

Sexual Activity

Has declined in the U.S. over the past few decades. Risk factors include early pubertal maturation and poor parental monitoring.

Pregnancy

The U.S. has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world.

Depression

Rates rise, with girls showing higher rates than boys.

Eating Disorders

Include Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa (girls show higher rates).

Substance Use

Experimentation is common and may be considered normative. Use tends to peak in the early 20s (emerging adulthood).

Delinquency

Rates generally rise in early adolescence and decline in late adolescence.

Peak Functioning

All organs and body systems peak in functioning during the 20s.

Aging

Senescence (gradual age-related decline) begins once physical maturity is reached, becoming measurable by about age 30. Physical strength peaks at about age 30.

Mortality

The leading cause of death for U.S. young adults (ages 19-39) is unintentional injury, with drug overdose being the most common fatal injury in adults age 25 and older.

Postformal Reasoning

Advanced thinking beyond Piaget's formal operations. It moves from Dualistic Thinking (right/wrong facts) to Relativistic Thinking (knowledge is relative to context/perspective) to Commitment within Relativistic Thinking (choosing and defending a position despite complexity).

Pragmatic Thought

Applying intellectual skills to real-world problems and accepting contradictions.

Cognitive-Affective Complexity

The capacity to be aware of emotions, integrate feelings, and regulate intense emotions to make logical decisions about complicated issues.

College Outcomes

Associated with advances in moral reasoning and identity development.

Adrenarche

Hormonal shifts contributing to changes in the body and brain during middle childhood.

Anorexia Nervosa

An eating disorder.

Autonomy

The ability to make and implement decisions.

Behaviorism

Theoretical perspective emphasizing environmental influences on behavior.

Binge Eating Disorder

An eating disorder.

Bulimia Nervosa

An eating disorder.

Child Assent

Respecting children's growing capacities for decision making by seeking their participation agreement (because they cannot provide full informed consent).

Cliques

Close-knit friend groups.

Cohabitation

A living arrangement where partners who are romantically involved live together without being married.

Emerging Adulthood (Age 18-25)

A distinct period characterized by five features: identity exploration (in love, work, and worldview), instability (demographic), being self-focused, feeling in-between (adolescence and adulthood), and optimism/confidence about the future.

Context

It is influenced by socioeconomic status (SES) and culture, and is not universal.

Erikson's Task

Early adulthood's psychosocial task is Intimacy versus Isolation, establishing an intimate, mutual, and satisfying relationship.

Identity

The identity search continues from adolescence, extending to include moral, religious, political, gender, sexual, and ethnic-racial identity.

Social Clock

Adjustment is influenced by the social clock (age-related expectations/norms for major life events, like marriage or parenthood).

Sexual Assault/Rape

About one-third of women will experience nonconsensual sexual activity in their lifetime. Most rapes are committed by someone the victim knows.

Love Components (Sternberg)

Relationships are defined by combinations of Passion (physical attraction/arousal), Intimacy (emotional engagement/closeness), and Commitment (decision to stay together).

Relationships

Young adults navigate singlehood, cohabitation, marriage, and divorce.