childhood & school

What happens in this phase (also called middle childhood)?

• 6-12 years old

• Expanded independence in daily occupations

• Development of formal occupational roles occurs

• Context and environment are critical - shape child’s performance and influence development

• Time of gained knowledge and participation in self care, domestic life, interpersonal interactions, and civic life

What are self-management skills?

Methods, skills, and strategies by which individuals can effectively direct their own activities toward the achievement of an objective

Self-Management Skills in Middle Childhood

• Goal setting

• Decision making

• Focusing

• Planning

• Scheduling

• Task tracking

• Self-evaluation

• Self-intervention

How does the brain develop in middle childhood?

• Becomes differentiated - areas of the brain become specialized for certain kinds of information

• Hemispheric Specialization

• Corpus Callosum fully myelinates

What is hemispheric specialization?

• The end result of brain maturation that allows hemispheres to work separately and more efficiently in school ages children

• Left Hemisphere: Specialized further for language development

• Right Hemisphere: Specialized for analysis of shapes, forms, geometrics

What does the corpus callosum do?

• Faster, more effective communication between two hemispheres

• Coordinates information between the many areas of the brain

• Allows for motor and sensory integration

• Links parietal and frontal lobe connections for communication (which is associated with measures of intelligence)

Where does most of the brain growth at this time occur?

In the frontal lobes

• Associated with mental functions for attention, abstraction, organization, planning, time management, cognitive flexibility, insight, judgment

• Shift from preschool activity of regulation and inhibiting impulsese to expanded high level cognitive functions

Sensory Development

Mechanisms for visual and auditory processing continue to refine

• Visual acuity is more in tune

Sensory in the Classroom

• Classroom environment requires students to perceive sensory information and filter it so that they can attend only to input important to the task at hand

• Children with visual and/or hearing impairments may need accomodations to participate and function well in classroom

Visual Development

• Visual is predominant sensory system used in school environment

• Sensory systems develop in a use-dependent manner

  • We are very dependent on vision, so it develops rapidly

Static Visual Acuity

The clarity with which people see stationary objects, when they are also stationary

• Tested with a standard Snellen chart

Acuity

• At birth: 20/400

• Middle Childhood: Develops to 20/20

• Statutory Blindness: 20/200 or less

• Low Vision: 20/70 or less

Auditory Development

• Child has gained many skills in understanding and processing auditory info

• Able to search for and find the auditory stimulus

• Child can hear, remember, repeat, and recall words, phrases, and sequences of numbers

• Uses auditory info to process language

Physical Development

• Grows 2-3 inches a year from age 6-11

• Relative size of head decreases, increases occur in skeletal and muscle mass replace fatty tissue

• Most growth is in the limbs, lowering center of mass to umbilicus region

  • Drop in center of mass allows for improved balance in standing and running, manipulating objects

• Ability to adjust to postural challenges without requiring working memory to maintain it develops

• Significant increase in muscle strength → gradual improvements in functional task performance

  • From years 7-17: grip strength increases by 200-300%

• Movements become more fluid, precise calibration of movements are refined

Fine Motor Skill Development

• Speed and dexterity increase

• In familiar tasks, variability of strategies used decreases

• Refinement of movement is due to maturation of CNS

• Improved reaching and calibrating hand and arm movements → improved accuracy

• Improved visual processing helps improve refined hand skills

• Finger Dexterity

• Improved bilateral coordination

• Timing of motor actions refines as children develop temporal and spatial perception skills

  • Coincidence Anticipation Timing

  • Projected Action Sequence

Finger Dexterity

The ability to make precise coordinated movements of the digits or one or both hands to use or manipulate objects

Coincidence Anticipation Timing

The perceptual motor ability to track a moving object, estimate its speed, and execute a physical response

• Catching a ball, swinging a bat

Projected Action Sequence

A motor planning skill that involves anticipating a future event, calculating timing and trajectory, and adjusting your body’s movements to meet those conditions

Development of Hand Dominance

• Established dominance is an indicator of both hemispheric specialization and interhemispheric communication

• Genetic factors play the most important part in determining hand dominance, but cultural and environmental factors are also an influence

Does hand dominance matter?

• No overall differences in development of motor skills between children with right and left hand dominance

• No negative developmental effects of having dominance in one hand for writing and the other for another specaialized task

• Children who exhibit a consistent right or left hand preference are motorically superior to those who have a pattern of mixed-hand use

• Those who are more lateralized have a stronger hand dominance, thus reflecting a more mature central nervous system

What do children need to establish hand dominance?

• Postural control

• Eye-hand coordination

• A complimentary bilateral function

• Internal/external directionality

Play is SO important in preschool because it helps establish these

Mobility in Middle Childhood

• Able to move effectively between standing and sitting in a variety of situations and on rough and uneven surfaces

• Able to get in and out of vehicles, including cars and buses

• Able to move at the same speed and distance as the crowd in corridors and out of doors

• Able to pick up and carry large objects from one room to another

• Able to manage stairs + ladders in familiar environments

• Can use a house key to unlock and open a typical door to a house or apartment

• Child can play hopscotch or jumprope (or other games that involve hopping)

• Is able to engage in intense physical activity for extended periods

Mental Functions: Attention

• In this period, children learn to selective attend to relevant information

• Children in this age range (6-12) are found to be more distracted by irrelevant auditory and visual stimuli than adolescents and young adults

• Today, children in this period are required to sit indoors for longer periods of time, with fewer breaks for physical activity - this attentional demand is harder

• Children with ADHD have a more difficult time in today’s environment for education due to lack of time for activity

Working Memory

• The ability to hold information on the mind to do verbal and nonverbal reasoning tasks - involves active, conscious processing and storage of information

• Supports attention, language comprehension, and language production

• Mental workspace that we can store information while performing mental functions

Aspects of Working Memory

• Phonological Loop

• Visual Spatial Processor

• Episodic Buffer

• Central Executive

Phonological Loop

Holds information as words for brief periods

• Rehearse and store verbal information

Visual Spatial Processor

Process visual and spatial information here

• Shapes, designs, and involved in planning spatial movements (complex building navigation)

Episodic Buffer

“Backup” storage areas which communicates with LTM

Central Executive

Drives the entire system and allocates data to the phonological loop or visual spatial processor

• Focusing attention, coordinating the subsystems, controlling encoding and decoding strategies, and receiving information from long term

What determines working memory?

How much one is able to hold and work with in the working memory is dependent on the age, innate ability, and the pace at which information is presented

• Improves dramatically after 7 years old

Mental Functions: Metamemory

• New cognitive development in this age group

• Type of metacognition that involves a conscious awareness of one’s memory capabilities and the intentional strategies to aid memory

• 3 common metamemory strategies

  • Rehearsal

  • Organization

  • Mnemonics

Metamemory: Rehearsal

Repeating information to one’s self over and over

Metamemory: Organization

Grouping together related items

Metamemory: Mnemonics

Using a word, acronym, or other device to create a relationship between two or more items that are not members of the same category

Mental Functions: Psychomotor Functions

• Specific mental functions of control over both motor and psychological events at the body level, including the capacity to manipulate and control objects

• also called “praxis” or “motor planning” - the ability to plan, organize, and sequence a new task

• Skillfull motor planning results in qualitative improvements in motor tasks

Psychomotor Functions Example

• Hand eye coordination and reaction time are integration of cognitive and motor functions

  • Reaction time is a psychomotor ability that allows the person to quickly move the arms and/or legs in response to stimulus

    • Improves dramatically in this period from beginning to end

Mental Functions: Emotional Functions

• During this period, children gain the ability to recognize and discuss their feelings

• Learn to hide and show emotions appropriately for their environment

• Self-Concept

• Children at this age often experience stress, when situations require them to adapt and change

Self-Concept

Composite of ideas, feelings, and attitudes that the children have about their own identity, worth, capabilities, and limitations

Three Types of Stress

• Positive stress

• Tolerable Stress

• Toxic Stress

Positive Stress

• Sense of pressure that results from challenging experiences that are short lived

  • Results in learning and positive growth

Tolerable Stress

• Adverse life experiences that are more intense than those causing positive stress, but are still short lived

  • May require support to overcome

  • If you don’t get help for tolerable stress, it can become toxic stress

Toxic Stress

• Results from intense adverse experiences that may be sustained over a long period of time, such as child abuse and chronic neglect

  • Children are unable to effectively manage the stress and the stress response is active for long periods of time

  • This impacts the development of the brain in areas for learning and memory

Mental Functions: Perceptual Functions

• Mental function of recognizing and interpreting sensory stimuli

• Draws from memory and language functions

Types of Perceptual Functions

• Visual Perception

• Kinesthetic Perception

Visual Perception

• Develops extensively in this period

• Supports the development of reading and writing

Kinesthetic Perception

• Interpretation of information regarding relative position of the body parts to each other, the position of the body in space, and an awareness of the body’s movements

  • Stereognosis: The ability to recognize objects through touch

Higher-Level Cognitive Functions

• Decision making

• Abstract thinking

• Planning

• Carrying out plans

• Mental Flexibility

• Deciding which behaviors are appropriate under what circumstances

• Cognitive Monitoring

• Temporal Awareness

• Spatial Awareness

• Cognitive Mapes

Cognitive Monitoring

Involves self-examination of what you are currently doing, what you will do next, and how effectively the activity is serving to meet your intended purpose

Temporal Awareness

Complex understanding of passage of time

Spatial Awareness

Understanding of both near and far space around an individual and the ability to accurately locate items in space

Cognitive Maps

Used to construct and accumulate spatial knowledge to visualize images and enhance recall and learning information

• Helps us map all the way from task initiation to task completion

Who struggles with higher level cognitive functions

Children with autism struggle with these, especially abstract thinking and mental flexibility

Self-Care Skill Progression

• Children in this stage spend about 55% of their time on ADLs

  • Stat is from when sleeping was an ADL

• IADL: Dishes, laundry, making bed, cleaning, taking out trash, pet care, etc

Self-Care: Bathing/Showers

Takes bath or shower with parental reminder, may require supervision in the early years

Self-Care: Eating

Able to eat all types of textures of food using familiar utensils

Self-Care: Hair Care

Able to effectively brush hair

Self-Care: Meal Preparation

Can fix a simple cold meal, such as a bowl of cereal or sandwich

Self-Care: Dressing

Able to dress and undress independently

• May require assistance with fasteners and in putting shoes on the right feet in early years

• Needs parental guidance to choose correct clothing for environmental context

Self-Care: Personal Hygiene

Able to manage basic personal hygiene + toileting tasks independently

Self-Care: Communication/Safety

• Can convey important information and seek help from appropriate adults

• Remembers to keep in touch via cell phone when this is expected

• Can dial and initiate a telephone call without using speed dial

Self-Care: Personal Device Care

Will require supervision with managing assistive devices such as glasses, contacts, hearing aids, orthoses, etc

Self-Care: Sleep/Rest

Needs parental supervision and prompting to manage bed times and wake up times

Aspects of Social Participation and Interpersonal Relationships

• Social Referencing

• Social Knowledge

• Social Competence

Social Referencing

• Evaluating their own ability and behaviors by comparing them to others

  • Facial expressions, body cues, etc

  • Helps them decide what to do in situations

Social Knowledge

• Learned through relationships and experiences in social contexts

• Children’s ability to understand and interpret peer relationships becomes increasingly important

• 5 steps

• Challenging for kids on autism spectrum

  • Can help with social stories, social groups, etc

5 Steps of Social Knowledge

1) Decoding social cues

2) Interpreting social cues

3) Searching for a response

4) Selecting an optimal response

5) Taking an action

Social Competence

Smooth, sequential and appropriate use of social skills like humor, reading nonverbal behavior, and understanding social conventions in a dynamic way across contexts

Social Function

• Able to demonstrate comprehension of verbal instructions and to convey information to others that is clear in meaning

• Able to keep working with an age peer on a single task for at least 30 min

• Considers preferences and interests of friends when planning shared play activities

• Able to demonstrate good safety awareness in familiar situations

• Able to function independently in a variety of familiar community settings without assistance

• Able to control their behavior and avoid problem behaviors during school

• Able to play competitive games and follow rules + show sportsmanship

• Can communicate with a friend using telephone, computer, or cell phone without adult help

• Bullying

  • 85% of girls, 80% of boys

Types of Play

Kids progress from parallel and exploratory play to these

• Virtual Play

• Games with Rules

• Free play

Virtual Play

Digital technologies utilized

• DVD, computers, TVs, video games, etc

• Passive forms of entertainment, should not be considered play unless they include some interactive or creative element

Games with Rules

Appropriate in this stage

• Involve all players having to follow guidelines

• Able to understand and handle competition more appropriately at the later end of this stage

Free Play

Time for creativity and learning

• Best type of play for cognitive growth and development

• Away from schoolwork + chores

• Allow imagination, self-direction, self discovery