Middle Childhood

Middle Childhood

• ~6-12 years old

• often when children are in formal education

• children become faster, stronger, more agile and endurance increases

• fine motor development increases

  • eg. drawing, cutting, writing, playing instruments

Physical Development in Middle Childhood

• girls tend to grow faster and by age 12 have reached ~93% of their adult height

• boys at the same age are ~84% of their adult height

• skeletal and muscle development continues

  • girls are often more coordinated

  • boys often stronger and faster

• these are group averages and there will be individual differences

Health in Middle Childhood

Most children are healthy at this age, however

• 1/3 fail to meet the minimum sleep recommendations

• 2/3 fail to meet the daily physical activity recommendation

• ½ exceed two hours of screen time/day

• linked to unsupervised night access to electronics, poor quality of sleep, poorer diet, low levels of physical activity and being overweight

Middle Childhood: BMI

Body Mass Index (BMI) is often used to estimate the proportion of body fat to lean body mass

• BMI< 3rd percentile = underweight

• BMI> 85th percentile = overweight

• BMI >97th percentile = obese

Because of growth spurts and the instability of physical variables in childhood, multiple assessments are required before any of these classifications are applied to an individual child

• BMI does not take into account whether weight is muscle or fat and can be a very inaccurate measure of health

Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood

• increases in existing cognitive skills and development of new ones

• brain grows rapidly until 5 or 6 and then slows as synaptic pruning occurs

• myelination continues, especially in the sensory and motor areas of the brain

• ability to control attention increases

  • selective attention: the ability to focus cognitive activity on the important elements of a problem or situation

Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood: Information Processing

We are born with the ability to take in, store, and manipulate information through our sensory, working and long term memory

Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood: Efficiency

Ability to efficiently use short-term memory increases with age

Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood: Automaticity

Ability to recall information from long-term memory without using short-term memory (ability increases with age)

Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood: Metacognition

Awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes

Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood: Executive Processes

Ability to use strategies for remembering, recalling and problem solving

Executive functioning: the brain's management system, a set of mental skills (like planning, focusing, memory, and self-control) that help you manage tasks, emotions, and actions to reach goals

Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood: Memory Strategies

The learned methods we use to remember information

Concrete Operational Stages of Reasoning

Piaget’s 3rd stage of reasoning, from approximately 6-11, where thought becomes logical and is applied to direct experiences:

• decentration, reversibility, classification, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning

Decentration

Thinking that takes multiple variables in to account

Reversibility

The understanding that an object has been physically altered and can be returned to its original stage, or a process can be done and undone

Classification

The ability to organize things into groups based on similar characteristics

Inductive Reasoning

Drawing general conclusions from specific observations, characteristic of the concrete operational stage

Deductive Reasoning

Moves from general principles to specific conclusions, emerges in adolescence during the formal operational stage (12+)

Language Development in Middle Childhood

• typically have developed basic pronunciation and grammar by the beginning of middle childhood

• metalinguistic awareness

• increasing ability to analyze the acceptability of what they are saying and communication

• vocabulary continues to increase although not as dramatic as toddlerhood and early childhood

• increase in use of words to describe actions (i.e verbs)

• speak differently depending on context

  • eg. to adults vs peers or younger children

Metalinguistic Awareness

• as children age, they become more aware of and knowledgeable about the nature and qualities of language

Education

• children learn by doing, thru play, problem solving, getting along with others and self-regulating

• easing children into the transition is important

• early school failure is harmful to an individuals academic functioning, cognitive development and socio-emotional development

  • early academic deficiencies often persist throughout the school years

  • children may fall behind with each successive year in school

Education: Social Promotion

The practice of promoting children to the next grade even though they did not meet academic standards, based on the belief that it will foster their self-esteem

• there tends to be a divide between retaining children versus allowing them to move to the next grade despite poor academic achievement 

Education: Social Promotion in BC

• in BC, students all transition thru elementary school (grade 3)

• in grades 4-12, the decision to advance or repeat a grade/course is based on performance and decided by teachers, parents, and the principal

• the principal has the ultimate say

• parents have the right to appeal the decision under the School Act

Education: Retained Students

Students who are retained show:

• poor performance in reading, mathematics and language

• poor school attendance

• more socio-emotional difficulties

• higher levels of disliking school

Retention can be a wake up call, but it could lead to:

• lower expectations, poor performance and ultimately dropping out of school in the future

Students who are retained are less likely to attend postsecondary school, and are more likely to have low paying and low status jobs

Social Development: Psychoanalytic Theories

Freud:

• Early Childhood: form emotional connections to primary caregivers

• Middle childhood: form emotional connections to peers

• there are variations in responses to social situations

Erikson:

• agreed with Freud that peer relationships are central for psychosocial development in middle childhood

• further argued that children experience the crisis of industry vs inferiority

  • Industry: “I can do it on my own”

  • Inferiority: “I can’t do it” 

Trait Theories

• help view social and personality development

• by middle childhood, temperament can be a base for certain traits

• each trait is assessed by Likert scale (5 point scale)

  • eg. not likely, likely, very likely 

Big 5: Extraversion

Extent to which a person is energetic and outgoing

• extroverts tend to get their energy from the outside world, whereas introverts are energized by being alone

• qualities: active, assertive, enthusiastic, outgoing

• temperament components: high activity level, sociability, positive emotionality, talkativeness

Big 5: Agreeableness

Extent to which a person is good-natured, helpful and trusting

• tendency to be accommodating and cooperative with others

• their tendency to please those around them can prevent them from sharing their own views

• qualities: affectionate, forgiving, generous, kind, sympathetic, trusting

• temperament components: high approach/positive emotionality, effortful control

Big 5: Conscientiousness

Extent to which a person is organized, careful and responsible

• helps you be successful in life

• qualities: efficient, organized, prudent, reliable, responsible

• temperament components: effortful control, task persistence

Big 5: Neuroticism/ Emotional Instability

Extent to which a person is calm and secure

• neuroticism is defined as experiencing a great number of negative emotions

• emotional stability (low neuroticism) helps you be satisfied

• qualities: anxious, self-pitying, tense, touchy, unstable, worrying

• temperament components: negative emotionality, irritability

Big 5: Openness

Extent to which a person is imaginative and independent and prefers variety

• represents having nontraditional and complex experience of the world

• qualities: artistic, curious, imaginative, insightful, original, having wide interests 

• temperament components: approach new situations and people, low inhibition

Social Cognitie Perspectives: Reciprocal Determinism

Bandura proposed that each of the 3 components influences and is influences by the other two

• Our personality provides us with distinct cognitions about the world that can shape the environments we choose and the impact of those environments on us

Children’s Self Concept

• ~7, children shift from using concrete descriptions to include trait-like psychological constructs

  • including negative explanations about themselves

• increasing cognitive capacities permits:

  • thinking about self in new, more complex ways

  • developing a more comprehensive and sophisticated self-concept

• a child can have an accurate view of their personality traits, and even have a solid sense of self-efficacy but still fail to value themselves as an individual

  • scientists have proposed that another aspect of self-concept development in middle childhood is a contributing factor; the emergence of the valued self (self esteem)

Self-Concept: Psychological Self

A person’s understanding of their enduring psychological characterisitcs

• includes judgements about self-compentencies

Self Concept: Self Efficacy

An individual’s belief in their capacity to cause an intended event to occur

Self-Concept: Social Comparison

The process of drawing conclusions about the self based on comparisons to others

Valued Self/ Self Esteem

Overall value of yourself as an individual

• self-esteem becomes increasingly compartmentalized and levels of self-esteem develop throughout childhood and adolescence

Valued Self: Preschoolers

• preschools typically have a very positive sense of self (also egocentric)

  • any goal is seen as achievable

  • contribute to the development of initiative and learning new skills

  • highly rate their abilities

Valued Self: School-Age

• school aged children begin to recognize temporal and contextual factors that influence behavior, abilities and experiences

• sense of self-esteem becomes more realistic and connected to abilities 

Influences on Self-Esteem

Social comparison: comparing yourself to others

• as ppl get older, we start to consider how others think about us (as egocentricism decreases)

• a positive of social comparison is having role models or motivation to be better

Personal Values: how much do you value certain abilities

External support

Self-Esteem: Ideal vs Real Self

Ideal self: a sense of self that is characterized by traits that one values

Real self: who an individual is, their personal characteristics

• ideal and real self in alignment means the person is doing well in the areas they value → higher self-esteem

• high discrepancies indicates the person does not believe they are doing well in areas they value → lower self-esteem

  • not as harmful to self-esteem if goals are out of our control

Cognition: Moral Reasoning

The process of making judgements about the rightness or wrongness of specific acts

• requires theory of mind

• is socially constructed 

• by age 2-6, children start to realize the difference b/w intentional and unintentional actions

Moral Realism

• objective moral facts and truths exist independently of human beliefs

• rules that govern behavior and can’t be broken

• after ~8, children realize there’s flexibility in rules

Moral Relativism

• argues that moral judgments are true only relative to a particular culture, society, or individual

Social Relationships: Primary Caregivers

• attachments to primary caregivers continues to be important

• capacity increases for self-regulation and depends on:

  • caregivers’ self-regulation

  • high parental expectations (developmentally appropriate) and parental monitoring (supporting children to meet standards)

• children learn from what they see

Social Relationships: Peers

• continued development in social and cognitive skills allow children to form and continue stable relationships

• importance of peer relationships increase during middle childhood

• ~10, children shift away from play as the only requirement for friendship to include trust (anticipation that someone else will treat you fairly)

• gender segregation: children take part in stereotypes, which starts in early childhood, and dictated by culture and society

• children learn from their peers

Social Relationships: Aggression

• as children progress thru elementary school, indirect or relational aggression increases

  • behaviors aimed at harming other’s self esteem or relationships

  • impact on both perpetrator and victim

  • linked to theory of mind (knowing how to harm someone else)

  • eg. gossiping, lying, cyberbullying

• physical aggression decreases

  • when younger, don’t know how to react

  • now better regulating emotions

  • physical aggression is more observable by teachers/caregivers (easier to discipline)

Peer Rejection

• children who experience peer rejection tend to be disliked and shunned by peers

• have poor communication, language, emotional control and social information processing skills

  • when children don’t get to practice social skills, they cannot develop these skills

• often misinterpret other children’s motives, have trouble understanding and regulating emotions, poor listeners, less socially competent

• dentrimental when parents don’t let children solve problems themselves (conflict resolution) 

Social Development: Influences beyond Family and Peers

• out of school care: eg. daycare

• TV/media: not always dentrimental (eg. facetime)

• video games: can allow for collaboration (communication)