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Chapter 9: Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle and Late Childhood

Chapter Outline

  • Physical Changes and Health

  • Children with Disabilities

  • Cognitive Changes, Language Development

Physical Changes and Health

Body Growth and Change

  • Growth averages 2 to 3 inches per year.

  • Weight gain averages 5 to 7 pounds a year.

  • Head circumference and waist circumference decrease in relation to body height during this stage.

  • Bones continue to ossify but are more flexible compared to mature bones.

The Brain

  • Brain volume stabilizes during this phase.

  • There are significant structural and regional changes, especially in the prefrontal cortex.

  • Increases in cortical thickness are observed, with varying activation levels in different brain areas.

Motor Development

  • Motor skills become smoother and more coordinated.

  • Girls typically outperform boys in fine motor skills.

  • Improvements in fine motor skills occur due to increased myelination of the central nervous system.

Exercise

  • Higher physical activity levels are linked to a lower risk of metabolic diseases, including cholesterol, waist circumference, and insulin levels.

  • Benefits of aerobic exercise include improvements in:

    • Children's attention and memory

    • Effortful and goal-directed thinking and behavior

    • Creativity

Ways to Promote Exercise

  1. Offer physical activity programs and utilize school facilities.

  2. Enhance physical fitness activities in schools.

  3. Encourage children to plan community and school activities.

  4. Motivate families to engage in physical activities.

Health, Illness, and Disease

  • Middle and late childhood is generally marked by excellent health.

  • Common causes of severe injuries include motor vehicle accidents.

Overweight Children

  • Causes include heredity and environmental contexts.

  • Consequences involve diabetes, hypertension, and elevated blood cholesterol levels.

Interventions for Overweight Children

  1. Encourage parents to adopt healthier lifestyles.

  2. Provide healthier food options and promote exercise.

Cardiovascular Disease

  • Rare in children, yet risk factors are present that may lead to issues later in life.

Cancer

  • Second leading cause of death among children aged 5 to 14.

  • Most common type of child cancer is leukemia.

  • Advances in treatment have improved survival rates for children with cancer.

Children with Disabilities

Scope of Disabilities

  • Educational Issues

    • The US Department of Education includes students with learning disabilities and ADHD under this category.

  • Special Education Services

    • 3 to 21-year-olds in the US who received care from 2011 to 2013.

Types of Learning Disabilities

  • Dyslexia: Impairment in reading and spelling.

  • Dysgraphia: Difficulty with handwriting.

  • Dyscalculia: Developmental arithmetic disorder.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

  • Characterized by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

  • Possible causes include:

    • Genetics

    • Brain damage during prenatal or postnatal stages

    • Exposure to cigarettes and alcohol during pregnancy

    • Low birth weight

Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

  • Persistent issues involving relationships, aggression, depression, and fears affecting personal or school matters.

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

  • Range from autistic disorder to Asperger syndrome, with symptoms including:

    • Deficiencies in social relations

    • Abnormalities in communication

    • Restricted or repetitive behaviors

Educational Issues

  • Individualized Education Plan (IEP): Tailored educational plan for disabled students.

  • Least Restrictive Environment (LRE): Similar setting to that of non-disabled peers.

  • Inclusion: Full-time integration in a regular classroom.

Cognitive Changes

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory

Concrete Operational Stage

  • Ages 7 to 11, where children can:

    • Classify and reason logically.

    • Perform operations on concrete objects (suritation and transitivity).

Evaluating Piaget's Theory

  • Concrete operational abilities do not appear uniformly across all individuals.

  • Education and culture significantly influence development.

Information Processing

  • Attention levels significantly improve, with increased focus on relevant stimuli.

  • Long-term memory enhances with age, developing knowledge and expertise in specific areas.

  • Working memory acts as a mental workbench to process information, with the central executive being a key component.

Strategies for Improvement

  • Autobiographical Memory: Memory of significant life events enhances with age.

  • Fuzzy Trace Theory: Considers both verbatim memory and gist memory.

  • Executive Function: Crucial for school success, including self-control, working memory, and flexibility.

Critical and Creative Thinking

  • Mindfulness: Being mentally present and flexible.

  • Divergent thinking fosters creativity by generating multiple answers to the same question.

  • Scientific thinking involves fundamental questioning and reasoning.

Metacognition

  • Knowledge about one's own memory processes (metamemory).

Intelligence

  • Defined as the ability to solve problems and adapt to experiences.

  • Binet tests measure mental age relative to the population average.

  • Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and the normal distribution describe IQ performance trends.

Types of Intelligence

  • Triarchic Theory: Encompasses analytical, creative, and practical intelligence.

  • Gardner's 8 Frames of Mind:

    • Verbal, mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist intelligence.

Cultural and Environmental Influences on Intelligence

  • Considering the role of genetics and environmental factors in individual differences in IQ.

  • Culture-fair tests aimed to minimize bias in measuring intelligence.

Language Development

Vocabulary, Grammar, and Metalinguistic Awareness

  • Children's vocabulary organization and grammar skills evolve significantly.

  • Metalinguistic awareness contributes to understanding language structure.

Reading Instruction

  • Whole language approach aligns with natural language learning.

  • Phonics approach focuses on basic rules for correlating symbols to sounds.

Writing Skills

  • Encouragement of early writing without excessive concern for spelling or letter formation is crucial.

Bilingualism and Second Language Learning

  • Bilingualism supports cognitive development positively.

  • Research suggests bilingual education is beneficial for skill enhancement.