1. Life-Span Development Twelfth Edition
Chapter 9:
Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle and Late Childhood
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Body Growth and Change
Body Growth and Change:
Growth averages 2–3 inches per year
Weight gain averages 5–7 lbs. each year
Muscle mass and strength gradually increase; baby fat decreases
Ossification of bones
Boys have a greater number of muscle cells and are typically stronger than girls
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Body Growth and Change
The Brain:
Brain volume stabilizes
Significant changes in structures and regions occur, especially in the prefrontal cortex
Improved attention, reasoning, and cognitive control
Increases in cortical thickness
Activation of some brain areas increase while others decrease
Shift from larger areas to smaller, more focal areas
Due to synaptic pruning
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Body Growth and Change
Motor Development:
Gross motor skills become smoother and more coordinated
Boys usually outperform girls on gross motor skills
Improvement of fine motor skills during middle and late childhood
Increased myelination of the central nervous system
Girls usually outperform boys on fine motor skills
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Exercise
Exercise plays an important role in children’s growth and development
Percentage of children involved in daily P.E. programs in schools decreased from 80% (1969) to 20% (1999)
Television watching is linked with low activity and obesity in children
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Exercise
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7. Health, Illness, and Disease
Middle and late childhood is usually a time of excellent health
Injuries are the leading cause of death during middle and late childhood
Motor vehicle accidents are most common cause of severe injury
Cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death in children 5– 14 years old
Most common child cancer is leukemia
Many elementary-school children already possess risk factors for cardiovascular disease
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8. Health, Illness, and Disease
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9. Health, Illness, and Disease
Overweight Children:
Being overweight as a child is a risk factor for being obese as an adult
Girls are more likely than boys to be overweight
Changes in diet and total caloric intake may be one reason for increasing obesity rates
Raises risks for many medical and psychological problems
Pulmonary problems, diabetes, high blood pressure
Low self-esteem, depression, exclusion from peer groups
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10. Learning Disabilities
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11. Learning Disabilities
Definition of learning disability includes three components:
Minimum IQ level
Significant difficulty in a school-related area
Exclusion of severe emotional disorders, second-language background, sensory disabilities, and/or specific neurological deficits
Boys are identified three times more frequently than girls
Most common form involves reading (i.e., dyslexia)
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12. Learning Disabilities
Possible Causes:
Genetics (many tend to run in families)
Environmental influences
Problems in integrating information from multiple brain regions
Difficulties in brain structures and functions
Intervention:
Improving reading ability through intensive instruction
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13. Learning Disabilities
ADHD
Characterized by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity
Number of children diagnosed has increased substantially
Possible Causes:
Genetics
Brain damage during prenatal or postnatal development
Cigarette and alcohol exposure during prenatal development
Later peak for cerebral cortex thickening
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14. Learning Disabilities
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15. Learning Disabilities
ADHD Treatment:
Stimulant medication (Ritalin or Adderall) is helpful
Combination of medication and behavior management seems to work best
Exercise may reduce ADHD symptoms
Critics argue that physicians are too quick to prescribe medications
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16. Learning Disabilities
Educational Issues:
1975: laws passed requiring all public schools to serve disabled children
Law requires disability students to receive:
IEP (Individualized Education Plan): written statement that is specifically tailored for the disabled student
LRE (Least Restrictive Environment): a setting that is as similar as possible to that of non-disabled children
Inclusion: educating a child with special education needs in the regular classroom
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Cognitive Changes
Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage:
Ages 7 to 11
Children can perform concrete operations and reason logically
Reasoning can only be applied to specific, concrete examples
Ability to classify things into different sets and consider their interrelationships
Seriation: the ability to order stimuli along a quantitative dimension
Transitivity: the ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions
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Cognitive Changes
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Cognitive Changes
Evaluating Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage:
Piaget proposed that various aspects of a stage should emerge together
Some concrete abilities do not appear at the same time
Education and culture exert stronger influences on children’s development than Piaget believed
Neo-Piagetians: argue that Piaget got some things right, but that theory needs considerable revision
More emphasis on attention, memory, and strategy use
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Memory
Memory: long-term memory increases with age during middle and late childhood
Experts have acquired extensive knowledge about a particular content area
Influences how they organize, represent, and interpret information
Affects ability to remember, reason, and solve problems
Older children usually have more expertise about a subject than younger children do
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Memory
Two important strategies: creating mental images and elaborating on information
Elaboration: engaging in more extensive processing of information
Fuzzy Trace Theory: two types of memory representations:
Verbatim memory trace: precise details of information
Gist: central idea of information
Older children begin to use gist more; contributes to fuzzy traces
Fuzzy traces are more enduring than verbatim traces
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Thinking
Critical Thinking: thinking reflectively and productively, and evaluating evidence
Few schools really teach critical thinking
Creative Thinking: the ability to think in novel and unusual ways, and to come up with unique solutions to problems
Convergent thinking: produces one correct answer
Divergent thinking: produces many different answers to the same question
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Thinking
Strategies for Fostering Creativity:
Encourage brainstorming
Provide environments that stimulate creativity
Don’t overcontrol students
Encourage internal motivation
Build children’s confidence
Guide children to be persistent and delay gratification
Encourage children to take intellectual risks
Introduce children to creative people
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Thinking
Scientific Thinking:
Children tend to:
Ask fundamental questions about reality
Place a great deal of emphasis on causal mechanisms
Be more influenced by chance events than by overall patterns
Maintain old theories regardless of evidence
Tools of scientific thought are not routinely taught in schools
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Thinking
Metacognition: cognition about cognition
Metamemory: knowledge about memory
Children have some knowledge of metamemory by 5–6 years of age
They do not understand certain components
Knowledge about strategies
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Intelligence
Intelligence: problem-solving skills and the ability to learn from and adapt to life’s everyday experiences
Individual Differences: stable, consistent ways in which people are different from each other
Intelligence Tests:
Binet Tests: designed to identify children with difficulty learning in school
Mental age (MA): an individual’s level of mental development relative to others
Intelligence quotient (IQ): a person’s mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100
Stanford-Binet Tests: revised version of the Binet test
Scores approximate a normal distribution—a bell-shaped curve
Wechsler Scales: give scores on several composite indices
Three versions for different age groups
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Intelligence
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Intelligence
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Intelligence
Types of Intelligence:
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence: intelligence comes in three forms:
Analytical intelligence: ability to analyze, judge, evaluate, compare, and contrast
Creative intelligence: ability to create, design, invent, originate, and imagine
Practical intelligence: ability to use, apply, implement, and put ideas into practice
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Intelligence
Types of Intelligence (continued):
Gardner’s Eight Frames of Mind:
Verbal: ability to think in words and use language to express meaning
Mathematical: ability to carry out mathematical operations
Spatial: ability to think three-dimensionally
Bodily-Kinesthetic: ability to manipulate objects and be physically adept
Musical: sensitivity to pitch, melody, rhythm, and tone
Interpersonal: ability to understand and interact effectively with others
Intrapersonal: ability to understand oneself
Naturalist: ability to observe patterns in nature and understand natural and human-made systems
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Intelligence
Controversies and issues in intelligence:
Heredity and genetics versus environment (increasingly higher scores suggest role of education)
Flynn effect
Bell curve: U.S. is developing large underclass of intellectually deprived
Racial and cultural bias
Use and misuse of IQ tests
Classifying types of mental retardation
Classification as being gifted
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Intelligence
Evaluating Multiple-Intelligence Approaches:
Pros:
Stimulated teachers to think more broadly about children’s competencies
Motivated educators to develop programs that instruct students in multiple domains
Contributed to interest in assessing intelligence and classroom learning
Cons:
Multiple-intelligence views may have taken the concept of specific intelligences too far
Research has not yet supported the different types
Are there other types of intelligences?
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33. Differences in IQ Scores
Influences of Genetics:
Heritability: the variance in a population that is attributed to genetics
Heritability of intelligence is about .75
Problems:
Heritability index is only as good as the data entered into the analysis
Assumes we can treat genetic and environmental influences as separate
One strategy is to compare the IQs of identical and fraternal twins
Most researchers agree that genetics and environment interact to influence intelligence
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34. Differences in IQ Scores
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35. Differences in IQ Scores
Environmental Influences:
Communication of parents
Schooling
Flynn Effect: rapidly increasing IQ test scores around the world
Increasing levels of education attained by more people
Explosion of available information
Interventions designed to help children at risk for impoverished intelligence
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36. Differences in IQ Scores
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37. Differences in IQ Scores
Group Differences:
On average, African American schoolchildren score 10 to 15 points lower on IQ tests than White American schoolchildren
Gap has begun to narrow as African Americans have gained social, economic, and educational opportunities
Culture-Fair Tests: tests that are intended to be free of cultural bias
Items that are familiar to children from all backgrounds
Nonverbal intelligence tests
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38. Differences in IQ Scores
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39. Differences in IQ Scores
Using Intelligence Tests:
Avoid stereotyping and expectations
Know that IQ is not the sole indicator of competence
Use caution in interpreting an overall IQ score
Extremes of Intelligence:
Mental Retardation: a condition of limited mental ability in which an individual has a low IQ (typically below 70) and has difficulty adapting to everyday life
Can be mild, moderate, or severe
Can have an organic cause, or it can be social and cultural in origin
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40. Differences in IQ Scores
Extremes of Intelligence (continued):
Giftedness: people who have 130 IQ or higher and/or superior talent for something
Three criteria:
Precocity
Marching to their own drummer
A passion to master
Giftedness is likely a product of both heredity and environment
Many experts argue that education programs for gifted children need a significant overhaul
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Language Development
During middle and late childhood:
Changes occur in the way children’s mental vocabulary is organized
Rapid increase in vocabulary and grammar skills
Improved logical reasoning/analytical skills
Metalinguistic Awareness: knowledge about language
Improves significantly during elementary school years
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Language Development
Reading:
Children with a large vocabulary have an advantage in learning to read
Two approaches to teaching reading:
Whole-language approach: reading instruction should parallel children’s natural language learning
Recognize whole words; use context to guess at meaning
Reading is connected with listening and writing skills
Phonics approach: reading instruction should teach basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds
Research suggests that instruction in phonics should be emphasized, although both methods can be beneficial
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Language Development
Bilingualism:
Learning a second language is easiest for children
U.S. students are far behind other countries in learning multiple languages
Ability to speak two languages has a positive effect on child’s cognitive development
Bilingual children perform better on tests of:
Control of attention (focus)
Concept formation
Analytic reasoning
Cognitive flexibility
Cognitive complexity
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