chapter 10 physical and cognitive development in middle and late childhood

Chapter 10

Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle and Late

Childhood

Black Hawk College Chapter 10 2

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Body Growth and Proportion

• Proportional changes are among the most pronounced.– Head and waist circumference and leg length decrease in

relation to body height.

• Muscle mass and tone improve.• Strength doubles.• Weight gain averages 5-7 pounds a year.• Increased weight is primarily due to

increases in the size of the skeletal and muscular systems, and the size of some organs.


Motor Development

• Motor development becomes much smoother and more coordinated.

• Skipping rope, swimming, bike riding, skating, and climbing are mastered.


Motor Development

• Increased myelination of the CNS is reflected in the improvement of fine motor skills.

• Hands are used more adroitly as tools—hammering, pasting, tying shoes, and fastening clothes.

• By 10-12 years children begin to show manipulative skills similar to the abilities of adults.


Exercise and Sports

• A 1997 poll indicated that only 22% of children in grades 4-12 were physically active for 30 minutes every day of the week.

• Only 34% attended daily P.E. classes and 23% had no P.E.


Participation in Sports

• Participation in sports can have both positive and negative consequences for children.

• It’s an opportunity for exercise, healthy competition, building self-esteem, peer relations and friendships.

• It can produce pressure to achieve to win, physical injuries, distractions from school, unrealistic expectations.


Health, Illness, and Disease

• Accidents and Injuries

• Obesity

• Cancer


Accidents and Injuries• The most common cause of severe injury

and death is motor vehicle accidents, either as a pedestrian or a passenger.

• The use of seat-belts is important in reducing the severity of such accidents.


Accidents and Injuries• Other serious injuries involve skateboards,

roller skates, and other sports equipment.

• Appropriate safety helmets, protective eye and mouth shields, and protective padding are recommended.


Obesity• Just over 20% of children are overweight, and

10% are obese.• Girls are more likely than boys to be obese.• Obesity is less common in African American than

White children during childhood, but this reverses during adolescence.

• Obesity at age 6 results in approximately a 25% chance for adult obesity.

• Obesity at age 12 results in approximately a 75% chance for adult obesity.


Consequences of Obesity in Children

• Obesity is a risk factor for many medical and psychological problems

• Pulmonary problems, such as sleep apnea• Hip problems• Tendency toward high blood pressure and elevated

cholesterol levels• Low self-esteem and depression • Exclusion from peer groups


Treatment of Obesity

• Exercise is believed to be an extremely important component of a successful weight-loss program for overweight children.

• Many experts on childhood obesity recommend a treatment that involves a combination of diet, exercise, and behavior modification.

• Behavior modification programs typically teach children to monitor their own behavior, keeping a food diary while attempting to lose weight.


Cancer• Cancer is the second leading cause of death in

children 5-14 years of age.• Currently 1 in every 330 children in the U.S.

develops cancer before the age of 19.• The incidence of cancer in children is increasing.• Child cancers are mainly those of the white blood

cells, brain, bone, lymph system, muscles, kidneys, and nervous system.

• All are characterized by an uncontrolled proliferation of abnormal cells.


Children with Disabilities

• Who Are Children with Disabilities?

• Learning Disabilities• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity

Disorder• Educational Issues


Who Are Children with Disabilities?• Approximately 10% of all children in the U.S. receive

special education or related services.• Within this group, little more than half have a

learning disability.• Of children with disabilities:

– 21% have speech or language impairments.– 12% have mental retardation. – 9% have serious emotional disturbance.

• Three times as many boys as girls are classified as having a learning disability.


Learning Disabilities• Children with a learning disability:

– are of normal intelligence or above.– have difficulties in at least one academic area and usually

several.– have a difficulty that is not attributable to any other diagnosed

problem or disorder.

• The most common problem that characterizes children with a learning disability involves reading—severe impairment termed dyslexia.

• They often have difficulties in handwriting, spelling, or composition.

• Successful intervention programs exist.


Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

• ADHD is a disability in which children consistently show one or more of the following characteristics over a period of time:– inattention– hyperactivity– impulsivity

• The disorder occurs as much as 4-9 times as much in boys as in girls.

• Students with ADHD have a failure rate in school that is 2-3 times that of other students.


Causes of ADHD

• Definitive causes of ADHD have not been found.• Possible low levels of certain neurotransmitters

have been proposed.• Pre- and postnatal abnormalities may be a cause.• Environmental toxins such as lead could

contribute to ADHD.• Heredity is considered a contributor, as 30-50%

of children with the disorder have a sibling or parent who has it.


Treatment of ADHD• Many experts recommend a combination of

academic, behavioral, and medical interventions to help ADHD students better learn and adapt.

• The intervention requires cooperation and effort on the part of the parents, school personnel, and health-care professionals.

• Ritalin is a controversial stimulant given to control behavior.

• In many children, Ritalin actually slows down the nervous system and behavior.


Educational Issues• Public Law 94-142 is the Education for All Handicapped

Children Act requiring that all students with disabilities be given a free, appropriate public education and be provided the funding to help implement this education.

• Enacted in 1975, renamed in 1983 the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

• IDEA spells out broad mandates for services to all children with disabilities, including evaluation and eligibility determination, appropriate education, and the individualized education plan (IEP) and the least restrictive environment (LRE).


The IEP• IDEA requires that students with disabilities have

an individualized education plan (IEP), a written statement that spells out a program specifically tailored for the student with a disability.

• In general, the IEP should be:– related to the child’s learning capacity.– specially constructed to meet the child’s

individual needs and not merely a copy of what is offered to other children.

– designed to provide educational benefits.


The LRE• Under the IDEA, a child with a disability must be

educated in the least restrictive environment, a setting as similar as possible to the one in which children who do not have a disability are educated.

• Inclusion - educating children with a disability in the regular classroom.

• Mainstreaming - educating children with a disability partially in a special education classroom and partially in a regular classroom.


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In telligen cean d C reativity

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Piaget’s Theory

• The Theory

• Piaget and Education

• Evaluating Piaget’s Theory


The Theory

• Piaget believed that around the age of 7, children enter the concrete operational stage.

• Concrete operational thinking involves:

– mental operations replacing physical actions

– reversible mental actions

– coordinating several characteristics of objects

– classifying and interrelating things

– seriation

– transitivity


Piaget and Education

• Take a constructivist approach.• Facilitate rather than direct learning.• Consider the child’s knowledge and level of

thinking.• Use ongoing assessment.• Promote the student’s intellectual health.• Turn the classroom into a setting of exploration

and discovery.


Evaluating Piaget’s Theory

• Contributions

• Criticisms


Contributions of Piaget• Piaget’s major contributions to understanding

children’s cognitive development include:– assimilation– accommodation– object permanence– egocentrism– conservation

• His observation yielded important things to look for in cognitive development, such as shifts in thinking and the significance of experience.


Criticisms of Piaget

• Estimates of children’s competence

• Stages• The training of children to

reason at higher levels• Culture and education


Information Processing

• Memory

• Critical Thinking

• Metacognition


Memory• Though short-term memory shows no considerable

increase after age 7, long-term memory increases with age during middle and late childhood.

• Long-term memory depends on the learning activities individuals engage in when learning and remembering information.

• Control processes (strategies) are cognitive processes that do not occur automatically but require work and effort to improve memory.

• Attitude, motivation, health, and knowledge also influence children’s memory.


Critical Thinking• Critical thinking involves grasping the deeper

meaning of ideas, keeping an open mind about different approaches and perspectives, and deciding for oneself what to believe or do.

• Deep understanding occurs when children are stimulated to rethink their prior ideas.

• Some experts believe that schools spend too much time on getting students to give a single correct answer in an imitative way, rather than encouraging them to expand their thinking and become deeply engaged in meaningful thinking.


Metacognition• Metacognition is cognition about cognition or knowing

about knowing.• Metamemory is knowledge about memory, and

includes general knowledge about memory and knowledge about one’s own memory.

• As they move through elementary school, children give more realistic evaluations of their memory skills.

• Some experts believe the key to education is helping students learn a rich repertoire of strategies that result in solutions of problems.


Intelligence and Creativity

• What Is Intelligence?• IQ• The Binet Tests• The Wechsler Scales• Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory• Gardner’s Eight Frames of Mind• Evaluating the Multiple Intelligence Approaches• Controversies and Issues in Intelligence• The Extremes of Intelligence• Creativity


What Is Intelligence?

• Intelligence is verbal ability, problem-solving skills, and the ability to adapt to and learn from life’s everyday experiences.

• Intelligence cannot be directly measured.• For the most part, intelligence tests have been

relied on to provide an estimate of a student’s intelligence.


IQ

• William Stern created the concept of intelligence quotient (IQ).

• IQ is a person’s mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100.

• IQ = MA/CA x 100.


The Binet Tests• Alfred Binet developed the concept of mental age:

an individual’s level of mental development relative to others.

• Binet’s original 1905 scale has been revised as the Stanford-Binet tests and is administered to individuals aged 2 years through adulthood.

• It requires both verbal and nonverbal responses.• It assesses four content areas: verbal reasoning,

quantitative reasoning, abstract/visual reasoning, short-term memory.


The Wechsler Scales

• David Wechsler developed tests to assess students’ intelligence:– The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of

Intelligence-Revised (WPPSI-R) for ages 4-6½– The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

(WISC) for ages 6-16.– The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS).

• The Wechsler scales provide an overall IQ and yield verbal and performance IQs.


Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory

• Robert J. Sternberg developed the triarchic theory of intelligence, which states that intelligence comes in three forms:– Analytical - involves the ability to analyze,

judge, evaluate, compare, and contrast.– Creative - consists of the ability to create,

design, invent, originate, and imagine.– Practical - focuses on the ability to use, apply,

implement, and put into practice.


Gardner’s Eight Frames of Mind

• Verbal skills• Mathematical skills• Spatial skills• Bodily-kinesthetic skills• Musical skills• Interpersonal skills• Intrapersonal skills• Naturalist skills


Evaluating the Multiple Intelligence Approaches

• These approaches have stimulated teachers to think more broadly about what makes up children’s competencies.

• They have motivated educators to develop programs that instruct students in multiple domains.

• They have contributed to the interest in assessing intelligence and learning in innovative ways.

• Critics say that there has yet to be a research base established to support the theories of multiple intelligences.


Controversies and Issues in Intelligence

• Ethnicity and Culture

• The Use and Misuse of Intelligence Tests


Ethnicity and Culture• In the U.S., African American and Latino children score

below White children on standardized intelligence tests.• The consensus is that these differences are based on

environmental differences.• Many early tests of intelligence were culturally biased,

favoring urban children over rural children, children from middle SES families over children from low-income families, and White children over minority children.

• Culture-fair tests are tests of intelligence that attempt to be free of cultural bias.


The Use and Misuse of Intelligence Tests

• Psychological tests are tools whose effectiveness depends on the knowledge, skill, and integrity of the user.

• They can be used for positive purposes, or they can be badly abused.

• Some cautions about IQ:– Scores can lead to stereotypes and expectations.– A high IQ is not the ultimate human value.– A single, overall IQ score is limiting.


The Extremes of Intelligence

• Mental Retardation

• Giftedness


Mental Retardation• Mental retardation is a condition of limited mental

ability in which an individual has a low IQ, usually below 70 on a traditional intelligence test, and has difficulty adapting to everyday life.

• Mental retardation can have an organic cause, or it can be social and cultural in origin.

• About 89% of mentally retarded people are mildly retarded (IQs of 55-70).

• About 6% are moderately retarded (IQs of 40-54).• About 3.5% are severely retarded (IQs of 25-39).


Giftedness• People who are gifted have above-average

intelligence (an IQ of 120 or higher) and/or superior talent for something.

• Characteristics of gifted children are:– Precocity– Marching to their own drummer– A passion to master

• Recent studies support the conclusion that gifted people tend to be more mature, have fewer emotional problems, and grow up in a positive family climate.


Creativity• Creativity is the ability to think about something

in novel and unusual ways and to come up with unique solutions to problems.

• Convergent thinking produces one correct answer and is characteristic of the kind of thinking required on conventional intelligence tests.

• Divergent thinking produces many different answers to the same questions and is more characteristic of creativity.

• Most creative children are quite intelligent, the reverse is not necessarily true.


Strategies for Developing Creativity

• Brainstorming

• Provide environments that stimulate creativity

• Don’t overcontrol

• Encourage internal motivation

• Foster flexible and playful thinking

• Introduce children to creative people


Language Development

• Vocabulary and Grammar

• Reading

• Bilingualism


Vocabulary and Grammar• During middle and late childhood, a change occurs

in the way children think about words.• They become less tied to the actions and

perceptual dimensions associated with words and more analytical in their approach to words.

• Children make similar advances in grammar.• The elementary school child’s improvement in

logical reasoning and analytical skills helps in the understanding of the use of comparatives and subjectives.


Reading• Education and language experts continue to debate

how children should be taught to read.• The whole-language approach stresses that reading

instruction should parallel children’s natural language learning, and that reading materials should be whole and meaningful.

• The basic-skills-and-phonetics approach emphasizes that reading instruction should teach phonetics and its basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds, and early reading instruction should involve simplified materials.


Bilingualism• As many as 10 million children in the U.S. come

from homes in which English is not the primary language.

• Bilingual education aims to teach academic subjects to immigrant children in their native languages, while slowly and simultaneously adding English instruction.

• This has been the preferred strategy of schools for the past two decades.


Findings on Bilingual Education• Researchers have found that bilingualism does not

interfere with performance in either language.• Children who are fluent in two languages perform

better on tests of attentional control, concept formation, analytical reasoning, cognitive flexibility, and cognitive complexity.

• Bilingual children are also more conscious of spoken and written language structure, and are better at noticing errors of grammar and meaning.

• Bilingual children in a number of countries have been found to perform better on intelligence tests.

chapter 10 physical and cognitive development in middle and late childhood

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