PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

Chapter 9

Learning Objectives

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

The Growing Body

Slow but steady…•Height changes

•Weight changes

•Only time in lifespan when on average girls taller than boys

•Variation in heights up to 6 inches not unusual

Cultural Patterns of Growth

Influences•Sufficient or insufficient nutrition

•Disease

•Genetic inheritance

•Familial stress

Should hormones be used to make short children grow?

Artificial Hormones: Points to Consider

• Currently taken by thousands of children with insufficient natural growth hormones

• Costly

• Some side effects

• Long-term studies of usage not available

Nutritional Benefits

• Children who received higher levels of nutrients had more energy and felt more self-confident than those whose nutritional intake was lower.

What policy implications does this finding suggest?

(Source: Based on Barrett & Radke-Yarrow, 1985.)

Benefits of Adequate Nutrition

Relationship to social and emotional functioning•More peer involvement•More positive emotions•Less anxiety•More eagerness to explore new environments•More persistent in frustrating situations•Generally higher energy levels•(See Guatemalan study, Barrett & Frank, 1987)

Consequences of Inadequate Nutrition

Undernutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide

Undernourished children•Lowered resistance to infection

•More likely to die from common childhood ailments and respiratory infections

•Frequent illness that impacts growth

What would Ugly Betty's life be like in a real elementary school?

Obesity

• Most common causes:– Genetic factors– Lack of physical activity– Unhealthy eating patterns– Combination of these factors

• Only in rare cases is being overweight caused by a medical condition such as a hormonal problem

Costs of Childhood Obesity

• Obese children– More likely to be

overweight as adults– Greater risk of heart

disease, diabetes, and other diseases

The other side of “fat”

• Even very young children are aware of society's fixation on thinness

• Lowered self-esteem has been associated with being overweight in girls as young as 5

• Attitude was closely correlated with parents' perceptions

Balanced Diet?

MOTOR DEVELOPMENT

Gross Motor Skills

Do boys and girls differ in motor skills?

Gender differences in gross motor skills became increasingly pronounced during middle childhood•Boys outperform girls

•Little or no difference when equal participation in exercise/activities

•Influenced by societal expectations

Fine Motor Development

• Necessary for wide range of school-related tasks

• Influenced by increase in amount of myelin speeds up electrical impulses between neurons

Health and School-agers

Middle childhood is period of robust health•Routine immunizations have produced considerably lower incidence of life-threatening illnesses

•More than 90 percent of children in middle childhood have at least one serious medical condition but most are short term illnesses

Asthma

About asthma•15 million US children•Periodic attacks of wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath

•Theories about increased incidence•Increased air pollution •More accurate diagnosis•Exposure to “asthma triggers”•Poverty

Other Health Risks

• Accidents– Motor vehicles– Bikes– Fires and burns– Drowning– Gun-related deaths

• Reduced by use of seatbelts and helmets

PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS

Identifying the Problem

• Psychological disorders in children overlooked for years– Incidence– Symptoms inconsistent from those of adults– Antidepressant drugs used for treatment have never

been approved by governmental regulators for use with children

Drugs As Treatment

FOR•Depression and other psychological disorders treated successfully using drug•More traditional nondrug therapies that largely employ verbal methods simply are ineffective

AGAINST•Long-term effectiveness of antidepressants with children not known•Use of antidepressants on developing brains and long-term consequences more generally not known•Correct dosages for children of given ages or sizes not known

Depression

• Key defining features of major depressive disorder in children and adolescents are same as they are for adults

• Way symptoms are expressed varies with developmental stage of child

Children with Special NeedsSensory Difficulties: Visual, Auditory, and Speech

Problems

Do you see what I see?

Difficulties in seeing •Blindness (20/200 after correction)

•Partial sightedness (20/70 after correction)

Say what?

• Loss of hearing or some aspect of hearing

• Affects 2 percent of school-age children

• Varies across number of dimensions

Children Who Do Not Hear

• Children with speech-language impairment have an impairment of their speech and/or language structures and functions

• Parts of the body used in speaking and understanding - the brain, nerves, mouth and throat - may be damaged or not developing or working properly

• Level of speech-language impairment can range from mild to severe

• Impairment may be obvious before school or not show itself until the child has difficulty learning at school

I Am Talking to YOU!

Definition•Impairment of speech articulation, voice, fluency, or the impairment or deviant development of language comprehension and/or expression

•Impairment of use of spoken or other symbol system that adversely affects educational performance

Stuttering

• Substantial disruption in rhythm and fluency of speech

• Most common speech impairment; 20 percent of all children go through stage

• No clear-cut answers to the causes of stuttering

Learning Disabilities Discrepancies Between Achievement and Capacity

to Learn

• Difficulties in acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities

• 2.8 million children in US

• Dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia– ADD/ADHD

The Brains of Children With ADHD

The Basic Definition in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

“Learning disability” = umbrella term

Developmental Reading Disability

Dylexia affects 2 to 8 percent of elementary school children•Reading difficulties

•Inability to separate sounds in words

•Problems sounding out words

Developmental Writing Disabilities

Writing involves several brain areas and functions (dysgraphia)

•Brain networks for vocabulary, grammar, hand movement, and memory must all be in good working order

•Developmental writing disorder may result from problems in any of these areas

Developmental Arithmetic Disability

• Arithmetic involves recognizing numbers and symbols, memorizing facts, aligning numbers, and understanding abstract concepts like place value and fractions

• Any of these may be difficult for children with developmental arithmetic disorders, also called dyscalculia

What are the most common signs of ADHD?

• Persistent difficulty in finishing tasks, following instructions, and organizing work

• Inability to watch an entire television program

• Frequent interruption of others or excessive talking

• Tendency to jump into a task before hearing all the instructions

• Difficulty in waiting or remaining seated

• Fidgeting, squirming

Diagnostic Criteria

Behaviors must: •Be excessive, long-term, and pervasive

•Appear before age 7, and continue for at least 6 months

•Create a real handicap in at least two areas of a person's life, such as school, home, work, or social settings

•Be different than "normal" distractibility or overstressed lifestyle prevalent in our society

ADHD Treatment Controversy

Ritalin or Dexadrine reduce activity levels in hyperactive children and are routinely prescribe•Effective in increasing attention span and compliance BUT side effects considerable and long-term health consequences unclear

•Help scholastic performance in short run BUT long-term evidence for continuing improvement is mixed

Overprescribing Ritalin?

The number of children being given drugs for psychological disorders has increased significantly over the last decade.

(Source: U.S. Surgeon General, 2000.)

Are there other treatments for ADD/ADHD?

Treatments•Behavioral therapy

•Diet

•Other?

Keeping Children Fit

• Make exercise fun. Gear activities to the child's physical level and motor skills.

• Encourage the child to find a partner. Start slowly.

• Urge participation in organized sports activities, but do not push too hard.

• Don't make physical activity, such as jumping jacks or push-ups, a punishment for unwanted behavior.

• Provide a healthy diet.

Review and Reply

Review and Reply

Review and Apply

INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

What are advances and limitations, in thinking during childhood?

Approaches•Piaget

•Information-processing

•Vygotsky

Intellectual Development: Piaget

Concrete operational stage•7 and 12 years

•Characterized by active and appropriate use of logic– Logical operations applied to concrete problems– Conservation problems; reversibility; time and speed,

decentering

Routes to Conservation

After being told that the two cars traveling on Routes 1 and 2 start and end their journeys in the same amount of time, children who are just entering the concrete operational period still reason that the cars are traveling at the same speed.

Later, however, they reach the correct conclusion: that the car traveling the longer route must be moving at a higher speed if it starts and ends its journey at the same time as the car traveling the shorter route.

How does preoperational thought emerge?

Shift from preoperational thought to concrete operational thought does not happen overnight •Children shift back and forth between preoperational and concrete operational thinking

•Once concrete operational thinking is fully engaged, children show several cognitive advances

Conservation Training

Rural Australian Aborigine children trail their urban counterparts in the development of their understanding of conservation; with training, they later catch up. Without training,around half of 14-year-old Aborigines do not have an understanding of conservation.

What can be concluded from the fact that training influences the understanding ofconservation?

(Source: Based on Dasen, Ngini, & Lavallee, 1979.)

Piaget Was Right…Piaget Was Wrong

Information Processing

Increasing ability to handle information•Memory improvement

•Short term memory capacity improvement

Thinking about Memory: Metamemory

• Understanding about processes that underlie memory

• Improves during school age years

• Helps children use control strategies (conscious, intentional tactics to improve functioning)

Can children be trained to be more effective in use of control strategies?

• School-age children can be taught to use particular strategies– Keyword strategies

• See Center for Development and Learning (10 Strategies to Enhance Memory) for additional strategies

Vygotsky's Approach

Cognitive advances occur through exposure to information within zone of proximal development (ZPD)•Influential in development of classroom practices

•Cooperative learning

•Reciprocal teaching

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Mastering the Mechanics of Language in Middle Childhood

Metalinguistic Awareness

One of most significant developments in middle childhood is children's increasing understanding of their own use of language •By age 5 or 6

– Understand language is governed by set of rules

•By age 7 or 8– Realize that miscommunication be due to factors

attributable not only to themselves, but to person communicating with them

How does language promote self-control?

• Helps school-age children control and regulate behavior

• “Self-talk” used to help regulate behavior

• Effectiveness of self-control grows as linguistic capabilities increased

The Diversity of Language Other Than The Diversity of Language Other Than English Spoken in the United StatesEnglish Spoken in the United States

Long-term Bilingualism

• According to survey data, even Spanish, a language thought to be particularly enduring in the United States, seldom lasts beyond the second or third generation (Pease-Alveraz, 1993)

Why do you think this occurs?

Cognitive Advantages of Bilingualism

• Greater cognitive flexibility

• Higher self-esteem

• Greater meta-linguistic awareness

• Potential improved IQ scores

Review and Apply

Review and Apply

Review and Apply

SCHOOLING: THE THREE Rs (AND MORE) OF MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

Schooling Around the World and Across Genders: Who Gets Educated?

• Primary school education universal right and legal requirement?

• Children in developing countries may have less access

• Females in these countries receive less formal education than males

The Plague of Illiteracy

What was the first book you remember reading?

Reading: Learning to Decode Meaning Behind Words

• No other task that is more fundamental to schooling than learning to read

• Reading involves significant number of skills

Development of Reading Skills

How Should We Teach Reading?

• Disagreement about nature of mechanisms by which information is processed during reading– Code-based approaches – Whole-language approaches

• National Reading Panel and National Research Council support reading instruction using code-based approaches

Brain Changes and Reading

• Whatever approach is used to teach reading, reading produces significant changes in the wiring of the brain

• It boosts the organization of the visual cortex of the brain and it improves the processing of spoken language

Educational Trends in the Next Millennium

• U.S. schools are experiencing return to educational fundamentals embodied in traditional three Rs

• Elementary school classrooms today stress individual accountability, both for teachers and students

• Elementary schools have also paid increased attention to issues involving student diversity and multiculturalism

Cultural Assimilation or Pluralistic Society?

Multicultural education developed in part as a reaction to a cultural assimilation model in which the goal of education was to assimilate individual cultural identities into a unique, unified American culture

Do you agree?

The social and emotional development of children are taking a back seat to literacy education?

Cultural Assimilation or Pluralistic Society?

• Cultural assimilation model• Pluralistic society model

• Form a small group and take five minutes to record all the group definitions, characteristics, and thoughts about each model.

• Which model makes the most sense to you?

Fostering a Bicultural Identity

• Today, most educators agree that minority children should be encouraged to develop a bicultural identity

• School systems encourage children to maintain their original cultural identities while they integrate themselves into dominant culture

• More contemporary approaches emphasize a bicultural strategy in which children are encouraged to maintain simultaneous membership in more than one culture

Intelligence: Determining Individual Strengths

How do you define intelligence?

Intelligence Benchmarks: Differentiating the Intelligent from the Unintelligent

Measuring IQ: Present-day approaches to intelligence•Binet's Test

– Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition (SB5)

•Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fourth Edition (WISC-IV)

•Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, 2nd Edition (KABC-II)

Measuring Intelligence

What IQ Tests Don't Tell: Alternative Conceptions of Intelligence

• Spearman's g• Catell: fluid and crystallize intelligence• Gardner: 8 intelligences• Vygotsky: dynamic assessment• Sternberg: triarchic theory of intelligence

Wow! So many tests…so little time.

Why do you think there are so many tests?

Group Differences in IQ

• Previous experiences of test-takers may have a substantial effect on their ability to answer questions

• Cultural background and experience have the potential to affect intelligence test scores

Racial Differences in IQ

• The question of how to interpret differences between intelligence scores of different cultural groups lies at the heart of one of the major controversies in child development

• Mean score of African Americans tends to be about 15 IQ points lower than the mean score of whites—although the measured difference varies a great deal depending on the particular IQ test employed

Nature or Nurture?

For Whom the Bell Told!!

The Bell Curve Controversy •Herrnstein and Murray: Average 15-point IQ difference between whites and African Americans is due primarily to heredity

• Most developmentalists and psychologists responded by arguing that the racial differences in measured IQ can be explained by environmental differences between the races

•Little evidence to suggest that IQ is a cause of poverty and other social ills

Below Intelligence Norms

Mental Retardation•Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act

– Least restrictive environment– Mainstreaming– Full inclusion

Benefits of Mainstreaming

• Ensure that all persons, regardless of ability or disability, have access to full range of educational opportunities, and fair share of life's rewards

How is intellectual disability identified?

American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities•Definition

– Familial intellectual disability– FAS– Down's Syndrome

•Levels– Mild– Moderate– Severe– Profound

Above Intelligence Norms

• Gifted– Federal government guideline (P.L. 97-35 Sec 582)

• Research suggests that highly intelligent people tend to be outgoing, well adjusted, and popular

Above Intelligence Norms:Educating the Gifted and Talented

• Acceleration• Enrichment

• How do the needs of children with higher abilities compare with children with lower abilities?

• What consequences might your decision have if funding for education is very limited?

Review and Apply

Review and Apply

Review and Apply

EPILOGUE

Look back to the prologue, about about La-Toya Pankey's development of reading skills, and answer the following questions:•Judging from the cues provided in the prologue, how would you have estimated La-Toya's chances for academic success before you learned about her ability to read? Why?

•If you wished to isolate the factors in La-Toya's genetic or environmental background that contributed to her interest and ability in reading, how would you proceed? Which factors would you examine? What questions would you ask?

EPILOGUE

• Given her circumstances, what threats to academic accomplishment does La-Toya still face? What advantages does she seem to have?

• Discuss La-Toya's situation in light of the premises of the authors of The Bell Curve. If La-Toya succeeds academically, outperforming students of higher socioeconomic status, how would the authors explain this phenomenon? How do you explain it?