1. Mid-Late Childhood: Cognitive Development
Human Development & Learning

2. Brain Development Advances include:
Continued myelination and neural connections
Greater ability for self-control
Selective attention: ability to concentrate on what is important
Automatization: some skills become routine (e.g., reading, writing one’s name)

3. Motor Skills
Motor skill development continues through middle childhood, due to brain maturation and experience.
Older children have a faster reaction time than younger children.
Rough-and-tumble play helps regulate and coordinate frontal lobes of brain.

4. Measuring the Mind
GRADES are an important measure of how a child is doing in school.
However, why might someone want a different assessment in addition to grades?

5. Objective Tests of Ability
Achievement Tests: measure what has been taught (given routinely in school)
Aptitude Tests: measure one’s potential
IQ Tests: designed to measure intellectual aptitude, or ability to learn in school

6. IQ TESTS
The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children is a commonly used IQ test.
It includes verbal and performance subtests.
Scores below 70 indicate possible mental retardation; those above 130 suggest giftedness.

7. In Theory, Most are Average

8. Criticisms of IQ Testing
Tests reflect the culture of the makers.
A person’s potential changes with time.
So, IQ tests should be part of a battery of assessments for an individual child.
IQ tests ignore many types of intelligence.

9. Robert Sternberg’s theory
Sternberg (1996) suggests 3 types of intelligence
academic (IQ and achievement)
creative (evidenced by imaginative endeavors)
practical (seen in everyday interactions)

10. Howard Gardner: Multiple Intelligences
linguistic
logical-mathematical
musical
spatial
bodily-kinesthetic
interpersonal (social understanding)
intrapersonal (self-understanding)
naturalistic

11. What does an IQ score tell us, really?
IQ tests can help detect learning disabilities, giftedness, and other special needs.
IQ scores predict later school achievement and to some degree, career attainment in adulthood.

12. Children with Special Needs
Children who require extra help in order to learn have “special needs.”
Examples: pervasive developmental delays, learning disabilities, attention deficits, autism, physical disability, emotional impairment, and more.

13. Developmental Psychopathology
This field applies insights about typical development to study and treat various disorders (and vice versa).
Abnormality is normal
Disability changes over time
Adolescence and adulthood may be better or worse
Diagnosis depends on social context

14. Pervasive Developmental Delays
Pervasive developmental disorders are severe problems, such as autism, that affect many aspects of a young child’s psychological growth, causing evident delay of speech, movement, or social skills before age 6 years.

15. Autism
Autism is a PDD characterized by an inability to relate to other people normally, including extreme self-absorption, and an inability to learn normal speech.
The level of severity of symptoms varies across individuals (e.g. Asperger syndrome represents high functioning).

16. Symptoms of Autism Absent of abnormal language Undersensitive to pain
OTHER POSSIBLE SYMPTOMS:
CORE SYMPTOMS:
Absent of abnormal language
Social aloofness or unawareness
Repetitive, asocial play
Undersensitive to pain
Oversensitive to noise
Insistence on routine

17. Treatment of Autism Early intervention is beneficial
One-on-one behavioral training
teaching social play strategies and language skills
Encouraging social connections
Examples: rewards for eye contact, interacting

18. Treatment for Autism (cont.)
This teacher is trying to facilitate eye contact and encourage this 4 year old child with autism to speak.
ALAN CAREY / THE IMAGE WORKS

19. Learning Disability
A marked delay in a particular area of learning not associated with any physical handicap, mental retardation, or unusually stressful home environment.
Represents a measured discrepancy between aptitude and achievement.

20. Dyslexia Dyslexia represents unusual difficulty with reading
May “guess” at reading, using contextual clues
Problem may involve auditory processing of sounds
Has a huge effect on self esteem

21. Early Education for Dyslexia
Individualized instruction before age 6 often helps minimize the problem
How? By forming new neurological connections, and teaching strategies
Unfortunately, many children don’t receive early intervention

22. Attention Disorders
ADD and ADHD are both neurological disorders involving difficulty screening out irrelevant stimuli.
Possible causes: abnormality in brain or neurotransmitters, or prenatal damage (teratogens), genetic vulnerability (boys more susceptible), or postnatal damage (lead)

24. Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
Difficulty concentrating
Prone to anxiety and depression
May seem lost in thought, “spaced out”
Increased risk of developing conduct disorder or oppositional defiant disorder
May also have learning disability in reading or social skills

25. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Difficulty concentrating for more than a few minutes at a time: inattentive, impulsive, overactive
Increased risk of developing conduct disorder or oppositional defiant disorder
May also have learning disability in reading or social skills

26. Treatment of Attention-Deficit Disorders
Medication (e.g., Ritalin, Adderall, Strattera)
Behavioral Modification
Training for parents and teachers

27. Educating Children with Special Needs
Least restrictive environment (LRE)— legally required school setting that offers children with special needs as much freedom as possible to benefit from the instruction available to other children.

29. Educating Children with Special Needs (cont.)
Children with special needs are guaranteed an Individual Education Plan (IEP).
Legal document
It specifies a series of educational goals, and services required

30. Educating Children with Special Needs (cont.)
Mainstreaming—special needs kids in the general classroom
Resource Room: separate room with a trained special-education teacher
Inclusion: child in general classroom but with paraprofessional

32. A Prime Time for Learning
Children in the school years are inquisitive and eager to learn new skills.

33. Piaget’s Third Stage
Concrete operational thought is the ability to reason logically about direct experiences and perceptions.
Children in this stage become more systematic, objective, and scientific thinkers–but only about tangible, visible things.

34. Logical Principles
Classification: organization into groups according to common property
Example: Show 5 golden retriever and 2 poodles. Ask, “Are there more dogs or poodles?”
Kids in middle childhood know that poodles are a subcategory of “dogs.”

35. Essence and Change
Identity: certain characteristics of an object remain the same even if other characteristics change
Examples: frozen water is still water; a butterfly was once a caterpillar; liquid in smaller glass is the same liquid

36. Essence and Change (cont.)
Reversibility: reversing the process by which something was changed brings the original conditions
Example: if = 14, then
14 – 9 must equal 5! Also, imagine pouring H2O back in conservation task.

37. Essence and Change (cont.)
Reciprocity is the principle that things may change in opposite ways, and thus balance each other out.
Example: A child states that the decreased height in the shorter is balanced out by its increased width.

38. Practical Applications
The logical principles of concrete operational thought make learning easier and more fun.
Example: Children enjoy classifying cities, states, nations, etc., or knowing that a tadpole turns into a frog (identity).

39. Logic and Culture
Lev Vygotsky believed more than Piaget that culture shapes cognition.

40. Information Processing
Analyzes how the mind analyzes, stores, and retrieves information.
Cognition becomes more efficient in middle childhood.

41. The Three “Parts” of Memory
Sensory register: registers incoming stimuli for a split second
Working memory (short term): where current, conscious mental activity occurs
Long-term memory = stores information for minutes, hours, days, months, years
Unlimited capacity (!)

42. Speed of Processing
Speed of processing increases during middle childhood.
This allows a child to process more thoughts quickly, retain more thoughts in memory, and simultaneously process two different thoughts.

43. Automatization
Certain skills become automatic during middle childhood (e.g., reading, writing).
This increases intellectual capacity and speed of processing.

44. Knowledge Base
Knowledge base: a body of knowledge in an area that makes it easier to master new learning
Interest, motivation, and practice determine the size of the knowledge base.
Example: child chess experts, Pokémon experts

45. Control Processes
Control processes regulate the analysis of information within the information processing system, and increase during middle childhood.
Examples: selective attention, retrieval strategies, metacognition

46. Improvements in Control Processes
Selective attention: the ability to screen out irrelevant distractions and concentrate on a task
Metacognition: the ability to evaluate a task and determine how to accomplish it

47. Meta-linguistic Awareness
Changes occur in the way children’s mental vocabulary is organized
Metalinguistic awareness -- knowledge about language
Metalinguistic awareness allows children “to think about their language, understand what words are, and even define them”

48. Language: Where we see changes
Improved grammar
Better grasp of rules and exceptions.
Increase in abstract and logical thinking.
Comparison/relational words.
Creativity
Writing becomes smaller, more even.
Some children are taught cursive (~ 2nd or 3rd grade)

49. Translation: This summer I went to Minnesota and I went to my cousin’s house there and when [I] got there and saw my aunt and my cousin looking at a doll magazine and I told them I want an American Girl Doll and my Aunt yes.
Do you see the physical, cognitive and psychosocial changes we’ve been talking about in these writing samples? This is going to be one of your Applied Knowledge Assignments for this week. I want you to point out the changes you see in each subsequent writing sample and tell me what physical, cognitive and psychosocial developments they illustrate. Don’t forget to look at changes in the content over time.

50. Translation:
The pencil sharpener is like a crocodile.
Eating little fishes in the jungle.
Watching up close. Goodbye, little
crocodile and have fun in your
pool. Don’t get a stomachache.

53. Language: New Vocabulary
School-age kids learn up to 20 new words a day.
They understand metaphors and various uses of words.
Examples: egg, “walking on eggshells,” “last one is a rotten egg,” egg salad, etc.
Video: Gorilla at the Ballet
This is my favorite “little boy” joke: Q. What’s brown and sticky? A. A stick.
Tell this to a six-year old boy and see if they think the answer is…fecal matter. Lol.

54. Two “Codes” of Language
Formal Code: used in school and other “formal” situations
Extensive vocabulary
Complex syntax
Lengthy sentences

55. Two “Codes” of Language (cont.)
Informal code: language used with friends
Fewer words, simpler syntax
Gestures and intonation convey meaning
Vital for social acceptance

56. Code Switching
Kids in middle childhood learn that certain words and phrases are okay with friends (informal code), but NOT with teachers, pastors, or other adults.
Failure to learn this could result in punishment for calling the teacher “dude”!
Practical use of language = “pragmatics”

57. Socioeconomics and Language
Lower-income children tend to have smaller vocabularies, simpler grammar, and more difficulty in reading.
Two key explanations for this:
Exposure to language
Parental expectations towards education

58. Language Exposure
A study of low-income children demonstrated that exposure to language was a key predictor of language development.
Real world application: TALK with kids!

60. Tones and Tricks
By 10 years of age, children learn to understand the nuances of language (tone, sarcasm, puns).
Example: 10 year olds recognized that saying “I lost my stickers” in a happy voice is strange.

62. Teaching and Learning
The curriculum for school-age children varies. Some possibilities include: reading, writing, math, arts, physical education, oral expression, religion.
Funding for education also varies greatly.

63. The Hidden Curriculum
The hidden curriculum is the unofficial, unstated rules that influence learning.
Examples: discipline strategies, teacher salaries, class size, testing, schedules, emphasis on sports, segregation by ethnicity, physical condition of the school

64. International Tests
International comparisons of achievement have found that the United States is not among the top scoring developed nations.

66. Education in Japan
Harold Stevenson (U of M) documented key aspects that help Japanese students:
Strong parental involvement
Teachers paid well, given time to prepare
Longer school days
Effort is highly valued

67. Education in Japan
Unfortunately, the strong emphasis on education has caused a fear of school for too many Japanese children.
The government is now working towards a more “relaxed education.”

68. The Reading Wars
Phonics approach: teaching reading by first teaching the sounds of each letter
Whole-language: teaching reading by early use of all language skills–talking, listening, reading, and writing
BOTH approaches are valuable

69. Which approach is this?

70. The Math Wars
Math is an often feared subject, but one of utmost importance.
New curriculum discourages rote learning, emphasizing problem solving, and understanding of concepts.
The focus is on the thought process, not just the final answer.

71. Class Size
Research on the relationship between class size and academic achievement has yielded mixed results.
Confounding factors include the types of students in the study, the qualifications of teachers, and suitable classrooms.

72. Bilingual Education
About 4 million U.S. children are English-language learners (ELL).
JOHN O’BRIAN / CANADA IN STOCK, INC.

73. Types of 2nd Language Programs
Total immersion: all instruction in second language
Reverse immersion: instruction of basic subjects in first language, then second language is taught
Bilingual education: instruction in both languages

74. Types of 2nd Language Programs (cont.)
Heritage language classes: after school classes to connect with native culture
English as a second language (ESL): exclusive English for a few months, in preparation for “regular” classes