1. Chapter 9 Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
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2. Body Growth in Middle Childhood
Slow, regular pace
Girls shorter and lighter until about age 9, when trend reverses
Lower portion of body grows fastest
Bones lengthen, broaden
Muscles very flexible
All permanent teeth appear
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Growth averages 2–3 inches per year
Weight gain averages 5–7 pounds a year
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3. Common Health Problems
Malnutrition
Obesity
32% of US children and adolescents are overweight
17% are obese
Illnesses
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Poverty continues to be a powerful predictor of ill health during the school years.
Percentage of kids who eat dinner with their families drops sharply from 9 to 14 and kids who eat an evening meal with parents eat more fruits, vegetables, grains and milk and less soft drinks and fast foods.
Being overweight increases with age.
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4. Health Risks for Obese Children
More likely to be overweight adults
Physical symptoms:
high blood pressure, cholesterol
respiratory problems
insulin resistance
Development of lifelong problems:
heart disease, diabetes, gall bladder disease, cancer, early death
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

5. Causes of Obesity in Middle Childhood
Overweight parents
Low SES
Parental feeding practices:
overfeeding
overly controlling
Insufficient sleep
Low physical activity
Television
Eating out
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Consistent relationship of low SES to overweight and obesity in industrialized nations, especially among ethnic minorities in the US.
Overweight children are less physically active
The more tv kids watch, the more body fat they added
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6. Psychological and Social Consequences of Obesity
Stereotyping/teasing
Social isolation
Depression
Emotional, academic, and behavior problems
Reduced life chances
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
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7. Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Treating Obesity
Family-based interventions:
diet change
exercise program
positive reinforcement
School environment:
screenings
improved nutrition standards
additional recess/physical education time
obesity awareness programs
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

8. Illness in Middle Childhood
High rates in first two years of school
15 percent have chronic conditions:
asthma
severe illnesses, such as sickle cell anemia, cancer, and diabetes
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
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9. Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Asthma
Bronchial tubes highly sensitive to stimuli:
cold, infection, allergies, stress
wheezing, coughing, breathing problems
Risk factors:
heredity
pollution
stressful home life
poor health care
obesity
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
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10. Motor Development in Middle Childhood
Gross-motor skill gains:
flexibility
balance
agility
force
Fine-motor skill gains:
writing
drawing
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Improvements in ability to react only to relevant information, and a decline in reaction time also allow improvements in performance in middle childhood.
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11. Sex Differences in Motor Development
Girls better at fine-motor skills
Boys better at gross-motor skills, sports
Social environment:
parental expectations
self-perceptions
coaching, media
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Parents hold higher expectations for boys’ athletic performance.
Today kids spend less time in informal outdoor play and ore time in adult-organized sports. School recess time has decline and over half of school that do have recess have it just once a day. However, regular breaks enhance attention and performance at all ages, and teacher ratings of classroom disruptive behavior decline for kids who have more than 15 minutes of recess a day. (page 233).
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12. Piaget’s Theory: Attainments of the Concrete Operational Stage
Conservation:
decentration
reversibility
Classification
Seriation: transitive inference
Spatial reasoning: cognitive maps
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
This is a preview of the next few slides
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13. Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Classification
Children pass the class inclusion problem between ages 7 and 10
Collecting and classifying items become common
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Can focus on relations between a general category and two specific categories at the same time – or three relations at once.
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14. Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Seriation
Ability to order items along a quantitative dimension—becomes efficient around 6–7 years
Transitive inference: ability to seriate mentally—appears around 7 years
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Transitive inference: if a=b, and b=c, then a= c
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15. Limitations of Concrete Operational Thought
Operations are concrete:
applied to information children can perceive directly
work poorly with abstract ideas
Continuum of acquisition: children master concrete operational tasks gradually, step by step
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Children think in an organized, logical fashion only when dealing with concrete information they can perceive directly.
Continuum of acquisition: Rather than coming up with general logical principles that they apply to all relevant situations, school age children seem to work out the logic of each problem separately.
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16. Information-Processing View of Concrete Operational Thought
Neo-Piagetians: gains in information-processing speed, rather than shift to a new stage
automatic schemas free working memory
central conceptual structures: networks of concepts and relations that allow them to think more effectively about a wide range of situations.
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Interesting idea that with practice, cognitive schemes require less attention and become more automatic, freeing up space in working memory.
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17. Key Gains in Information Processing
Working memory
Flexible strategy use
Cognitive self-regulation: continually monitoring progress toward a goal, checking outcomes and redirecting unsuccessful efforts.
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Capacity of working memory improves and the time to process information declines.
Kids from poverty stricken families are especially likely to score low on working memory tasks. Use memory strategies more flexibly (see slide #19)
School age kids are still not very good at cognitive self-regulation – and kids who develop this have a sense of academic self-efficacy – confidence in their own ability.
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18. Attention in Middle Childhood
Attention becomes more
selective
adaptable
planful
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Kids are better are attending to just the relevant aspects of a situation - and better at planning what to pay attention to – as well as flexibly adapting their attention to the situation.
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19. Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Memory Strategies
Rehearsal (early grade school)
repeating information to oneself
Organization (early grade school)
grouping related items together
Elaboration (end of middle childhood)
creating a relationship between pieces of information not in the same category
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

20. Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Inattention
Impulsivity
Excessive motor activity
Results in
academic problems
social problems
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Treatment of ADHD
Stimulant medication:
improves attention, academic performance, and peer relations for 70%
insufficient by itself
Kids with ADHD show abnormal brain functioning, including less electrical and blood flow activity as well as structural abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex – and brains that grow more slowly and are 3 percent smaller in overall volume. Several genes that disrupt functioning of serotonin are implicated.
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21. Promoting Cognitive Self-Regulation
Point out important features of tasks.
Suggest effective learning strategies.
Emphasize monitoring of progress.
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
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22. Information Processing and Academic Learning
Reading:
phonological awareness, information-processing speed, and visual discrimination contribute to reading skills
blend whole-language and phonics approaches
Mathematics:
learn facts and procedures through practice, reasoning, experimenting with strategies
blend drill and “number sense” approaches
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Information processing research applied to reading and math.
Interesting to note (page 242) that Asian words are shorter and require less space in working memory.
Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

23. Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Intelligence Tests
Group Tests
Allow testing of large groups
Require little training to administer
Useful for instructional planning
Identify students who need individual testing
Individual Tests
Require training and experience to administer
Provide insights about accuracy of score
Identify highly intelligent children and children with learning problems
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
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24. Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Successful Intelligence
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Figure 9.4 Sternberg’s triarchic theory of successful intelligence
Figure 9.4
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25. Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences
Linguistic
Logico-mathematical
Musical
Spatial
Bodily-kinesthetic
Naturalist
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
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26. Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Nature, Nurture, and IQ
Adoption studies confirm the influence of both heredity and environment.
Ethnic differences are largely environmental.
A dramatic secular trend (generational rise in IQ) supports the role of environment.
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
American black children and adolescents score, on average 10 to 12 IQ points below American white children, although the difference has been shrinking over the past several decades (Nisbett, 2009, page 245).
The gap between middle and low SES children – about 9 points – accounts for some of the ethnic differences in IQ, but not all. Matching black and white children on parental education and income reduces the black-white IQ gap by 1/3 to ½. (page 245)
When young children are adopted in to caring, stimulating homes, their Iqs rise substantially compared with the IQs of nonadopted children who remain in their economically deprived families.
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27. Cultural Bias in Testing
Cultural influences affect test performance:
communication styles
test content
stereotypes
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
The sheer amount of time a child spends in school predicts IQ.
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28. Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Communication Styles
Middle-SES White Parents
Knowledge-training questions
Hierarchical style of communication
Low-SES Minority Parents
Analogy or story- starter questions
no right answer
fosters complex verbal skills
Collaborative style of communication
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Ethnic minority parents without extensive education use a more collaborative style of communication – working together in a fluid way – each focused on the same aspect of the problem.
With increasing education, parents establish a hierarchical style of communication, where the parents directs each child to carry out an aspect of the task.
The hierarchical style more closely mirrors the school setting.
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29. Learning Two Languages
Bilingual development:
learn both languages at the same time or learn first language, then second
sensitive period during childhood
Bilingual education:
language immersion
English-only programs: risk of inadequate proficiency in both languages
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Mastery of a second language must begin sometime in childhood for second language learners to reach full proficiency.
children have difficulty learning a subject when it is taught in a language they do not understand, and (2) when both languages are integrated in the classroom, children learn the second language more readily and participate more actively
Bilingualism has positive consequences for development. More advanced in certain aspects of language awareness.
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30. Features of High-Quality Elementary Education
Class size
Physical setting
Curriculum
Teacher–student interactions
Evaluations of progress
Relationships with families
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
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31. Educational Philosophies
Traditional vs. constructivist
New philosophical directions: social- constructivist
teachers and children as partners
many types of symbolic communication
teaching adapted to zone of proximal development
cooperative learning
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Although older elementary children in traditional classrooms have a slight edge in achievement test scores, constructivist settings are associated with many other benefits – including gains in critical thinking, social and moral maturity and positive attitudes about school.
Note magnet school controversy page 253 which suggests that African American children are just as likely to attend a school that serves a mostly black population as they were in the 1960s and Hispanic children are even more segregated. The research suggests that less segregated education enhances minority achievement especially for low SES, minority students.
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32. Teacher–Student Interaction
caring, helpful, stimulating, emphasizing high-level thinking—fosters achievement
use of repetitive drill, bias in favor of well-behaved students—impedes achievement
Self-fulfilling prophecies: have greater impact on low-achieving students
homogenous ability groups—a potent source
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Homogenous groups can become a potent source of self-fulfilling prophecies.
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33. Teaching Children with Learning Difficulties
Children often placed in regular classrooms:
mild mental retardation
learning disabilities: 5–10% of school-age children
Law requires “least restrictive” environment: inclusive classrooms
full inclusion
resource rooms
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Increasing number of students experience full inclusion in regular classrooms – although many do not benefit from this and may be rejected by regular classroom peers.
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34. International Comparisons in Academic Achievement
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
Figure 9.7 Average mathematics scores of 15-year-olds by country
Figure 9.7
(Adapted from Programme for International Student Assessment, 2009.)
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35. Cultural Variations in Schools
United States:
less challenging teaching
variable teacher training, salaries
Finland:
nationally mandated curricula, teaching practices, assessments
Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan):
nationally mandated curricula
well-prepared, well-paid teachers
Exploring Lifespan Development Third Edition  Laura E. Berk
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US is far less equitable in the quality of teaching it provides to its low income and ethnic minority students than other top achieving countries.
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