Chapter 7

1. Chapter 7 Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle and Late Childhood PowerPoints developed by Nicholas Greco IV, College of Lake County, Grayslake, IL (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

2. Body Growth and Change • Middle and late childhood -- slow, consistent growth • Children grow an average of 2 to 3 inches a year until the age of 11 • During the middle and late childhood years, they gain about 5 to 7 pounds a year due to increases in the size of the skeletal and muscular systems and size of body organs • Decreases in baby fat and increases in muscle mass and strength (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

3. The Brain • Total brain volume stabilizes by the end of middle and late childhood • Significant changes in various structures and regions of the brain continue to occur (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

4. The Brain • Synaptic pruning -- areas of the brain not being used lose synaptic connections and those being used show an increase in connections • Cognitive control -- which involves flexible and effective control in a number of areas • These areas include controlling attention, reducing interfering thoughts, inhibiting motor actions, and being cognitively flexible in switching between competing choices (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

5. Motor Development • Children’s motor skills become much smoother and more coordinated than they were in early childhood • In gross motor skills involving large activity, boys usually outperform same-age girls • Increased myelination of the central nervous system is shown in improvement of fine motor skills • Fine motor coordination develops so that children can write rather than print words (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

6. Exercise • Children are more fatigued by long periods of sitting than by running, jumping, or bicycling • Practical ways to get children to exercise • Improve physical fitness activities in schools • Offer more physical activity programs run by volunteers at school facilities • Have children plan community and school activities that really interest them • Encourage families to focus more on physical activity and encourage parents to exercise more (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

7. Overweight Children • The percentage of U.S. children who are at risk for being overweight has doubled from 15 percent in the 1970s to almost 30 percent today • Girls are more likely than boys to be overweight • African-American and Latino children were more likely to be overweight or obese than non-Latino White children (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

8. Risks Caused by Overweight • Being overweight raises the risk for many medical and psychological problems • Overweight children can develop lung problems and hip problems • Other problems include high blood pressure, elevated blood cholesterol levels, and type 2 diabetes • Low self-esteem, depression, and problems in peer relations are common (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

9. Cancer  • Second-leading cause of death in U.S. children 5 to 14 years of age • Incidence of cancer in children has slightly increased • 1 in 330 children develops cancer before the age of 19 • Child cancers mainly attack the white blood cells (leukemia), brain, bone, lymph system, muscles, kidneys, and nervous system (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

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11. Children with Disabilities • 14% of children in the United States receive special education or related services • 5.4 percent have a learning disability or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder • 3.0 percent have speech or language impairments • 1.1 percent have mental retardation • 0.9 percent have an emotional disturbance (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008) (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

12. Children with Disabilities • A child with a learning disability (LD) has difficulty in learning that involves understanding or using spoken or written language, and the difficulty can appear in listening, thinking, reading, writing, and spelling • Three times as many boys than girls are classified with a learning disability • Approximately 80 percent of children with a LD have a reading problem (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

13. Learning Disabilities • Dyslexia-- category of individuals who have a severe impairment in their ability to read and spell • Dysgraphia is a learning disability that involves difficulty in handwriting • Dyscalculia is a learning disability that involves difficulty in math computation (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

14. Causes of Learning Disability • It is unlikely learning disabilities reside in a single, specific brain location • More likely due to problems in integrating information from multiple brain regions or subtle difficulties in brain structures and functions (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

15. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) • Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) -- a disability showing these characteristics over a period of time: inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity • They may get bored with a task after only a few minutes -- or even seconds • They may be impulsive and have difficulty curbing their reactions • They do not do a good job of thinking before they act (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

16. Diagnosis and Causes of ADHD • There is controversy about the increased diagnosis of ADHD • Some experts attribute the increase to heightened awareness of the disorder • Many children may be incorrectly diagnosed • Definitive causes of ADHD have not been found (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

17. Treatment of ADHD • Researchers have found that a combination of stimulant medication such as Ritalin or Adderall and behavior management improves the behavior of children with ADHD better than medication alone or behavior management alone (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

18. Autism Spectrum Disorders • Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) • Also called pervasive developmental disorders • Characterized by problems in social interaction, problems in verbal and nonverbal communication, and repetitive behaviors • Occur in 1 in 150 individuals (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

19. Autism Spectrum Disorders • Autistic Disorder • Severe developmental autism disorder that has its onset in the first three years of life • Characterized by deficiencies in social relationships; abnormalities in communication; and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior • Asperger Syndrome • Mild autism spectrum disorder • Child has relatively good verbal language, milder nonverbal language problems, and a restricted range of interests and relationships (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

20. Educational Issues • Until the 1970s children with disabilities were refused enrollment and/or inadequately served • 1975 -- Public Law 94-142 -- all students with disabilities must be given a free, appropriate public education • 1990 -- Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) • Amended in 1997 • 2004 -- Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

21. IDEA Mandates Services • Evaluation and eligibility determination • Appropriate education • Individualized education plan (IEP) • Education in the least restrictive environment (LRE) • Inclusion describes educating a child with special education needs full-time in the regular classroom (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

22. IEP and LRE • Individualized education plan (IEP) -- written statement that spells out a program that is specifically tailored for the student with a disability • Least restrictive environment (LRE) -- a setting that is as similar as possible to the one in which children who do not have a disability are educated (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

23. The Concrete Operational Stage • Concrete operational stage lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age • Children can perform concrete operations and they can reason logically when it can be applied to specific or concrete examples • Operations -- mental actions that are reversible • Concrete operations -- operations that apply to real, concrete objects (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

24. Recognizing Concrete Operational Thought • Conservation tasks • Classify or divide things into different sets or subsets, and consider their interrelationships • Seriation-- the ability to order stimuli along a quantitative dimension (such as length) • Another aspect is transitivity -- the ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

25. Evaluating Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage • Neo-Piagetians argue that Piaget got some things right but that his theory needs considerable revision • They give more emphasis to how children use attention, memory, and strategies to process information • A more accurate portrayal of children’s thinking requires attention to children’s strategies, the speed at which they process information, the task involved, and the division of problems into smaller, more precise steps (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

26. Information Processing • Information-processing approach focuses on how children process information about their world, including learning tasks • During middle childhood, most children dramatically improve their ability to sustain and control attention • Other changes involve memory, thinking, and metacognition (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

27. Memory • After age 7, short-term memory does not show as much increase as it did in the preschool period • Long-term memory --relatively permanent and unlimited type of memory • Improvements in memory reflect increased knowledge and increased use of memory strategies (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

28. Memory Strategies • Strategies-- deliberate mental activities to improve the processing of information • Elaboration involves more extensive processing of the information • thinking of examples • relating the information to one’s own life • elaboration makes the information more meaningful • Mental imagery can help to remember pictures (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

29. Memory Strategies • Fuzzy trace theory states that memory is best understood by considering two types of memory representations: • Verbatim memory trace • Precise details of the information • Gist • Central idea of the information (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

30. Thinking • Critical thinking involves thinking reflectively and productively, as well as evaluating the evidence • Creative thinking -- ability to think in novel and unusual ways and to come up with unique solutions to problems • Guilford (1967) distinguished between • convergent thinking, which produces one correct answer • divergent thinking, which produces many different answers to the same question and characterizes creativity (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

31. Metacognition • Metacognition --cognition about cognition, or knowing about knowing • studies of metacognition have focused on metamemory -- knowledge about memory (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

32. Intelligence • Intelligence -- problem-solving skills and the ability to learn from and adapt to life’s everyday experiences • Interest in intelligence has often focused on individual differences and assessment • Individual differences -- the stable, consistent ways in which people are different from each other (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

33. The Binet Tests • Binet and Simon, in France in 1904, developed an intelligence test to meet the need to devise a method of identifying children who were unable to learn in school • Binet developed the concept of mental age (MA) -- an individual’s level of mental development relative to others (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

34. The Binet Tests • In 1912, William Stern created the concept of intelligence quotient (IQ) -- a person’s mental age divided by his/her chronological age (CA), multiplied by 100 • IQ = MA/CA × 100 • Revisions to the Binet test are called the Stanford-Binet tests because revisions were made at Stanford University • A normal distribution shows a symmetrical curve, with a majority of the scores falling in the middle of the possible range of scores and fewer and fewer scores in the extremes of the range (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

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36. The Wechsler Scales • Another set of widely used tests is called the Wechsler scales, developed by David Wechsler • WPPSI-III to test children 2 years 6 months to 7 years 3 months of age • WISC-IV Integrated for children and adolescents 6 to 16 years of age • WAIS-IV for adults • Wechsler scales provide more than an overall IQ • They also yield subscales for verbal and performance IQs (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

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38. Types of Intelligence: Sternberg    • 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 -- the ability to use, apply, implement, and put ideas into practice (Sternberg, 1986, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

39. verbal mathematical spatial bodily-kinesthetic musical interpersonal intrapersonal naturalist Types of Intelligence: Gardner Howard Gardner suggests there are eight types of intelligence, or “frames of mind” • Everyone has all of these intelligences to varying degrees (Gardner, 1983, 1993, 2002) (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

40. Interpreting Differences in IQ Scores • Heritability -- the fraction of the variance in a population that is attributed to genetics • most research on heredity and environment does not include environments that differ radically • most researchers agree that genetics and environment interact to influence intelligence • Schooling is one environmental influence on intelligence (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

41. Group Differences • On average, African-American children in the United States score 10 to 15 points lower on standardized intelligence tests than non-Latino White American schoolchildren do • Children from Latino families also score lower than non-Latino White children • Group differences in average IQ scores may be due in part to biased tests or cultural differences (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

42. Creating Culture-Fair Tests • Culture-fair tests -- tests of intelligence that are intended to be free of cultural bias • Two types have been devised • one includes items that are familiar to children from all socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds or items that at least are familiar to the children taking the test • second type of culture-fair test has no verbal questions (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

43. Extremes of Intelligence • Mental retardation -- 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 • Mild – IQ of 55–70 (89%) • Live independently as adults, work • Moderate – IQ of 40–54 (6%) • Attain second grade level of skills, structured work setting • Severe – IQ of 25–39 (3.5%) • Learn to talk and accomplish very simple tasks, require constant supervision • Profound – IQ below 25 (less than 1%) • Need constant supervision, long-term care (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

44. Extremes of Intelligence • Organic retardation is caused by a genetic disorder or brain damage • IQ ranges from 0–50 • Cultural-familial retardation is a mental deficit in which no evidence of organic brain damage can be found • IQ ranges from 50–70 (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

45. Extremes of Intelligence • Giftedness -- above-average intelligence (an IQ of 130 or higher) and/or superior talent for something • Tend to be more mature, have fewer emotional problems, and grow up in a positive family culture • Ellen Winner described three criteria: • Precocity • Marching to a different drummer • A passion to master (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

46. Language Development • Children acquire new skills that make it possible to learn to read and write: • increased use of language to talk about things that are not physically present • learning what a word is • learning how to recognize and talk about sounds • They also learn the alphabetic principle --that the letters of the alphabet represent sounds of the language (Berko Gleason, 2003) (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

47. Vocabulary, Grammar, and Metalinguistic 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” (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

48. Approaches to Teaching Reading • Whole-language approach stresses that reading instruction should parallel children’s natural language learning • Phonics approach emphasizes that reading instruction should teach basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds • Research suggests that children can benefit from both approaches (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

49. Bilingualism and Second Language Learning • Learning a second language is more readily accomplished by children than adolescents or adults • Bilingualism -- the ability to speak two languages • Subtractive bilingualism -- going from being monolingual in their home language to bilingual in that language and in English, only to end up monolingual as speakers of English (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

50. Bilingual Education • Involves teaching academic subjects to immigrant children in their native language while slowly teaching them English • Most immigrant children take approximately three to five years to develop speaking proficiency and seven years to develop reading proficiency in English (c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.