Chapter 12 Middle Childhood: Cognitive Development

1. Chapter 12Middle Childhood:Cognitive Development

2. Middle Childhood: Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction? • Don’t try the “Yes, but” defense with a 5-year old. If you did it, you’re guilty, even if it was an accident. • Memorizing the alphabet requires that children keep 26 chunks of information in mind at once.

3. Middle Childhood: Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction? • An IQ is a score on a test. • Two children can answer exactly the same items on an intelligence test correctly, yet one can be above average in intelligence and the other below average.

4. Middle Childhood: Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction? • Highly intelligent children are creative. • Adopted children are more similar in intelligence to their adopted parents than to their biological parents.

5. Middle Childhood: Cognitive Development Truth or Fiction? • Bilingual children encounter more academic problems than children who speak only one language.

6. Piaget’s Concrete-Operational Stage

7. What Is Meant by the Stage of Concrete Operations? • Beginnings of adult logic, involves tangible not abstract ideas • Characterized by • Reversibility and flexibility • Less egocentric • Decentration

8. What Is Meant by the Stage of Concrete Operations? • Demonstrate understanding of conservation • Object can have several properties or dimensions • Child can decenter and focus on more than one dimension • Conservation of mass develops first

9. What Is Meant by the Stage of Concrete Operations? • Demonstrate understanding of transitivity • If A exceeds B in some property • B exceeds C, • then A must also exceed C • Assess transitivity through seriation tasks • Requires decentration to focus on more than one dimension • Demonstrate an understanding of class inclusion

10. Figure 12.2 A Grid for Demonstrating the Development of Seriation

11. Lessons in Observation: Piaget’s Concrete-Operational Stage • What is conservation? • Why is the ability to conserve an important milestone in cognitive development, according to Piaget? • Describe the conservation tasks and discuss the performance of the children depicted in the video. • Are their responses typical of children in the concrete operational stage? Why or why not? • Cite specific reasons given by children in the video when they are asked to explain “why” they thought the amount of liquid or play dough had changed or not changed. [insert video: Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage (ConcreteOperationalStage.mov)]

12. Lessons in Observation: Piaget’s Concrete-Operational Stage • Do these responses illustrate changes in the reasoning abilities of concrete operational children as described by Piaget? • Include the following Piagetian concepts in your discussion: conservation, decentration, and reversibility • Do the children in the video use logical or intuitive approaches to solving problems?

13. Lessons in Observation: Piaget’s Concrete-Operational Stage • Are children in Piaget’s concrete operational stage likely to be able to use their reasoning skills on problems and ideas that they have not experienced directly? Why or why not?

14. Can We Apply Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development to Educational Practices? • Learning involves active discovery • Find stimulating materials instead of imposing knowledge • Instruction geared to student’s level • Consider the level of cognitive development • Encourage development of perspective taking

15. Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory • Piaget tended to underestimate children’s abilities • Horizontal decalage • Ability to master different tasks within same stage • Cognitive development may be more continuous

16. Moral Development The Child as Juror

17. How Does Piaget View the Development of Moral Reasoning? Two stages of moral development • Moral Realism – ‘objective morality’ • Emerges at about age 5 • Behavior is correct when to conforms to authority or rules • Rules are absolutes • Punishment is inevitable • Immanent justice or automatic retribution • Do not excuse accidental behavior

18. How Does Piaget View the Development of Moral Reasoning? Two stages of moral development • Autonomous Morality • Emerges between ages of 9 and 11 • Social rules are arbitrary agreements that can be changed • Circumstances can require breaking rules • Consider the intentions of the wrongdoer • Develops as a result of cooperative peer relationships

19. What Is Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development? • Preconventional level • Obedience and punishment • Instrumental orientation • Conventional level • Good-boy/good-girl orientation • Law-and-order orientation • Postconventional level • Contractual, legalistic orientation • Universal ethical principles orientation

20. Information-Processing Learning, Remembering, Problem Solving

21. What Is the Difference Between Piaget’s View of Cognitive Development and the Information Processing Approach? • Information Processing • Compares children to functions of a computer • Key elements • Selective attention • Ability to focus attention and screen out distractions • Capacity for storage and retrieval of information • Strategies for processing information

22. Figure 12.3 Development of the Ability to Ignore Distractions

23. What Is Meant by the Term Memory? • Storage and retrieval of information • Sensory Memory • Short-term or working memory • Auditory encoding • Capacity 7 chunks of information achieved by adolescence • Typical 5- or 6-year old – works on two chunks of information at a time • Cognitive strategies used to promote memory • Rote learning

24. Figure 12.4 The Structure of Memory

25. How Much Information Can be Stored in Long-Term Memory? • No known limit of information • Moving information to long-term memory • Rehearsal • Elaborative strategy • Semantic encoding • Organization in long-term memory • Recall memory is improved by categorization

26. What Do Children Understand About the Functioning of Their Cognitive Processes and Their Memory? • Metacognition • Knowledge and control of cognitive abilities • Metamemory • Children’s awareness of the functioning of their memory • As children develop they utilize more strategies for memory

27. A Closer Look Children’s Eyewitness Testimony

28. Intellectual Development, Creativity, and Achievement

29. What Is Intelligence? • Achievement • What a child has learned • Specific content area • Intelligence • Child’s underlying learning ability • Cognitive basis for academic achievement • Cognitive basis for academic achievement

30. Theories of Intelligence

31. What Are “Factor Theories” of Intelligence? • Behaviors we consider intelligent have a common factor • Spearman g or “general intelligence” • Broad reasoning and problem solving • s or “specific capacities” • Individual abilities • Thurstone – 9 specific factors or primary mental abilities

32. Figure 12.5 Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

33. Figure 12.6 Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences

34. A Closer Look Emotional Intelligence

35. Measurement of Intellectual Development • Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (SBIS) • Assumes intelligence increases with age • Older child must answer more items to obtain comparable score to younger child (mental age) • IQ = mental age divided by chronological age x 100 • 2-year-olds to adults

36. Measurement of Intellectual Development • Wechsler Scales • Groups questions into subtests that measure different intellectual tasks • Compares performance on one type of task with another • Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scales of Intelligence (WPPSI) • Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC) • Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales (WAIS)

37. Figure 12.7 Performance Items on a Intelligence Test

38. The Testing Controversy • IQ test scores • Should not be sole criteria for placement • Accurately measure skills necessary in today’s high tech work • Culture-bias versus culture-free • Bias for African American and lower social class • Cattell’s Culture-Fair Intelligence Test • Culture-free tests have not been successful • Disadvantaged children consistently score lower • Do not predict academic success

39. Figure 12.9 Sample Items from Catell’s Culture-Fair Intelligence Test

40. How Does Intelligence Develop? • Advances in middle childhood • Symbolize experiences and manipulate symbols • Vocabulary development • Increase logical and complex thought • Two major spurts • Entry to school • Approaching puberty

41. Figure 12.10 Five Patterns of Change in IQ Scores for Children in the Fels Longitudinal Study

42. What Are the Socioeconomic and Ethnic Differences in Intelligence? • Increased predictive power but consistent individual differences • Lower class US children score lower than more affluent • Most ethnic minority groups score lower than European American • Asian Americans outscore European Americans

43. Developing in a World of Diversity Socioeconomic and Ethnic Differences in IQ

44. Differences in Intelligence • Mental Retardation • Significant limitations • Intellectual functioning (IQ scores of 70 to 75), and • Adaptive behavior • Causes of mental retardation • Biological • Cultural-familial retardation • Giftedness • Outstanding abilities and high performance • In specific academic area • Leadership, arts, or bodily talents

45. What Is Creativity? • Ability to do things novel and useful (Sternberg) • Solve problems without expected solutions • Creative children • Take chances, • Refuse to accept limitations, • Appreciate art and music

46. What Is the Relationship Between Creativity and Intelligence? • Moderate relationship between intelligence scores and creativity • Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory includes creative intelligence • Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences include creative areas • Explanation for lack of relationship • Intelligence testing requires convergent thinking • Creative thinking requires divergent thinking

47. What Are the Roles of Nature and Nurture on the Development of Intelligence? • Genetic Influences • Measured through kinship and adoption studies • More closely related – more similar IQ scores • Heritability – about 45 to 60% • Environmental Influences • Same studies consider • Situational factors that effect IQ testing • Exploring ability to rebound from early deprivation • Effects of positive early environments

48. Figure 12.11 Findings of Studies of the Relationship Between IQ Scores and Heredity

49. Language Development and Literacy

50. How Does Language Develop in Middle Childhood? • Vocabulary and Grammar • Vocabulary expands • Recognize words with multiple meanings • Articulation and complex grammar improves • Tag questions • Correct use and comprehension of passive sentences • Use connectives • Direct object – indirect object constructions