Middle childhood

Question 1

Cultural models

Answer 1

Cognitive structures pertaining to common activities.

Question 2

Physical growth

Answer 2

In middle childhood, physical growth continues at a slow but steady pace, about 5–8 cm per year in height and about 2.5–3 kg per year in weight.

Of all age groups in the life span, 6- to 10-year-olds have the lowest body mass index (BMI), a measure of the ratio of weight to height.

From age 6 to 12, children lose all 20 of their ‘primary teeth’ and new, permanent teeth replace them. The two top front teeth are usually the first to go.

Question 3

Sensory development

Answer 3

Hearing often improves because the tube in the inner ear that is the site of ear infections in toddlerhood and early childhood has now matured and is longer and narrower than it was before. This structural change makes it less likely for fluid containing bacteria to flow from the mouth to the ear, which in turn makes inner ear infections less likely.

With regard to sight, the incidence of myopia, also known as being nearsighted, rises sharply in middle childhood and is on the rise across the world. While 1 in 4 Australians are nearsighted, myopia is the second most common long-term condition for young Australians. The increases in myopia can be put down to lifestyle factors such as spending less time outside and more time on tasks such as reading or using a screen.

Question 4

Gross motor development and physical activity

Answer 4

In a variety of ways, gross motor development advances from early to middle childhood. Children’s balance improves, allowing them to stay steady on a bike without training wheels.

They become stronger, so that they can jump higher and throw a ball further. Their coordination advances so that they can perform movements in activities such as swimming and skating that require the synchronisation of different body parts. Most likely to be involved with an organised sport. About 60% of Australian children aged 5–14 participate in at least one organised sport, with more boys than girls participating and children aged 9–11 being the most likely to be involved.

For Australian and New Zealand children aged between 5 and 12, at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day is recommended.

Finally, their reaction time becomes faster, allowing them to respond rapidly to changing information.

Increasing myelination of the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain (see the chapter ‘Early childhood’) accelerates reaction time in middle childhood for both gross motor and fine motor tasks.

Question 5

Fine motor development

Answer 5

Not many 3- or 4-year-olds can tie their shoelaces successfully, but nearly all 8- to 9-year-olds can. In Asian cultures, only about half of 4-year-olds can use chopsticks well enough to eat with them, but for children 6 years old and up it comes easily.

By the end of middle childhood, their fine motor abilities have nearly reached adult maturity, whereas gross motor development will continue to advance for many years to come.

Question 6

Malnutrition

Answer 6

There is a consensus that the sensitive period for long-term effects of malnutrition is from the second trimester of pregnancy to age 3. Malnutrition that begins after age 3 does not appear to result in permanent cognitive or behavioural deficits.

Question 7

Overweight and Obesity

Answer 7

BMI exceeding 18 and 21, respectively.

In Australia, children aged between 5 and 14 spend more than 2 hours a day on screen-based activities.

In addition, more screen time was related to a higher waist circumference, unhealthy eating and less physical activity.

Genetics also makes a contribution to obesity. Concordance rates for obesity are higher among MZ twins than DZ twins. Research has even identified a specific gene, called FTO, that sharply increases children’s risk for obesity.

Even in middle childhood, obesity can result in health risks such as breathing problems, joint issues or type 2 diabetes. Obesity also proves hard to shake from childhood to adulthood. About 80% of obese children remain overweight as adults.

Question 8

Asthma

Answer 8

Rates of asthma are highest in middle childhood and are increasing worldwide. Boys are at higher risk than girls, for reasons that are not clear.

Other risk factors are low birth weight, having a parent who smokes, living in poverty and obesity.

Asthma is the most common chronic condition for children in Australia, affecting 11% of those under age 14. Indigenous Australians have a higher prevalence rate compared to non-Indigenous Australians.

The most common causes of injury in middle childhood are car accidents, drowning and burns.

Question 9

Piaget’s concrete operation stage

Answer 9

Ages 7 - 12.

During this stage, children become capable of using mental operations, which allow them to organise and manipulate information mentally instead of relying on physical and sensory associations.

According to Piaget, the advances of concrete operations are evident in new abilities for performing tasks of conservation, classification and seriation.

Question 10

Information processing

Answer 10

Due to increased myelination in the brain, especially of the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres, speed of processing information increases.

Question 11

Selective attention

Answer 11

In middle childhood, children become more capable of focusing their attention on relevant information and disregarding what is irrelevant.

Question 12

attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Answer 12

It is estimated that around 1 in 20 Australian children and 3–5% of school-aged children in New Zealand have ADHD. Boys are over twice as likely as girls to have ADHD.

A large European study found higher rates of ADHD among boys than among girls, but the ratios varied widely among countries, from 3:1 to 16:1.

Girls with ADHD were more likely than boys to have additional emotional problems and to be bullied by their peers, whereas ADHD boys were more likely than girls to have conduct problems.

The diagnosis is usually made by a GP who will refer the family to a paediatrician or psychologist, who will then provide a more comprehensive evaluation of the child in consultation with parents and teachers.

Question 13

Managing ADHD

Answer 13

Stimulant medications have successfully treated children with ADHD since the 1970s. The most common stimulants prescribed are methylphenidate (also known as Ritalin) and dexamphetamine. These types of medication can improve concentration, impulse control and hyperactivity in most children.

However, there are concerns about side effects, including decreased appetite, headaches or dizziness, difficulty falling asleep and irritability. Behavioural therapies are also effective, and the combination of medication and behavioural therapy is more effective than either treatment alone.

Question 14

Memory

Answer 14

On memory tests for sequences of numbers, the length of the sequence recalled is just 4 numbers for the typical 7-year-old, but for the typical 12-year-old it has increased to 7, equal to adults,

Middle childhood is the period when children first learn to use mnemonics memory strategies, such as rehearsal, organisation and elaboration.

Question 15

Intelligence

Answer 15

Capacity for acquiring knowledge, reasoning and solving problems.

Genetics plays a huge role in correlation of intelligence. Environment also plays a factor.

Question 16

The Wechsler intelligence tests

Answer 16

The most widely used intelligence tests are the Wechsler scales, including the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) for ages 6–16. There are also the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPSSI) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) for ages 16 and up.

The Wechsler scales consist of 11 subtests, of which 6 are Verbal subtests and 5 are Performance subtests. Provide IQ score 100 as median. The overall IQ can be broken down into a Verbal IQ score, a Performance IQ score and scores for each of the 11 subtests.

People with IQs below 70 are classified as having intellectual disability, and those with IQs above 130 are classified as gifted.

Question 17

Flynn effect

Answer 17

From 1932 to 1997, the median IQ score among children in the United States rose by 20 points.

Due to environmental factors such as parental care. More preschool and less children in the houshold.

The brain requires a great deal of the body’s physical energy—87% in newborns, nearly half in 5-year-olds and 25% in adults. Infectious diseases compete for this energy by activating the body’s immune system and interfering with the body’s processing of food during years when the brain is growing and developing rapidly. The higher a country’s infectious disease burden, the lower its median IQ. Thus, the Flynn effect may have been primarily due to the elimination of major infectious diseases in developed countries.

Question 18

Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences

Answer 18

Linguistic
Musical
Logical/mathematical
Spatial
Bodily/kinaesthetic
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Naturalist

Question 19

Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence

Answer 19

Analytical
Creative
Practical

Neither Sternberg’s nor Gardner’s tests are widely used among psychologists, in part because they take longer to administer and score than standard IQ tests do.

Question 20

Vocabulary, grammar and pragmatics

Answer 20

At age 6, the average child knows about 10,000 words, but by age 10 or 11, this number has increased fourfold to about 40,000.

Start using conditional sentences.

In middle childhood, the understanding of pragmatics grows substantially. A substantial amount of humour in middle childhood involves violating the expectations set by pragmatics.

Question 21

Multilingualism

Answer 21

Within Australia, 65% of Indigenous Australian children in remote areas and 25% in non-remote areas can speak an Indigenous language; for 31% in remote areas, it was the main language they spoke at home.

English is the most common language spoken by Māori and Samoan children living in New Zealand, and 15.2% of Māori and 32.9% of Samoans speak two languages.

When children learn two languages, they usually become adept at using both. They understand they are learning more than one language, and learning a secondary language does not interfere with mastering the primary language.

When children learn their second language after already becoming fluent in a first language, it takes longer to master the second language, usually 3–5 years.

Studies have shown that beyond the age of about 12 it is difficult for people to learn to speak a new language without a noticeable accent.

Question 22

metalinguistic skills

Answer 22

Children who are bilingual or multilingual have better metalinguistic skills than single-language children, meaning that they have greater awareness of the underlying structure of language.

Studies have confirmed that multilingual children are better than single-language children at detecting mistakes in grammar and meaning.

Multilingual children also score higher on more general measures of cognitive ability, such as analytical reasoning, cognitive flexibility and cognitive complexity, indicating that becoming bilingual also has general cognitive benefits.

Neurological research has shown that children exposed to two languages have denser brain tissue in areas related not only to language, but also to attention and memory. This is especially the case for children who heard different languages before the age of 5 years.

Question 23

Schooling

Answer 23

In New Zealand, the Education Act of 1877 introduced compulsory and free education for ages 7–13, and by 1930, attendance was estimated at 90%.

In most developing countries, about 18% of children aged 6–10 do not attend primary school, and in sub-Saharan Africa, 23% of boys and 21% of girls aged 6–10 do not attend.

In our grandparents’ generation, few children were expected to continue education past Year 6. In 2020, the apparent retention rate to Year 12 was around 88% for girls and 79% for boys, and had increased from 84% and 75%, respectively, in 2011.

Question 24

Phonics approach

Answer 24

The phonics approach advocates teaching children by breaking down words into their component sounds, called phonics, then putting the phonics together into words.

Question 25

Whole-language approach

Answer 25

In this view, the emphasis should be on the meaning of written language in whole passages, rather than breaking down each word into its smallest components. This approach advocates teaching children to read using complete written material, such as poems, stories and lists of related items. Children are encouraged to guess at the meaning of words they do not know, based on the context of the word within the written material. In this view, if the material is coherent and interesting, children will be motivated to learn and remember the meanings of words they do not know.

Question 26

Dyslexia

Answer 26

Difficulty sounding out letters, difficulty learning to spell words and a tendency to misperceive the order of letters in words. One of the most common forms of learning disability. The causes of dyslexia are not known, but boys are about 3 times as likely as girls to have the disability, suggesting a genetic link to the Y chromosome.

Question 27

Numeracy

Answer 27

When they are just 6 weeks old, if they are shown a toy behind a screen and see a second toy added, when the screen is then lowered they look longer and appear more surprised if one or three toys are revealed rather than the two toys they expected. Children begin to count around age 2, the same age at which their language development accelerates dramatically. They begin to be able to do simple addition and subtraction around age 5, about the same age they often learn to read their first words. During middle childhood, as they become more adept readers, they typically advance in their maths skills, moving from addition and subtraction to multiplication and division, and increasing their speed of processing in response to maths problems.

Question 28

Dyscalculia

Answer 28

Neurologically based difficulty in numerical processing. May have trouble remembering and counting numbers in the correct order and may struggle to recognise patterns and understand words such as less than or greater than.

Question 29

Emotions

Answer 29

Children in middle childhood report being ‘very happy’ 28% of the time, a far higher percentage than for adolescents or adults. Emotional self-regulation improves from early childhood to middle childhood in part because the environment requires it. They become aware that they can experience two contradictory emotions at once, an emotional state known as ambivalence. They also learn how to conceal their emotions intentionally. In Asian cultures, children in middle childhood learn the concept of ‘face’, which means showing to others the appropriate and expected emotion regardless of how you actually feel,

Question 30

Self-concept

Answer 30

How we view and evaluate ourselves—changes during middle childhood from the external to the internal and from the physical to the psychological. Another important change in self-concept in middle childhood is that children engage in more accurate social comparison, in which they compare themselves to others.

Question 31

Self-esteem

Answer 31

Americans value high self-esteem to a greater extent than people in other countries. In traditional Japanese culture, self-criticism is a virtue and high self-esteem is a character problem. Cross-cultural research has found that individualistic countries, including the United States and New Zealand, have higher self-esteem scores than collectivistic countries, like Kenya and South Africa. In Western countries, having low self-esteem in middle childhood is related to anxiety, depression and antisocial behaviour.

Question 32

Gender development

Answer 32

Boys and girls not only learn gender-specific tasks in middle childhood, they are also socialised to develop personality characteristics that enhance performance on those tasks: independence and toughness for boys and nurturance and compliance for girls. Same-gender play groups rose from a proportion of 30–40% at ages 2–3 to over 90% by ages 8–11.

Question 33

Family relations

Answer 33

From early childhood to middle childhood, parents and children move away from direct parental control and towards co-regulation, in which parents provide broad guidelines for behaviour but children are capable of a substantial amount of independent, self-directed behaviour. In one study that recorded episodes of conflict between siblings, the average frequency of conflict was once every 20 minutes they were together.

Question 34

Diverse family forms

Answer 34

According to the ABS, there are 7.3 million families, with couple families accounting for 83% and one-parent families accounting for 15%. In 2018, the Northern Territory was the last Australian state or territory to pass legislation allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. Same-sex couples in New Zealand gained the right to adopt in 2013 at the same time that same-sex marriage was legalised. The United States is one of the countries where the increase has been greatest, with over 40% of births to single mothers. The rates in Australia and New Zealand are lower, with 25–30% of children living with a single parent.

Question 35

Divorce

Answer 35

In New Zealand, the crude divorce rate (divorces every 1,000 existing marriages and civil unions) is on the decline, from 10.1 in 2010 to 7.6 in 2020. The Australian crude divorce rate (divorce rate per 1,000 resident population) was 1.9 in 2019, down from 2.8 in 1999. In Australia, each year about 40,000 children experience divorce, although over half of divorces are couples with no children (ABS, 2016d). In contrast, divorce remains rare in southern Europe and in non-Western countries. Overall, children respond negatively in a variety of ways, especially boys and especially in the first 2 years following divorce. Poor family environment can be worse than a divorce. Not exposing children to conflict is better. In about 90% of cases (across countries), mothers retain custody of the children. Compared to children in non-divorced families, children in stepfamilies have lower academic achievement, lower self-esteem and greater behavioural problems. Girls respond more negatively than boys to remarriage, a reversal of their responses to divorce. If the stepfather also has children of his own that he brings into the household, making a blended stepfamily, the outcomes for children are even worse than in other stepfamilies.

Question 36

Coercive cycle

Answer 36

Mothers and boys sometimes become sucked into a coercive cycle following divorce, in which boys’ less compliant behaviour evokes harsh responses from mothers, which in turn makes boys even more resistant to their mothers’ control, evoking even harsher responses and so on.

Question 37

Selective association

Answer 37

People tend to prefer being around others who are like themselves, a principle called selective association. Other important criteria for selective association in middle childhood are sociability, aggression and academic orientation.

Question 38

Friends

Answer 38

In one study of children in Years 3–6, the expectation that a friend would keep a secret increased from 25% to 72% across that age span among girls; among boys the increase came later and did not rise as high. As trust becomes more important to friendships in middle childhood, breaches of trust (such as breaking a promise or failing to provide help when needed) also become the main reason for ending friendships.

Question 39

Playing with friends

Answer 39

What is new about play in middle childhood is that it becomes more complex and more rule based. Card games and board games become more popular, and often these games require children to count, remember and plan strategies.

Question 40

Four categories of social status

Answer 40

Popular children Rejected children (boys more likely) Neglected children (girls more likely) Controversial children

Question 41

Social information processing

Answer 41

Failing this leads to perceive behaviour as hostile even when it is not, and they tend to blame others when there is conflict. Common in rejected children who are more aggressive.

Question 42

Bullying

Answer 42

(1) aggression (physical or verbal); (2) repetition (not just one incident, but a pattern over time); and (3) power imbalance (the bully has higher peer status than the victim). The prevalence of bullying rises through middle childhood and peaks in early adolescence, then declines substantially by late adolescence. Estimates do vary but overall, about 20% of children are victims of bullies at some point during middle childhood. Unfriendly behaviours included name calling, social exclusion and physical aggression, which were common experiences, with 59% reporting they had experienced at least one in the past year. About 32% said they had experienced bullying to some extent.

Question 43

Eriksons industry vs inferiority

Answer 43

Age 7-11 years When children become capable of doing useful work as well as their own self-directed projects, unless the adults around them are too critical of their efforts, leading them to develop a sense of inferiority instead. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has estimated that about 73 million children aged 5–11 are employed worldwide, which is about 9% of the total population of children in that age group, and 95% of working children are in developing countries.

Question 44

Media use

Answer 44

The Australian Child Health Poll conducted by The Royal Children’s hospital in Melbourne shows that children aged 6–13 years old have screen time for on average 31.5 hours per week. One analysis of 34 studies found that prosocial content in children’s television shows had positive effects on four areas of children’s functioning: altruism, positive social interactions, self-control and combating negative stereotypes. Several longitudinal studies by Rowell Huesmann and colleagues have shown that watching high amounts of violent television in middle childhood predicts aggressive behaviour at later life stages. Media research continues to focus on negative outcomes, but with non-violent content, and if used in moderation, media use can be a positive and enjoyable part of childhood.