Module 6 Flashcards
(25 cards)
Middle childhood ages
6 – 11 years
-> technically ends with puberty (influenced by factors such as ethnicity, SES and psychosocial stress, obesity)
Major developmental tasks of middle childhood
- acquisition of culturally valued skills (Erikson’s sense of industry)
- application of motor skills
- self-regulation incl. cognitive and emotional
- acquisition and maintenance of friendships
- > Much of this acquired through play!
Growth in middle childhood
- Further physical developments
- Increases in height & weight
- Baby teeth lost & replaced
- Lower body grows quickly
- Increases in flexibility (ligaments not firmly attached to bones)
- From 8 yrs: girls acquire fat at faster rate
Gross motor development
Gross: developments in balance, flexibility, agility, force, coordination Influenced by: - Improved information-processing - Improved reaction time - Improved eye-hand coordination
Fine motor development
- Writing improvements, increased legibility
- Drawing: Accurately copy shapes, convey depth
- Begin to play musical instruments
Gender differences in middle childhood
Girls
- greater flexibility
- better sequential movements
- earlier growth spurt (8.5 – 10.5 yrs vs. 10.5-12.5 yrs boys)
Boys
- 5-10% more muscle cells & strength
- Greater forearm strength
- high activity & aggression levels
- greater aerobic capacity & endurance
-> Exacerbated by socialisation rather than reflecting inherent (small) differences –> For example: #Likeagirl
Play in childhood
UN High Commission for Human Rights: ‘play’ is a human right! -> Important to cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being
Child-driven unstructured play
- Not directed by caregiver
- Creativity, imagination, freedom, exploration of own likes/dislikes, no risk of ‘failure’
- Current trends are reducing the amount of time children have in unstructured play (i.e. recess, free-play)
Rough and tumble play
- Mimicked aggression but pro-social in childhood
- Characterized by “play face”
- Universal
More likely if:
-> away from adults
-> open space
-> familiarity
-> male
-> 8 – 10 years old
Structured play - games, sports, etc
- Gains in perspective-taking, can understand different roles
- Try out competition, cooperation, winning & losing with minimal personal risk
- Organisational skills & social skills
- Sports participation – increased confidence & self-esteem, when paired with encouragement versus criticism
- Can be especially protective for girls
- Potential drawback of high levels of structured activity
–> cuts into unstructured play time and family time
Piaget’s stages of development: Concrete Operations 7-11 years
- Ability to engage in operational (logical) thought, but only applied to real, tangible objects (concrete)
- Can organise thoughts logically & coherently, capable of concrete problem-solving
-> Limitations: Cannot think abstractly
Main attainments in this stage:
-> Conservation, Classification, Seriation, Spatial Reasoning
Conservation
- Conservation & reversibility have developed
Decentration:
Focusing on several aspects of a problem and relating them (e.g., size/volume of containers)
Reversibility
Thinking through a series of steps and then mentally reversing direction
(e.g., back to original presentation)
Classification
can arrange & group objects on the basis of various characteristics & hierarchies…collecting begins
Seriation
Seriation: ordering objects along quantitative dimensions
Transitive inference: can seriate mentally (for objects)
If Kate is taller than Sarah, and Sarah is taller than Charlotte, is Charlotte taller than Kate?
Cognitive development of time and space (8-10 years)
- Understand time unfolds in single constant flow marked by clocks, calendars, milestones
- Cognitive maps: represent spatial relations of surroundings -> make maps & models of local area, home
- Perspective taking, reversibility
- By 10 – 12 years understand scale in maps
- Not universal; cultural differences
- Nomadic cultures: rapid development of spatial reasoning
Cognitive development as part of information processing theory
Gains in information processing capacity drives cognitive development, rather than progression through discrete stages
- Can focus on multiple dimensions of situations (more complex story-telling, more characters & plots)
- Ongoing myelination and synaptic pruning and frontal lobe development underlie improvements in:
- > Inhibition
- > Information processing speed
- > Implications for attention, memory, problem solving
- > Attention becomes > selective, adaptable & planful
Information processing perspective
Info processing perspective examines separate aspects of thinking. Including: - Working Memory - Attention - Cognitive Self-regulation - Theory of Mind
Collectively known as ‘executive functions’
Information processing and working memory
- Improvements in inhibition, memory & processing speed
- Improvements in strategy use & learn to combine strategies
Information processing and memory - rehearsal
- Good for short term retention
- Emerges around 7 years
- Younger children limited by working memory capacity
- Initially rehearse one item at a time
- 10 year olds rehearse in clusters
Information processing and memory - Organisation/chunking
- Useful for long term storage
- Emerges around 9 - 10 years
Information processing and memory - Elaboration
Creating relationships between pieces of information in other categories
- Useful for long term storage
- Requires greater knowledge base
- Spontaneous use in adolescence
Early examples:
-> Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit
-> My Very Easy Memory Jingle Seems Useful Naming (Planets)
Information processing theory and memory - Chi 1978
Combining strategies better
Memory improvements also due to increased knowledge (Chi, 1978)
- where children with chess experience and college students without chess experienced memorised and recalled random numbers and chess pieces
- random numbers trial saw college students with high recall
- chess pieces trial saw children with higher recall
Information processing theory and attention
- Increases in adaptability (processing of relevant information in the environment)
- Improved performance on switching tasks (‘cognitive flexibility’), less perseverative errors
- Increased ability to ignore irrelevant and distracting stimuli
- Adapt study to areas known least well
- Implications for improved problem solving, staying on task
- For some children, attention deficit disorders now become apparent
Information processing theory and Theory of Mind
Theory of Mind: more elaborate & refined
- Metacognition: awareness of cognition & cognitive strategies
- 7-8 yrs: understanding of different interpretations of same event/situation
- Important and relevant for the increasing complexity of social relationships as children enter adolescence
Information processing theory and Self-regulation
Cognitive self-regulation gradually emerges: the ability to continually monitor progress toward goals, checking outcomes & redirecting efforts
- Highly demanding tasks
- E.g. memory strategies, reviewing difficult study content, asking questions to enhance understanding
Better cognitive self-regulation associated with:
- academic success
- academic self-efficacy
