Middle childhood Flashcards
What is most characteristic for period of middle childhood
Middle childhood is considered to be a “sensitive period” because of the active role that experiences play in brain development (4). During middle childhood, the brain is in a constant state of flux: myelination is occurring within the corpus callosum and subcortical areas, which enables increased conduction speed and synaptic transmission between the right and left hemisphere, while at the same time, the cortical gray matter is actively adapting. As this takes place, brain activity and behavioural responses advance.
Across tasks, young children exhibit patterns of diffuse and widespread activation on functional magnetic resonance imaging while older children show more select regional activation. This is because synaptic pruning enables the brain to attenuate activity in certain areas, while maintaining or enhancing activity in other areas. Thus with age, fewer and more select regions of the brain are activated for specific tasks by responding selectively to the same stimuli (1). The degree to which this occurs is modulated by the experiences a child has. As such, children have a greater chance of reaching their potential when they have access and opportunity to engage in stimulating environments, experiences, and interactions that support and promote their individual capacities and capabilities.
Gross and fine motor skills development due to myelination. Brain volume stabilises.
Cognitive development determines school readiness
Individual differences in cognitive ability determine educational achievement.
Schooling affects domain-specific as well as meta-cognitive skills but not general cognitive efficiency.
Conceptualisation of cognitive development
- Cognitive development as a series of stages: Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
- Cognitive development as continuous increase in Information-processing capacity
- Role of schooling -
Continuous development: change that occurs at a steady pace, often shows consistent improvement or growth
Discontinuous development: change that occurs in bursts of improvement, often followed by periods of consolidation
Asynchronous development: development occurs unevenly across skills more advance in some, less in others
What is Piaget’s conceptualisation of cog. devel. in middle childhood
By then children have reached CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE
➔Children become capable of internalised actions that fit into a logical system.
➔Children can mentally combine, separate, order and transform objects and actions.
➔Not able to operate (or think) systematically about representations of objects or events.
–Manipulating representations is a more abstract skill that develops later
understand preservation(conservation) even when appearance changes
Reversibility: the ability to think about the steps of a process in any order
Decentration: focus on more than one feature of a problem at a time
Are there any cultural differences in cognitive development?
Greenfiled (1966) - unschooled children in Senegal less likely to pass conservation task (comp Western children) - traditional belief system might influence interpretation of the transformation.
Dasen (1972) aboriginal children do not understand conservation but high spatial abilities
What is children’s thinking limited by ?
Children’s thinking is limited by : knowledge, memory and attention (already observable in infancy) control and speed of processing.
Kail (1991) Processing speed increases dramatically from infancy through childhood
What factors improve performance?
attention and executive functioning: switching between tasks, updating representations in working memory, and inhibition irrelevant information.
Schooling - approaches of classroom teaching
bottom-up (skills and knowledge focused)
top-down ( solving meaningful tasks)
IQ to predict achievement? Research has shown causal relationship between education and intelligence
What are the two beliefs about IQ - mindset
Fixed mindset: belief that intelligence is c= fixed and cannot be changed
Growth mindset: belief that intellectual abilities can be developed through sustained effort, good strategies and appropriate help and support from others.
Does growth mindset predicts better performance?
Blackwell et al. (2007)
Claro et al. (2016) ; MEASURED MATHEMATICS AND LANGUAGE TESTS, MINDSET AND SOCIOECONOMIC background.
Students for the lowest-income families were twice as likely to endorse a fixed mindset. Mindset was the best predictor. But a growth mindset may lessen neg. effects of poverty on academic achievement
(Reardon, 2011) socioeconomic background one of the strongest predictors of academic achievement
due to : reduced access to educational resources, higher stress levels, poorer nutrition, reduced access to healthcare
Sisk et al. (2018) combined evidence; explored the strength of the relationship between growth mindset and academic achievement and the effectiveness of mindset interventions on academic achievement.
moderators: developmental stage, academic risk, socioeconomic status, academic achievement measure, publication bias.
The correlation between growth mindset and academic achievement was very weak.
- Mindset interventions on academic achievement were nonsignificant for adolescents, typical students, and students facing situational challenges
- However, academically high-risk students and economically disadvantaged students may benefit from growth-mindset interventions
What is the evidence for schooled vs non-schooled kids
Compare 6-year-olds with and without schooling:
–Better memory skills in schooled children due to use of organisational strategies (Morrison, 1995).
–No difference in conservation, storytelling or vocabulary (Christian et al., 2001).
Cross culturally
–Schooled children have superior memory for unrelated items (Wagner, 1978) à schooling improved organisational strategies.
–No difference in recall of meaningfully related items in a panorama scene (Rogoff & Waddell, 1982) à schooling does not improve memory capacity per se.
What is understood by metacognition and how it can be improved?
By metacognition is understood reasoning about own mental capacities: being aware what you know, and can remember.
Important for successful strategy: how to learn and remember facts (rehearsal etc.)
It can be improved through training; involving problem solving and underlying cognitive abilities is particularly appropriate for children who are poor at problem solving.
Greatest training benefits observed in weakest children *COrnoldi et al., 2015)
How do peers influence your sense of self?
By 6-12y children engage in complex play and negotiations, friendships, group identity. peers represent a source of information about social rules and one’s own qualities.
Social comparison occurs around school age.
Sociometric status
Peer influence: Sociometric status; how much is a child like and noticed by peers
categories: popular (liked by many, +, good leaders, cooperative)
rejected (disliked by many, disruptive, antisocial, active, solitary, little cooperative, either aggressive or withdrawn)
neglected( +-, shy, non-aggressive, solitary)
controversial( liked by some, disliked by others, may be aggressive, but cognitive and social skills)
average
Are these behaviours cause or effect tof sociometric status?
vice versa. Children who are popular, neglected or controversial at young age can change their status after several years. However children that are actively rejected, without intervention, will not acquire the relevant social skills for social acceptance. (Dodge, 1983)
Homophily effect
we tend to incline towards people who are similar on many dimensions
The more you share with someone the more intimate the relationships will be
Are friendships gendered?
Most research focuses on same gender friendships. Boys are more likely to have stable same-gender friendships.
Boys and girls do not differ in the proportion of friendships but differ in activities
Voluntary gender segregation? why?
playing styles
beliefs about other gender
relationship efficiency
Gender is one of the earliest identity and social category to emerge
Transgender children believe gender to be less stable and still prefer the same genders
what is the role of friendship?
To develop social and conflict resolution skills. Social feedback. Altruism and caring for others.
Correlation between stable friendships and higher scores of self-esteem.
based on selective-associations and trust
