Middle & Late Childhood: Physical & Cognitive Development Flashcards
How is physical growth in middle & late childhood characterized?
- Slow and consistent
- Period of calm before the rapid growth spurt in adolescence
During elementary school years, children grow an average of _____ inches a year until 11 years old and gain about _____ pounds a year
- 2-3 inches
- 5-7 pounds
Average height & weight of 8-year-old children:
- Height: 4 ft. 2 inches
- Weight: 56 pounds
Weight increase is due mainly to increases in the size of? With this increase comes the decrease of?
- Skeletal and muscular systems -> Increased muscle mass & strength
- Some body organs
- Baby fat decreases
Changes in proportion are among the most pronounced physical changes in middle and late childhood
These decrease in relation to body height
- Head circumference
- Waist cirumference
- Leg length
- The highest level of the frontal lobes that is involved in improved attention, reasoning, decision making, and self-control
- Its brain pathways an circuitry continue to increase in middle and late childhood
- Orchestrates the functions of many other brain regions during development
Prefrontal cortex
The brain is _____ organized and mainly develops from the ______
Hierarchically organized; bottom up
What does increased focal brain activation and synaptic pruning from 7-30 years of age entail?
Increased efficiency in cognitive performance, especialy cognitive control
It thickens at temporal and frontal lobe areas for language abilities such as reading
Cerebral cortex
What generally happens to motor skill development in middle-late childhood?
- Become smoother and more coordinated
- Physical skills (running, climbing, swimming, etc.) are further developed and mastered
Which gender outperforms in gross motor skills? Fine motor skills?
- Boys outperform in gross motor skills
- Girls outperform in fine motor skills
Long-term negative effects of undeveloped basic motor skills:
- Unable to participate in group activities or sports
- Lower motivation for sports participation
- Lower self worth
One way of encouraging children to be active and develop their motor skills
Organized sports
It is reflected in regards to the brain in the improvement of fine motor skills during middle and late childhood
Increased myelination of the central nervous system
Fine motor-skill milestones at
- 6 years
- 7 years
- 8-10 years
- 10-12 years
- 6 years: Hands as tools - hammer, paste, tie shoes, fasten clothes
- 7 years: Steadier handedness; writes with pencil in smaller print; reversal of letters less common
- 8-10 years: Use hands independently with more ease and precision; now write rather than print
- 10-12 years: Manipulative skills; playing instruments, crafts
Guidelines recommend how much time young children get for physical activity
15 or more minutes per hour, totaling to 3 hours per day
This exercise benefits cognitive development: children’s attention, memory, effortful and goal-directed thinking and behavior, and creativity
Aerobic Exercise
_____ and _____ play important roles in determining children’s exercise levels
Parents and schools
This is linked to low activity and obesity; children linked to gadgets instead of being active
Screen time
Although the dangers of disease have greatly diminished, parents must still keep a timely _____
Immunization schedule
Leading cause of death during childhood
Accidents, specifically motor vehicle accidents either as passenger or pedestrian
What is the best way to improve the health of children who live in poverty?
Treat the medical problems of the entire family, not just the individual child
Categories for obesity, overweight and risk of being overweight are determined by
Determining body mass index (BMI), formula that takes into account height and weight
Categories & BMI Correlation:
Obese: 97th percentile >
Overweight: 95th percentile >
Risk of becoming overweight: 85th percentile >
Causes of obesity:
- Heredity
- Environment
Consequences of Obesity
Medical & psychological problems
- Pulmonary problems
- Hip problems
- Type 2 diabetes
- Hypertension / high blood pressure
- Elevated blood cholesterol
- Depression & anxiety
- Low self-estee
Interventions for Obesity:
Combination of
- Diet
- Exercise
- Behavior modification
- It is uncommon but can sow the seeds in adulthood
- Associated with metabolic syndrome
- Possess one or more of the risk factors (HTN, Obesity)
Cardiovascular Disease
Metabolic Syndrome is characterized by what factors?
- High BMI
- High waist circumference
It is the second leading cause of death of children aged 5-14
Cancer
Some types:
- Leukemia (most common),
- Brain,
- Bone,
- Lymph system,
- Muscles,
- Kidneys,
- Nervous system
Advancement in cancer treatment
Chemotherapy
How is a child with a learning disability defined?
A child with a learning disability has difficulty in learning that involves understanding or using spoken or written language.
The difficulty can appear in
- listening,
- thinking,
- reading,
- writing,
- doing mathematics
About three times as many boys as girls are classified as having a learning disability. Among the explanations for this gender difference are:
- Greater biological vulnerability among boys
- Referral bias - boys are more likely than girls to be referred by teachers for treatment because of troublesome behavior
What are the 3 types of learning disabilities:
- Dyslexia: individuals with a severe impairment in their ability to read and spell
- Dysgraphia: involves difficulty in handwriting. Children with dysgraphia may write very slowly, their writing products may be virtually illegible, and they may make numerous spelling errors because of their inability to match up sounds and letters
- Dyscalculia: aka developmental arithmetic disorder, is a learning disability that involves difficulty in math computation
Interventions for Learning Disabilities:
- Improving reading ability
- Intensive instructions by teacher
What does ADHD stand for? What characteristics are portrayed by children who usually have it?
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Characteristics portrayed:
- Inattention: Children who are inattentive have so much difficulty focusing on any one thing that they may get bored with a task after only a few minutes—or even seconds
- Hyperactivity: Children who are hyperactive show high levels of physical activity, seeming to be almost constantly in motion
- Impulsivity: Children who are impulsive have difficulty curbing their reactions; they do not do a good job of thinking before they act
Depending on the characteristics that children with ADHD display, they can be diagnosed as:
- ADHD with predominantly inattention
- ADHD with predominantly hyperactivity/impulsivity
- ADHD with both inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity
Controversies & Risks of ADHD:
- Boys diagnosed more than girls four to nine times
- Increased diagnosis may be because of incorrect diagnoses
- Increased risk of school dropout, adolescent pregnancy, substance use, antisocial
Causes of ADHD:
Not definite, but some include:
- Brain Image: Delayed peak thickness in cerebral cortex at prefrontal regions
- Heredity
- Prenatal/Postnatal brain damage
- Cigarette and alcohol exposure
- High level of maternal stress during prenatal
- Low birth weight
Strategies for ADHD treatment:
- Stimulant drug treatment
- Behavior management
- Neurofeedback
- Mindfulness training
- Exercise
Method that trains individuals to become more aware of their physiological responses so that they can attain better control over their brain’s prefrontal cortex
Neurofeedback
What are Emotional & Behavioral Disorders?
Which disorders are internalized and externalized?
Consist of serious, persistent problems that involve relationships, aggression, depression, and fears associated with personal or school matters and other inappropriate socioemotional characteristics
- Internalized: Depression
- Externalized: Aggression
What is another name for Autism Spectrum Disorders? What characterize them?
- Aka Pervasive Developmental Disorders
Characterized by problems in:
- social interaction,
- problems in verbal and nonverbal communication, and;
- repetitive behaviors
How Autism Spectrum make its distinctions?
Distinctions will be made in terms of the severity of problems based on amount of support needed due to challenges involving social communication, restricted interests, and repetitive behaviors
Severe developmental autism spectrum disorder that has its onset in the first three years of life and includes deficiencies in social relationships; abnormalities in communication; and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior
Autistic disorder
A relatively mild autism spectrum disorder in which the child has relatively good verbal language skills, milder nonverbal language problems, and a restricted range of interests and relationships, often engaging in obsessive, repetitive routines
Asperger syndrome
What can a child do in the Concrete Operational Stage?
- Children from 7-11 years old can perform concrete operations and think logically.
- Child can also consider several characteristics rather than to focus on a single property of an object.
This task indicates whether a child is capable of concrete operations, or being able to employ mental actions on concrete objects
Conservation
It is the opposite of conservation, or child cannot perform concrete operations yet
Centration
Under concrete operational stage, this task entails the ability to classify or divide things into different sets or subsets and to consider their interrelationship
Classification
- This task refers to sorting or arranging things or ideas by size, color, shape, or type
- The ability to order stimuli along a quantitative dimension
Seriation
- The ability to logically combine relations to reach certain conclusions
- The ability to transfer gained knowledge between two elements to other elements
Transitivity
It is the retention of information over time
Memory
The 3-step process of memory:
- Encoding - getting information into memory
- Storage - retaining information over time
- Retrieval - taking information out of storage
Failure can occur in any of these stages
- According to this theory, people mold memories to fit information that already exists in their minds
- We reconstruct the past rather than take an exact photograph of it, and the mind can distort an event as it encodes and stores impressions of it
Schema theory
A relatively permanent and unlimited type of memory
Long-term memory
- Type of memory increases during childhood
- Retention of information for up to 15 to 30 seconds, without rehearsal of the information.
- Using rehearsal, individuals can keep the information in longer
Short-term memory
A method of assessing limited mental capacity wherein a list of stimuli is heard at rapid, and asked to be repeated
Memory-span task
Why does memory span change with age? Factors include….
- Rehearsal of information: older children rehearse the digits more than younger children do
- Speed of processing information: speed with which memory items can be identified
- Speed of repetition: The children who were able to quickly repeat the presented words were also far more likely to have greater memory spans
- A kind of mental “workbench” where individuals manipulate and assemble information when they make decisions, solve problems, and comprehend written and spoken language
- Is described as more active and powerful in modifying information than short-term memory
- Develops slowly and linked to many aspects of child’s development
Working Memory
Memory of significant events and experiences in one’s life
Autobiographical memory
As children go through middle and late childhood, and through adolescence, their autobiographical narratives broaden and become more elaborated
For memory, _____ and _____ are two typical strategies that older children use to remember information more effectively
- Rehearsal
- Organization
- Memory strategy by creating mental images
- Works best to remember verbal information for older children
Imagery
- Memory strategy which involves engaging in more extensive processing of information
- Thinking of examples, especially those related to yourself
Elaboration
Theory that emphasizes the reconstructive aspects of memory provides an alternative to strategies in explaining developmental changes in children’s memory
Fuzzy Trace Theory
Fuzzy trace theory states that memory is best understood by considering two types of memory representations:
- Verbatim memory trace: consists of the precise details of the information
- Gist: central idea of the information
Using gist contributes to the improved memory and reasoning of older children because fuzzy traces are more enduring and less likely to be forgotten than verbatim traces
It involves manipulating and transforming information in memory in order to reason, reflect, evaluate ideas, solve problems, and make decisions.
Thinking
An umbrella-like concept that encompasses a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the brain’s prefrontal cortex
Executive functions
- Thinking reflectively and productively and evaluating evidence
- Thinking that involves grasping the deeper meaning of ideas, keeping an open mind about different approaches and perspectives, and deciding for oneself what to believe or do.
Critical thinking - includes asking not only what happened, but how and why; examining supposed “facts” to determine whether there is evidence to support them; evaluating what other people say rather than immediately accepting it as true; and asking questions and speculating beyond what isknown to create new ideas and acquire new information
- It is an important aspect of thinking critically
- Being alert, mentally present, and cognitively flexible while going through life’s everyday activities and tasks
Mindfulness
The ability to think in novel and unusual ways and to come up with unique solutions to problems
Creative Thinking
- Characteristic of creativity
- Thinking that produces many answers to the same question
Divergent Thinking
- Thinking that produces one correct answer
- Characteristic of the kind of thinking required on conventional intelligence tests
Convergent thinking
Thinking that seeks to answer problems, question reality and identify causal relations
Scientific Thinking
- Cognition about cognition; knowing about knowing
- It includes thinking about and knowing when and where to use particular strategies for learning or for solving problems
- Helps people perform many cognitive tasks more effectively
Metacognition
- Individuals’ knowledge about memory
- Knowing recognitions tests are easier than recall tests
- It also encompasses knowledge about one’s own memory
Metamemory
What is metacognition of children at 5-6 years old like?
- Know that familiar items are easier to learn than unfamiliar ones,
- short lists are easier to remember than long ones,
- that recognition is easier than recall,
- forgetting becomes more likely over time
3 Dimensions of Executive Functioning in 4-11 year olds:
- Cognitive Inhibition
- Cognitive Flexibility
- Working memory
What is the problem in defining Intelligence?
- Intelligence is the ability to solve problems and to adapt and learn from experiences
- Intelligence cannot be directly measured
Intelligence varies from person to person.
_____ the stable, consistent ways in which people are different from each other
Individual Differences
- This intelligence test not only provides an overall IQ score but also yields five composite scores (Verbal Comprehension, Working Memory, Processing Speed, Fluid Reasoning, and Visual Spatial)
- These scores allow the examiner to quickly see whether the individual is strong or weak in different areas of intelligence
Wechsler Scales
Original concept of Binet Test:
The correlation of mental age and chronological age with intelligence quotient
IQ = MA/CA * 100
Present concept of Stanford-Binet 5 test?
- It was revised to analyze an individual’s responses in five content areas: fluid reasoning, knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial reasoning, and working memory.
- one general composite score also is obtained
In the Binet Test, it is a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve with a majority of the cases falling in the middle of the range of possible scores and few scores appearing toward the extremes of the range.
Normal Distribution
This intelligence theory states that intelligence comes in three forms, namely:
- Analytical intelligence
- Creative intelligence
- Practical Intelligence
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence
Intelligence that to the ability to analyze, judge, evaluate, compare, and contrast
Analytical Intelligence
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence
Intelligence that consists of the ability to create, design, invent, originate, and imagine
Creative Intelligence
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence
Intelligence that consists of the ability to use, apply, implement, and put ideas into practice
Practical Intelligence
According to this intelligence theory, there are 8 types of intelligences
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
The ability to think in words and use language to express meaning (occupations: authors, journalists, speakers)
Verbal Intelligence
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
The ability to carry out mathematical operations (occupations: scientists, engineers, accountants)
Mathematical
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
The ability to think three-dimensionally (occupations: architects, artists, sailors)
Spatial
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
The ability to manipulate objects and be physically adept (occupations: surgeons, craftspeople, dancers, athletes)
Bodily-Kinesthetic
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
A sensitivity to pitch, melody, rhythm, and tone (occupations: composers, musicians, and sensitive listeners)
Musical
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
The ability to understand and effectively interact with others (occupations: successful teachers, mental health professionals)
Interpersonal
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
The ability to understand oneself (occupations: theologians, psychologists)
Intrapersonal
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
The ability to observe patterns in nature and understand natural and humanmade systems (occupations: farmers, botanists, ecologists, landscapers)
Naturalist
- Extreme of intelligence wherein inadequate intellectual functioning is present
- Limited mental ability; individual has low IQ below 70 on a traditional intelligence test
Mental retardation
Types of Intellectual Disability (range):
- Mild: 55-70 IQ range
- Moderate 40-54 IG range
- Severe: 25-39 IQ range
- Profound below 25 IQ rangw
Intellectual disability that describes a genetic disorder or a lower level of intellectual functioning caused by brain damage
Organic Intellectual disability
Intellectual disability when no evidence of organic brain damage can be found, and instead stems from growing up in a below-average intellectual environment
Cultural-familial intellectual disability
- Extreme of Intelligence wherein children have above-average intelligence; 1Q 130 / higher
- Tend to be more mature than others, socially well-adjusted, fewer emotional problems than others, and grow up in a positive family climate
Giftedness
Criteria of Giftedness:
- Precocity
- Marchjng to their own drummer
- A passion to master
