Summary Chapter 5 - Middle Childhood

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Chapter 5
Middle Childhood – 6-12 years
5.1) Physical development
5.1.1) General physical development
 Rapid growth in arms and legs
 Lanky appearance
 Slower/ gradual growth rate
 Girls tend to grow faster
 Brain
» Almost adult size/ weight (volume and mass – not structural)
» NB!! – development of frontal lobes
 Responsible for judgement, impulse control, planning,
reasoning, emotions, memory and problem solving
 Increasing brain interconnections= able to master difficult
cognitive tasks
 Respiratory system
» Elasticity of the lungs increases = deeper/slower breathing
 Circulatory system  Based on
» Develops – slower rate averages
 Permanent teeth  Nationality
» Milk teeth fall out  Socio-
» Replaces by permanent teeth economic
» End of middle school background
» Malocclusion
 Teeth are not aligned properly – faulty contact between
upper and lower jaw
 Quite common in children
 Disappears on its own or need braces
 Vision
» Well developed
» Myopia
 Near sightedness
 Distant objects = out of focus
 Closer object =full focus
» Affect all spheres of life
 Sleep
» Growth hormone – secretes shortly after deep sleep
» Inadequate sleep
 Overweight
 Affects cognitive processes
 School adjustment
 Depression
 Anxiety
 Low self-esteem

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5.1.2) Motor Skills
 Acquisition / refinement – psychomotor skills
» Increase in strength Practice
» Increase in coordination makes perfect
» Increase in muscle control
» Increase in balance
» Increase in elegance of physical movement
 Boys = develop more rapidly
» Running/jumping/throwing
» More muscle tissues
 Motor development facilitates personality development
 Cognitive level = skills
» Writing
» Drawing
» Painting
» Playing an instrument
 Social development enhanced – participating in individual/ team sports



5.1.3Sexuality in Middle school
 Freud = sexual latency – Disregarded
 End of middle childhood = firm gender identity/ constancy
 Understand – gender consistency
 Aware of sexual orientation issues
» Heterosexually / homosexuality
 Media
 Parents
 Minority- masturbates for pleasure
» No concern
 Sex play – not always noticeable
» Curiosity and exploration
 Basic understanding of “how babies are made”
» Parents
» Media
» Peers



5.2) Cognitive development

Piaget’s Theory: Concrete Development
 7-11
 Start using mental operations (strategies/ rules – make thinking more systematic)
» To solve problems
» Reason
Reflect a
 Numbers = addition/subtraction/ multiplication/division
general rule
 Categories of objects = organising shapes/sizes and colour
about objects
 Spatial relation = map reading
and their
relationships

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 Reversibility
» Understanding – physical action & mental operations = reversed
» Each operation – inverse (undo the effect)
 Hierarchies of classes
» Bruno-Labrador-dog-animal
 Conservation task
» Matter can change in appearance without changing in quantity
 Horizontal decalage
» Do not transfer
what they have
learned about one Developmental
conservation to change occurs
another type through several
important forms

5.2.2) Development
of information
processing skills
 Memory
» Central – key component
» Working memory – improves
 Phonological loop
 Stores sound
 Verbal material
 Learning how to read
 Understanding language
 Acquiring vocabulary
 Visual spatial sketchpad
 Visual material
 Creation/use mental images
» Larger working memory = increased processing
 Greater vocabulary
 Greater academic achievement
» Long-term memory
 Well developed
» Memory strategies
 Rehearsal
 Mental/vocal repetition
 Organisations
 Categorisations
 Grouping ideas, objects, words – meaningful units
 Elaborations
 Embellishing info – make it more memorable




 Age related advances in memory development

Child age Memory capabilities

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Under 2 years  Infants remember actions/routines – involve them
 Memory is implicit
 Triggered by sights/sounds
» Interactive toy
» Caregivers voice
2-5 years  Words – encode/retrieve memories
 Explicit memory begins
» Do not use memory strategies yet
 Remember things by rote
 Not always understanding
» Phone number/ address/ rhymes/ songs
5-7 years  Realise – things should be remembered
 Use simple strategies
» Primarily rehearsal
7-9 years  Use new strategies
 Use visual clues
 Auditory hints
 Benefit – organisation of things to be remembered
9-11 years  Memory – more adaptive/ strategic
 Organise material self
 Develop own memory aids

 Processing speed
» Speed – carry out cognitive processes
» Increases with age
» Critical – number of actions must be performed in a fixed period
 Automatic processing
» Automaticity
 Cognitive activities – not effort
» More cognitive capacity available for other cognitive tasks
» Middle school – autotomise info at rapid rate
 Knowledge base
» What children know
» The more you know – the better you learn and remember
» Helps to recall info quicker
 Control processes
» Executive functions
 Memory + processing speed + knowledge base
 Variety of cognitive skills to enable
 Planning
 Organising
 Decision making
 Abstract thinking
 Problem solving
 Help control/inhibit impulsive behaviour
 Prefrontal cortex – synchronise neural activity in brain
 Predicts academic achievement
 Metacognitions
o Evaluate cognitive tasks
o Determine how to do it
o Monitor performance