Chapter 12 Key Questions

Feldman / Child Development, 5th EditionCopyright © 2010

Chapter 12Cognitive Development in

Middle Childhood

Child DevelopmentFIFTH EDITION

Robert S. FeldmanUniversity of Massachusetts at Amherst


Chapter 12 Key Questions

• In what ways do children develop cognitively during the years of middle childhood?

• How does language develop during the middle-childhood period, and what special circumstances pertain to children for whom English is not the first language?

• What trends are affecting schooling worldwide and in the United States?


Chapter 12 Key Questions

• What kinds of subjective factors contribute to academic outcomes?

• How can intelligence be measured, what are some issues in intelligence testing, and how are children who fall outside the normal range of intelligence educated?


Cognitive and Language Development

• During this period, children’s cognitive abilities broaden, and they become increasingly able to understand and master complex skills.

• At the same time, though, their thinking is still not fully adultlike.


Piagetian Approaches to Cognitive Development

• From Piaget’s perspective, the preschooler thinks preoperationally.

• This type of thinking is largely egocentric, and preoperational children lack the ability to use operations—organized, formal, logical mental processes.


The Rise of Concrete Operational Thought

• Concrete operational stage The period of cognitive development between 7 and 12 years of age, characterized by the active and appropriate use of logic

• Decentering The ability to take multiple aspects of a situation into account


• However, once concrete operational thinking is fully engaged, children show several cognitive advances representative of their logical thinking.

• Still, they remain tied to concrete, physical reality and have difficulty with abstraction.

The Rise of Concrete Operational Thought


Piaget in Perspective: Piaget Was Right; Piaget Was Wrong

• Piaget’s approach was quite successful in describing cognitive development.

• At the same time, though, critics have raised justifiable objections to his approach.

• Piaget underestimated children’s capabilities, as well as the age at which cognitive abilities emerge.


Information Processingin Middle Childhood

• According to information-processing approaches, children become increasingly sophisticated in their handling of information.

• Like computers, they can process more data as the size of their memories increases and the “programs” they use to process information become increasingly sophisticated.


Memory

• Memory The process by which information is initially recorded, stored, and retrieved

• Through encoding, the child initially records the information in a form usable to memory.

• Proper functioning of memory requires that material that is stored in memory must be retrieved.

• During middle childhood, short-term memory capacity improves significantly.


Memory

• Metamemory An understanding about the processes that underlie memory that emerges and improves during middle childhood

• School-age children’s understanding of memory becomes more sophisticated as they grow older and increasingly engage in control strategies.

• Similarly, children in middle childhood increasingly use mnemonics.


Vygotsky’s Approach to Cognitive Development and Classroom Instruction

• Vygotsky’s approach supports the practice of children actively participating in their educational experiences.

• Several current and noteworthy educational innovations have borrowed heavily from Vygotsky’s work. Cooperative Learning

• Reciprocal teaching is a technique to teach reading comprehension strategies.


Language Development:What Words Mean

• The linguistic sophistication of children, particularly at the start of the school-age period—still requires refinement to reach adult levels of expertise.

• 6 years old 8-14,000 words• 9-11 years old 5,000 additonal words


Mastering the Mechanicsof Language

• Vocabulary and mastery of grammar continues to increase during the school years at a fairly rapid clip. (Syntax of language)

• By the time they reach first grade, most children pronounce words quite accurately.(Phonemes, or units of sound)

• School-age children may have difficulty decoding sentences when the meaning depends on intonation, or tone of voice. (Pragmatics, or rules covering language in social settings)


Metalinguistic Awareness

• Metalinguistic awareness An understanding of one’s own use of language

• Metalinguistic awareness helps children achieve comprehension when information is fuzzy or incomplete.

• Begin to ask for clarification of information that is unclear


How Language PromotesSelf-Control

• The growing sophistication of their language helps school-age children control their behavior.

• Children may use “self-talk” to help regulate their own behavior.

• The effectiveness of their self-control may grow as their linguistic capabilities increase.


Bilingualism: Speakingin Many Tongues

• Bilingualism The ability to speak two languages

• With bilingual instruction, students are able to develop a strong foundation in basic subject areas using their native language.

• An alternative approach is to immerse students in English as quickly as possible.

• Bilingual students often have greater metalinguistic awareness, understanding the rules of language more explicitly, and show great cognitive sophistication.


Schooling Around the World: Who Gets Educated?

• In the U.S., as in most developed countries, a primary school education is both a universal right and a legal requirement.

• Children in other parts of the world are not so fortunate.

• In almost all developing countries, fewer females than males receive formal education, a discrepancy found at every level of schooling.


What Makes ChildrenReady for School?

• Delaying children’s entry into school does not necessarily provide an advantage and in some cases may actually be harmful.

• Ultimately, age per se is not a critical indicator of when children should begin school.

• Instead, the start of formal schooling is more reasonably tied to overall developmental readiness, the product of a complex combination of several factors.


Reading: Learning to Decode the Meaning Behind Words

• Reading involves a significant number of skills, from low-level cognitive skills (the identification of single letters and associating letters with sounds) to higher level skills (matching written words with meanings located in long-term memory and using context and background knowledge to determine the meaning of a sentence).


Reading Stages

• Development of reading skill generally occurs in several broad and frequently overlapping stages (Table 12-1).

• Stages 0 to 4 span birth through beyond eighth grade


Development of Reading Skills (page 332)


How Should We Teach Reading?

• According to proponents of code-based approaches to reading, reading should be taught by presenting the basic skills that underlie reading.

• In contrast, some educators argue that reading is taught most successfully by using a whole-language approach.

• A growing body of data suggests that code-based approaches are superior.


Educational Trends:Beyond the Three Rs

• Elementary school classrooms today stress individual accountability, both for teachers and for students.

• As the U.S. population has become more diverse, elementary schools have also paid increased attention to issues involving student diversity and multiculturalism.


Multicultural Education

• Multicultural education Education in which the goal is to help students from minority cultures develop competence in the culture of the majority group while maintaining positive group identities that build on their original cultures

• Cultural assimilation model The view of American society as a “melting pot” in which all cultures are amalgamated


Multicultural Education

• Pluralistic society model The concept that American society is made up of diverse, coequal cultures that should preserve their individual features

• Bicultural identity The maintenance of one’s original cultural identity while becoming integrated into the majority culture


Should Schools Teach Emotional Intelligence?

• Emotional intelligence The set of skills that underlie the accurate assessment, evaluation, expression, and regulation of emotions

• Goleman argues that emotional literacy should be a standard part of the school curriculum.


• Programs meant to increase emotional intelligence have not been met with universal acceptance.

• Still, most people consider emotional intelligence worthy of nurturance.

Should Schools Teach Emotional Intelligence?


Expectation Effects: How Teachers’ Expectancies Influence Their Students

• Teachers treat children for whom they have expectations of improvement differently from those for whom they have no such expectations.

• Teacher expectancy effect (Self-Fulfilling Prophecy-person’s expectations is capable of bringing about an

outcome))The phenomenon whereby an educator’s expectations for a given child actually bring about the expected behavior (pages 336-337)


• These communicated expectations in turn indicate to the child what behavior is appropriate, and the child behaves accordingly.

Expectation Effects: How Teachers’ Expectancies Influence Their Students


Homeschooling: LivingRooms as Classrooms

• Homeschooling is a major educational phenomenon in which students are taught, by their parents, in their own homes.

• Homeschooling clearly works, in the sense that children who have been homeschooled generally do as well or better on standardized tests as students who have been educated traditionally.


• In addition, their acceptance rate into college appears to be no different from that of traditionally schooled children.

• Critics of homeschooling argue that it has drawbacks.

Homeschooling: LivingRooms as Classrooms


Intelligence: Determining Individual Strengths

• Intelligence The capacity to understand the world, think rationally, and use resources effectively when faced with challenges

• The difficulty in defining intelligence stems from the many paths followed over the years in the quest to distinguish more intelligent people from less intelligent ones.

• Intelligence tests


Binet’s Test

• Binet’s pioneering efforts in intelligence testing left several important legacies. (Performance on a test is related to school success – but his theory does not take into account other attributes)

• Mental age The typical intelligence level found for people of a given chronological age

• Chronological (physical) age A person’s age according to the calendar

• Intelligence quotient (IQ) A score that expresses the ratio between a person’s mental and chronological ages


Measuring IQ: Present-Day Approaches to Intelligence

• Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale, Fifth Edition (SB5) A test that consists of a series of items that vary according to the age of the person being tested

• Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fourth Edition (WISC-IV) A test for children that provides separate measures of verbal and performance (nonverbal) skills, as well as a total score


• Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, Second Edition (KABC-II) An intelligence test that measures children’s ability to integrate different stimuli simultaneously and step-by-step thinking

Measuring IQ: Present-Day Approaches to Intelligence


What IQ Tests Don’t Tell: Alternative Conceptions of Intelligence

• Fluid intelligence Intelligence that reflects information processing capabilities, reasoning, and memory

• Crystallized intelligence The accumulation of information, skills, and strategies that people have learned through experience and previous use of fluid intelligence - people can further apply in problem-solving situations


Howard Gardner

• Eight Distinct Intelligences (Operate not in isolation – but together.)– Musical– Bodily Kinesthetic (Dancer, Actor, Athlete)– Logical Mathematical (Problem solving and

scientific thinking)– Linguistic Intelligence– Spatial Intelligence (Artists and Architects)– Interpersonal Intelligence– Intrapersonal Intelligence– Naturalistic Intelligence


• Triarchic theory of intelligence (Robert Sternberg’s Info processing Approach- Intelligence relates to

the processes that underlie intelligent behavior) The belief that intelligence consists of three aspects of information processing: (1)The componential/analytical element (score high on

traditional tests), (2) The experiential/creative element (create new ideas), and (3)The contextual/practical element (logical)

What IQ Tests Don’t Tell: Alternative Conceptions of Intelligence


Group Differences in IQ

• Although the questions on traditional IQ tests are not so obviously dependent on test takers’ prior experiences, our examples, cultural background, and experiences do have the potential to affect intelligence-test scores.

• Many educators suggest that traditional measures of intelligence are subtly biased.


Explaining RacialDifferences in IQ

• The issue of how cultural background and experience influence IQ-test performance has led to considerable debate among researchers.

• The debate has been fueled by the finding that IQ scores of certain racial groups are consistently lower, on average, than the IQ scores of other groups.

• The issue is important because of its social implications.


The Bell Curve Controversy

• In short, most experts in the area of IQ were not convinced by The Bell Curve contention that differences in group IQ scores are largely determined by genetic factors.


• Today, IQ is seen as the product of both nature and nurture interacting with one another in a complex manner.

The Bell Curve Controversy


Below the Norm: Mental Retardation (Intellectual Disability)

• Mental retardation (intellectual disability) A significant limitations in intellectual functioning and adaptive behaviors involving conceptual , social and practical skills – page 319

• Although limitations in intellectual functioning can be measured in a relatively straightforward manner using standard IQ tests, it is more difficult to determine how to gauge limitations in adaptive behavior.


Degrees of Intellectual Disability

• Mild retardation Intellectual disability with IQ scores in the range of 50 or 55 to 70

• Moderate retardation Intellectual disability with IQ scores from around 35 or 40 to 50 or 55

• Severe retardation Intellectual disability with IQ scores that range from around 20 or 25 to 35 or 40

• Profound retardation Intellectual disability with IQ scores below 20 or 25


Above the Norm: TheGifted and Talented

• Gifted and talented Showing evidence of high performance capability in intellectual, creative, or artistic areas, in leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields

• Acceleration The provision of special programs that allow gifted students to move ahead at their own pace, even if this means skipping to higher grade levels


• Enrichment Approach through which students are kept at grade level but are enrolled in special programs and given individual activities to allow greater depth of study on a given topic

Above the Norm: TheGifted and Talented

Chapter 12 Key Questions

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