Concrete Operational Stage: Middle Childhood

Nutrition: Children need well balanced diet for good health and successful learning. Without it children show delays in physical growth, impaired motor coordination, inattention, and low IQ. (p. 409)

Obesity: Children who are obese suffer serious emotional and social difficulties. Health issues of high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, respiratory abnormalities, insulin resistance, and inflammatory reactions.(p. 410)

Common Health Problems

Vision and Hearing: Myopia (nearsightedness) is the most common vision problem. It affects approximately 25 percent of children.

• Gains in body size and muscle development improve coordination.
• New motor skills are use in more complex ways.
• Gross Motor is improved, increasing flexibility, balance, agility, and force (playing harder)
• More efficient information processing improves motor performance.
• Fine Motor skills are improved, organization, detail in drawings, handwriting. (p. 419-421)

Motor Development

• Differences in motor abilities are influenced by heredity and environment.
• Sex difference continue as girls have better fine motor skills of handwriting and drawing.

(p. 421-422)

• Play changes in Middle childhood.
• Games with rules become common.
• Children play a variety of organized games as well as inventing their own games.
• Games contribute to emotional and social development.
• For most children joining community teams lead to increased self-esteem and improved social skills. (p. 419-423)

Play

• High parental pressures that focus on winning or who punish for mistakes are at risk of damaging the self esteem of the child. (p. 425)

Cultural/SES Bias of testing can be solved by

• The use of Dynamic assessments: Influenced by Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, the adult introduces purposeful teaching into the testing situation to find out what the child can attain with social support
• (p. 454)
• countering the impact of stereotyping by persuading students that their intelligence depends heavily on effort
• Self affirming intervention: encourage students to affirm their self worth by writing a short essay on their most important values (p. 454)

The fix

Sternberg's Triarchic Theory

Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory is the idea that people who think intelligently balance three interrelated intelligences which are;

1. Analytical intelligence or information processing skills

a) Apply strategies

b) Acquire task relevant and metacognitive knowledge

c) Engage in self-regulation

2. Creative intelligence or problem solving

a) Solve novel problems

b) Make processing skills automatic to free working memory for complex thinking

3. Practical intelligence or applying intellectual skills in everyday situations

a) Adapt to

b) Shape

c) Select

Environments to meet both personal goals and the demands of one’s everyday world (p. 448)

Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences- a distinct set of processing operations that permit individuals to engage in a wide range of culturally valued activities. Dismisses the idea of general intelligence. Gardner proposes eight independent intelligences.

1. Linguistic: Sensitivity to the sounds, rhythms, and meaning of words and the function of language

2. Logico-mathematical: Sensitivity to and capacity to detect, logical or numerical patterns, ability to handle long chains of logical reasoning

3. Musical: Ability to produce and appreciate pitch, rhythm and aesthetic quality of the forms of musical expression

4. Spatial: Ability to perceive the visual-spatial world, to preform transformations on those perceptions, and to re-create aspects of visual experience in the absence of relevant stimuli

5. Bodily-kinesthetic: Ability to use body skillfully for expressive as well as goal directed purposes, ability to handle objects skillfully

6. Naturalist: Ability to recognize and classify all varieties of animals, minerals, and plants

7. Interpersonal: Ability to detect and respond appropriately to the moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions of others

8. Intrapersonal: Ability to discriminate complex inner feelings and to use them to guide one’s own behavior; knowledge of one’s own strengths, weaknesses, desires and intelligences (p. 449)

• Children are able to organize better, allowing them to think about the use of words more thoroughly
• They add new words to their vocabulary simply by being given a definition
• Fluent reading is a major source of language learning (p. 455)

Vocabulary

Grammar

• Students mastery of grammatical constructions improves
• English speaking students grasp the use of the passive voice
• Older children apply passive voice to wide range of nouns and verbs
• Better understanding of infinitive phrases (p. 456)

Pragmatics

• Students adapt to the needs of the listeners in challenging communicative situations
• Peers greatly influence unclear messages
• Children are able to detect subtle, indirect expression (recursive thought)
• Children's narratives increase in organization, detail and, expressiveness (p. 456)

Cognitive development at this stage affects the changing structure of self.

• Children are better at coordinating several aspects of a situation with reason.
• They combine experiences and behaviors into stable psychological dispositions
• They blend positive and negative characteristics
• They compare themselves with many peers (p. 475)

Recursive thought allows children the ability to better read messages from others. and internalize the expectations being sent to them

Perspective taking improves giving the ability to infer what others are thinking and separating it from their own thoughts

(p. 475)

Cognitive Development

Culture and Gender

• Culture forces affect self-esteem especially where social comparison is strong
• Gender stereotyped beliefs affect self-esteem-Girls discussing the way people look placing value on thinness
• Weight was linked more to girls than boys
• Academically boys are favored in math and science, girls in language arts

Child Rearing Practices

• Authoritative child rearing produce children who feel good about themselves
• Controlling parental styles leave children feeling inadequate and with lower self confidence
• Parents who repeatedly disapprove and insult their children have lower self-esteem
• Indulgent parents have been associate with unrealistically high self-esteem, a sense of superiority and have an inflated opinion of themselves are not prepared to accept disappointments and susceptible to identity crisis (p. 477)

Influences on Self-Esteem

Culture, Diversity, Inequality

• Children in diverse cultures use similar criteria to reason about moral, social conventional and personal concerns
• Chinese young people who place high value on respect for and deference to adult authority, say parents should have no right to interfere in children's personal matter (p. 485)
• American children feel that they should be obeyed when giving directives that seem fair and caring
• Children pickup much information about group status from implicit messages in their surroundings (p. 485)
• Children become more aware of stereotyping and wider range of gender, including personality traits, achievement areas, and appreciation for what males and females can do (p. 517)

Peer Acceptance

Peer acceptance refers to the extent that a child is viewed by a group of peers as acceptable. A worthy social partner.

(p. 490)

Being a child who is accepted by your peers leads to the view that you are more socially competent. This leads to an increased number of friends.

Peer acceptance is an indicator of current as well as future psychological adjustment. (p. 490)

• Children who are rejected by their peers display a wide range of negative social behaviors
• Rejected aggressive children show high rates of conflict, physical and relational aggression and hyperactive, inattentive and impulsive behaviors
• Rejected-withdrawn children are passive and socially awkward. They hold negatively expectations about interaction with peers and worry about being scorned and attacked (p. 491)

Peer Rejection

Controversial and Neglected

• Peers of these children hold mixed opinions of them
• Controversial children display a blend of positive and negative social behaviors. They may have many friends but may bully others. They may not be liked by peers but have a quality that protects them from exclusion
• Neglected children engage in low rates of interaction and considered shy. General well adjusted and do not report being unhappy with social life. (p. 491)