Middle and Late Childhood Development

• Lecture 5 is on Middle and Late childhood
• Recommended readings include Chapter 8 (sections 8.1-8.7 & 8.9) and Chapter 9

Lecture Outline

• Middle and Late childhood has three main focuses.
• Physical Development
• Cognitive Development
• Psychosocial Development

Learning Outcomes

• Describe middle and late childhood development
• Explain the developmental characteristics in this developmental stage

Physical Development in Middle and Late Childhood

• Motor development becomes smoother and more coordinated
• Skipping rope, swimming, bike riding, skating, and climbing are mastered
• Increased myelination of the CNS is reflected in the improvement of fine motor skills
• Hands are used more adroitly for hammering, pasting, tying shoes, and fastening clothes
• By 10-12 years of age children begin to show manipulative skills similar to adults
• Physical growth slows
• Physical skills are easier to learn
• Children in developed countries generally have good health
• Immunisation programs in mid 1950's helped improve health
• Some children experience chronic conditions
• Some chronic conditions include Asthma, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, excessive motor activity.
• Chronic conditions affect a minority of children
• The most common cause of severe injury and death is motor vehicle accidents, either as a pedestrian or a passenger
• Seat-belts are important in reducing the severity of accidents
• Other serious injuries involve skateboards, roller skates, and other sports equipment
• Appropriate safety helmets, protective eye and mouth shields and protective padding are recommended

Obesity

• Australia 2007 data showed 17% overweight and 6% obese
• Similar pattern in New Zealand
• Obesity has a higher incidence among certain populations
• Obesity is increasing in affluent and Western societies
• Complex causes include high calories and low expenditure and community and family views
• Dieting also is a serious health issue

Obesity in Childhood

• Obesity can be due to to gentic tendancy
• Early development of poor eating patterns – habitual overeating is a contributing factor
• A lack of exercise is a contributing factor to obesity
• Obesity is linked to adult obesity and health problems in childhood and adulthood
• There are negative social consequences, such as behaviour problems, depression, and low self-esteem

Obesity: Responding to Issues

• Make sure the child really needs to lose weight
• Consult with a doctor or nutritionist before putting a child on a diet
• Develop an appropriate exercise program
• Seek support from family, teachers, and significant others

Health and Illness

• Child mortality is declining in Western nations
• Chronic diseases can be triggers for asthma
• 150 million children worldwide have asthma.
• 1 in 8 in Australia have severe cases of asthma
• Asthma cases have doubled since the 1980's
• Atmospheric pollutants and cigarette smoke contribute to asthma
• Acute illnesses include influenza – virus infection
• Indigenous health is characterized by higher mortality, and more risk of disease
• Requires careful interpretation of statistics (urban vs rural communities)

Cognitive Development in Middle and Late Childhood

• Piaget theorized children enter the concrete operational stage around age 7
• Concrete operational thinking involves mental operations replacing physical actions
• Concrete operational thinking involves reversible mental actions
• Concrete operational thinking involves classifying and interrelating things
• Concrete operational thinking involves seriation (arranging objects)
• Decentration means the child takes into account multiple aspects of a problem to solve it.
• Children no longer perceive an exceptionally wide but short cup to contain less than a normally-wide, taller cup
• Reversibility means the child understands that numbers or objects can be changed, then returned to their original state.
• An example of reversibility involves understanding that 4+4 (8), minus 4 will equal four, the original quantity

Seriation

• A seriation task involves the ability to arrange objects in an order according to size, shape or any other characteristic
• During a seriation task, students can order 8 sticks from smallest to largest
• Transitivity task is the ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions
• Transitivity tasks involve objects such as three sticks (A, B, and C)
• From a transitivity task, students can conclude than if A is the longest, B is intermediate, and C is shortest, A is longer than C

Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural Theory

• According to Vygotsky children's cognitive development advances within the child’s zone of proximal development (ZPD)
• Scaffolding involves hints, reminders, questions and prompts to advance the learner in their self-discovery
• Knowledge is gradually relocated
• Children becomes more competent at the task

Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural Theory in Education

• Vygotsky's theory is important in educational contexts in Australia and New Zealand
• Cooperative learning is a technique commonly used in primary schools
• Children are organized into small groups for active problem solving, benefiting form the insights of others
• Gillies and Boyd (2006, 2010) state this type of learning is most effective when some members of the group are more competent than others
• Teachers need to take group composition into account and make sure that tasks set are within the ZPD
• Reciprocal learning is another educational strategy based on Vygotsky’s theorisations
• Children are told to ask questions about a piece of text and take on the role of the expert teacher
• Adults and more competent peers can nurture and encourage individuals who show extra measures of talent, skill and knowledge
• There is a priority given to the impact of social interactions on individual cognitive development
• Children are perceived as apprentice learners in a world of supportive experts

Psychosocial Development

Kohlberg’s Theory

• Kohlberg (1958) Elaborated on Piaget’s theory
• 58 boys, from both middle- and lower-class families in Chicago, were used for the study
• The boys were ages 10, 13, and 16
• Each boy was given the same story, Heinz’s dilemma
• The study focused on the choice between disobeying the law (and save his wife) or obeying the law (and watch his wife die)
• The study noted how the boys reasoned about what Heinz did
• Later younger children, delinquents, and boys and girls from other American cities and from other countries were added to the research (1963, 1970)

Kohlberg’s Theory Criticism

• Rest (1979) suggested scoring could be biased
• Dilemma scenarios are too narrow
• Walker et al. (1987) used real-life moral dilemmas and found different results
• Giligan (1982) suggested the theory is sex-biased towards men as using more abstract notions of justice and women using concrete ideas about caring - so women never reach same moral level as men

Moral Development

• Carol Gilligan theorized Kohlberg greatly under-played the care perspective in moral development
• Kohlberg's study due to being male used primarily males for research and basing his theory on male responses
• Gilligan’s research indicated girls consistently interpret moral dilemmas in terms of human relationships
• Research has found that the gender differences in moral reasoning are not absolute

Psychosocial Challenges

• A major challenge is knowing self
• A major challenge is family relationships
• A major challenge is peers

Challenge of Knowing Self

• Self-knowledge increases, moving beyond observable features and absolute descriptors
• Becomes more complex and better organised
• Incorporates aspects of internal characteristics, social description, and comparison
• Understanding one's populatiry
• Understanding of friendships
• How their skills compare with others
• “I am nice, and I have a close friend named Julie"
• Western cultures are individualistic an sense of self as personal entity
• Asian cultures are collectivist and include familial and spiritual selves

Self-Esteem

• Children scored along two dimensions of self-esteem: competence and acceptance
• Children who felt less confident in a cognitive domain were likely to feel less competent in a physical domain
• Children who felt accepted by their friends were likely to report being accepted by their parents
• I.e., self-concepts among young children are relatively undifferentiated
• Self-esteem is found to be stable at least across a month or so of time
• Self-esteem can change, especially in response to transitions in life
• Primary school children engage in social comparison, which can lower their self-esteem
• Low self-esteem is related to depression.

Strategies to increase self-esteem

• Identify the causes of low self-esteem
• Provide emotional support and social approval
• Help children achieve
• Help children cope

Gender Stereotypes

• Broad categories that reflect our impressions and beliefs about females and males
• Males are widely believed to be dominant, independent, aggressive, achievement-oriented, and enduring
• Females are widely believed to be nurturant, affiliative, less esteemed, and more helpful
• Boys are more physically aggressive than girls
• Gender differences often disappear when measuring verbal aggression, although sometimes it is more pronounced in girls
• Boys usually show less self-regulation than girls
• Low self-regulation has been found to be linked with greater aggression and the teasing of others
• Overreaction to frustration is related to low-self regulation
• Low cooperation and inability to delay gratification is linked to low self-regulation

Industry vs. Inferiority

• In Erikson's fourth stage
• With school, learn mastery, competence, and productivity cooperate, work with others and be industrious
• When encouraged in their efforts to make, build, and work, children's sense of industry increases
• Parents who see their children's efforts as making “mischief” or “a mess” encourage children's development of a sense of inferiority
• School plays a very important role in this stage

Changing Families

• Pre 1970s, the nuclear family was the norm
• More complex structures have emerged
• Single-parent families
• Blended families
• Extended families
• Changes in marriage include a decrease in marriage rate
• An increase in cohabitation
• An increase in divorce

Effects of Divorce

• Divorce threatens a child's secure base
• Divorce increases the risk of maladjustment
• Notion of equally shared parental responsibility replaced sole custody
• Cumulative effect hypothesis theorizes the earlier the parental separation in a child’s life, the greater the impact on their development
• There is a theory that young children experience greater long-term adjustment as they lack the capacity to mourn effectively
• Critical stage hypothesis, a more psychoanalytical approach, predicts greater child maladjustment if parental separation occurs during the Oedipal phase of development
• Regency hypothesis argues all children regardless of age react adversely when parental separation occurs
• Other variables such as the child's pre-divorce achievements, the degree of hostility between the parents and socioeconomic factors play a more important role than child’s age

Functions of Friendship

• Fosters social competence
• Gives ego support
• Provides emotional security
• Is a source of intimacy and affection
• Provides guidance and assistance
• Provides companionship and stimulation
• Is a basis for reliable alliance (Asher & Parker, 1989)

Peer Status

• Popular children are frequently nominated as a best friend and are rarely disliked by peers
• Neglected children are infrequently nominated as a best friend, and unliked by peers
• Rejected children are infrequently nominated as a best friend, and are actively disliked by peers
• Controversial children are frequently nominated both as someone's best friend and as being disliked
• Popularity associated with physical attractiveness, standard name, higher academic achievement and social competence

Bullying

• Verbal or physical behavior intended to disturb someone less powerful
• In recent study, nearly one of every three students said they had experienced occasional or frequent involvement as a victim or perpetrator in bullying
• In one study, both victim and bullying behavior were linked to parent-child relationships

Reducing Bullying Strategies

• Get older peers to serve as monitors for bullying and intervene when they see it taking place
• Develop school wide rules and sanctions against bullying and post them throughout the school
• Form friendship groups for adolescents who are regularly bullied by peers
• Incorporate the message of the anti-bullying program into church, school