Middle Childhood: Biological and Cognitive Development

1. Middle Childhood: Biological and Cognitive Development Aylin Küntay PSYC 206

2. Motor Development • At age of 5, boys tend to be more advanced in motor skills that require power and force (e.g., jumping, running, throwing or kicking a ball), while girls tend to excel in fine motor skills (e.g., drawing and writing) or in gross motor skills that combine balance and foot movement (e.g., skipping and gymnastics) • Boys have slightly greater muscle mass and are bigger than girls (until age 10½ when girls spurt ahead in height for a few years) • However, cultural conceptions of the activities appropriate to boys and girls also play an important role in shaping these differences

3. Brain Development • Increased myelination, particularly in frontal cortex • Increased number of synapses • Increased output of neurotransmitters • EEG patterns change dramatically… • Until age 5, EEGs of awake children are dominated by theta activity (characteristic of adult sleep states), rather than alpha activity (characteristic of engaged attention) • Theta and alpha patterns are equalized in ages 5-7, and thereafter alpha activity dominates • EEG coherence (synchronization of electrical activity in different areas of brain) increases significantly… • Particularly between frontal lobes and other parts of the brain (resulting in controlled attention, planning, self-reflection…)

4. Changes in amount of theta and alpha EEG activity during development

5. Changes in EEG coherence in the transition from early to middle childhood

6. Cognitive Developments A Change in Logical Thinking Conservation

7. A Change in the Logic of Thinking • In middle childhood children’s thinking becomes distinctly“two-sided” • Can think about objects from more than one perspective • Can hold one characteristic of a situation in mind while comparing it with another

8. A Change in the Logic of Thinking • Piaget: Concrete Operations • “Concrete” because these mental actions (i.e., operations) are directed toward concrete objects in everyday activities • Distinguished from preoperations by their double-sidedness • Results in more flexible and organized thinking (e.g., can think about alternatives and can reverse their thinking) • Allows children to think through their actions, and to mentally combine, separate, order, and transform objects and actions

9. Conservation • Understanding that some properties of an object remain the same even when its appearance is altered (e.g., beaker test…, card test…) • Begin to understand at age 5 or 6; typically mastered by age 8 • Mental operations • Identity – “They were equal to start with and nothing was added, so they’re the same.” • Compensation – “The liquid is higher, but the glass is thinner” • Reversibility – “If you pour it back, you’ll see that it’s the same”

10. Piaget: Conservation of Quantity

11. Piaget: Conservation of Number Children below the age of 6 or 7 rarely display conservation of number, and will say that the elongated row has more. An understanding of logical necessity—that “it has to be that way”—is Piaget’s key criterion of a stagelike change in thinking.

12. Causes of Developmental Changes in Cognition Information-Processing Bridges Evolution of Strategies Additional Bridging Processes

13. Possible Causes • Piaget believed that all cognitive growth is driven by assimilation (i.e., incorporate new experiences into existing schemas) and accommodation (i.e., modify existing schemas in the light of new experiences) • Other, more recent, explanations • Memory capacity • Accumulating knowledge • Development of cognitive strategies

14. Influence of Memory on Cognition • Factor 1: Increased speed and capacity of memory processing • Memory span: 5-year-olds remember 4 digits, 10-year-olds remember 6, adults remember 7 • Retrieval speed: 11-year-olds retrieved information from long-term memory about 6 times faster than 5-year-olds • Speed and capacity are interrelated…

15. Relationship of memory span and speed of naming

16. Influence of Memory on Cognition • Factor 2: Expanded knowledge base • Retention improves because children have more prior information to which to relate new information • Younger subjects who have a rich knowledge base in a given area remember more new information related to that area than older subjects whose knowledge base is not as rich

17. Influence of Memory on Cognition • Factor 3: Acquisition of improved memory strategies (all are two-sided because they must simultaneously think about a goal and the way to achieve it) • Rehearsal – Repeating to oneself the material one is trying to memorize • Memory Organization – Group in meaningful clusters (e.g., by sound, by situational associations “farm things”, by conceptual categories “foods”), tested by free recall (any order) • Elaboration – Make up connections between 2 or more things to be remembered (“tomato” and “street”, imagine tomato squashed in the street), tested by paired words

18. Influence of Memory on Cognition • Factor 4: Emergence of metamemory(i.e., the ability to think about one’s own memory processes) • 8-year-olds have a better understanding of the limitations of their own memories than most 5-year-olds • Consequently they knew enough to study the materials and to test themselves on their ability to remember

19. Combining Memory and Logical Stages • It is an increase in the capacity of working memory that allows children to think about two or more aspects of a problem at one time • Hence, a close relationship between problem-solving ability and the capacity of working memory

20. Not until middle childhood did children pay attention to each of the four houses in a systematic way to discover the subtle differences between them.

21. Increased Linguistic Skills • Vocabulary • 6-year-olds understand about 10,000 words • 2 years later that has doubled • By 10 or 11, have a vocabulary of approximately 40,000 words • Conversation: Older children are better at making sure they and their partners understand each other and have a greater ability to maintain coherence in a conversation over longer periods of time • Use linguistic makers: “Getting back to…” “As I was saying” • Provide ongoing feedback by nodding or saying “Uh hum”

22. Increased Classification Skills • Piaget: Set of brown beads and white beads “Are there more brown beads or more beads?” • Children 4-6 cannot attend to the subclass and the superordinate class at the same time; instead they compare one subclass with another subclass • In middle childhood gain ability to understand the hierarchical structure of categories and can categorize objects according to multiple criteria • Begin to collect stamps, baseball cards, etc.

23. Is conservation acquisition universal? Children in non-industrial societies lag a year or more behind Piaget’s norms, and in some cases never acquire it, even as adults

24. Is conservation acquisition universal? • Performance improves, however, with training, and when interviewed in their native language and with content with which they are more familiar • Thus, conservation is a universal cognitive achievement of middle childhood, as Piaget assumed it was, when these conditions are taken into account