Chapter 10
Physical and Cognitive Development in Early and Middle Childhood
Physical Development
Body Growth and Proportion
Slow but consistent growth.
Height: 2 to 3 inches a year.
Weight: 5 to 7 pounds a year.
Decrease in baby fat.
Increase in muscular strength tone
Motor Development
More coordinated gross and fine motor skills.
Active, rather than passive activities.
Increased myelination of the CNS is reflected in the improvement of fine motor skills.
Gender differences in motor development.
Reflect: What leads to gender differences in fine and motor skills?
Exercise and Sports
Only 22 % are physically active for 30 minutes everyday
Decrease in P.E. programs from 80% to 20 %
Positive consequences of exercise and sports.
Negative consequences of exercise
Accidents and Injuries: Leading cause of death
Cancer
Second leading cause of death in middle childhood (3% of all children).
1 in every 330 children in the U.S. develops cancer before the age of 19.
Leukemia: The most common cancer.
Obesity
20 % are overweight, 10 % are obese.
Girls are more likely than boys to be obese.
75 percent of obese 12-year-olds will be obese as adults.
Medical problems associated with obesity.
Psychological problems associated with obesity.
Treatment: diet, exercise, and behavior modification.
Children with Disabilities
10 % of all children in the U.S. receive special education.
More than 5% have learning disability.
Learning Disabilities
Normal intelligence or above.
Difficulties in at least one academic area.
Have a difficulty not attributable to any other diagnosed problem.
Boys are 3 times more classified with a learning disability than girls.
Reason: biological vulnerability and referral bias.
Dyslexia
The most common learning disability.
Severe impairment in ability to read, write and spell.
Affects 1 out of 5 children in the US.
Leading cause of school dropouts.
Usually diagnosed in the third grade or later.
Identifiable with 92% accuracy.
Common signs of Dyslexia
Difficulty remembering the names and alphabets
Difficulty remembering the sounds of the letters
Reversing letters
Writing right to left
Reading words backwards
Scrambling letters
Treatment: Early intervention and Phonological awareness training
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
1. Inattention
2. Hyperactivity
3. Impulsivity.
The number of children with ADHD doubled in the 1990s.
4 to 9 times more in boys than girls.
Some proposed causes:
1. Low levels of certain neurotransmitters.
2. Prenatal and postnatal abnormalities.
3. Heredity and environmental toxins.
Assessment of ADHD needs to be multidimensional:
1. Parents and teachers reports
2. Systematic observations
3. Sociometric assessment.
Treatment:
Combination of academic, behavioral and medical intervention
Stimulant medication
Educational Issues
Individualized education plan (IEP)
The least restrictive environment (LRE)
Cognitive Development
Piagets Theory
Concrete operational stage (3rd stage)
Ability to do mentally what they had done physically before.
Ability to reverse mental actions on real-concrete objects.
Conservation: Ability to focus on more than one dimension.
Piagets Theory cont.
Classification: Ability to classify or divide things.
Seriation: ordering stimuli along a quantitative dimension.
Transitivity: ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions.
Piaget and Education
Facilitate rather than direct learning.
Consider the childs knowledge and level of thinking.
Use ongoing assessment.
Promote the students intellectual health.
Focus on exploration and discovery.
Intelligence
Verbal ability
Problem-solving skills
The ability to adapt and learn from everyday experiences.
Use of intelligence tests to examine individual differences.
The Binet Tests
Purpose: to identify children who were unable to learn in school.
Concept of Mental age (MA)
Concept of Intelligence quotient (IQ) MA/CA x 100
Assessment of four content areas
The Wechsler Scales
Three types of scales:
1. WPPSI
2. WISC
3. WAIS
Measure verbal and performance IQ.
CD-ROM to test childrens IQ
Want to check your IQ?
www.queendom.com
Controversies in Intelligence
Ethnicity and Culture
Influence of environment, ethnicity and culture on intelligence.
Culture fair tests: to be free of cultural bias:
1. Items familiar to children from all SES and ethnic backgrounds.
2. Non verbal items.
Intelligence itself is culturally determined
Extremes of Intelligence
Mental retardation
Limited mental ability with low IQ (below 70).
Difficulty adapting to everyday life.
5 million Americans fit in this definition.
Classification of Mental Retardation
Mild (IQs 55-70)
Moderate (IQs 40-54)
Severe (IQs 25-39)
Profound (below 25)
Two types of mental retardation
Organic retardation (0-50)
Cultural-familial retardation (IQs 50 to 70)
Giftedness
Above-average intelligence (an IQ of 120 or higher).
Superior talent for something.
More mature.
Fewer emotional problems
Grow up in positive family atmosphere.
Characteristics of Gifted Children (Winner, 1996)
Bilingualism
English is not the primary language for 10 million children in the US.
Bilingual education is a preferred strategy to teach in some schools.
A controversial issue.
ESL programs in most schools.
Advantages of Bilingual education
Positive effects on childrens cognitive development.
Increase in self-esteem.
Age and learning a second language.