CHAPTER 8

M I D D L E A N D L AT E C H I L D H O O D :
PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

A H S 1 0 5 3 /A H B S 1 3 1 6 D e ve l o p m e nta l Psyc h o l o g y
for Health Science
AHSC 1314 Developmental Psychology
in Health Sciences

SURIATI SIDEK, PHD

LEARNING GOALS :
• Describe physical changes and health in middle
and late childhood.

• Explain cognitive changes in middle and late

childhood.

• Discuss language development in middle and late

childhood.
PHYSICAL
DEVELOPMENT
OVERVIEW
• Compared with the swift growth during the
first 6 years, physical growth during middle
childhood is slow but steady.

• It begins at about age 7 and continuing to age

12.

• This period is often referred to as the “primary

school years".
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
• During middle and late childhood:
– Growth averages 2-3 inches per year
– Weight gain averages 5-7 pounds each
year.
– Muscle mass and strength gradually
increase.

• Boys have a greater number of muscle

cells and are stronger than girls.
Girls and boys still have similar body shapes and proportions until both sexes
reach puberty, the process whereby children sexually mature into teenagers
and adults.
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT AND NUTRITION

• Proper nutrition is linked to positive personality

traits:
 More involved with peers
 More positive emotions

 Less anxiety

 More self-confident

 More energy
 More persistent
Who provide a good
nutrition to the
children?
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT AND NUTRITION

• Malnutrition:
– A physical condition in which a person is either getting
inadequate or too much of nutrients.
– It includes undernutrition and overnutrition.

• Undernutrition: When you do not get enough

nutrients.

• Overnutrition: When you get more nutrients that

you need.
CHILDHOOD OBESITY IN MALAYSIA
• 1 out of 5 of 7-12 year-old-children in Malaysia are
overweight.
CONSEQUENCES OF OBESITY IN CHILDREN

• Overweight and obese kids are at risk for developing

medical problems that affect their present and future
health and quality of life, including:
– high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol levels.
– shortness of breath that makes exercise, sports, or any
physical activity more difficult and may aggravate the
symptoms or increase the chances of developing asthma.
– restless or disordered sleep patterns, such as sleep apnea.
– overweight girls may have irregular menstrual cycles and
fertility problems in adulthood.
– low self-esteem and depression.
– exclusion from peer groups.
GUIDANCE IN OBESITY PREVENTION IN
CHILDREN
• Physical activity :
– Investigate local opportunities for adding organized sports to
lifestyle. (community and school programs).
– Offer options, including individual sports if team sports not
practical or enjoyed by child (E.g: martial arts, dance).
– Participate in physical activities with children: recreational
sports, outdoor play, walking or bicycling.

• Behavioral :
– Support healthy body image, emphasizing strength and health
rather than weight and appearance.
MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
• Motor development becomes much
smoother and more coordinated.

• By 10-12 years, children begin to

show manipulative skills similar to
the abilities of adults.

• A manipulative skill is one in

which a child handles an object with
the hands, feet or other body parts.
CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES IN MALAYSIA
LEARNING DISABILITIES
• Dyslexia – category of learning disabilities involving severe
impairment in ability to read and spell.

• Common signs of dyslexia :

– Difficulty remembering the names and alphabets
– Difficulty remembering the sounds of the letters
– Writing right to left
– Reading words backwards
– Scrambling letters

• Treatment: Early intervention and phonological awareness

training.
DYSLEXIA
DYSLEXIA

• List of people diagnosed with dyslexia:

Steven Spielberg- Film director
Jamie Oliver- Celebrity chef
Steve Jobs- Co-founder of Apple
Orlando Bloom- Actor
Tom Cruise- Actor
ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER
(ADHD)
• ADHD shows one or more of the following
characteristics:

Inattention: difficulty focusing on any one thing, get

bored after only a few minutes.

Hyperactivity: show high levels of physical activity and

almost always seem to be in motion.

Impulsivity: difficulty curbing reactions and do not do

a good job of thinking before they act.

• It occurs 4-9x more in boys than girls.

CAUSES OF ADHD
• Low levels of certain neurotransmitters.

• Prenatal and postnatal abnormalities.

• Environmental toxins (e.g :lead).

• Heredity is considered as a contributor, as 30%-

50% of children with ADHD have a sibling or
parent who has it.
TREATMENT OF ADHD
• The intervention requires cooperation and effort
from parents, teachers and healthcare professionals.

• Give stimulant medication like Ritalin in order to

control behavior.
COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
 According to Piaget, what
is the stage of cognitive
thinking that occurs during
middle and late childhood?
PIAGET’S IDEAS ABOUT MIDDLE AND
LATE CHILDHOOD
• During this stage, children begin to develop the
fundamental of logic. It can be seen through the:
– Ability to sort objects
– Ability to classify objects
– Understand conservation
– Ability to determine that if A is longer
than B, and B is longer than C, than A
is longer than C.
- Ability putting a number of sticks of varying
lengths in order from shortest to longest.
INFORMATION PROCESSING
• There are several categories of thinking:
– Creative thinking
– Critical thinking
– Divergent thinking
– Convergent thinking
– Reflective thinking
– Metacognition
CREATIVE THINKING
• It refers to the ability to think in
novel an unusual ways and come
up with unique solutions to
problems.

• Strategies for fostering creativity:

– Brainstorming
– Provide environments that stimulate
creativity
– Introduce children to creative
people
WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Answers:
1. A peacock
2. A girl face
CRITICAL THINKING
• It involves thinking reflectively and productively, as well as
evaluating the evidence.

• Deep understanding occurs when children are stimulated to

rethink their prior ideas.

• Some experts believe that school spend too much time on

getting students to give a single correct answer rather than
encouraging them to expand their thinking and become deeply
engaged in meaningful thinking.

• E.g : contrast, evaluate, criticize, analyze, infer and predict.

 THINKING
DIVERGENT & CONVERGENT THINKING

• Divergent thinking- • Convergent thinking

producing many – finding the one
different answers to a correct answers.
given question.
 THINKING
REFLECTIVE THINKING

You thought about an

experience and decided to
learn from it and do
something different the next
time.
METACOGNITION
• Metacognition is the understanding and awareness of
one's own mental or cognitive processes.

• Examples:
– Awareness that you have difficulty remembering people’s
names
– Realizing that you know an answer to a question but
simply can’t recall it at the moment.
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?
• Intelligence is verbal ability, problem-solving skills and
the ability to adapt and to learn from life’s everyday
experiences.

• Intelligence is the measurement of cognitive

capabilities.

• For the most part, intelligence tests have been relied

on to provide an estimate of a student’s intelligence.
THE BINET TEST
• Binet Test calculated a child’s mental age
and compared it to the child’s chronological age.

• Mental Age (MA) is the average age at which normal individuals

achieve a particular score.

• Chronological Age (CA) is the number of years since the individual

birth.

• Binet decided that those most needing help were students

whose MA was two years behind CA.
EXAMPLE OF QUESTIONS IN THE BINET TEST
INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT (IQ)
 IQ is a person’s mental age divided by chronological
age, multiplied by 100.

 Mental Age 
IQ    x100
 Chronologi cal Age 

 The concept developed by William Stern.

 For example, a child with a mental age of 12 and a

chronological age of 10 would have an IQ of 120 (12 /10
x 100).
IQ CATEGORIES
Measure IQ Category
Range
145-160 Very gifted or highly advanced
130-144 Gifted or very advanced
120-129 Superior
110-119 High average
90-109 Average
80-89 Low average
70-79 Borderline impaired or delayed
55-69 Mildly impaired or delayed
40-54 Moderately impaired or delayed
WHAT DOES THE IQ SCORE MEANS?

• Reasonably good predictors of school

performance
• NOT good predictors of performance
outside of school
–Frequently inaccurate at predicting future
success, income, etc.!
THE EXTREMES OF INTELLIGENCE

• Mental retardation –
Often conceived as representing the
lower 2% of the IQ range.

• Giftedness –
Often conceived as representing
the upper 2% of the IQ range
 HOW MANY OF YOU THINK YOU
ARE SMART?
The answer is that ALL of you are smart.

Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

GARDNER’S MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
LINGUISTIC INTELLIGENCE

• Word Smart
• Ability to manipulate
the structure,
phonology semantics
and pragmatic
dimensions of language.
• Journalists, poets,
playwrights, public
speakers
LOGICAL/MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCE

• Number smart
• Capacity with numbers,
logical patterns and
relationships.
• Use of categorisation,
classification, calculation
and hypothesis testing.
• Mathematicians,
accountants, statisticians,
scientists
SPATIAL INTELLIGENCE

• Picture Smart
• Ability to perceive the
visual spatial world
accurately.
• Sensitivity to colour, line,
shape, form and space.
• Architects, artists,
inventors, designers
KINESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE

• Body, sports or hand smart

• Show expertise in using one’s
body to express ideas and
feelings.
• Ability to use one’s hands to
produce or transform things as a
sculptor, mechanic or surgeon.
• Co-ordination, dexterity,
flexibility.
• Dancer, athlete, sportsmen
MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE

• Music Smart
• Who can play an
instrument, compose a
song
• Song writer, singer,
composer
INTERPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE
• People Smart
• Ability to perceive and
make distinctions in
the moods, intentions
motivations and feelings
of other people.
• Counselor, teacher,
psychologist
INTRAPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE

• Self Smart
• Having an accurate
picture of one’s
strengths and
limitations.
• An awareness of one’s
inner moods, intentions,
motivations and desires.
NATURALIST INTELLIGENCE

• Nature Smart
• Ability to function well
in the natural
environment.
• The recognition and
categorisation of
natural objects.
• Gardener, farmer
WHAT DO THESE MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
TELL US?
• There is a belief that you can be good at all of
them, but inevitably we favor certain
intelligences.

• It is important to know how you are

intelligent so you can do your best to adjust
and adapt to what you have to learn.

• For example, if you are musically smart,

memorize facts in songs.
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
• Language during middle and late childhood:
– Changes occur in how words are selected
– Increased logical reasoning/analytical skills
– Increased ability to understand and use complex
grammar.

• Vocabulary development plays an important role

in reading comprehension.
BILINGUALISM
 Learning a second language is easiest for children
than adolescent or adults.

 What are the examples of second language that

children may learn?

 Advantages of Bilingual education

– Positive effects on children’s cognitive development.
– Increase in self-esteem.
End of Chapter 8