MIDDLE TO LATE CHILDHOOD  Otis-Lennon School Ability Test – Group test that
measure child's achievement against the achievement
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
- Tooth decay remains one of the most common chronic
untreated conditions
- Access to proper dental care is important for young children
- Faster and more efficient information processing and an
increased ability to ignore distractions
- Motor Skills continue to improve in middle childhood
- Boys typically play physically (running), whereas girls
loves games that involves verbal expression or counting out
loud (jump rope, hopscotch)
- Rough-And-Tumble Play – wrestling, kicking, tumbling,
grappling, and chasing, accompanied by laughing and
screaming
- Older children are able to process instruction and learn
team strategies
Body Image (how one believes one looks) becomes
important early in middle childhood, especially for girls,
which could lead to eating disorders during adolescence.
Acute Medical Conditions – occasional, short-term
conditions, such as infections and warts
Chronic Medical Conditions – physical, developmental,
behavioral, or emotional conditions that persists 3 months or
more such as asthma and diabetes
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
 At about 7 years of age, children enter the stage of
Concrete Operations according to Jean Piaget
 Children can now think logically.
 Spatial concepts – allows to interpret maps and
navigate environment
 Causality – makes judgement about cause and
effects.
 School-age children can concentrate longer than
younger children and can focus on the information they
need and want while screening out irrelevant information
 Selective Attention – the ability to deliberately
direct one’s attention and shut out distractions
 Inhibitory control – the voluntary suppression of
unwanted responses
 The efficiency of working memory increases greatly in
middle childhood
 Mnemonic Device – strategy to aid memory
 External Memory Aids – writing down things to
remember
 Rehearsal – conscious repetition
ASSESSMENT OF INTELLIGENCE
 Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV) –
most widely used individual test to determine whether a
child has cognitive deficiency and create intervention.
 Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales - Test to measure
the intellectual functioning of the child. The averagr
intelligence quotient (IQ) of a child should be 100.
of all other children of the same age. Tool used to
identify gifted students.
 Critics claim that the tests underestimate the intelligence
of children who are in ill health or do not do well on tests
Theory of Multiple Intelligence – Proposed by Howard
Gardner. Conventional intelligence tap only three types of
intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, and to some
extent spatial.
The other five, which are not reflected in IQ scores are,
musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal,
and naturalist
CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
 Intellectual Disability – significantly subnormal
cognitive and adaptive functioning.
- Intervention programs have helped many of those mildly or
moderately disabled and those considered borderline to hold
jobs, live in the community, and function in society
 Learning Disabilities – difficulty in learning that
involves understanding or using spoken or written
language, and the difficulty can appear in listening,
thinking, reading, writing, and spelling
a) Dyslexia – most commonly diagnosed LD; severe
impairment in their ability to read and spell
b) Dysgraphia – difficulty in handwriting
c) Dyscalculia – developmental arithmetic disorder/
numbers
 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – most
common mental disorder in childhood. Characterized by
mood swings, impatience, carelessness, poor
organization, risky behavior.
 Autism Spectrum Disorder – Characterized by
problems with social communication and interaction,
and restricted or repetitive behaviors or interests.
CHILDREN IN THE FAMILY
 Coregulation – children and parents share power
 The amount of autonomy parents provide affects how
their children feel about them.
 Children exposed to high levels of family conflict are
more likely to show a variety of responses that can
include internalizing or externalizing behaviors
Internalizing behaviors – anxiety, fear, depression-anger
turned inward
Externalizing behaviors – aggression, fighting,
disobedience, hostility
 The more satisfied a mother is with her employment
status, the more effective she is likely to be a parent
 Children tend to do better in families with two
continuously married parents than in cohabiting,
divorced, single-parent, or step-families
 Having a warm and supportive sibling relationship is
associated with
 better adjustment and better emotion regulation
 Sisters are higher in sibling intimacy than brothers.
CHILDREN IN THE PEER GROUP
 Peer groups helps children learn how to adjust their
needs and desires to those of others.
 Prejudice – unfavorable attitudes towards outsiders
 Sociometric Popularity – measures that is composed
of positive nominations, negative nominations or no
nominations
 Positive Nomination – asking children who they like to
play with, they like the most, or who they think other kids
like the most
 Negative Nomination – opposite of positive nomination
 Popular Children – frequently nominated as bestie and
rarely disliked by peers
 Average children – receive an average no of both
positive and negative nominations
 Neglected Children – infrequently nominated as bestie
but not really disliked
 Rejected Children – disliked by peers
 Controversial Children – frequently nominated both
bestie and most disliked
 Unpopular children - can make friends but they tend to
have fewer friends and they prefer younger ones
 Hostile Attributional Bias – quickly conclude, in
ambiguous
 situations that others were acting with ill intent and are
likely to strike out in retaliation or self-defense
 Bullying – aggression that is deliberately, persistently
directed against a particular target
OLD AGE
 Ageism – prejudice or discrimination based on age
 Primary Aging – gradual, inevitable process of bodily
deterioration that begins early in life and continues
through years irrespective of what people do to stave it
off (nature)
 Secondary Aging – results from disease, abuse, and
disuse – factors that are often within a person’s control
(nurture)
3 STAGES IN OLD AGE
 Young Old – 65-74 yrs old
 Old Old – 75-84 yrs old
 Oldest old – 85 and above
 Functional Age – how well a person functions in a
physical and social environment in comparison with
others of the same chronological age
 Gerontology – study of the aged and aging processes
 Life Expectancy – the age to which a person born at a
certain time and place is statistically likely to live, given
his or
 her current age and health status
 Longevity – actual length of life of members of a
population
 Mortality Rates – death rates
 Human Life Span – longest period that members of our
species can live
 Survival Curve – represents the percentage of people
or animals alive at various age
 Senescence – the decline in body functioning
associated with aging
DID YOU KNOW?
 Women live longer and have lower mortality rates at
all ages than men
THEORIES ASSOCIATED ON AGING
 Endocrine Theory – biological clocks act through
hormones to control the pace of aging
 Immunological Theory – programmed decline in
immune system functions leads to increased
vulnerability to infectious disease and thus to aging and
death
 Evolutionary Theory – Aging is an evolved trait thus
genes that promote reproduction are selected at higher
rates than genes that extend lives
 Variable-Rate Theories – aging is the results of
random processes that vary from person to person
(Error theories)
 Wear-and-Tear Theory – cells and tissues have vital
parts that wear out
 Free-Radical Theory – Accumulated damage from
oxygen radicals causes cells and eventually organs to
stop functioning
 Rate-of-Living Theory – the greater an organism’s rate
of metabolism, the shorter its life span
 Autoimmune Theory – Immune system becomes
confused and attacks its own body cells
 Disengagement Theory – normal part of aging involves
gradual reduction in social involvement and greater
preoccupation with the self.
 Activity Theory – the more active older people are, the
better they age
 Continuity Theory – people’s need to maintain
connection between past and present. Activity is viewed
as important, not for its own sake but because it
represents continuation of previous lifestyle.
PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH
 DEMENTIA– the general term for physiologically caused
cognitive and behavioral decline sufficient to interfere
with daily activities.
o Alzheimer’s – most common type, caused by
specific changes in the brain (abnormal build
up of neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaque
in the brain)
a. Amnesia – memory loss
b. Aphasia – inability to express through speech
c. Agnosia – inability to recognize familiar objects, tastes,
smells
d. Apraxia – misuse of objects because failure to identify
them
e. Anomia – inability to remember the names of things.
> Vascular Dementia – caused by strokes or other issues of
blood flow in the brain; have strokes like episodes.
> Lewy Bodies – have movement or balance (stiffness or
trembling); daytime sleepiness, confusion, or staring; trouble
sleeping at night and visual hallucinations.
> Frontotemporal – leads to personality and behavior
changes and problems in language skills.
> Huntington’s Disease – resulted from gene mutation
which impacts movement, concentration, behavior, and
cognition. Also characterized by loss of coordination,
difficulty in swallowing and speaking
> Parkinson’s Disease – uncontrollable movements,
tremor, stiffness, slow movement, prevalent in men than
women.
WELL-BEING IN OLD AGE
 In general, older adults have fewer mental disorders and
are happier and more satisfied with life than younger
adults
 Positivity Effect – older adults are more likely to
pay attention to and then remember positive events
than negative events
 Terminal Drop – rapid decline in well-being and life
satisfaction approx. 3-5 yrs before death
PHASES OF RETIREMENT
1. Pre-Retirement – begin to think seriously about the life
they want for themselves in retirement and whether they
are financially on track to achieve it.
2. Retirement – makes the transition from full-time work to
retirement they’ve planned.
3. Contentment – positive phase when retirees get to
enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of labor (Honeymoon
period).
4. Disenchantment – they may experience some of the
emotional downsides of retirements such as loneliness,
disillusionment, and a feeling of uselessness.
5. Reorientation – people try to figure who they are and
map their place in the world as a retiree.
6. Routine – people accept their situation and settle into a
new set of routines.
DEATH AND DYING
 Cultural aspects of death include care of and behavior
toward the dying and the dead, the setting, mourning
customs and rituals.
 The most common cause of death are heart disease
and cancer.
 Thanatology – study of death and dying
 Hospice Care – personal, patient and family-centered,
compassionate care for the terminally ill.
 Palliative Care – includes relief of pain and suffering,
controlling of symptoms, alleviation of stress, and
attempts to maintain a satisfactory quality of life.
FACING DEATH AND LOSS
 Terminal Drop or Terminal Decline – specifically to a
widely observed decline in cognitive abilities shortly
before death
 Near-Death Experience – often involving a sense of
being out of the body or sucked into a tunnel and visions
of bright lights or mystical encounters.
 Grief – Subjective emotional response that generally
follows closely on the heels of death.
 Mourning – Process how grief is resolved. Societal
expression of post bereavement behavior.
 Bereavement – the state of being deprived of someone
by death.
5 STAGES OF GRIEF
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargain
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
 Grief Work – working out of psychological issues
connected with grief often takes the following path:
1. Shock and Disbelief
2. Preoccupation with the memory of the dead person
3. Resolution
 Recovery Pattern – mourner goes high to low distress.
 Delayed Grief – moderate or elevated initial grief, and
symptoms worsen over time.
 Chronic Grief – distressed for a long time
 Resilience – the mourner shows a low and gradually
diminishing level of grief in response to the death of a
loved one
 By age 4, children build a partial understanding of the
biological nature of death
 Adjusting to loss is more difficult if a child had a troubled
relationship with the person who died
 They do not understand death, but they understand loss
 Middle-Aged and Older adults are more prepared
with death
ETHICAL ISSUES CONCERNING EUTHANASIA
 Brain Death – neurological condition which states the
person is brain dead when all electrical activity of the
brain has ceased for a specific period of time.
 Higher portions of the brains dies sooner than lower
parts which facilitates breathing and heartbeat. This is
the reason why brain could be dead but you still have
heartbeat for the mean time
 Euthanasia – good death, intended to end suffering or
to allow terminally ill person to die with dignity.
 Passive Euthanasia – involves withholding or
discontinuing treatment that might extend the life of a
terminally ill patient such as life support
 Active Euthanasia – “mercy killing” involves action
taken directly or deliberate to shorten life
 Advance Directive – contains instructions for when and
how to discontinue futile medical care
 Living will or a more formal legal document called a
durable power of attorney
 Durable Power of Attorney – appoints another person
if the maker of the document becomes incompetent to
do so.
 Assisted Suicide – physician or someone else helps a
person bring about a self-inflicted death.