PSY 361 - Ch. 11 - Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood

Fluent reading comprehension (Stage 3)

("reading to learn") involves creating a mental model of the events, location, and ideas presented in the text. -Reading comprehension involves many different information-processing and language functions, such as processing speed, working memory, and knowledge of vocabulary and grammar

Teachers frequently use a five-step process:

(1) planning or brainstorming; (2) drafting (focus on main ideas and organization); (3) revising (fixing sentences, sequence of topics and using richer language); (4) editing (fixing major spelling and grammatical errors); (5) publishing (fixing additional small spelling and grammatical errors, including illustrations or charts)

Many researchers argue that the essence of scientific thinking (at any age level) is

a process of coordinating theory with evidence

English Language Learners (ELLs)

22 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 17 in the United States speak a language other than English at home. Many of them will require services in school to assist them in learning English

Heritability of intelligence

50% (increases with age to 75-80% for various components of IQ in adults) -On average, about 25 percent of the differences among individuals can be attributed to shared environment (the environment shared by siblings, such as a common home, school, etc.) and about 25 percent by non-shared environment (the unique environment experienced by each child)

NICHD Protocol

A comprehensive set of guidelines for interviewing children known as the NICHD Protocol has been developed by researchers. These guidelines include having the interviewer build a warm rapport with the child that neither praises nor criticizes specific things the child says, making it clear that the child can say, "I don't know" in answer to any question. Interviewers should start with open-ended questions and then follow up by using information supplied by the child to cue memory ("You said your uncle touched you down there. Tell me about that.").

Self-teaching mechanism (Stage 2)

After a few successful experiences in phonologically decoding a printed word, readers are able to retrieve the word immediately from memory

Response to Intervention

An educational strategy intended to help children in early grades who demonstrate below-average achievement by means of special intervention. In the form of three tiers: tier 1: regular classroom instruction (kids that don't pass, go on to tier 2) (80% of children) tier 2: Smaller groups that focus on what the children had a hard time on in tier 1 (15% of children) tier 3: One-on-one or very small group to help children even more (5% of children)

Transitional Bilingual programs

Begin instruction in the native language and attempt to make a transition to all-English instruction within two to three years.

Studies of patients with specific brain injuries consistently find that word reading engages six main areas in the left hemisphere (some of which have subareas), spanning areas known to be involved in auditory perception, phonological processing, and associating sounds with print

Broca's area -word pronunciation and processing of word meaning Wernicke's area - letter-sound correspondence and phonological decoding Supramarginal gyrus / Angular gyrus - links visual, phonological and semantic information about words Superior Temporal gyrus Ventral Occipitotemporal Cortex -analysis of spelling patterns in printed words, letter and word recognition -Children with dyslexia may have subtle structural abnormalities in these same brain areas prior to the start of school

Classic narrative structure

By ages 8 to 9, many children's narratives show a classic narrative structure, in which there is a sequence of events, possibly involving a conflict, leading up to the main event of the story or a resolution of conflict

Intellectually gifted

Children are identified as intellectually gifted if they either have an IQ score of 130 or higher (the top 2 percent of the distribution) or are highly creative and talented in one or more specific domains (such as science or art). An estimated 6 percent to 10 percent of the school population is identified as gifted

Specific learning disorder

DSM-5 criteria: (1) difficulties in learning academic skills (reading, writing, math impairment) that have persisted for at least 6 months, despite the provision of interventions to target those difficulties; (2) the affected academic skills are substantially low for the child's chronological age based on normed test measurements; (3) the learning difficulties began during the school-age years but may not have become fully evident until academic demands exceeded the individual's capacities (for example, when tests are timed); (4) the learning difficulties are not better accounted for by intellectual disability, uncorrected visual or auditory deficits, other mental or psychological disorders (such as ADHD), psychosocial adversity, lack of proficiency in the language of instruction, or inadequate academic instruction -About 7.5 percent of children in the United States have specific learning disorders, and roughly 80 percent of those children with learning disorders are estimated to have reading impairments

Two general approaches to meeting the needs of ELLs

English as a second language (ESL) approach, children who are not proficient in English are taught entirely in English, sometimes with the help of a bilingual classroom aide (More common in the U.S.) Bilingual education approach, children receive instruction in both languages, and there are different models of how to deliver that instruction

How should gifted children be educated?

Enrichment keeps the child in his/her grade and provides extra activities, research projects, or tutoring. Acceleration speeds up the education process by allowing grade skipping, placement in advanced or accelerated learning courses, and early entrance to high school and college

Three basic processes involved in learning to read printed words in an alphabetic language such as English (Stage 1 of Reading Development)

First, children develop sufficient phonological awareness—the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words—to understand how printed spellings map onto the sounds of the language (map and mat differ only in the final phoneme). Second, they must develop phonological decoding, which involves learning which sounds go with which letters and how to use this knowledge to pronounce unfamiliar words. Third, the process of sounding out printed words helps children learn a sight word vocabulary, which consists of words children can read accurately and quickly without resorting to phonological decoding.

Knowledge and Expertise

In areas where children have some knowledge or expertise, their memory is better.

Whole language approach

In the 1980s and 1990s, reading instruction followed the whole language approach, which assumes that children learn to read naturally by interacting with interesting and meaningful text.

General intelligence

Intelligence as a single entity

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)

It has 15 subtests: 10 are used to determine the Full-Scale IQ score, and 5 are optional subtests. All 15 subtests measure four distinct indices (specific ability domains): verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed

Metamemory

Knowledge about memory a subset of a more general type of understanding of the mind, referred to as metacognition

Gardener's Multiple Intelligences

Linguistic intelligence Sensitivity to the sounds and meanings of words and how language can be used Logico-mathematical intelligence Understanding of logical and numerical patterns and ability to reason about logical problems Spatial intelligence Ability to perceive the visual world accurately, perform transformations on perceptions, and re-create visual experience (e.g., on paper) Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence Ability to use the body in highly skilled ways for expressive, goal-directed purposes; ability to handle objects skillfully Musical intelligence Ability to perceive and produce pitch, rhythm, melody, and the aesthetic aspects of music Intrapersonal intelligence Ability to understand one's thoughts and emotions and use them to guide behavior Interpersonal intelligence Sensitivity and responsiveness to others' moods, behaviors, and motivations Naturalistic intelligence Ability to observe, recognize, and classify varieties of animals, plants, and minerals

Hierarchal model of intelligence

Many researchers now accept a hierarchical model of intelligence, with g at the top, several specific ability domains in the middle (such as verbal, spatial, numerical, working memory, and processing speed), and individual skills (such as vocabulary, verbal analogies, and general knowledge, all parts of verbal ability) at the bottom of the hierarchy

Intellectual Disability

Previously known as mental retardation, is defined as a general delay in cognitive development. To be defined as having ID, a child must have an IQ score of 70 or below (which is in the bottom 2 percent of the distribution) and an adaptive behavior deficit originating before the age of 18 -About 1 percent of children in the United States, as well as about 1 percent of the global population are identified as having ID

Dual language (or two-way immersion) bilingual programs

Provide equal amounts of instruction in English and the native language, and entire subjects (such as science) may be taught in the native language for several years

Adaptive behavior

Refers to the ability to carry out daily living skills (such as putting on clothes and basic dental care), communication, and socialization, and it is measured by rating scales (filled out by a caregiver or parent) such as the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-II

Semantic memory

a vast network of associations between concepts that includes words as well as themes. Researchers usually conceptualize it as a network with nodes and links between nodes. For example, if a child learns about a new animal, moose, she might enter it into her knowledge base, creating links between the new item and other existing items

Metalinguistic awareness

ability to reflect on language as a communication tool and on the self as a user of language

Concrete operations

Systematic mental rules or procedures that are reversible. Ex: mathematical operations of addition and multiplication are examples of concrete operations. They are systematic, and they are reversible (addition can be reversed by subtraction, and vice versa) -starts at 7-8 years old

Transivity

the ability to reason about the relations ("greater than" or "less than") between items in a serial ordering (for example, items of different lengths). -For example, Inhelder and Piaget showed children pairs of sticks that were different colors. After seeing that stick A was longer than B and that B was longer than C, children were asked to judge, without looking, whether A was longer than C

Phonological Processing Deficits

The cognitive basis of dyslexia - Phonological awareness: difficulty in segmenting or analyzing words into their constituent phonemes (for example, skate consists of four phonemes, /s/, /k/, /ā/, /t/) - Retrieving phonological codes from long-term memory: difficulty or slowness at learning the names of familiar letters, digits, colors, days of the week, and so on, and in retrieving words from memory - Phonological working memory: difficulty remembering lists of digits or words, forgetting familiar numbers, or mixing up the order of digits in phone numbers -- interfere with two of the primary ways that children master word reading: phonological decoding (sounding a word out) and sight word recognition (learning to recognize a word and retrieve its pronunciation from memory quickly)

Consolidation

the development of long-term memory involves the creation of an increasing number of individual concepts (like moose) and linking them more and more strongly over time with other concepts (such as deer, warm-blooded, herbivore)

Organization Stategies

Type of memory strategy - Organization involves grouping words that are semantically related during rehearsal, recall, or both. For example, in a list of words such as moose, cow, pig, deer, elk, and horse, the words moose, deer, and elk might be rehearsed in one group (wild animals) and cow, pig, and horse (farm animals) in another group

Rehearsal

Type of memory strategy as a way to come up with more efficient strategies for consolidating information in memory -Rehearsing in sets probably creates stronger temporary associations between items in memory (even when the items are unrelated), making it more likely that if you recall one item from a set, you are likely to recall the others

Central executive system

acts like a supervisor in regulating the flow of information through the three storage systems. Each storage system has its own type of information that it holds and its own capacity limits -also directs the movement of information out of long-term memory into the working memory system (addition and multiplication facts) and into long-term memory (such as an episodic memory of steps used in solving the problem)

Four components of working memory

central executive and three limited capacity storage systems, a visuospatial sketchpad, a phonological loop, and an episodic buffer (a buffer is a temporary storage device)

Class inclusion task

children are shown a collection of seven yellow and three red flowers. These are two subclasses of flowers, and both are included logically in the superordinate class of flowers. When shown a bunch of flowers and asked, "Are there more yellow flowers or more flowers here?" younger children typically answer "more yellow flowers." It is not until about ages 7 to 8 that children answer the question correctly. Inhelder and Piaget proposed that young children do not understand the concept of part and whole. They are unable to shift mentally between thinking of the parts (yellow and red flowers) and thinking of the whole (flowers), because they lack reversibility.

Phonics approach

children were taught how spelling patterns corresponded to sounds and how to decode printed words

Dyslexia

defined within the DSM-5 as involving problems in accurate or fluent word recognition, poor phonological decoding, and poor spelling abilities -heritability of 0.70 or higher, but gene-environment interactions also - children who have reading difficulties are often disinterested in reading from an early age, and parents with a history of reading difficulties may expose children to fewer reading experiences

Episodic Buffer

keeps track of what the system is doing at any given time, for example, "I am multiplying the number of cups times the price per cup."

Phonological loop

holds and manipulates a limited number of articulated sounds, such as the number of names the child uses to add and multiply lemonade profits -In the case of verbal material (such as words or digits), the items are stored in the phonological loop, but the central executive has to recycle the items (by rehearsing them) or they will be forgotten within a few seconds

Visuospaitial sketchpad

holds and manipulates three to four pieces of visual or spatial information. In the lemonade problem it might hold sums or products the child wrote down on paper

Balanced approach

most researchers and educators now favor a balanced approach to instruction that blends the phonics and whole language approaches

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

requires that children with ID be placed in the least restrictive environment. The intention is that children with disabilities have maximal opportunities to interact socially and to learn with non-disabled peers. This practice of inclusion means that a child with ID will spend much of the day in the regular classroom with the assistance of an instructional aide and part of the day in a special education classroom with small-group instruction from special education teachers

Seriation

the ability to order items along a quantitative dimension, such as length. - In a typical seriation task, Piaget asked children to put sticks of various lengths in order from shortest to longest. At ages 4 to 5, children can put a few sticks in order but have difficulty adding a new stick that falls in the middle of the series. By ages 6 to 7, most children can quickly and easily insert a stick into the middle of a series and can put several sticks in order. Piaget argued that this is the case because they can keep two relationships in mind simultaneously

Three processes are involved in the development of long-term memory:

use of memory strategies, acquisition of knowledge and expertise, and metamemory.