Chapter 12: Middles Childhood Cognitive Development
International testing
Over the past two decades, more than 50 nations have participated in at least one massive international test of educational achievement. -Longitudinal data reveal that when achievement rises, the national economy advances with it; this sequence seems causal, not merely correlational - The U.S. teachers taught math at a lower level than did their German and Japanese counterparts, presenting more definitions disconnected to prior learning. Few U.S. students seemed engaged in math because they felt the teachers "seem to believe that learning terms and practicing skills is not very exciting"
Classification experiment
Piaget devised many classification experiments. In one, he showed a child a bunch of nine flowers—seven yellow daisies and two white roses. -Then the child is asked, "Are there more daisies or more flowers?" ^Until about age 7, most children answer, "More daisies." >The youngest children offer no justification, but some 6-year-olds explain that "there are more yellow ones than white ones" or "because daisies are daisies, they aren't flowers" (Piaget et al., 2001). By age 8, most children can classify: "More flowers than daisies," they say.
Gender differences in school performance
The PIRLS finds girls ahead of boys in verbal skills in every nation by an average of 16 points. -The female advantage is not that high in the United States, with the 2011 PIRLS finding girls 10 points ahead. ^This meant that they were ahead of the average boy by about 2 percent—an advantage similar to Canada, Germany, and the >Netherlands, which may mean that those nations are more gender-equitable than other nations. -However, TIMSS reported that those gender differences among fourth-graders in math narrowed or disappeared in 2011. ^In most nations, boys are still slightly ahead, with the United States showing the greatest male advantage (9 points—about 2 percent). >However, in many nations, girls were ahead, sometimes by a great deal, such as 14 points in -Thailand and 35 points in Kuwait. Such results support the gender-similarities hypothesis (see Chapter 10) that males and females are similar academically in middle childhood, with "trivial" exceptions later on -Unlike test results, classroom performance during elementary school does show gender differences. ^Girls have higher report card grades overall, including in math and science, with reasons having to do with brain maturation (girls are better able to sit still, manipulate a pencil) and culture (girls are more rewarded for "good" behavior, which includes listening to the teacher) -Many reasons for adult gender differences have been suggested, with the social context of childhood classrooms being crucial (Legewie & DiPrete, 2012). ^The hidden curriculum may favor young girls. Since most elementary school teachers are women, girls in the early grades may feel (or be) more encouraged than boys. -Analysts once attributed the female advantage in elementary school to the faster maturation of the female body. ^Now explanations more often consider socio cultural factors. (The same switch in explanations, from biology to culture, appears for male advantages later on.)
Codes
-Code is used in texting—numbers (411), abbreviations (LOL), emoticons (:-D), and spelling (r u ok?), which children now do a dozen or more times a day. -All children need instruction in the formal code because the logic of grammar (whether who or whom is correct or how to spell you) is almost impossible to deduce, as is the spelling of many words. ^ The peer group teaches the informal code, and each local community transmits dialect, metaphors, and pronunciation; schools must convey the formal code. -The ability to switch codes correlates with school achievement and benefits from teachers who appreciate and respect the home language while speaking and teaching the school language ^ Many children learn two or more codes—easiest in early childhood, possible in middle childhood, and increasingly difficult after puberty. -If children learn two languages in the first three years of life, no brain differences are detectable between monolingual and bilingual children. ^However, from about age 4 through adolescence, the older children are when they learn a second language, the more likely their brains will change to accommodate the second language, with greater cortical thickness on the left side (the language side) and thinness on the right
Studies of Information processing
-From brain research, information processing, and longitudinal studies of children's learning, we now know that children learn step by step, gradually advancing as neurological connections spread from one domain to another. ^However, the major pitfall of information processing is in application. >As explained in detail in the following, information from various parts of the brain is combined in regions called hubs to achieve the learning that occurs in middle childhood; how to strengthen those hubs is the next question.
Differences in Learning Language
-Learning to speak, read, and write the school language is pivotal for primary school education. ^Some differences in ability may be innate: A child with an intellectual disability will have trouble with both the school and home languages. -It is a mistake to assume that a child who does not speak English well has a disability (difference is not deficit), but it is also is a mistake to assume that such a child's only problem is lack of English knowledge (deficits do occur among all children, no matter what their background) -Often the language gap between one child and another is caused neither by brain abnormality nor by the home language. Two social factors have a major impact: SES and expectations. ^To discover whether a child has difficulty learning language, testing in the home language is best—even when the child has been speaking the second language from kindergarten on
Adjusting Language to the context
-Middle childhood also involves understanding pragmatics -pragmatics is evident when knowing when to use certain language with a teacher and when to use language with a friend - As children master pragmatics, they become more adept at making friends. -By contrast, children with autism spectrum disorder are usually very poor at pragmatics -Mastery of pragmatics allows children to change styles of speech, or "linguistic codes," depending on their audience. ^Each code includes many aspects of language—not just vocabulary, but also tone, pronunciation, gestures, sentence length, idioms, and grammar. ^Sometimes the switch is between formal code (used in academic contexts) and informal code (used with friends); sometimes it is between standard (or proper) speech and dialect or vernacular (used on the street).
Understanding Metaphors
-understanding of metaphors usually occurs 6-11 yrs old due to cognitive flexibility -a lack of metaphorical understanding indicates a cognitive issue
10 questions
1. Should public education be a priority for public funds, or should wealthy parents be able to pay for smaller class size, special curricula, and expensive facilities (e.g., a stage, a pool, a garden) in private education? 2. Should parents be given vouchers to pay for some tuition at whatever private school they wish? 3. Should more charter schools open or close? 4. Home schooling occurs when parents avoid both public and private schools by educating their children at home. 5. Should public education be free of religion to avoid bias toward one religion or another? 6. Should the arts be part of the curriculum? 7. Should children learn a second language in primary school? 8. Can computers advance education? 9. Are class sizes too big? 10. Should teachers nurture soft skills such as empathy, cooperation, and integrity as part of the school curriculum, even though these skills cannot be tested by multiple-choice questions?
ESL (English as a Second Language)
A U.S. approach to teaching English that gathers all of the non-English speakers together and provides intense instruction in English. Students' first languages are never used; the goal is to prepare them for regular classes in English. -Unless a child is already bilingual at age 5, ELLs fall further behind their peers with each passing year, leaving school at higher rates than other students their age ex./ in Pennsylvania in 2009, the percentage of fourth-graders proficient in reading was 74 percent for the non-ELLs but only 30 percent for the ELLs. ^The gap in math scores was not quite as wide, but in every subject and every grade, the gap widened as children grew older
knowledge base
A body of knowledge in a particular area that makes it easier to master new information in that area. -Three factors facilitate increases in the knowledge base: past experience, current opportunity, and personal motivation. ^The last item in this list explains why children's knowledge bases are not what their parents or teachers might prefer. ex./ Some schoolchildren memorize words and rhythms of hit songs, know plots and characters of television programs, or can recite the names and histories of basketball players. Yet they do not know whether World War I was in the nineteenth or twentieth century or whether Pakistan is in Asia or Africa.
Differences by Nation
Beyond literacy and math, nations vary in what they expect. -All want their children to be good citizens. -However, there is no consensus as to what good citizenship means or what developmental paths should be followed for children to learn it
Automatization
A process in which repetition of a sequence of thoughts and actions makes the sequence routine so that it no longer requires conscious thought. -At first, almost all voluntary behaviors require careful thought. After many repetitions, neurons fire in sequence, and less thinking is needed because the firing of one neuron sets off a chain reaction. -Consider again learning to read. At first, eyes (sometimes aided by a guiding finger) focus intensely, painstakingly making out letters and sounding out each one. This leads to the perception of syllables and then words. ^Eventually, the process becomes so routine that as people drive along on a highway, they read billboards that they have no interest in reading. -Automatization aids all academic skills. One longitudinal study of second-graders—from the beginning to the end of the school year—found that each type of academic proficiency aided each other type. Thus, learning became more automatic as automatization fostered more learning ex./ Learning a second language, reciting the multiplication tables, and writing one's name are all slow at first, but automatization makes each effortless by adulthood. ^Not just academic knowledge but also habits and routines that are learned in childhood echo lifelong—and are hard to break. That's automatization.
Charter School
A public school with its own set of standards that is funded and licensed by the state or local district in which it is located.
Immersion
A strategy in which instruction in all school subjects occurs in the second (usually the majority) language that a child is learning. -The opposite strategy begins by teaching children in their first language until the second language is taught as a "foreign" tongue (a strategy rare in the United States but common elsewhere).
bilingual schooling
A strategy in which school subjects are taught in both the learner's original language and the second (majority) language. -A major problem is that children's language-learning abilities change with age: In middle school, the youngest children learn a new language much more quickly than the older children -Language learning depends not only on the child but also on the literacy of the home environment (frequent reading, writing, and listening in any language helps); the warmth, training, and skill of the teacher; and the national context.
Math
Age Norms and Expectations 4-5 years Count to 20. Understand one-to-one correspondence of objects and numbers. Understand more and less. Recognize and name shapes. 6 years Count to 100. Understand bigger and smaller. Add and subtract one-digit numbers. 8 years Add and subtract two-digit numbers. Understand simple multiplication and division. Understand word problems with two variables. 10 years Add, subtract, multiply, and divide multidigit numbers. Understand simple fractions, percentages, area, and perimeter of shapes. Understand word problems with three variables. 12 years Begin to use abstract concepts, such as formulas and algebra. ***Math learning depends heavily on direct instruction and repeated practice, which means that some children advance more quickly than others. This list is only a rough guide, meant to illustrate the importance of sequence.
Reading
Age Norms and Expectations 4-5 years Understand basic book concepts. For instance, children learning English and many other languages understand that books are written from front to back, with print from left to right, and that letters make words that describe pictures. Recognize letters—name the letters on sight. Recognize and spell own name. 6-7 years Know the sounds of the consonants and vowels, including those that have two sounds (e.g., c, g, o). Use sounds to figure out words. Read simple words, such as cat, sit, ball, jump. 8 years Read simple sentences out loud, 50 words per minute, including words of two syllables. Understand basic punctuation, consonant-vowel blends. Comprehend what is read. 9-10 years Read and understand paragraphs and chapters, including advanced punctuation (e.g., the colon). Answer comprehension questions about concepts as well as facts. Read polysyllabic words (e.g., vegetarian, population, multiplication). 11-12 years Demonstrate rapid and fluent oral reading (more than 100 words per minute). Vocabulary includes words that have specialized meaning in various fields. For example, in civics, liberties, federal, parliament, and environment all have special meanings. Comprehend paragraphs about unfamiliar topics. Sound out new words, figuring out meaning using cognates and context. Read for pleasure. 13+ years Continue to build vocabulary, with greater emphasis on comprehension than on speech. Understand textbooks. ***Reading is a complex mix of skills, dependent on brain maturation, education, and culture. The sequence given here is approximate; it should not be taken as a standard to measure any particular child.
Trends in Math and Science Study (TIMSS)
An international assessment of the math and science skills of fourth- and eighth-graders. Although the TIMSS is very useful, different countries' scores are not always comparable because sample selection, test administration, and content validity are hard to keep uniform.
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
An ongoing and nationally representative measure of U.S. children's achievement in reading, mathematics, and other subjects over time; nicknamed "the Nation's Report Card." - The NAEP has high standards, rating fewer children proficient than do state tests. ex./ For example, New York's tests reported 62 percent proficient in math, but the NAEP found only 32 percent; 51 percent were proficient in reading on New York's state tests but only 35 percent according to NAEP
Advances in Memory from infancy to age 11
Child's Age Memory Capabilities 1. Under 2 years -Infants remember actions and routines that involve them. Memory is implicit, triggered by sights and sounds (an interactive toy, a caregiver's voice). 2. 2-5 years -Words are now used to encode and retrieve memories. Explicit memory begins, although children do not yet use memory strategies. Children remember things by rote (their phone number, nursery rhymes). 3. 5-7 years -Children realize that they need to remember some things, and they try to do so, usually via rehearsal (repeating an item again and again). This is not the most efficient strategy, but repetition can lead to automatization. 4. 7-9 years -Children can learn new strategies, including visual clues (remembering how a particular spelling word looks) and auditory hints (rhymes, letters), evidence of brain functions called the visual-spatial sketchpad and phonological loop. Children benefit from organizing things to be remembered. 5. 9-11 years -Memory becomes more adaptive and strategic as children become able to learn various memory techniques from teachers and other children. They can organize material themselves, developing their own memory aids.
English Language Learners (ELLs)
Children in the United States whose proficiency in English is low—usually below a cutoff score on an oral or written test. Many children who speak a non-English language at home are also capable in English; they are not ELLs.
Cultural variations
Culture and context affect more than academic learning. -Culture affects how children learn, not just what they learn. ^Whereas many traditional Western schools expect children to learn directly, by listening to a teacher and demonstrating what they have learned with individually written homework and tests, some other cultures consider learning to occur mostly indirectly, by observation and joint activity ex./ one study found that children born and raised in the United States from Native American cultures were accustomed to learning by observation.
Home Schooling
Education in which children are taught at home, usually by their parents.
Problems with International Benchmarks
Elaborate and extensive measures are in place to make the PIRLS and the TIMSS valid. - For instance, test items are designed to be fair and culture-free, and participating children represent the diversity (economic, ethnic, etc.) of each nation's child population. -Consequently, most social scientists respect the data gathered from these tests.
International Schooling
Everywhere, children are taught to read, write, and do arithmetic, as the brain matures.
The Common Core: Sample Items for Each Grade
Grade Reading and Writing Math 1. Kindergarten -Pronounce the primary sound for each consonant -Know number names and the count sequence 2. First -Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words -Relate counting to addition and subtraction (e.g., by counting 2 more to add 2) 3. Second -Decode words with common prefixes and suffixes -Measure the length of an object twice, using different units of length for the two measurements; describe how the two measurements relate to the size of the unit chosen 4. Third -Decode multisyllabic words -Understand division as an unknown-factor problem; for example, find 32 ÷ 8 by finding the number that makes 32 when multiplied by 8 5. Fourth -Use combined knowledge of all letter-sound correspondences, syllable patterns, and morphology (e.g., roots and affixes) to read accurately unfamiliar multisyllabic words in context and out of context -Apply and extend previous understandings of multiplication to multiply a fraction by a whole number 6. Fifth -With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, and rewriting, or trying a new approach -Graph points on the coordinate plane to solve real-world and mathematical problems *Information from National Governors Association, 2010.
Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)
Inaugurated in 2001, a planned five-year cycle of international trend studies in the reading ability of fourth-graders.
Socioeconomic Status
Language is a major reason. Not only do children from low-SES families usually have smaller vocabularies than those from higher-SES families, but their grammar is also simpler (fewer compound sentences, dependent clauses, and conditional verbs) and their sentences are shorter -Brain scans confirm that development of the hippocampus is particularly affected by SES, as is language learning - Possibilities include inadequate prenatal care, blood lead levels, no breakfast, crowded households, few books at home, teenage parents, authoritarian child rearing, inexperienced teachers, poor neighborhood role models . . . the list could go on and on ^All of these conditions correlate with low SES and less learning, but it is difficult to isolate the impact of any specific one. >Most less-educated parents use simpler vocabulary and talk much less to their infants and young children than more-educated parents do. ex./ For instance, among mothers of 2-year-olds, 24 percent of those with less than a high school education read books daily to their children, but 70 percent of the mothers with at least a B.A. did
Vygotsky and Culture
Like Piaget, Vygotsky felt that educators should consider children's thought processes, not just the outcomes. -He appreciated the fact that children are curious, creative learners. -For that reason, Vygotsky believed that an educational system based on rote memorization rendered the child "helpless in the face of any sensible attempt to apply any of this acquired knowledge" -Vygotsky stressed direct instruction from teachers and other mentors who provided the needed scaffold between potential and knowledge by engaging each child in his or her zone of proximal development. ^Internationally as well as nationally, children who begin education at age 4 or 5, tend to be ahead in academic achievement compared to those who enter later, an effect noted even at age 15, although not in every nation >Vygotsky would explain the variation in impact by noting that early education is far more interactive, and hence better, in some places than in others.
Memory
Many scientists who study memory take an information-processing approach. -They have learned that various methods of input, storage, and retrieval affect the increasing cognitive ability of the schoolchild. ^Each of the three major steps in the memory process—sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory—is affected by both maturation and experience.
Control Processes
Mechanisms (including selective attention, metacognition, and emotional regulation) that combine memory, processing speed, and knowledge to regulate the analysis and flow of information within the information-processing system. (Also called executive processes.) -Control processes require the brain to organize, prioritize, and direct mental operations, much as the CEO (chief executive officer) of a business organizes, prioritizes, and directs business operations. -control processes are also called executive processes, and the ability to use them is called executive function (already mentioned in Chapter 9); these processes allow a person to step back from the specifics of learning and thinking and consider more general goals and strategies. -control processes improve with age and experience ex./ in one study, children took a fill-in-the-blanks test and indicated how confident they were about each answer. ^Then they were allowed to delete some questions, with the remaining ones counting more. >Already by age 9, they were able to estimate correctness; by age 11, they were skilled at knowing what to delete -Sometimes, experience that is not directly related has an impact. ^This seems to be true for fluently bilingual children, who must learn to inhibit one language while using another. ^They are advanced in control processes, obviously in language but also in more abstract measures of control (Bialystok, 2010). >Such processes develop spontaneously as the prefrontal cortex matures, but they can also be taught.
Concrete Operational Thought
Piaget's term for the ability to reason logically about direct experiences and perceptions. Operational: comes from the Latin word operare, meaning "to work; to produce." By calling this period operational, Piaget emphasized productive thinking. Horizontal decalage: However, Piaget also recognized that children do not leap wholesale to a new conceptual level but advance step by step within each stage. He called this horizontal décalage—the idea that at each level (like a horizon, seeming flat) concepts appear in sequence over months or even years. -Piaget's theory is considered a classic stage theory, in that concrete operational thinking is a more advanced kind of thinking than preoperational but less advanced than the next stage (formal operational). ^Concrete thinking arises from what is visible, tangible, and real, not abstract and theoretical (as at the next stage, formal operational thought). Children become more systematic, objective, scientific—and educable.
voucher
Public subsidy for tuition payment at a nonpublic school. Vouchers vary a great deal from place to place, not only in amount and availability but also in restrictions as to who gets them and what schools accept them.
Common Core
Since states tend to vary in what they expect children to learn and then design tests that favor their students, the governors of all 50 states designated a group of experts to develop high national standards, the Common Core, finalized in 2010. - The standards are explicit, with half a dozen or more specific expectations for achievement in each subject for each grade. (Table 12.4 provides a sample of the specific standards.) -Various testing companies have attempted to measure student accomplishments.
Working memory
The component of the information-processing system in which current conscious mental activity occurs. (Formerly called short-term memory.) -Processing, not mere exposure, is essential for getting information into working memory; for this reason, working memory improves markedly in middle childhood (Cowan & Alloway, 2009). ^That enables children to become much better learners, as they can organize material into chunks that help them understand and remember bits of knowledge. -Working memory is particularly important for reading in that each letter, word, and sentence needs to be connected with the other letters, words, and sentences—all held in the memory for long enough for better processing of what has been read. -Cultural differences are evident. For example, many Muslim children are taught to memorize all 80,000 words of the Quran, so they learn strategies to remember long passages. ^ These strategies are unknown to non-Muslim children, and they help the Muslim children with other cognitive tasks
Sensory memory
The component of the information-processing system in which incoming stimulus information is stored for a split second to allow it to be processed. (Also called the sensory register.) -the first component of the human information-processing system. It stores incoming stimuli for a split second, with sounds retained slightly longer than sights. -sensations are retained for a moment, and then some become perceptions. This first step of sensory awareness is already quite good in early childhood. ^ Sensory memory improves slightly until about age 10 and remains adequate until late adulthood.
Long term memory
The component of the information-processing system in which virtually limitless amounts of information can be stored indefinitely. -The capacity of long-term memory—how much can be crammed into one brain—is huge by the end of middle childhood. ^ Together with sensory memory and working memory, long-term memory organizes ideas and reactions, fostering more effective learning over the years -Crucial to long-term memory is not merely storage (how much material has been deposited) but also retrieval (how readily past learning can be brought into working memory). ^For everyone at every age, retrieval is easier for some memories (especially of vivid, emotional experiences) than for others. -And for everyone, long-term memory is imperfect: We all forget and distort memories and need strategies for accurate recall. ex./ Some schools teach this more than others—just as some Islamic children memorize the Quran and some children memorize Shakespeare, or the books of the Bible, or the Gettysburg Address.
Seriation
The concept that things can be arranged in a logical series, such as the number sequence or the alphabet. -Seriation is crucial for using (not merely memorizing) the alphabet or the number sequence. -By age 5, most children can count up to 100, but because they do not yet grasp seriation, they cannot correctly estimate where any particular two-digit number would be placed on a line that starts at 0 and ends at 100
Classification
The logical principle that things can be organized into groups (or categories or classes) according to some characteristic that they have in common. ex./ For example, family includes parents, siblings, and cousins. Other common classes are animals, toys, and food. Each class includes some elements and excludes others; each is part of a hierarchy.
hidden curriculum
The unofficial, unstated, or implicit patterns within a school that influence what children learn. For instance, teacher background, organization of the play space, and tracking are all part of the hidden curriculum—not formally prescribed, but instructive to the children. -Whether and how students should talk in class is part of the hidden curriculum, taught from kindergarten on. ex./In the United States, children are encouraged to express opinions—perhaps by raising their hands, but always verbal, active, and engaged. -The hidden curriculum may also be the underlying reason for a disheartening difference in whether elementary school students ask their teachers for help. In one study, middle-class children requested special assistance more often than low-SES students did. ^ The researchers found that the low-SES students wanted to avoid special attention, fearing it would lead to criticism (Calarco, 2014). ex./For that reason, the hidden curriculum meant that middle-class students benefited from having middle-class teachers, an advantage contrary to what the teachers hoped or intended.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary builds during middle childhood because concrete operational children are more logical; they can understand prefixes, suffixes, compound words, phrases, and metaphors, even if they have not heard them before. -In middle childhood, some words become pivotal for understanding what is taught in middle school, such as negotiate, evolve, allegation, deficit, molecules.
Information processing perspective
benefits from technology that allows much more detailed data and analysis than was possible for Piaget or Vygotsky. -Accordingly, as in information processing in computers, people can access large amounts of information. They then (1) seek relevant information (as a search engine does), (2) analyze (as software programs do), and (3) express conclusions (as a printout might do). By tracing the paths and links of each of these functions, scientists better understand the learning process. -Brain connections and pathways are forged from repeated experiences, allowing advances in processing. Without careful building and repetition of various skills, fragile connections between neurons break. Robert Siegler: One of the leaders in the information-processing perspective -He has studied the day-by-day details of children's cognition in math (Siegler & Chen, 2008). -Apparently, children do not suddenly grasp the logic of the number system, as Piaget expected at the concrete operational stage. ^Instead, number understanding accrues gradually, with new and better strategies for calculation tried, ignored, half-used, abandoned, and finally adopted (Siegler, 2016). -Siegler compared the acquisition of knowledge to waves on an ocean beach when the tide is rising. There is substantial ebb and flow; eventually a new level is reached. ex./ One example is the ability to estimate where a number might fall on a line, such as where the number 53 would be placed on a line from 0 to 100. This skill predicts later math achievement ^Many information-processing experts. Now advocate giving children practice with number lines in order to develop later math skills, such as the ability to do multiplication and division. -Overall, information processing guides teachers who want to know exactly which concepts and skills are crucial foundations for mastery, not only for math but for reading, writing, and science as well. ex./ For example, in the beginning of middle childhood, children are typically stumped when a scientific experiment leads to surprising results. By age 10, they are able to generate hypotheses to explain it (Piekny & Maehler, 2013). ^This suggests that science may be interesting to young children at every stage, but expecting them to think like scientists, developing hypotheses and testing them, might be premature.
