Psych
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Part One
Theme: The period of middle and late childhood sees the beginning emergence of an individual with both cognitive development, self image, and a life outside the family.
Although there are major changes and growth in the infancy years, the middle and late childhood stages are quite crucial for different changes. This is when the child builds on the skills he/she has already learned, as well as develops more cognitive skills, and how Piaget created the cognitive development theory. The child begins to show concrete operational thought.
Piaget proposed that the concrete operational stage lasts from approximately seven to eleven years of age (Santrock 323). He believes that at this age, the child can reason logically, as long as it is applied to specific examples. An example would be the clay experiment. It starts with two pieces of clay rolled into balls, both the same size. One then is rolled down flat, and the child is asked which one has more clay. It isn’t until this age that the child can logically think that they are equal in size, because they can reverse their thinking. They can picture the flat piece rolled back into a ball. Concrete operations allow the child to consider several characteristics rather than focus on a single property of an object (Santrock 324). One important skill is the ability to classify or divide things into different sets or subsets and to consider their interrelationships. Like the family tree and the different generations. A child that has reached the concrete operational stage understands that the same person can be a brother, father, grandfather and son all at the same time. Another aspect of logical thinking that occurs at this age is called transitivity. For example, they are able to understand things like; if A is longer than B and B is longer than C, than A is also longer that C.
Another key area of development of the cognitive stage is information processing, which involves things like memory, thinking and metacognition. Although short-term memory is primarily developed in the infancy years, long-term memory increases with age during middle and late childhood. If we know anything at all about long-term memory, it is that long-term memory depends on the learning activities individuals engage in when learning and remembering information (Santrock 327). Mental imagery greatly helps children increase their memory capacity as well as elaborating on information. For instance to say the big red dog chased the little yellow bird. Critical thinking is another crucial part of a child’s development, encouraging students to expand their thinking by coming up with new ideas. This in turn leads to creative thinking skills. Creative thinking is the ability to think in novel and unusual ways and to come up with unique solutions to problems. It is important to recognize that children will show more creativity in some domains than others (Santrock 328). Metacognition then is cognition about cognition, or knowing about knowing. The child starts to know their own capabilities and their memory, like if they feel they have studied enough for a test. Younger children that have not reached this level however, have a false sense of their memory, or inflated sense of memory. As they move through the elementary school years, children give more realistic evaluations of their memory skills (Santrock 330).
Intelligence is another form of cognitive development; problem-solving skills and the ability to learn from and adapt to life’s everyday experiences. There are many different ways to test intelligence. One of the most popular ways is the Binet test which was developed in 1904. He developed the concept of mental age, which is an individual’s level of mental development relative to others. This lead to the concept of the intelligence quotient which is a persons mental age divided by the chronological age (Santrock 331). There are also extremes of intelligence, which are mental retardation and intellectual giftedness. Mental retardation is a condition of limited mental ability in which an individual has a low IQ and has difficulty adapting to everyday life (Santrock 340). Then there are other individuals who are extremely intelligence and are known as gifted. These individuals have an extreme capability of learning and can excel at almost everything they try or do.
Like stated earlier during early and late-childhood an emergence of self image is starting to develop. For example, stating psychological factors when describing themselves, whereas younger children describe physical factors. During the elementary school years, children also start noticing social aspects of the self; referring to themselves as Girl Scouts, Brownies, Boy Scouts and so on. This is also the age where children start to become more competitive because they start to think about what they can do in comparison to what their peers can do. High self esteem and a positive attitude are very important attributes to develop at a young age. Variations in self-esteem have been linked with many aspects of children’s development; however, much of the research is coo relational rather than experimental (Santrock 354). There needs to be a balance of praise so as not to give the child an inflated self-esteem.
Some ways to improve a child’s self esteem is to try to identify the causes of low self esteem. One should also provide emotional support and social approval. Some children come from broken homes; this does affect their self-esteem and their self-worth. So in some cases this support could come from a teacher, coach or school counselor. Achievement can also improve esteem, like teaching children skills that will help them achieve