Middle and Late Childhood - A Comprehensive Presentation from Santrock's Lifespan Development (17th ed.).

1. MIDDLE & LATE
CHILDHOOD
© Tinnie Cruz, RPm
San Beda College Alabang
SY2021-2022

2. Physical Development during
Middle and Late Childhood

3. PHYSICAL CHANGES
AND HEALTH
• There is a slow, consistent pattern of growth.
• Children gain about 5 to 7 pounds a year, which is
accounted by the increases in the size of the skeletal
and muscular systems.
• Total brain volume stabilizes by the end of late
childhood, but certain structures and regions
continue to occur such as the prefrontal cortex.
• Some brain areas become more active while others
becomes less active.

4. MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
• Motor skills become much smoother and more
coordinated.
• Boys perform better than girls in activities that
involve the gross motor skills.
• The increased myelination in the nervous system is
reflected in the improvement of the fine motor skills.
• Girls perform better than boys in activities that
involve the fine motor skills.

5. EXERCISE
• Exercises programs with a frequency of
three weekly sessions lasting longer
than 60 minutes were effective in
lowering the blood pressure.
• Aerobic exercise was found to benefit
cognitive functions.
• Parents and schools play an important
roles in determining the children’s
exercise levels.
• Screen time is linked with low activity,
obesity, and worse sleep patterns.

6. HEALTH, ILLNESS, AND DISEASE
• Injuries are the leading cause of death during
middle and late childhood, and the most common
cause is motor vehicle accidents
• Others may be due to bicycle, skateboards, roller
skates, and other sports equipment
• Being overweight is increasingly a problem.
• Heredity and environment are related to being
overweight
• Parents and children often have similar body
types, height, body fat composition, and
metabolism
• Greater availability of food, energy-saving
devices, declining physical activity, parent’s eating
habits and monitoring of children’s eating habits,
the context which a child eats, and heavy screen
time
• Diet, exercise, and behavior modification can be
helpful
• Encourage parents to

7. HEALTH, ILLNESS, AND DISEASE
• Many elementary-school aged
children possess the risk for
cardiovascular disease.
• The incidence of cancer has increased
slightly.
• Childhood cancers mainly attack the
white blood cells, brain, bone, lymph
system, muscles, kidneys, and nervous
system.
• The most common form of cancer in
children is leukemia, wherein the bone
marrow manufactures an abundance
of abnormal WBC that crowd out
normal cells.

8. CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES
• Difficulty in learning that involves understanding or using spoken/written
language, and the difficulty can appear in listening, thinking, reading,
writing, spelling, and arithmetic
• Boys are likely to be referred due to troublesome behavior
• It involves a difficulty in the integration of information from multiple brain
regions
Learning
Disabilities
• Inattention: difficulty focusing on one thing that they may get bored easily
• Hyperactivity: high levels of physical activity that appears to be seemingly constant
motion
• Impulsivity: difficulty in curbing reactions
• Can lead to lower academic achievement, problematic peer relations, dropout, early
parenthood, substance use, and antisocial behavior
• May be due to cigarette and alcohol exposure as well as maternal stress and low
weight
Attention-
Deficit
Hyperactivity
Disorder
(ADHD)

9. CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES
• Serious, persistent problems that involve relationships, aggression,
depression, and fears associated with personal or school matters as well
other inappropriate socioemotional characteristics.
• Internalized Disorders may include depression, while externalized
disorders may include aggression
Emotional and
Behavioral
Disorders
• Also known as Pervasive Developmental Disorder.
• Involves problems in social interaction, verbal and non-verbal
communication, repetitive behaviors, and atypical responses to sensory
experiences.
• Some may present intellectual disability while others show average or
above average mentality
• Distinctions are made in terms of the severity of problems based on the
amount of support needed
Autism
Spectrum
Disorders

10. EDUCATIONAL
ISSUES
• ALL STUDENTS WITH
DISABILITIES SHALL BE GIVEN
A FREE, APPROPRIATE PUBLIC
EDUCATION (PL 94-142)
• In The Philippines, we have the
Special Education Act of 2008
that was introduced by the late
Senator Miriam Defensor-
Santiago

11. EDUCATIONAL
ISSUES
Public Law
94-142
Individualized Education Plan:
is a written statement that spells out something tailored
the student
Least Restrictive Environment:
Is a setting that is similar as possible to the one in
children who do not have a disability are educated
Inclusion:
educating a child with special needs in a regular
classroom

12. EDUCATIONAL
ISSUES
• The effort to educate children with disabilities in the
regular classroom has become to extreme.
• Like general education, special education should
challenge children with disabilities to become all
they can be.

13. Cognitive Development during
Middle and Late Childhood

14. PIAGET’S CONCRETE
OPERATIONAL STAGE
• Children begins to reason logically as long as it can be
applied to specific or concrete examples.
• Concrete operations allows the child to consider several
characteristics than focusing on a single property of an
object.
• Children can now classify/divide things into different
sets/subsets and consider their interrelationships.
• Seriation: the ability to order stimuli along a quantitative
dimension
• Transitivity: the ability to logically combine relations to
understand certain conclusions.

15. PIAGET’S CONCRETE
OPERATIONAL STAGE
• Some researchers found that some concrete
operational abilities do not appear in synchrony.
• Neo-Piagetians give more emphasis to how children
use attention, memory, and strategies to process
information

16. INFORMATION-PROCESSING
• During middle and late childhood years, most
children dramatically improve their ability to sustain
and control attention.
• Children pay more attention to those that are task-
relevant.

17. MEMORY
• Improvements in memory reflect children’s increased
knowledge and their use of strategies.
• Working memory develops slowly.
• Children who have better working memory have
advancements in their comprehension, math skills,
problem-solving, and reasoning.
• Older children have more expertise on a certain subject
area.
• Children develop more detailed, coherent, and evaluative
autobiographical memories when their mothers
reminisce with them in elaborated and evaluative ways.

18. MEMORY
• Strategies: deliberate mental activities that improves
the processing of information.
• Elaborate what is to be remembered
• Mental imagery works better for older children
• Encourage children to understand, give meaning, elaborate
and personalize the material.
• Repeat with variation and link
• Embed memory-relevant language

19. MEMORY
• Fuzzy Trace Theory: memory is best understood by
the verbatim memory trace (precise details of
information) and gist (central idea)
• At some point during early elementary school years, children
begin to use gist more

20. THINKING
• Executive function is a better predictor of school
readiness than general IQ.
• Concentrate and persist on learning tasks (self-
control/inhibition)
• Mentally work with the masses of information that will be
encountered (working memory)
• Consider different strategies and perspectives (flexibility)

21. THINKING
• Mindful children and adults maintain an active
awareness of the circumstances in their life and are
motivated to find the best solutions to tasks.
• Mindful individuals create new ideas, are open to
new information, and explore multiple strategies and
perspectives.
• Mindfulness is an important mental process that
children can engage in to improve a number of
cognitive and socioemotional skills, such as
executive function, focused attention, emotion
regulation, and empathy.

22. THINKING
• Creative Thinking: the ability to think in novel and
unusual ways and to come up with unique solutions
to problems
• Convergent Thinking: produces one correct answer
• Divergent Thinking: produces many different answers
to the same question
Children will show more creativity in some domains
than others.

23. METACOGNITION
• Metacognition: cognition about cognition or knowing about
knowing
• Young children do have some general knowledge about
memory.
• Young children also have only limited knowledge about their
own memory. They have an inflated opinion of their memory
abilities
• A key to education is helping students learn rich repertoire of
strategies that produce solutions to problems.
• Good thinkers routinely use strategies and effective planning
to solve problems
• Good thinkers know when and where to use these strategies.

24. INTELLIGENCE
• Intelligence: the ability to solve problems and to
adapt and learn from experiences
• IQ = [Mental Age/Chronological Age] x 100
• Mental Age: an individuals level of mental
development relative to others
• SB-5 consists of five content areas: fluid reasoning,
knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visuo-spatial
reasoning, and working memory.
• The Wechsler Scale includes 16 verbal and nonverbal
scales.

25. INTELLIGENCE
• Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence:
• Analytical: analyze, judge, evaluate, compare, and contrast
• Creative: create, design, invent, originate, and imagine
• Practical: ability to use, apply, implement, and put ideas
into practice
• Gardner’s 8 Mental Frames: Verbal, Mathematical, Spatial,
Bodily-kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal,
and Naturalist
• A number of psychologists think that the multiple
intelligence views took intelligence too far.

26. INTELLIGENCE
• Although genetic endowment may always influence
a person’s intellectual ability, environmental
influences and opportunities available to children
and adults do make a difference.
• IQ scores have been increasing so quickly that a
high percentage of people regarding as having
average intelligence at the turn of the century would
be considered below average today.
• Efforts to counteract deprived early environment’s
effect on intelligence emphasize prevention rather
than remediation

27. INTELLIGENCE
• Even if there are culture-fair tests, those people with
more education tend to score higher than those
with less education.
• Learning Disability: an individual that has an IQ
below 70 and has difficulty adapting to demands of
everyday life.
• Organic: genetic disorder that can cause brain
damage
• Cultural-familial: IQs between 55 and 70 where one
grew up in below-average intellectual environment,

28. INTELLIGENCE
• Gifted: above-average intelligence and/or superior
for something
• Precocity: master an area earlier than their peers
• Marching to their own drummer: learning in a
qualitatively different way
• A passion to master: driven to understand the
domain they have a high ability in.
They show signs of high ability in a particular area, but
strong support and years of training also play its role

29. LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
• At about 7 years of age, children begin to respond with a
word that is the same part of speech as the stimulus
word.
• During the elementary school years, improvement in
logical reasoning and analytical skills helps children
understand comparatives and subjunctives.
• Language is more connected as sentences becomes
related to one another in producing descriptions,
definitions, and narratives that makes sense.
• Metalinguistic Awareness: the mechanism which allows
children to think about their language, understand what
words are, and even define them

30. LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
• Children who begin elementary school with a robust
vocabulary have an advantage when it comes to
learning to read.
• Whole-language Approach: reading instruction
should parallel natural learning. This involves the
integration of other skills and subjects.
• Phonics Approach: reading instruction that teaches
basic rules for translating written symbols into
words.

31. LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
• Parents and teachers should encourage children’s early
writing but not be overly concerned about the formation
of letters or spelling.
• Corrections of spelling and printing should be selective
and made in positive ways that do not discourage the
child’s writing and spontaneity.
• Children should be given many writing opportunities.
• Compared with adults, children are less sensitive to
feedback, less likely to use explicit strategies, and are
more likely to learn a second language from large
amounts of input.
• Bilingualism is linked to positive outcomes for children’s
language and cognitive development

32. Socioemotional Development
during Middle and Late
Childhood

33. EMOTIONAL AND
PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT
• From 8 to 11 years of age, children increasingly
describe themselves in terms of psychological
characteristics and traits.
• They are more likely to recognize the social aspects
of the self.
• Perspective Taking: the social cognitive process
involved in the assumption of perspective of others
and understanding their thoughts and feelings
• This can be important in determining whether
children would develop prosocial or antisocial
attitudes and behavior.

34. EMOTIONAL AND
PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT
• Self-esteem: the global evaluations of the self.
• Self-concept: the domain specific evaluations of the self.
• The foundations of self-esteem and self-concept emerge from
the quality of parent-child interactions.
• Self-esteem may not always match reality, which may
represent arrogance, grandiosity, and an unwarranted sense of
superiority.
• Low self-esteem has been implicated in overweight and
obesity, anxiety, depression, suicide, and delinquency.
• Children with high self-esteem are more likely to be securely
attached to their parents and to have parents who engage in
sensitive caregiving

35. EMOTIONAL AND
PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT
• Self-efficacy: the belief that one can master a
situation and produce favorable outcomes
• During middle and late childhood, children has an
increased capacity for self-regulation.
• High self-control was linked to lower levels of
deviant behavior, which may also be key to adult
health and longevity.

36. EMOTIONAL AND
PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT
• During the industry vs. inferiority stage of Erikson’s
development, children become more interested in
how things are made and work.
• When children are encouraged in their efforts to
make, build, and work, their sense of industry
increases.
• School becomes important

37. EMOTIONAL AND
PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT
• In this stage, children are more adept at talking about
their own and others’ emotions. They also show a
growing awareness of the need to control and manage
their emotions to meet social standards.
• As children get older, they are able to accurately appraise
a stressful situation and determine how much control
they have over it.
• By 10 years of age, most children are able to use
cognitive strategies in coping with stress, but those who
have been in families that are not supportive and are
characterized by turmoil/trauma, children may be so
overwhelmed by stress that they do not use such
strategies.

38. EMOTIONAL AND
PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT
• In this stage, children are more adept at talking about
their own and others’ emotions. They also show a
growing awareness of the need to control and manage
their emotions to meet social standards.
• As children get older, they are able to accurately appraise
a stressful situation and determine how much control
they have over it.
• By 10 years of age, most children are able to use
cognitive strategies in coping with stress, but those who
have been in families that are not supportive and are
characterized by turmoil/trauma, children may be so
overwhelmed by stress that they do not use such
strategies.

39. MORAL DEVELOPMENT
• Kohlberg suggested that there are three levels of moral
development, which he deemed as universal.
• The development from one level to another is fostered
by opportunities to take the perspective of others and to
experience conflict between one’s current level of moral
thinking and the reasoning of someone at a higher level.
• One’s morality gradually becomes more internal or
mature.
• Peer interaction and perspective taking are critical
aspects of the social stimulation that challenges children
to change their moral reasoning.

40. Summary of Kohlberg’s Stages of
Moral Development

41. MORAL DEVELOPMENT
• Gilligan’s Care Perspective: views people in terms of their
interconnectedness with others and emphasizes
interpersonal communication, relationships with others,
and concern for others.
• Domain Theory of Moral Development: there are
different domains of social knowledge and reasoning.
Moral development emerges from their attempts to
understand and deal with different forms of social
experience.
• Social Conventional Reasoning: focuses on the
conventional rules that have been established by social
consensus in order to control behavior and maintain a
system

42. MORAL DEVELOPMENT
• Moral reasoning focuses on the ethical issues and
rules of morality. Unlike conventional rules, they are
not arbitrary. They are obligatory, widely accepted,
and somewhat interpersonal.
• Moral judgments involve concepts of justice
• Violation of moral rules is more serious than of
conventional rules
• Children begin to express objective ideas about
fairness by the time they reach elementary school

43. GENDER
• By elementary school years, children have considerable
knowledge about which activities are linked with being
male or female.
• Female brains are approximately 10% smaller than males,
but female’s brain have more folds, which gives more
surface brain tissue.
• It is likely that there are far more similarities than
differences in the brains of females and males.
• Boys perform better in math due to the implications of
visuospatial skills than girls.
• Girls perform better in reading and writing.

44. GENDER
• Girls earn better grades and complete high school at a
higher rate, and they are less likely to drop out of school
than boys.
• Males are more likely to be assigned to special/remedial
classes
• Girls are likely to be engaged more with the academic
material, be attentive, put more effort, and participate
• Boys are physically aggressive, while girls are relationally
aggressive
• When it comes to verbal aggression, gender differences
disappear

45. FAMILIES
• As children move into the middle and late childhood
years, parents spend considerably less time with
them.
• The value that parents place on education can
determine whether children do well in school
• During middle and late childhood, some control is
transferred from parent to child.
• Parents continue to exercise general supervision and
control, while children are allowed to engage in
moment-to-moment self-regulation.

46. FAMILIES
• Family management practices are positively related
to student’s grades and self-responsibility, and
negatively to school-related problems.
• Attachment becomes more sophisticated as
children’s social worlds expand to include peers,
teachers, and others, they typically spend less time
with parents
• Secure attachment is associated with lower
internalized problems and a higher level of emotion
regulation, and less difficulty in emotion
identification

47. PEERS
• Reciprocity becomes important
• The size of peer group increases and interaction is
becoming less supervised.
• It is until age 12 where preference for same-sex peers
increases.
• Popular – frequently the best friend
• Average – average number of positive and negative
nominations
• Neglected – infrequently nominated as best friend and not
disliked
• Rejected – infrequently nominated as best friend and
disliked
• Controversial – both best friend and disliked

48. PEERS
• Children’s social cognition becomes increasingly
important in understanding peer relations
• Bullies torment victims to gain higher status and with the
need for others to see their power displays.
• Children who are bullied are more likely to experience
depression, engage in suicidal ideation, and attempt
suicide.
• Friends are more similar than in age, sex, race, and many
other factors including attitudes toward school,
educational aspirations, and achievement orientations

49. SCHOOLS
• Constructivist Approach: children are encouraged to
explore their world, discover knowledge, reflect, and
think critically with careful monitoring and
meaningful guidance from the teacher.
• Direct Instruction Approach: structured, teacher-
centered approach characterized by teacher
direction and control, expectations for student’s
progress, maximum time spent on academic tasks,
and efforts to keep negative affect to a minimum