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Chapter 12: Cognitive and Language Development in Middle Childhood (Ages 6-10)

Terms in this set (36)

5 to 7 Shift
Children go through a gradual period of transition from the illogical and unsystematic reasoning of the preoperational period to the more logical and systematic reasoning of middle childhood. Elementary education is very important here!
Intuitive during 5 to 7 shift
Noticeable improvement in preoperational, but lingering lapses in logic. They get the right answers to problems, but do not understand the underlying principles behind it. Ex: 6 yr old may recognize the amount of a liquid stays the same when it is poured from a tall, thin container to a short, stout container, but not be able to express why changing the shape of the container is irrelevant to the amount of liquid inside.
Concrete Operations
A form of cognitive ability that enables the child to interact with his or her environment with logic
Concrete vs. Preoperational
Able to reverse thinking (reversibility ). Ex: when a child thinks about disassembling a bike they must first think about how to put it back together after
Decenter
Distributing their attention among multiple features of their experience. Take a broader view of problems they encounter. Ex: see the forest among trees
Egocentrism in Concrete thought
Children begin to view the world more like adults, distinguishing others points of view from their own. Ex: Lashonda understands that when she is watching TV and her father is in another room preparing dinner, he cannot possibly see what she is watching.
Conservation
They do not recognize that the amount of a substance remains unchanged despite changes in the shape of the container in which it is held.
Classification
The term hierarchy refers to the fact that any given object can be classified in a series of increasingly inclusive levels. Ex: apples are included in the class of fruits, which can be included in the class of foods
Moral Reasoning
They must ultimately learn to reason about the situations they find themselves in, to make judgments about what constitutes morally correct behavior in those situations, and to enact that behavior. Our thinking about the "rightness" or "wrongness" of specific behaviors. Encourage them to understand people's needs and empathize with their feelings. Promote their participation in social situations with same-age peers. Allow them to deal with their own social dilemmas, rather than imposing your morality. Discuss complex moral issues with them. Not providing overly simplistic moral views of "right" and "wrong." Make it clear that rules need to be flexible, depending on the situation.
Freud's View of Moral Development
Children develop moral concern late in the preschool years as a by-product of the resolution of the Oedipus complex (in boys) or Electra complex (in girls). They identify with the same-sex parent.
Superego
Mental structure that unconsciously guides a child's behavior. Contains both a conscience that prohibits certain behaviors and an ego ideal that provides the child with an internal image. Violating the conscience or not living up to the ego ideal is punished by unconscious guilt, a debilitating psychological state that undermines the child's ability to think or behave rationally.children do not engage in moral reasoning. They are unconsciously motivated to avoid the experience of guilt by behaving in ways that are consistent with the prohibitions and "ideals" of the superego.
Piaget's View of Moral Development
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Amoral (Piaget)
Unable to reason logically about rules and concepts of right and wrong. They may, of course, behave morally, but only in response to the rewards and punishments presented by adults.
Moral Realism (Piaget)
An inflexible view that behaviors are either right or wrong, with no in-between. Laws are created by the absolute authority of adults, and that authority cannot be questioned. The child as a "moral realist" decides the rightness and wrongness of behaviors strictly by their consequences, irrespective of the person's intentions. Ex: if a child ACCIDENTALLY breaks teacups compared to a child who purposefully breaks one teacup.
Immanent Justice (Piaget)
The notion that you always get punished for behaving inappropriately and rewarded for behaving appropriately, and conversely, that if you get punished, you must have done something bad, or, if you get rewarded, you must have done something good. Causes some young children to blame themselves when something unfortunate happens to them or to members of their family. Ex: a child may believe that her parents' divorce is punishment for her past misbehavior.
Autonomous Moral Reasoning
In middle childhood and in early adolescence children gradually come to realize that rules can be changed through negotiation, and that an individual's intentions must be considered in judging whether a behavior is right or wrong.
Kohlberg
Children's responses to the dilemmas as a series of non-overlapping, qualitatively distinct, sequential levels of moral reasoning: preconventional morality, conventional morality, and postconventional (or principled) morality, with each level subdivided into two stages.
Preconventional Moral Reasoning (Kohlberg)
Believing that the rightness or wrongness of a behavior is determined solely by its consequences.
Stage 1: Children believe that behaviors that avoid punishment must be "good" or "right" (obedience and punishment orientation) Ex: some children insist that Heinz should not steal the drug because he would be put in jail. Others center on the negative consequences to Heinz if he lets his wife die, that he would be sad and lonely.
Hedonistic and Instrumental Orientation
Belief that behaviors are "good" if they meet one's personal needs. Behaving to gain rewards, rather than to avoid punishments. They begin to recognize that they may have to please others in order to please themselves. Ex: "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine." Thus, they might suggest that Heinz should steal to help his wife get better--even though he may spend some time in jail--because he needs her to cook his dinner.
Conventional level of Moral Reasoning
(Stages 3 and 4), children develop internal standards that reflect society's values of what is right and wrong.
Good boy, good girl Orientation
Engaging in "good" behavior to gain adult approval or to avoid disapproval. Ex: Heinz should steal the drugs and save his wife's life because everyone will admire him for "doing the right thing.
Law and Order Orientation
That laws define what is right or wrong. Ex: Heinz should not steal because it is forbidden
Postconventional Moral Reasoning
Enables the individual to think beyond specific laws to abstract principles, such as justice, equality, and human rights.
Social Contract Orientation
Laws should be respected as the best way to balance individual interests against the needs of the group. People should obey the law because it is the best way for everyone to live harmoniously.
Universal Principles of Orientation
Believing that universal moral principles (justice, equality, human rights) transcend laws made by man. Ex: Heinz must follow his own conscience, basing his decision on what he believes is just. In this situation he would reason that nothing is more important than a human life!
Information Processing
Odyssey of information flow..a model of cognitive processing in real time that is so precisely specified, explicit, and detailed that it can actually be run successfully as a working program on the computer.
Limited Capacity
There is only so much mental resource to go around; investment in one mental activity means less available for other activities. Ex: a child may be unable to study effectively for an exam if she is preoccupied thinking about her friends.
Effortful vs. Automatic
Effortful: Mental activities that require more resources and less is automatic
Mental Operations
Rehearsal: Involves repeating items over and over--aloud or to oneself. Ex: children learn that they are less likely to forget someone's phone number if they repeat it several times immediately after hearing it
Organization: Purposeful attempt to identify conceptual relationships among items to be remembered. Ex: if a child were asked to memorize potato, car, airplane, apple, spinach, bicycle, she could improve her recall by grouping the items into two exclusive categories: foods and vehicles.
Elaboration: Relating objects to one another with absurd visual images. Ex: if a child were asked to memorize book, boy, horse, field, and rain, She could "elaborate" by generating a visual image such as "A boy was riding his horse across a field, reading his book in the rain." Recalling the image should facilitate recall of the individual items.
Elaborated Knowledge Base
Operates like a cross-referenced computer file. Strategies can be used to recall specific facts, such as the name of a particular child, or whole categories of facts, such as the names of all children in the top reading group. Ex: a child memorizes her classmates and then organizes them by gender. (Become an expert in a specific field)
Metacognition
It includes knowing what you know, knowing what you do not know, and knowing what to do with what you know to solve problems.
Self appraisal and self management (metacognition)
SELF APPRAISAL: Recognizing that she had not learned the concepts required to complete her assignment, by assessing what concepts she needed to know, and by sensing when her self-study had adequately prepared her to tackle the problems.
SELF MANAGE by altering her study environment to reduce distraction, and by enacting specific information-gathering strategies to compensate for her deficiencies: listing the words she did not know, and using the text's glossary and the chapter introduction.
What makes a school good?
Strong leadership provided by a principal who actively and energetically organizes activities of the school. Leadership style must engender the trust and respect of teachers, parents, children, and the community.
There must be clear lines of authority and sanctions for dealing with those who choose to jeopardize the learning process.
teachers who actively participate in the school's decision making processes
Minority children in schools
Cognitive deficits, lack of motivation to learn, and lack of parent involvement also contribute to minority children's low achievement in first grade.
Decoding
Ability to interpret printed letters as a code for spoken words
Comprehension
Ability to understand words that have been decoded.
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