Transcript Chapter 10: Physical Development in Middle Childhood Physical Growth – Rate of growth slows relative to infancy & early childhood – Rate is roughly.

Chapter 10: Physical Development in Middle
Childhood
Physical Growth
– Rate of growth slows relative to infancy & early
childhood
– Rate is roughly 2-3 inches in height and 5 lbs per
year
– As girls approach 8-9 years, the rate of growth
increases relative to boys
– Girls begin to develop additional fat cells relative
to muscle cells
– Girls’ growth rate is faster than boys’ until roughly
13 year—possibly linked with puberty
Overweight Children
• BMI at or above the 95th percentile of the population
of same aged children (normative)
• Over 25 percent of American children suffer from
obesity,
– a greater-than-20-percent increase over average
body weight, based on the child’s age, sex, and
physical build.
• Over 80 percent of obese youngsters remain
overweight as adults
Causes of Obesity
• Obese children tend to have obese parents, and
concordance for obesity is greater in identical than
fraternal twins
• Low-SES youngsters in industrialized nations are
more likely to be overweight
– lack of knowledge about healthy diet
– tendency to buy high-fat, low-cost foods
– family stress
• Parental feeding practices contribute to childhood
obesity
Causes of Obesity
• obese children are more responsive to external
stimuli associated with food
• less responsive to internal hunger cues
• Obese children are less physically active than their normalweight peers
• obese children tend to watch more television
– Linked to sedentary lifestyle
– Linked to advertising and models portrayed
Outcomes of Obesity
• Socio-cultural--Both children and adults rate obese
youngsters as unlikable
• By middle childhood,
– obese children report feeling more depressed
– display more behavior problems than normal-weight age
mates
– psychological consequences of obesity combined with
continuing discrimination result in real or perceived
reduced life chances
Growth and Maturation of the Brain
• The rapid decline in processing time over middle
childhood is thought to be due to
– myelinization
– synaptic pruning
• Growth spurts during middle childhood:
–
–
–
–
Frontal,
Temporal,
Occipital
Parietal, (Pribram, 1990)
Growth and Maturation of the Brain
• Increased function related to
– micro-developmental (myelinization and synaptic pruning) and
– macro-development (development of various lobes)
• Lateralization (isolation of functions to one or the other
hemisphere of the brain) increases and further reduces
plasticity
• Elaborations (development of new connections in the brain)
are contingent on brain maturation and experience
• Synaptic connections transverse increasingly longer
distances across the brain and are correlated with
increased flexibility of thought
Growth and Maturation of the Brain
• Brain growth spurts roughly correspond to Piaget’s
observed sequence of cognitive development
• By the end of middle childhood the mass of the brain
closely matches that of the adult brain
• The later in childhood a neurological trauma occurs,
the more challenging the recovery and the
relocalization of the functions in the brain due to a
decrease in plasticity
Motor Development
• Gross Motor Development
– During middle childhood, running, jumping,
hopping, and ball skills become more refined.
– Motor skills improve in the capacities of flexibility,
balance, agility, and force.
– Steady improvements also occur in reaction
time—11-year-olds can respond almost twice as
quickly to a stimulus as 5-year-olds.
Motor Development
• Fine Motor Development
– Fine motor development also improves steadily
over the school years.
– Gains are especially evident in writing and
drawing.
• Writing tends to be large at first, and legibility gradually
increases.
• Drawings show gains in organization, detail, and
representation of depth.
• School-age children not only depict objects in
considerable detail, they also relate them to one
another as part of an organized whole.
Individual and Group Differences in Motor
Development
• Parents who encourage physical exercise tend to have
youngsters who enjoy it more and who are also more
skilled.
• Family income affects children’s opportunities to
develop a variety of physical abilities.
• Girls remain ahead in the fine motor area and skills
which depend on balance and agility.
• School-age boys’ genetic advantage in muscle mass is
not great enough to account for their superiority in
many gross motor skills; thus, environment plays a
large role in motor development.
• Greater emphasis on skill training for girls along with
increased attention to their athletic achievements in
schools and communities is likely to increase their
involvement.
Childhood Play and Games
• Child-Organized Games
– Organized games with rules become common in
middle childhood.
– Gains in perspective taking allow children to
understand the roles of several players in a game
and permit the transition to rule-oriented games.
– Participation in organized games helps children
form more mature concepts of fairness and
justice.
Adult-Organized Youth Sports
• The past several decades have witnessed an expansion of youth
sports programs.
• Some researchers worry that adult-structured athletics are robbing
children of crucial learning experiences and endangering their
development.
• Children who join teams so early that the skills demanded are
beyond their capabilities soon loose interest and drop out.
• Parents powerfully influence children’s athletic attitudes and
capabilities.
• When coaches emphasize effort, improvement, participation, and
teamwork, young athletes enjoy their experience more, like their
coach and teammates more, and gain in self-esteem
Play: Shadows of Our Evolutionary Past
• Rough-and-tumble play
– Friendly wrestling, rolling, hitting, and chasing among
children
– School-age youngsters are quite good at telling the
difference between playful wrestling and a true aggressive
attack
– Girls’ rough-and-tumble play consists largely of running
and chasing
– Boys engage in more playful wrestling and hitting
Play: Shadows of Our Evolutionary Past
• Dominance hierarchy
– stable ordering of individuals
– predicts who will win when conflict arises between group
members
– serves the adaptive function of limiting aggression among
group members
Physical Education: The Context of School
• provide regularly scheduled opportunities for
exercise and play
• ensure that all children have access to physical
activity that supports:
• healthy bodies.
• a sense of self-worth as physically active and capable
beings.
• the cognitive and social skills necessary for getting
along well with others.
Physical Education: The Context of School
• The average school-age child gets only 20 minutes of
physical education a week Florida has recently
increased this for elementary students.
• The growing fitness movement among adults has not
filtered down to children
• Emphasizing informal games and individual
exercise—pursuits that are most likely to last into
later years.
• Physically fit children become more active adults
who reap many benefits.
Special Needs in Middle Childhood
• Biopsychosocial forces tend to create
transactions among forces in children’s lives
that lead to psychopathology
• Determining exact causes of psychopathology
among children is difficult due to:
– Range of possible causal factors
– Comorbidity (presence of two or more disorders)
ADHD
• Relative to the norm for age mates:
– Inability to sustain attention
– High levels of activity
– Low impulse control
• Prevalence rate of ADHD 4%-6% meet clinical
definition
• Genetic, neurological components involved
• Environmental toxins also implicated (lead exposure,
prenatal exposure to alcohol and tobacco)
• Treatments of choice typically involve drugs
(stimulant) & behavioral management
Communicative and Learning disorders
• Communicative disorders
– Articulation—physiological differences; can be
treated by speech therapists/pathologists
– Expressive/receptive communication (linked to
autistic spectrum disorders)
– Expressive language disorder linked to early ear
infections
– Stuttering—frequently declines across childhood; can be
associated with stress in later years
Communicative and Learning disorders
• Learning Disorders
– Specific learning disorder—narrowly defined to
domain (e.g. reading, math, writing)
– Child possesses intelligence at or above normal
level
– Differences in brain activity with children with
communicative and learning disorders linked to
differences in information processing
– Discriminating between environmental and
biological factors is difficult
Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Lower than average:
– Communication - both verbal (spoken) and non-verbal
(such as pointing, eye contact, and smiling)
– Social - sharing emotions, understanding how others think
and feel, and holding a conversation
• Routines or repetitive behaviors (stereotyped
behaviors) – repeating words or actions,
– obsessively following routines or schedules, and
– playing in repetitive ways
Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Usually seen as early as 18 months
• Range of indicators
– Does not smile in response to others’ smiles
– Engages in repetitive rapid motor behaviors (ex.
hand flapping)
– Does not point at objects
– Does not wave or say “bye-bye”
– Overly active, uncooperative, resistant
– Shows unusual attachments to object
Education for Special Needs Children
• IEP (Santa Rosa County’s IST)
• Least Restrictive Environment
– Resource room
– Inclusion
– Mainstreaming
– Intact classroom
– Resource teacher