Human Growth
and
Development
Chapter Eleven
The School Years:
Biosocial Development
PowerPoints prepared by Cathie Robertson, Grossmont College
Revised by Jenni Fauchier, Metropolitan Community College
A Healthy Time
• Middle childhood, ages 7 to 11, is
generally a happy, easy time
– children usually healthy and selfreliant
Typical Size and Shape
• Contributing Factors to
Variations in physique
– nutrition, genetic factors,
gender
– undernutrition, which does not
disappear with age or a
nation’s wealth, correlated
with less growth and more
illness
Childhood Obesity
• Overweight—20% above ideal
weight for height
• Obesity—30% over ideal weight for
height
- about one-third of American
children obese
- psychological, physical, and
medical problem
Causes of Childhood
Obesity
• Genetic Differences
– genes do not act in isolation
• Environmental Factors
- cultural values
- lack of exercise
- poor quality food
- watching TV/video
Chronic Illness:
The Case of Asthma
• Middle childhood is the period of life
when chronic illness is least common
• Asthma is the most common medical
problem that causes absences from
school
Causes of Asthma
• Asthma—chronic inflammatory disorder
of the airways; affects between 10% and
20% of school-age children in North
America
– three times as common as 20 years ago
– figures expected to double again by
2020
• Possible Causes
– genes on chromosomes 2, 11, 12, 13, and
21
– exposure to allergens
Prevention of Asthma
• Primary prevention: proper
ventilation; decreased pollution;
eradication of cockroaches; safe
outdoor play spaces
• Secondary prevention: ridding house
of allergens; breast-feeding, if
genetic history is known
• Tertiary prevention: care after
ailment is recognized; in doctor’s
office, hospital
Brain Development
• Brain reaches adult size at age 7
• Hemispheric specialization makes
brain more efficient overall
Advances in
Middle Childhood
• Changes become apparent in both
motor and cognitive development
• Rapid growth rate of school-age
children leads them to be better able
to control their bodies and emotions
Attention and
Automatization
• Selective attention—ability to
attend to information from many
areas of brain at one time and pay
special attention to most important
elements
– the result of extensive myelination
and increased production of
neurotransmitters
Attention and Automatization, cont.
• Automatization—process by which
thoughts and actions are repeated in
sequence until they become routed or
automatic and need little conscious
thought
– becomes easier and faster with
myelination
– reading an example of
automatization
Motor Skills
• Brain maturation is a key factor in
decrease of reaction time—length of
time it takes to react to a stimulus
– older child has faster reaction time
than younger child
Motor Skills, cont.
• Child’s motor habits benefit from
connections formed in brain
– corpus callosum continues to mature
– motor abilities advanced through play
– rough-and-tumble play may help to
regulate and coordinate frontal lobes of
brain
• may also help in interpretation and in
providing emotional regulation
Brain and Intelligence
• Cognition is improved
– this advance reflected on
tests
Tests of Ability
• Intellectual skills
- Aptitude—potential to learn or
achieve
- IQ test—test to measure
intellectual aptitude
- Achievement—what a person has
learned
Tests of Ability, cont.
• Achievement tests measure reading
ability, math knowledge, scientific
knowledge, and writing skills
• Two highly regarded IQ tests
– Stanford-Binet
– Wechsler Intelligence Scale for
Children
• designed for school-age children
Criticisms of IQ Testing
• Quite reliable in predicting school
achievement, and somewhat reliable in
predicting adult career attainment
– difficult to measure potential without
achievement
– does not consider rate of development,
culture, family, school, genes
• in comparing IQ to achievement,
learning disabilities may be noted
• Standard IQ tests measure only
linguistic and logical-mathematical
ability
– no measure for other types of intelligence
• Sternberg (1996) suggests 3 types of
intelligence
– academic (IQ and achievement)
– creative (evidenced by imaginative
endeavors)
– practical (seen in everyday interactions)
• Gardner describes 8 distinct
intelligences
– linguistic
– logical-mathematical
– musical
– spatial
– bodily-kinesthetic
– interpersonal (social understanding)
– intrapersonal (self-understanding)
– naturalistic
Children with Special
Needs
• Some children, because of a physical or
mental disability, require special help in
order to learn—children with special needs
– 13% of all U.S. schoolchildren in 2000
– individual education plan (IEP)
• legally required document specifying a
series of educational goals for each
child with special needs
Developmental
Psychopathology
• Field in which knowledge of normal
development is applied to the study and
treatment of psychological disorders
• Offers 4 lessons applicable to all children
– abnormality is normal
– disability changes over time
– adulthood may be better or worse
than present
– diagnosis depends on social context
Pervasive Developmental
Disorders
• Severe problems that affect many
aspects of psychological growth
Incidence
• Autism—inability to relate in
ordinary ways to others
– extreme self-absorption, inability
to learn normal speech
– quite rare; occurs in about 1 of
every 2,000 children
Possible Causes
• Particular genes may make some
embryos more vulnerable than others
– teratogens may increase genetic
weakness
• Theory that childhood immunization
may cause genetic weakness has been
disproved
• Other theories are under
investigation
Changes over Time
• Asperger syndrome—less severe autism
– good communication, poor social perceptions
• Early Pervasive Developmental Disorder
– Child has deficiencies in three areas
• ability to communicate
• social skills
• imaginative play
Changes over Time, cont.
• In later childhood and beyond
– child may lack
• awareness of thoughts of other
people
• theory of mind
• emotional regulation
Attention-Deficit
Disorders
• ADD—Attention-Deficit Disorder
• AD/HD—Attention-Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder
– most common type
– lack of concentration accompanied
by excitability, impulsivity, need to
be active
• easily frustrated and quicktempered
Attention-Deficit Disorders, cont.
• Possible Causes
– neurological
– genetic vulnerability
• teratogens
– postnatal damage
• e.g., lead poisoning
Learning Disabilities
• Half of all ADD children also have
learning disability
• Learning-disabled—having a marked
delay in a particular area of learning
not associated with any physical
handicap, overall mental retardation,
or unusually stressful home
environment
Learning Disabilities, cont.
• Dyslexia—unusual difficulty with
reading
– Most common learning disability
• Indications of learning disabilities
– may be advanced in comprehension
through use of contextual clues, but
behind in ability to match letters to
sounds
– discrepancy between aptitude and
achievement scores on intelligence
tests
Treatment of AttentionDeficit Disorders
• Help for children with ADHD
– drugs with reverse effect
• 11 million prescriptions for Ritalin in 1999
– ongoing changes at home and school
– psychological therapy for child and family
– structure of classroom
• too rigid or too loose harmful
• flexible structure helpful
Educating Children with
Special Needs
• Mainstreaming—federal policy under
which children with special needs
must be taught in the least
restrictive environment —which
usually means placing them with other
children in the general classroom
Educating Children with Special
Needs, cont.
• Least restrictive environment (LRE)—
legally required school setting that
offers children with special needs as
much freedom as possible to benefit
from the instruction available to
other children; often, in the general
classroom
Educating Children with Special
Needs, cont.
• Some schools set aside a resource
room where children with special
needs spend part of the day with a
specially trained teacher equipped to
work with the disability
Educating Children with Special
Needs, cont.
• Inclusion—a policy under which learningdisabled children are included in the
regular class, but are supervised by a
specially trained teacher or paraprofessional for all or part of the day
– leading toward integration: each child
within a regular classroom is a vital part
of that social and educational group
Conclusion
• Parents should be taught specific
ways to encourage their children to
show appropriate behavior
• If problem undiagnosed, intervention
may not begin when it should and may
also be less effective
• Both home and school context make a
difference