PSYC 4220 1st Edition Lect ure 25 Outline of Last Lecture I II III Social Learning in Gender Gender Schema Theory Physical Development in Middle Childhood A Body Growth B Malnutrition and Obesity Outline of Current Lecture I II III IV Treatment Motor Development Brain Development Language Development Current Lecture Obesity continued Not enough exercise PE becomes less frequent with age as academics become more important they do less sport with technology improvements they are playing more video games and watching more TV so they are more sedentary Treatment To truly fix the issue the whole family needs to be on board and make changes It is hard to fix this issue because you don t want to put too much emphasis on weight so that they become obsessed with it Generally we don t put kids on diets because they need enough nutrients Instead we help them improve eating habits and increasing physical activity Eating less fast food and eating out less can help Don t put them in a sport they don t like or are bad at because then they will feel like failures and just want to drop out Make it fun and allow them to pick something they enjoy Limit screen time TV computer video games etc Motor Development Gross motor skills improvement in balance agility force reaction time Improvement in fine motor skills using buttons tying shoes better hand writing drawing is more realistic and more organized Gender differences continue throughout this time period Boys can jump higher run longer are stronger Girls have better balance hopping on one foot coordinating their bodies and fine motor skills Some of the differences in strength are biologically driven because they have a little more muscle mass But if you look at boys and girls participating in the same activities at this age their levels are about the same It has a lot more to do with what activities they are participating in American Academy of Pediatrics boys and girls should engage in same types of sports in mixed gender until puberty The size difference at puberty becomes the major reason for separating teams by gender Children particularly boys who perform well physically are more popular with peers Brain Development Development of new synapses myelination thickening of cortex From 6 8 primary area motor and sensory cortexes Result improved fine motor skills hand eye coordination Increase in logical thought planning attention Increase in selective attention Piaget s Stages of Cognitive Development Concrete Operations 7 11 years Can perform mental actions on objects as long as they are not abstract o Can mentally process things like equal size balls of clay can categorize put things in order and count as long as what they are thinking about is concrete can t do abstract problem solving yet Master logical operations lacking in preoperational thinkers Understand conservation decentration acquire reversibility of thought Horizontal decalage not all skills of each stage are mastered at once develop conservation but not conservation of all things happen at same age Relational logic logic used to understand the relationship between objects Seriation mentally order objects along quantifiable dimension Transitivity understand logical relationship of objects in a series o Show kids 3 sticks point out the stick A is longer then B and B is longer than C and then ask if A is longer than C older kids can use logic to figure this out they don t have to see it Major limitation organized logical thinking only when dealing with concrete physical world Can not think logically about abstract or hypothetical problems Language Development School age children continue to Build vocabulary 20 words per say 40 000 by age 11 Increased understanding of morphology exposure to written word helps