MODULE 8 MIDDLE AND LATE CHILDHOOD

This module is intended for the AB PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS OF TARLAC STATE UNIVERSITY
ONLY to address THE BLENDED LEARNING SCHEME for A.Y. 2022-2023 as implemented by
the Commission on Higher Education brought by the COVID -19 pandemic. Parts of this
module were directly lifted and adapted from different sources, then were compiled. All
credits and rights are reserved to the authors and/ or owners. No reproduction of any part of this
module may be used, sold, or distributed for commercial purposes or be changed or edited in other
business, work, or publication, whether in print or electronic copies unless prior permission has been
granted.

I. LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After completing this module, you should be able to:

▪ Describe physical changes and health in middle and late childhood.

▪ Identify children with different types of disabilities and discuss issues in educating them.
▪ Explain cognitive changes in middle and late childhood.
▪ Discuss language development in middle and late childhood.
▪ Discuss emotional and personality development in middle and late childhood.
▪ Describe developmental changes in parent-child relationships, parents as managers, attachment in
families, and stepfamilies.
▪ Identify changes in peer relationships in middle and late childhood.

PHYSICAL CHANGES AND HEALTH IN MIDDLE AND LATE CHILDHOOD

BODY GROWTH AND CHANGE
▪ The period of middle and late childhood involves slow, consistent growth (Hockenberry,
▪ Wilson, & Rodgers, 2017). This is a period of calm before the rapid growth spurt of adolescence. During the
elementary school years, children grow an average of 2 to 3 inches a year until, at the age of 11, the average
girl is 4 feet, 10 inches tall, and the average boy is 4 feet, 9 inches tall. During the middle and late childhood
years, children gain about 5 to 7 pounds a year. The weight increase is due mainly to increases in the size
of the skeletal and muscular systems, as well as the size of some body organs.
BRAIN
▪ Total brain volume stabilizes by the end of late childhood, but significant changes in various structures and
regions of the brain continue to occur. In particular, the brain pathways and circuitry involving the
prefrontal cortex, the highest level in the brain, continue to increase during middle and late childhood (see
Figure 1). These advances in the prefrontal cortex are linked to children’s improved attention, reasoning,
and cognitive control (de Haan & Johnson, 2016; Wendelken & others, 2016, 2017).
▪ Changes also occur in the thickness of the cerebral cortex (cortical thickness) in middle and late childhood
(Thomason & Thompson, 2011).
▪ Cortical thickening across a two-year time period was observed in the temporal and frontal lobe areas that
function in language, which may reflect improvements in language abilities such as reading.
▪ One shift in activation that occurs as children develop is from diffuse, larger areas to more focal, smaller
areas (Turkeltaub & others, 2003). This shift is characterized by synaptic pruning, a process in which areas
of the brain that are not being used lose synaptic connections and areas that are used show increased
connections.
▪ Individuals from 6 to 22 years of age, connectivity between the prefrontal and parietal lobes in childhood
was linked to better reasoning ability later in development (Wendelken & others, 2017). (Santrock, 2019)

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MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
▪ During middle and late childhood, children’s motor skills become much smoother and more coordinated
than they were in early childhood (Hockenberry, Wilson, & Rodgers, 2017). Running, climbing, skipping
rope, swimming, bicycle riding, and skating are just a few of the many physical skills elementary school
children can master. In gross motor skills involving large muscle activity, boys usually outperform girls.
▪ Increased myelination of the central nervous system is reflected in the improvement of fine motor skills
during middle and late childhood.
▪ By 7 years of age, children’s hands have become steadier. At this age, children prefer a pencil to a crayon
for printing, and reversal of letters is less common. Printing becomes smaller. At 8 to 10 years of age, the
hands can be used independently with more ease and precision. Fine motor coordination develops to the
point at which children can write rather than print words. Cursive letter size becomes smaller and more
even. At 10 to 12 years of age, children begin to show manipulative skills similar to the abilities of adults.
They can master the complex, intricate, and rapid movements needed to produce fine-quality crafts or to
play a difficult piece on a musical instrument. Girls usually outperform boys in their use of fine motor skills.

EXERCISE
▪ Increasing children’s exercise levels has a number of positive outcomes (Dumuid & others, 2017; Walton-
Fisette & Wuest, 2018).
▪ 55 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity daily was associated with a lower incidence
of obesity (Nemet, 2016).
▪ Exercise programs with a frequency of three weekly sessions lasting longer than 60 minutes were effective
in lowering both systolic and diastolic blood pressure (Garcia-Hermoso, Saavedra, & Escalante, 2013).
▪ Aerobic exercise benefits children’s processing speed, attention, memory, effortful and goal-directed
thinking and behavior, and creativity (Chu & others, 2017; Davis & Cooper, 2011; Davis & others, 2011; Khan
& Hillman, 2014; Lind & others, 2018; Ludyga & others, 2018; Monti, Hillman, & Cohen, 2012; Pan & others,
2017).
▪ Sustained physical activity programs were linked to improvements in children’s attention, executive
function, and academic achievement (de Greeff & others, 2018).
▪ 6-week high-intensity exercise program with 7- to 13-year-olds improved their cognitive control and
working memory (Moreau, Kirk, & Waldie, 2018).
▪ A daily instructor led aerobic exercise program that lasted eight months was effective in improving the
efficiency of neural circuits that support better cognitive functioning (Kraftt & others, 2014).
▪ Screen time also is linked with low activity, obesity, and worse sleep patterns in children (Tanaka & others,
2017).
▪ Higher level of screen time increased the risk of obesity for low- and high-activity children (Lane, Harrison,
& Murphy, 2014)
▪ 8- to 12-year-olds found that screen time was associated with lower connectivity between brain regions, as
well as lower levels of language skills and cognitive control (Horowitz-Kraus & Hutton, 2018)

HEALTH, ILLNESS, AND DISEASE

▪ Injuries are the leading cause of death during middle and late childhood, and the most common cause of
severe injury and death in this period is motor vehicle accidents, either as a pedestrian or as a passenger
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017c).

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 ▪ Overweight is defined in terms of body mass index (BMI), which is computed by a formula that takes into
account height and weight—children at or above the 97th percentile are included in the obesity category,
at or above the 95th percentile in the overweight category, and children at or above the 85th percentile
are described as at risk for being overweight (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017b).
▪ Heredity and environmental contexts are related to being overweight in childhood (Insel & Roth, 2018;
Yanovski & Yanovski, 2018). Genetic analysis indicates that heredity is an important factor in children
becoming overweight (Donatelle, 2019). Overweight parents tend to have overweight children (Pufal &
others, 2012).
▪ Parents and their children often have similar body types, height, body fat composition, and metabolism
(Pereira-Lancha & others, 2012).
▪ Greater availability of food (especially food high in fat content), energy-saving devices, declining physical
activity, parents’ eating habits and monitoring of children’s eating habits, the context in which a child eats,
and heavy screen time (Ren & others, 2017)
▪ Children were less likely to be obese or overweight when they attended schools in states that had a strong
policy emphasis on healthy foods and beverages (Datar & Nicosia, 2017).
▪ Consequences of being Overweight
o The high percentage of overweight children in recent decades is cause for great concern because
being overweight raises the risk for many medical and psychological problems (Powers & Dodd,
2017; Schiff, 2019; Song & others, 2018).
o Diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), and elevated blood cholesterol levels are common
in children who are overweight (Chung, Onuzuruike, & Magge, 2018; Martin-Espinosa & others,
2017).
o Obesity was linked with low self-esteem in children (Gomes & others, 2011; Moharei & others,
2018).
o Overweight children were more likely than normal-weight children to report being teased by their
peers and family members (McCormack & others, 2011).
▪ Cardiovascular Disease
o Environmental experiences and behavior during childhood can sow the seeds for cardiovascular
disease in adulthood (Schaefer & others, 2017).
o Many elementary-school-aged children already possess one or more of the risk factors for
cardiovascular disease, such as hypertension (high blood pressure) and obesity (Chung,
Onuzuruike, & Magge, 2018; Zoller & others, 2017).
o Also in a longitudinal study, high levels of body fat and elevated blood pressure beginning in
childhood were linked to premature death from coronary heart disease in adulthood (Berenson &
others, 2016).
▪ Cancer
o Childhood cancers mainly attack the white blood cells (leukemia), brain, bone, lymph system,
muscles, kidneys, and nervous system. All types of cancer are characterized by an uncontrolled
proliferation of abnormal cells (Marcoux & others, 2018).

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TYPES OF DISABILITIES AND DISCUSS ISSUES IN EDUCATING THEM

SCOPE OF DISABILITIES

▪ Students with a learning disability were by far the largest group of students with a disability to be given
special education, followed by children with speech or hearing impairments, autism, intellectual disability,
and emotional disturbance
▪ Learning Disabilities
o A child with a learning disability has difficulty in learning that involves understanding or using
spoken or written language, and the difficulty can appear in listening, thinking, reading, writing,
and spelling. A learning disability also may involve difficulty in doing mathematics (McCaskey &
others, 2017, 2018).
o The learning problem is not primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities; intellectual
disability; emotional disorders; or environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage (Friend,
2018; Heward, Alber-Morgan, & Konrad, 2017). Among the explanations for this gender difference
are a greater biological vulnerability among boys and referral bias. That is, boys are more likely to
be referred by teachers for treatment because of troublesome behavior.
o Three types of learning disabilities:
▪ Dyslexia is a category reserved for individuals who have a severe impairment in their
ability to read and spell (Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2017).
▪ Dysgraphia is a learning disability that involves difficulty in handwriting (Hook & Haynes,
2017). Children with dysgraphia may write very slowly, their writing products may be
virtually illegible, and they may make numerous spelling errors because of their inability
to match sounds and letters.
▪ Dyscalculia, also known as developmental arithmetic disorder, is a learning disability that
involves difficulty in math computation (McCaskey & others, 2017, 2018; Nelson &
Powell, 2018).
o Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
▪ Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a disability in which children
consistently show one or more of the following characteristics over a period of time:
• Children who are inattentive have such difficulty focusing on any one thing that
they may get bored with a task after only a few minutes—or even seconds.
• Children who are hyperactive show high levels of physical activity, seeming to be
almost constantly in motion.
• Children who are impulsive have difficulty curbing their reactions; they do not
do a good job of thinking before they act.
▪ Regardless of the symptoms described, boys were twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed
as having ADHD.
▪ ADHD have an increased risk of lower academic achievement, problematic peer relations,
school dropout, adolescent pregnancy, substance use problems, and antisocial behavior
(Machado & others, 2018; Regnart, Truter, & Meyer, 2017).
▪ ADHD was associated with long-term underachievement in math and reading (Voigt &
others, 2017).

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 ▪ typically developing girls, girls with ADHD had more problems in friendship, peer
interaction, social skills, and peer victimization (Kok & others, 2016).
▪ ADHD in childhood was linked to the following long-term outcomes: failure to complete
high school, other mental and substance use disorders, criminal activity, and
unemployment (Erskine & others, 2016).
▪ ADHD were more likely to become parents at 12 to 16 years of age (Ostergaard & others,
2017).
▪ Some children likely inherit a tendency to develop ADHD from their parents (Hess &
others, 2018; Walton & others, 2017).
▪ Other children likely develop ADHD because of damage to their brain during prenatal or
postnatal development (Bos & others, 2017).
▪ Among early possible contributors to ADHD are cigarette and alcohol exposure, as well as
a high level of maternal stress during prenatal development and low birth weight
(Scheinost & others, 2017).
COGNITIVE CHANGES IN MIDDLE AND LATE CHILDHOOD

The Concrete Operational Stage

▪ Piaget proposed that the concrete operational stage lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age. In this
stage, children can perform concrete operations, and they can reason logically as long as reasoning can be
applied to specific or concrete examples. Remember that operations are mental actions that are reversible,
and concrete operations are operations that are applied to real, concrete objects.
▪ Concrete operations allow the child to consider several characteristics rather than focusing on a single
property of an object. In the clay example, the preoperational child is likely to focus on height or width. The
concrete operational child coordinates information about both dimensions.
▪ One important skill is the ability to classify or divide things into different sets or subsets and to consider
their interrelationships.
▪ Children who have reached the concrete operational stage are also capable of seriation, which is the ability
to order stimuli along a quantitative dimension (such as length).
▪ Another aspect of reasoning about the relations between classes is transitivity, which is the ability to
logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions. (Santrock, 2019)
INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence is the ability to solve problems and to adapt and learn from experiences. Interest in intelligence has
often focused on individual differences and assessment. Individual differences are the stable, consistent ways in
which people differ from each other (Sackett & others, 2017).

The Binet Tests

o In 1904, the French Ministry of Education asked psychologist Alfred Binet to devise a method of
identifying children who were unable to learn in school.
o Binet and his student Theophile Simon developed an intelligence test to meet this request. The
test is called the 1905 Scale. It consisted of 30 questions on topics ranging from the ability to touch
one’s ear to the ability to draw designs from memory and define abstract concepts.

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 o Binet developed the concept of mental age (MA), an individual’s level of mental development
relative to others. Not much later, in 1912, William Stern created the concept of intelligence
quotient (IQ), a person’s mental age divided by chronological age (CA), multiplied by 100; that is,
IQ = MA/CA × 100. If mental age is the same as chronological age, then the person’s IQ is 100. If
mental age is above chronological age, then IQ is more than 100. If mental age is below
chronological age, then IQ is less than 100.
o In 2004, the test—now called the Stanford Binet 5—was revised to analyze an individual’s response
in five content areas: fluid reasoning, knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial reasoning,
and working memory.
o By administering the test to large numbers of people of different ages (from preschool through
late adulthood) from different backgrounds, researchers have found that scores on the Stanford-
Binet approximate a normal distribution A normal distribution is symmetrical, with a majority of
the scores falling in the middle of the possible range of scores and much fewer scores appearing
toward the extremes of the range.
The Wechsler Scale

o Another set of widely used tests to assess students’ intelligence is called the Wechsler scales,
developed by psychologist David Wechsler. They include the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale
of Intelligence—Fourth Edition (WPPSI-IV) to test children from 2.5 years to 7.25 years of age; the
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fifth Edition (WISC-V) for children and adolescents 6 to
16 years of age; and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale— Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV).
o The WISC-V now not only provides an overall IQ score but also yields five composite scores (Verbal
Comprehension, Working Memory, Processing Speed, Fluid Reasoning, and Visual Spatial)
(Canivez, Watkins, & Dombrowski, 2017). These scores allow the examiner to quickly see whether
the individual is strong or weak in different areas of intelligence.
Sternberg Triarchic Theory

o Robert J. Sternberg developed the triarchic theory of intelligence, which states that intelligence
comes in three forms: (1) analytical intelligence, which refers to the ability to analyze, judge,
evaluate, compare, and contrast; (2) creative intelligence, which consists of the ability to create,
design, invent, originate, and imagine; and (3) practical intelligence, which involves the ability to
use, apply, implement, and put ideas into practice.
o Sternberg (2017a, b, 2018a, b, c, d) says that children with different triarchic patterns “look
different” in school. Students with high analytic ability tend to be favored in conventional
schooling. They often do well under direct instruction, in which the teacher lectures and gives
students objective tests.
o In contrast, children who are high in creative intelligence often are not on the top rung of their
class. Many teachers have specific expectations about how assignments should be done, and
creatively intelligent students may not conform to those expectations. Instead of giving conformist
answers, they give unique answers, for which they might get reprimanded or marked down.
o Like children high in creative intelligence, children with predominantly practical intelligence often
do not relate well to the demands of school. However, many of these children do well outside of
the classroom’s walls.

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Gardner’s Eight Frames of Mind

o Howard Gardner (1983, 1993, 2002, 2016) suggests there are eight types of intelligence, or “frames
of mind.” These are described here, with examples of the types of vocations in which they are
regarded as strengths (Campbell, Campbell, & Dickinson, 2004):
▪ Verbal: The ability to think in words and use language to express meaning. Occupations:
authors, journalists, speakers.
▪ Mathematical: The ability to carry out mathematical operations. Occupations: scientists,
engineers, accountants.
▪ Spatial: The ability to think three-dimensionally. Occupations: architects, artists, sailors.
▪ Bodily-kinesthetic: The ability to manipulate objects and be physically adept.
Occupations: surgeons, craftspeople, dancers, athletes.
▪ Musical: A sensitivity to pitch, melody, rhythm, and tone. Occupations: composers and
musicians.
▪ Interpersonal: The ability to understand and interact effectively with others. Occupations:
successful teachers, mental health professionals.
▪ Intrapersonal: The ability to understand oneself. Occupations: theologians, psychologists.
▪ Naturalist: The ability to observe patterns in nature and understand natural and
humanmade systems. Occupations: farmers, botanists, ecologists, landscapers.
According to Gardner, everyone has all of these intelligences to varying degrees. As a result, we prefer to
learn and process information in different ways. People learn best when they can do so in a way that uses
their stronger intelligences. (Santrock, 2019)

EXTREMES OF INTELLIGENCE

• Intellectual Disability. The most distinctive feature of intellectual disability (formerly called mental
retardation) is inadequate intellectual functioning. Long before formal tests were developed to
assess intelligence, individuals with an intellectual disability were identified by a lack of age-
appropriate skills in learning and caring for themselves.
• Such differences in social competence led psychologists to include deficits in adaptive behavior in
their definition of intellectual disability.
• Intellectual disability is a condition of limited mental ability in which the individual (1) has a low
IQ, usually below 70 on a traditional intelligence test; (2) has difficulty adapting to the demands of
everyday life; and (3) first exhibits these characteristics by age 18 (Heward, Alber-Morgan, &
Konrad, 2017).
• Organic intellectual disability describes a genetic disorder or a lower level of intellectual
functioning caused by brain damage. Down syndrome is one form of organic intellectual disability,
and it occurs when an extra chromosome is present.
• When no evidence of organic brain damage can be found, cases are labeled cultural familial
intellectual disability. Individuals with this type of disability have IQs between 55 and 70.
Psychologists suspect that this type of disability often results from growing up in a below average
intellectual environment. Children with this type of disability can be identified in schools, where
they often fail, need tangible rewards (candy rather than praise), and are highly sensitive to what
others expect of them.

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Giftedness

People who are gifted have above-average intelligence (an IQ of 130 or higher) and/or superior talent
for something. There also are increasing calls to further widen the criteria for giftedness to include such
factors as creativity and commitment (Sternberg, 2017c; Sternberg, 2018g; Sternberg & Kaufman,
2018a). Characteristics of giftedness:

o Precocity. Gifted children begin to master an area earlier than their peers. Learning in
their domain is more effortless for them than for ordinary children.
o Marching to their own drummer. Gifted children learn in a qualitatively different way
from ordinary children. One way that they march to a different drummer is that they need
minimal help, or scaffolding, from adults to learn.
o A passion to master. Gifted children are driven to understand the domain in which they
have high ability. They display an intense, obsessive interest and an ability to focus.
• Individuals who are gifted recall that they had signs of high ability in a particular area at a very
young age, prior to or at the beginning of formal training. This suggests the importance of
innate ability in giftedness. However, researchers have also found that individuals with world-
class status in the arts, mathematics, science, and sports all report strong family support and
years of training and practice (Bloom, 1985).
• Individuals who are highly gifted are typically not gifted in many domains, and research on
giftedness is increasingly focused on domain-specific developmental trajectories (Sternberg &
Kaufman, 2018a; Winner, 2014).

LANGAUGE DEVELOPMENT

• Vocabulary
o At about 7 years of age, children begin to respond with a word that is the same part of speech
as the stimulus word. For example, a child may now respond to the word dog with “cat” or
“horse.” To eat, they now might say “drink.” This is evidence that children now have begun to
categorize their vocabulary by parts of speech.
o The process of categorizing becomes easier as children increase their vocabulary (Clark, 2012,
2017). Children’s vocabulary increases from an average of about 14,000 words at age 6 to an
average of about 40,000 words by age 11.
o During the elementary school years, children’s improvement in logical reasoning and
analytical skills helps them understand such constructions as the appropriate use of
comparatives (shorter, deeper) and subjunctives (“If you were president . . .”)
o During the elementary school years, children become increasingly able to understand and use
complex grammar, such as the following sentence: The boy who kissed his mother wore a hat.
They also learn to use language in a more connected way, producing connected discourse.
o These advances in vocabulary and grammar during the elementary school years are
accompanied by the development of metalinguistic awareness, which is knowledge about
language, such as understanding what a preposition is or being able to discuss the sounds of

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 a language (Schiff, Nuri Ben-Shushan, & Ben-Artzi, 2017; Tong, Deacon, & Cain, 2014; Yeon,
Bae, & Joshi, 2017). Metalinguistic awareness allows children “to think about their language,
understand what words are, and even define them” (Berko Gleason, 2009, p. 4).
o Children also make progress in understanding how to use language in culturally appropriate
ways—a process called pragmatics (Beguin, 2016; Bryant, 2012). By the time they enter
adolescence, most children know the rules for using language in everyday contexts—that is,
what is appropriate and inappropriate to say.
• Reading
o Vocabulary development plays an important role in reading comprehension (Vacca & others,
2018). How should children be taught to read? For many years debate focuses on the whole-
language approach versus the phonics approach (Fox & Alexander, 2017; Reutzel & Cooter,
2019).
o The whole-language approach stresses that reading instruction should parallel children’s
natural language learning. In some whole language classes, beginning readers are taught to
recognize whole words or even entire sentences, and to use the context of what they are
reading to guess at the meaning of words. Reading materials that support the whole-language
approach are whole and meaningful—that is, children are given material in its complete form,
such as stories and poems, so that they learn to understand language’s communicative
function.
o The phonics approach emphasizes that reading instruction should teach basic rules for
translating written symbols into sounds. Early phonics-centered reading instruction should
involve simplified materials. Only after children have learned correspondence rules that relate
spoken phonemes to the alphabet letters that are used to represent them should they be
given complex reading materials, such as books and poems ( Cunningham, 2017; Fox &
Alexander, 2017; Leu & Kinzer, 2017).
• Writing
o Like becoming a good reader, becoming a good writer takes many years and lots of practice
(Graham & Harris, 2017; Tompkins, 2019). Children should be given many writing
opportunities. As their language and cognitive skills improve with good instruction, so will
their writing skills.
o The metacognitive strategies involved in being a competent writer are linked with those
required to be a competent reader because the writing process involves competent reading
and rereading during composition and revision (Graham & Harris, 2018; Harris & others,
2018).
• Second Language Learning
o For many years, it was claimed that if individuals did not learn a second language prior to
puberty they would never reach native-language learners’ proficiency in the second language
(Johnson & Newport, 1991).
o Children’s ability to pronounce words with a native-like accent in a second language typically
decreases with age, with an especially sharp drop occurring after the age of about 10 to 12.
o Children who are fluent in two languages perform better than their single-language
counterparts on tests of control of attention, concept formation, analytical reasoning,

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 inhibition, cognitive flexibility, cognitive complexity, and cognitive monitoring ( Bialystok,
2001, 2007, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2017; Bialystok & Craik, 2010; Sullivan & others, 2014).
o Recent research also documented that bilingual children are better at theory of mind tasks
(Rubio-Fernandez, 2017). They also are more conscious of the structure of spoken and written
language and better at noticing errors of grammar and meaning, skills that benefit their
reading ability (Bialystok, 1997; Kuo & Anderson, 2012). (Santrock, 2019)
EMOTIONAL AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE AND LATE CHILDHOOD
DEVELOPMENT OF SELF UNDERSTANDING
▪ From 8 to 11 years of age, children increasingly describe themselves in terms of psychological characteristics
and traits, in contrast with the more concrete self-descriptions of younger children.
▪ Older children are more likely to describe themselves using adjectives such as “popular, nice, helpful, mean,
smart, and dumb” (Harter, 2006, p. 526). In addition, during the elementary school years, children become
more likely to recognize social aspects of the self (Harter, 2012, 2013, 2016). They include references to
social groups in their self-descriptions.
▪ Children are more likely to distinguish themselves from others in comparative rather than in absolute terms
but are more likely to think about what they can do in comparison with others.
▪ Children older than 7 included socially comparative information in their self-descriptions. In sum, in middle
and late childhood, self-description increasingly involves psychological and social characteristics, including
social comparison.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
▪ In middle and late childhood, perspective taking, the social cognitive process involved in assuming the
perspective of others and understanding their thoughts and feelings, improves. Executive function is at
work in perspective taking (Galinsky, 2010).
▪ Recent research indicates that children and adolescents who do not have good perspective taking skills are
more likely to have difficulty in peer relations and engage in more aggressive and oppositional behavior
(Morosan & others, 2017; Nilsen & Basco, 2017; O’Kearney & others, 2017).
▪ In Robert Selman’s (1980) view, at about 6 to 8 years of age, children begin to understand that others may
have a different perspective because some people have more access to information. Then, he says, in the
next several years, children begin to realize that each individual is aware of the other’s perspective and that
putting oneself in the other’s place is a way of judging the other person’s intentions, purposes, and actions.
▪ Perspective taking is thought to be especially important in determining whether children develop prosocial
or antisocial attitudes and behavior. In terms of prosocial behavior, taking another’s perspective improves
children’s likelihood of understanding and sympathizing with others when they are distressed or in need.

SELF ESTEEM AND SELF CONCEPT

▪ High self-esteem and a positive self-concept are important characteristics of children’s well-being
(Baumeister, 2013; Miller & Cho, 2018; Oberle, 2018). Self-esteem refers to global evaluations of the self;
it is also called self-worth or self-image.
▪ Self-concept refers to domain-specific evaluations of the self. Children can make self-evaluations in many
domains of their lives—academic, athletic, appearance, and so on. In sum, self-esteem refers to global self-
evaluations, self-concept to domain-specific evaluations
▪ The foundations of self-esteem and self-concept emerge from the quality of parent-child interaction in
infancy and early childhood (Miller & Cho, 2018). Thus, if children have low self-esteem in middle and late

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 childhood, they may have experienced neglect or abuse in relationships with their parents earlier in
development. Children with high self-esteem are more likely to be securely attached to parents and have
parents who engage in sensitive caregiving (Lockhart & others, 2017; Thompson, 2016). Self-esteem reflects
perceptions that do not always match reality (Baumeister, 2013; Cramer, 2017).
▪ Thus, high self-esteem may refer to accurate, justified perceptions of one’s worth as a person and one’s
successes and accomplishments, but it can also refer to an arrogant, grandiose, unwarranted sense of
superiority over others (Gerstenberg & others, 2014). In the same manner, low self-esteem may reflect
either an accurate perception of one’s shortcomings or a distorted, even pathological insecurity and
inferiority.
▪ Low self-esteem has been implicated in overweight and obesity, anxiety, depression, suicide, and
delinquency (Paxton & Damiano, 2017; Rieger & others, 2016; Stadelmann & others, 2017). One study
revealed that youths with low self-esteem had lower life satisfaction at 30 years of age (Birkeland & others,
2012). Another study found that low and decreasing self-esteem in adolescence was linked to adult
depression two decades later (Steiger & others, 2014).
▪ Children with high self-esteem are more likely to be securely attached to their parents and to have parents
who engage in sensitive caregiving (Thompson, 2015). And in a longitudinal study, the quality of children’s
home environment (which involved assessment of parenting quality, cognitive stimulation, and the physical
home environment) was linked to their self-esteem in early adulthood (Orth, 2017).
▪ Children with high self-esteem have greater initiative, but this can produce positive or negative outcomes
(Baumeister & others, 2003). Children with high self-esteem are prone to both prosocial and antisocial
actions (Krueger, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2008).

SELF REGULATION
▪ One of the most important aspects of the self in middle and late childhood is an increased capacity for self-
regulation (Blair, 2017; Galinsky & others, 2017; Neuenschwander & Blair, 2017; Schunk & Greene, 2018;
Usher & Schunk, 2018; Winne, 2018). This increased capacity is characterized by deliberate efforts to
manage one’s behavior, emotions, and thoughts, leading to increased social competence and achievement
(Blair, 2017; Eisenberg, 2017; McClelland & others, 2017; Schunk & Greene, 2018).
▪ A study of almost 17,000 3- to 7-year-old children revealed that self-regulation was a protective factor for
children growing up in low-socioeconomic-status (SES) conditions (Flouri, Midouhas, & Joshi, 2014). In this
study, 7-year-old children with low self-regulation living in low-SES conditions had more emotional
problems than their 3-year-old counterparts with higher self-regulation. Thus, low self-regulation was
linked to a widening gap in low-SES children’s emotional problems over time.
▪ The increased capacity for self-regulation is linked to developmental advances in the brain’s prefrontal
cortex (Bell, Ross, & Patton, 2018; Wendelken & others, 2016).
▪ Increased focal activation in the prefrontal cortex that is linked to improved cognitive control, which
includes self-regulation (Diamond, 2013).
▪ Self-regulation fosters conscientiousness later in life, both directly and through its link to academic
motivation/success and internalized compliance with norms.

INDUSTRY VERSUS INFERIORITY

▪ Erik Erikson’s fourth stage, industry versus inferiority, appears during middle and late childhood. The term
industry expresses a dominant theme of this period: Children become interested in how things are made

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 and how they work. When children are encouraged in their efforts to make, build, and work—whether
building a model airplane, constructing a tree house, fixing a bicycle, solving an addition problem, or
cooking—their sense of industry increases. However, parents who see their children’s efforts at making
things as “mischief” or “making a mess” encourage children’s development of a sense of inferiority.
▪ Children’s social worlds beyond their families also contribute to a sense of industry. School becomes
especially important in this regard.

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
▪ Emotional Changes:
o Improved emotional understanding.
o Increased understanding that more than one emotion can be experienced in a particular situation.
o Increased tendency to be aware of the events leading to emotional reactions.
o Ability to suppress or conceal negative emotional reactions.
o The use of self-initiated strategies for redirecting feelings
o A capacity for genuine empathy.

MORAL DEVELOPMENT
▪ Piaget proposed that younger children are characterized by heteronomous morality—but that by 10 years
of age they have moved into a higher stage called autonomous morality. According to Piaget, older children
consider the intentions of the individual, believe that rules are subject to change, and are aware that
punishment does not always follow wrongdoing.
▪ A second major perspective on moral development was proposed by Lawrence Kohlberg (1958, 1986) who
suggested that there are three levels of moral development. These levels, he argued, are universal.
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.
▪ A key concept in understanding progression through the levels is that the person’s morality gradually
becomes more internal or mature. That is, their reasons for moral decisions or values begin to go beyond
the external or superficial reasons they gave when they were younger.
▪ Kohlberg’s Three levels of Moral Development:
o Level 1: Preconventional Reasoning Preconventional reasoning is the lowest level of moral
reasoning in Kohlberg’s theory. At this level, children interpret good and bad in terms of external
rewards and punishments. Or they might be nice to others so that others will be nice to them. This
earliest level has sometimes been described as “What’s in it for me?”
o Level 2: Conventional Reasoning Conventional reasoning is the second, or intermediate, level in
Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. Individuals abide by certain standards (internal), but they
are the standards of others, such as parents or the laws of society.
o Level 3: Postconventional Reasoning Postconventional reasoning is the third and highest level in
Kohlberg’s theory. At this level, morality is more internal. Also, in postconventional reasoning,
individuals engage in deliberate checks on their reasoning to ensure that it meets high ethical
standards.

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 ▪ Kohlberg maintained that these levels occur in a sequence and are age-related: Before age 9, most children
use level 1, preconventional reasoning based on external rewards and punishments, when they consider
moral choices.
▪ Carol Gilligan argues that Kohlberg’s theory is gender biased and reflects a justice perspective. In contrast,
Gilligan argues for a care perspective, which is a moral perspective that views people in terms of their
connectedness with others and emphasizes interpersonal communication, relationships with others, and
concern for others.

GENDER
▪ Gender stereotypes are broad categories that reflect our impressions and beliefs about females and males.
▪ By the time children enter elementary school, they have considerable knowledge about which activities are
linked with being male or female. Until about 7 to 8 years of age, gender stereotyping is extensive because
young children don’t recognize individual variations in masculinity and femininity. By 5 years of age, both
boys and girls stereotype boys as powerful and in more negative terms, such as mean, and girls in more
positive terms, such as nice (Martin & Ruble, 2010).
▪ Gender Similarities and Differences
▪ Females
o Women have about twice the body fat of men, most of it concentrated around their breasts and
hips. In males, fat is more likely to go to the abdomen.
o Females have a longer life expectancy than males, and females are less likely than males to develop
physical or mental disorders.
o Female brains are approximately 10 percent smaller than male brains (Giedd, 2012; Giedd &
others, 2012).
o Female brains have more folds; the larger folds (called convolutions) allow more surface brain
tissue within the skulls of females than males (Luders & others, 2004).
o The areas of the brain involved in emotional expression show more metabolic activity in females
than males (Gur & others, 1995).
o Research has shown that in general girls and women have slightly better verbal skills than boys
and men, although in some verbal skill areas the differences are substantial (Blakemore,
Berenbaum, & Liben, 2009). Girls have more negative math attitudes
o There is strong evidence that females outperform males in reading and writing. Girls had higher
reading achievement than did boys in every country (Reilly, 2012).
o Girls earn better grades and complete high school at a higher rate, and they are less likely to drop
out of school than boys are (Halpern, 2012).
o Girls are more likely than boys to be engaged with academic material, be attentive in class, put
forth more academic effort, and participate more in class (DeZolt & Hull, 2001).
▪ Males
o Males grow to be 10 percent taller than females
o From conception on, Males have twice the risk of coronary disease compared with females
o A research review revealed that boys have better visuospatial skills than girls (Halpern & others,
2007). An area of the parietal lobe that functions in visuospatial skills is larger in males than
females (Frederikse & others, 2000).

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 o Parents’ and teachers’ expectancies for children’s math competence are often gender-biased in
favor of boys (Gunderson & others, 2012).
o A research review found that having a stronger masculine gender role was linked to better spatial
ability in males and females (Reilly & Neumann, 2013).
o Males are more likely than females to be assigned to special/remedial education classes. (DeZolt
& Hull, 2001).
▪ Socio Emotional Differences
▪ Females
o Girls engage in more relational aggression than boys in adolescence but not in childhood (Smith,
Rose, & Schwartz-Mette, 2010). Further, in a longitudinal study, preschool relational aggression
predicted adolescent relational aggression for girls, but not for boys (Nelson & others, 2014).
Verbal aggression is more pronounced in girls (Eagly & Steffen, 1986).
o Females express emotion more than do males, are better at decoding emotion, smile more, cry
more, and are happier (Gross, Fredrickson, & Levenson, 1994; LaFrance, Hecht, & Paluck, 2003).
o Females are better than males at recognizing nonverbal displays of emotion (Thompson & Voyer,
2014).
o Girls showed more positive emotions (sympathy, for example) and more internalized emotions
(sadness and anxiety, for example); The gender difference in positive emotions became more
pronounced with age as girls more strongly expressed positive emotions than boys in middle and
late childhood and in adolescence.
o Females engage in more prosocial behavior than males do (Hastings, Miller, & Troxel, 2015).
o Females are more likely than males to volunteer their time to help children with personal problems
and to engage in caregiving behavior.
▪ Males
o Boys are more physically aggressive than girls are (Hyde, 2017)
o The physical aggression difference is especially pronounced when children are provoked. Both
biological and environmental factors have been proposed to account for gender differences in
aggression. Biological factors include heredity and hormones. Environmental factors include
cultural expectations, adult and peer models, and social agents that reward aggression in boys and
punish aggression in girls
o Males report experiencing and expressing more anger than females do (Kring, 2000).
o Males feel a sense of competence and in circumstances that involve danger, males are more likely
than females to help (Eagly & Crowley, 1986).

DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGES IN PARENT-CHILD AND FAMILIAL RELATIONSHIPS

▪ Parents spent less than half as much time with their children aged 5 to 12 in caregiving, instruction, reading,
talking, and playing as they did when the children were younger (Hill & Stafford, 1980).
▪ Parents especially play an important role in supporting and stimulating children’s academic achievement in
middle and late childhood (Lansford & others, 2018; Longo & others, 2017).
▪ Parents not only influence children’s in-school achievement, but they also make decisions about children’s out-
of-school activities. Whether children participate in sports, music, and other activities is heavily influenced by
the extent to which parents sign up children for such activities and encourage their participation (Simpkins,
Fredricks, & Eccles, 2015).

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▪ Parents are more likely to use deprivation of privileges, appeals to the child’s self-esteem, comments designed
to increase the child’s sense of guilt, and statements that the child is responsible for his or her actions
▪ Parents continue to exercise general supervision and control, while children are allowed to engage in moment-
to-moment self-regulation.
▪ Family management practices are positively related to students’ grades and self- responsibility, and negatively
to school-related problems (Eccles, 2007; Taylor & Lopez, 2005). Among the most important are maintaining a
structured and organized family environment, such as establishing routines for homework, chores, bedtime,
and so on, and effectively monitoring the child’s behavior.
▪ When parents monitored their son’s academic achievement by ensuring that homework was completed, by
restricting time spent on nonproductive distractions (such as video games and TV), and by participating in a
consistent, positive dialogue with teachers and school officials, their son’s academic achievement benefited
(Mandara, 2006).
▪ In middle and late childhood, attachment becomes more sophisticated and as children’s social worlds expand
to include peers, teachers, and others, they typically spend less time with parents.
▪ Attachment to parents and various child outcomes in the middle and late childhood years and found that secure
attachment is associated with a lower level of internalized symptoms, anxiety, and depression in children
(Brumariu & Kerns, 2010; Kerns & Brumariu, 2016).

CHANGES IN PEER RELATIONSHIPS IN MIDDLE AND LATE CHILDHOOD

▪ As children enter the elementary school years, reciprocity becomes especially important in peer interchanges.
Researchers estimate that the percentage of time spent in social interaction with peers increases from
approximately 10 percent at 2 years of age to more than 30 percent in middle and late childhood (Rubin,
Bukowski, & Parker, 2006).
▪ As children move through middle and late childhood, the size of their peer group increases, and peer interaction
is less closely supervised by adults. Until about 12 years of age, children’s preference for same-sex peer groups
increases.
▪ Sociometric status, a term that describes the extent to which children are liked or disliked by their peer group
(Achterberg & others, 2017; Cillessen & Bukowski, 2018). Sociometric status is typically assessed by asking
children to rate how much they like or dislike each of their classmates.
▪ Developmentalists have distinguished five peer statuses (Wentzel & Asher, 1995):
o Popular children are frequently nominated as a best friend and are rarely disliked by their peers.
o Average children receive an average number of both positive and negative nominations from their
peers.
o Neglected children are infrequently nominated as a best friend but are not disliked by their peers.
o Rejected children are infrequently nominated as someone’s best friend and are actively disliked by
their peers.
o Controversial children are frequently nominated both as someone’s best friend and as being disliked.
▪ Popular children have many social skills that contribute to their being well liked (McDonald & Asher, 2018). They
give out reinforcements, listen carefully, maintain open lines of communication with peers, are happy, control
their negative emotions, show enthusiasm and concern for others, and are self-confident without being
conceited (Hartup, 1983; Rubin, Bukowski, & Bowker, 2015).
▪ Rejected children often have serious adjustment problems (Bukowski & others, 2015; Prinstein & others, 2018).
Peer rejection is consistently linked to the development and maintenance of conduct problems (Chen, Drabick,

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 & Burgers, 2015; Prinstein & others, 2018). Rejected children can be taught to more accurately assess whether
the intentions of their peers are negative (Bierman & Powers, 2009).
VII. REFERENCES

Boyd, D. G., & Bee, H. L. (2014). The Developing Child Thirteenth Edition. Edinburg: Pearson Education
Limited.

Boyd, D., & Bee, H. (2015). Lifespan Development 7th Edition. Essex, England: Pearson Education
LImited.

Feldman, R. S. (2018). Development Across the Life Span (8th ed.). England: Pearson.

Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life Span Development 17th edition. New York: Mcgraw Hill Education.

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