Cognitive and Psychosocial Development in Middle Childhood

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Interesting set of questions! Let's take a closer look through discussion, research and links for further research, which you can draw on for your final copy.

1. Explain and analyze one of the approaches to cognitive development in middle childhood.

The study of cognitive development in school age children has been the main focus of study over the past 25 years. Have you given some thought to what theory you would like to focus on? As a case in point, let's look at Piaget's approach to cognitive development in middle childhood.

Piagetian theme: Concrete Operational thinking (~age 7-11)

The concrete operational stage begins around age seven and continues until approximately age eleven. During this time, children gain a better understanding of mental operations. Children begin thinking logically about concrete events, but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/p/concreteop.htm).

What is the logic of a child in middle childhood? Piaget determined that children in the concrete operational stage were fairly good at the use of inductive logic. Inductive logic involves going from a specific experience to a general principle. On the other hand, children at this age have difficulty using deductive logic, which involves using a general principle to determine the outcome of a specific event (http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/p/concreteop.htm)

For example, concrete operational thinking of middle childhood is illustrated by certain conservation tasks such as pouring water between two different sized and / or shaped containers and the realization that the volume of water does not change. The child's thought is thus more mature (e.g., flexible, logical, and organized). Changes are also seen across many areas of cognition, such as:

a. Classification: Can group objects into hierarchies, classes and subclasses more efficiently
b. Seriation: The ability to order items along a quantitative dimension
c. Creating series: length or weight
d. Spatial Reasoning: Understanding of spatial relationships becomes more sophisticated

One might characterize ...