Chapter 10: Physical Development in Middle Childhood

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Chapter 10 Physical Development in Middle
Childhood
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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 yearpossibly linked with puberty

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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 childs age, sex, and
  physical build.
• Over 80 percent of obese youngsters remain
  overweight as adults

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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

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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 normal-weight peers
• obese children tend to watch more television
• Linked to sedentary lifestyle
• Linked to advertising and models portrayed

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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

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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)

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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

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Growth and Maturation of the Brain

• Brain growth spurts roughly correspond to
  Piagets 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

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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
  time11-year-olds can respond almost twice as
  quickly to a stimulus as 5-year-olds.

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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.

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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 childrens 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.

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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.

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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 childrens 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

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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

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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

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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.

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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
  exercisepursuits that are most likely to last
  into later years.
• Physically fit children become more active adults
  who reap many benefits. 

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Special Needs in Middle Childhood

• Biopsychosocial forces tend to create
  transactions among forces in childrens 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)

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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

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Communicative and Learning disorders

• Communicative disorders
• Articulationphysiological differences can be
  treated by speech therapists/pathologists
• Expressive/receptive communication (linked to
  autistic spectrum disorders)
• Expressive language disorder linked to early ear
  infections
• Stutteringfrequently declines across childhood
  can be associated with stress in later years

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Communicative and Learning disorders

• Learning Disorders
• Specific learning disordernarrowly 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

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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

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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

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Education for Special Needs Children

• IEP (Santa Rosa Countys IST)
• Least Restrictive Environment
• Resource room
• Inclusion
• Mainstreaming
• Intact classroom
• Resource teacher

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