Chapter Six

Off to School: Cognitive and Physical Development in

Middle Childhood

Learning Objectives

According to Piaget, how do children think during the concrete operational and formal operational stages?

According to information processing theories, how do children learn to improve their learning and remembering?

How can we apply research about learning to children’s school experiences?

Piaget’s Final Two Stages: More Sophisticated Thinking

Concrete-Operational Period (7 - 11 years) Can use symbols to perform mental operations Mental operations are mental actions that produce

consistent results Can reverse thought Less influenced by appearance, immediate

perceptions, and egocentrism than preoperational children

Limitation: Thinking is bound to the concrete, here and no; cannot deal effectively with abstract or hypothetical

More Sophisticated Thinking The Formal Operational Period (11 years - adulthood)

Children can reason abstractly and hypothetically At this stage children tend to use deductive reasoning

at a higher level than concrete operational children Deductive reasoning is drawing conclusions from

facts or rules Understand that hypothetical situations may not

produce the same results as “real world” problems Ex: A feather might be able to break a glass in a

hypothetical situation even though a feather does not break a glass in “real life.”

Criticisms of Piaget’s View Adolescents who are in the formal operational

stage may not always reason at that level

Adolescents’ thinking is often egocentric and irrational

Cognitive development continues after reaching the formal operational stage; Piaget’s stages do not account for this continued development

Information-Processing Strategies for Learning and Remembering

Most human thinking takes place in working memory Working Memory - type of memory in which a

small number of items can be stored briefly

Information may be transferred to long-term memory Long-Term Memory - permanent storehouse

for memories that has unlimited capacity

Memory Strategies: A Few Highlights Gradually, children learn about their own memory

processes and evaluate them

Organization - information to be remembered is structured so that related information is placed together

Elaboration - information is embellished to make it more memorable

Metacognition—Thinking About Thinking An awareness of your own thought processes and

strategies Becomes more advanced as children age Metacognitive knowledge – awareness of one’s

own cognitive processes Metamemory – a child’s understanding of their

own memory Cognitive self-regulation – the ability to select

strategies for learning and monitor those strategies effectively to determine if they are successful

Monitoring

Monitoring is part of metacognition Gradually, children learn about their own

memory processes and begin to evaluate them

Elementary school-aged children can often identify information which they have not learned, but do not focus their attention on learning it