Developmental Psychology

attention is defined as the ability to concentrate on relevant information such as information from a lecture, while attempting to ignore distractions. Children in middle childhood have the ability to learn how to plan, and problem solve, and begin to recognize their personal skills as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Metacognition is known as the ability to think about thinking, or to think about specific tasks and the best way to complete the task. The metacognition develops as a child moves through the middle childhood stage. Memory in the middle childhood stage continues to improve. When a child enters higher grade levels, their increased memory becomes extremely helpful. It helps because more information needs to be retained and recalled. There are two different storage strategies that will help a child with the improvement of their own memory. • Rehearsal : This is the repeating of information to make sure that the information can be remembered. • Reorganization : This is the regrouping of information so that it can be easily remembered. Jean Piaget believed that children in the middle childhood stage are within the concrete operational stage. Here are some of the characteristics. • Compensation : This is the principle that changes in on dimension that can be offset by changes in another dimension 6.3 Language During the middle childhood stage, a child’s communication skills will continue to improve and will gain more vocabulary, as well as grammar skills. Along with the improved vocabulary and grammar skills allows them to be more logical and analytical. There are many schools that attempt to encourage children to learn another language. Bilingualism has been proven to help improve cognitive develop. The plasticity of a young child helps them learn another language fairly easily and learn about a variety of different topics. 6.4 Intelligence Children will progress through school, and as they do, schools will administer achievement tests to help measure how much the child has learned and retained on a particular topic. These testes are designed to measure a child’s cognitive potential and are also used to gauge academic success or predict the potential for learning disabilities. One of the most popular tests that are given are IQ tests, or Intelligence Quotient tests. They are defined as a child’s mental age is divided by the chronological age. One of the most frequently used IQ tests is the Stanford-Binet test and the Wechsler test. Each one of these tests measures a person’s general knowledge, reasoning ability, memory, math, vocabulary, and spatial perception. There are different tests for varying ages, including preschool age • Conservation • Reversibility • Classification : The combination of objects into categories : Organizing objects in an orderly manner (Large to small) • Seriation

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