Lecture: Middle Childhood: Physical and Cognitive Development
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 11
Opening
Picture four people in four different places. An elementary teacher is planning a lesson. An after-school leader is setting up a board game. A pediatric nurse is talking with a family about how school is going. And a parent at a kitchen table is helping a child with a spelling list. Each of them is working with a school-age child, somewhere between about 6 and 11, and each of them needs to read that child's thinking fairly.
That's what this lecture is about. In Week 6 you met Piaget's first stage, the sensorimotor stage, and in Week 9 you met his second, the preoperational stage, when a child's answer follows how things look. In Week 3 you learned to keep what a child did apart from what it might mean. And in Week 10 you followed young children's feelings and relationships.
In this lecture we move into the school years. I'll start with the body, then spend most of our time on the mind. We'll meet Piaget's third stage and three things it lets a child do, then a second way of explaining the same growth, called information processing. After that, I'll take on two popular ideas about learning and intelligence and tell you plainly what the evidence says. We'll finish with learning differences, and then I'll read one record from the running case with two theories.
1. The body grows steadily, and skills get smoother
Think of a neighborhood park in the late afternoon. A 6-year-old wobbles along on a bike while an adult jogs alongside. Over by the swings, a 10-year-old jumps rope and counts out loud without missing a beat. Both children are growing. The older one moves with a smoothness the younger one is still building.
Here's the big idea for the body in these years. Growth in middle childhood is slower and steadier than it was in infancy and early childhood. Children keep getting taller and stronger, but the dramatic changes of the first years give way to a gradual climb. That steady pace leaves room for skill.
You met the two kinds of motor skills in Week 5. Gross motor skills use the large muscles, and in these years running, jumping, throwing, catching, and riding a bike grow smoother and better coordinated. Fine motor skills use the small muscles, especially of the hands, and handwriting, cutting with scissors, and tying shoelaces grow more precise.
Health in these years rests on everyday habits such as active play, sleep, and regular checkups. I'll describe those habits in words, and I won't give you a rule for any one child. A question about one child's health belongs with that family's health professional.
Pause and try this. A relative says a child "should" be riding a bike by first grade. How would you reply, using this course's rule about ages?
Hold your reply in mind for a moment.
Here's the answer. Every skill is a typical range, not a deadline, so a child who learns to ride later than a classmate has not missed a deadline.
2. Piaget's third stage: logic about real things
Let me set up a small scene. At an after-school snack table, two children have the same number of crackers, but one child has broken theirs into pieces. A preschooler might insist the broken pile is more. A school-age child is more likely to say, "It's the same crackers, you broke them." The second child is reasoning about what happened, not only about how the pile looks.
That shift has a name. Piaget described 4 stages of cognitive development, and this is the third. The concrete operational stage is Piaget's third stage, at about 7 to 11, in which children reason logically about concrete things, the real objects and events in front of them, and can conserve, classify, and seriate.
The word "concrete" matters. Children in this stage reason well about things they can see, touch, or picture from real experience. Reasoning about pure ideas and "what if" possibilities comes later, in the stage you'll meet in Week 13.
Now a word on the ages. The preoperational stage runs at about 2 to 7, a span of about 5 years. The concrete operational stage runs at about 7 to 11, a span of about 4 years. Those ages are rough signposts. What you hold on to are the stage names and their order.
Pause and try this. A classmate says a child "turns concrete operational on their 7th birthday." What's wrong with that sentence?
Think about what an approximate age means.
Here's the answer. Piaget's ages are approximate, so the stage is a model, not a timetable, and children reach its reasoning at different times.
3. Reversibility: picturing the pour run backward
Here's something you do without thinking. You pour a glass of water into a different glass, and you know there's no more water than before. You didn't memorize that. You can picture pouring it back, and that picture settles the question.
That everyday move is the heart of this section. Conservation, which you met in Week 9, is the understanding that an amount stays the same when its appearance changes, as long as nothing is added or taken away. And reversibility is mentally running an action backward, such as picturing poured water going back into its first glass. It's the reason a concrete operational child gives for conserving.
Piaget's conservation-of-liquid task asks a child whether the amount is the same after water is poured into a taller, thinner glass. The earlier, preoperational response says the tall glass has more. The later, concrete operational response says it is the same and explains why.
Now let's read the running case. Remember, it's illustrative, constructed for this course, and it describes no real child. Record R6 was written at 7 years, in an after-school program. Water is poured from a short, wide glass into a tall, thin glass, and the child says it's "the same", and gives the reason "you could pour it back".
That reason is reversibility. The child is running the pour backward in their head. And because the child gives the reason, R6 shows you the later response on the task, not a lucky guess.
Pause and try this. Suppose a different child says "the same" but, asked why, says only, "Because my teacher said so." Does that answer show conservation?
Think about where the evidence lives.
Here's the answer. It doesn't show conservation yet, because conservation is reasoning about what happened, and the child's reason is the evidence, not the words "the same."
So conservation isn't learned by memorizing an answer. The reason is what counts.
4. Sorting, including, and ordering
Picture a kitchen table on a rainy afternoon. A child of about 8 spreads out a baseball-card collection and sorts it into piles by team. Then the child sweeps the piles together and lines the cards up by the year printed on each one. Two different mental moves are happening, and a third is hiding inside them.
Here are the terms. Classification is grouping things by a feature they share, such as sorting a card collection by team. Seriation is arranging things in order along one dimension, such as lining cards up from oldest to newest year. And class inclusion is understanding that a smaller group is part of a larger group, so the larger group must hold at least as many members.
Piaget tested class inclusion with a short question. A child is shown 7 dogs and 3 cats and asked, "Are there more dogs or more animals?" Let's count it out together. Seven dogs plus three cats makes 10 animals. The dogs are a smaller group inside the animals, so there are 3 more animals than dogs. As shares, the dogs are 70 percent of the animals and the cats are 30 percent, a gap of 40 percentage points.
A preoperational child typically says "more dogs." That child is comparing the dogs with the cats, 7 against 3, which is a different question from the one asked. A concrete operational child compares the dogs with all 10 animals and says "more animals."
Pause and try this. In the class-inclusion task, which answer shows class inclusion, and what is the child comparing when they give it?
Picture the two groups, one inside the other.
Here's the answer. "More animals" shows class inclusion, because the child compares the 7 dogs with all 10 animals, the larger group that holds them.
One honest limit before we move on. R6 carries no class-inclusion task, so the record can't tell you how this child answers it.
5. Information processing: the mind's work in parts
Let's pick a family board game on a weekend evening. A 9-year-old has to remember which cards are already played, plan two moves ahead, wait for a turn without grabbing the dice, and change strategy when someone flips the direction of play. That's a lot of mental work at once.
Piaget describes change as stages. A second approach, information processing, describes the mind's work in parts and explains growth as gradual improvement in each part. Here are the parts, in words. Attention is focusing the mind on what matters for a task while tuning out the rest. Working memory is the small mental workspace that holds a few pieces of information in mind for a few seconds while a person uses them. Processing speed is how quickly the mind takes in information and carries out a mental task. And executive function is the set of skills that steer thinking and behavior toward a goal: planning, inhibiting, which means holding back an automatic response, and switching between rules or tasks.
Back to the game. Keeping track of the cards played this turn is working memory. Ignoring the television in the next room is attention. Thinking two moves ahead is planning. Waiting instead of grabbing the dice is inhibiting. Changing strategy when the direction flips is switching.
Pause and try this. The 9-year-old knows the game's rules from last summer but loses track of the cards played this turn. Which kind of memory is struggling?
Think about how long each kind of memory holds things.
Here's the answer. Working memory is struggling, because it holds information for seconds while you use it, while the rules sit in long-term memory.
Keep those two apart. Working memory is not long-term memory, even though both are called memory.
6. Metacognition, and the learning-styles evidence
Picture a 10-year-old at a library homework table with a list of spelling words. The child takes a practice test, notices that the words with silent letters are the ones still wrong, and decides to spend the next stretch of time on those. That child is watching their own learning and steering it.
The term is metacognition: thinking about one's own thinking, such as noticing which words one still misspells and choosing how to study them. It grows across middle childhood, as children get better at testing themselves and noticing what they haven't learned yet.
Now I want to take on a popular idea that sounds like it belongs here. The learning styles idea is the popular claim that teaching matched to a student's preferred style, such as visual or auditory, improves learning. Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, and Bjork published a review in 2008 called "Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence." They found no adequate evidence that matching instruction to a learner's preferred style improves learning. So this course states it plainly: the learning-styles idea is not supported by the evidence.
Here's the part people miss. A student can still prefer pictures or prefer listening. Preferences are real. What isn't supported is the claim that matching teaching to the preference makes the student learn more.
Pause and try this. The spelling learner improves by testing and adjusting. Is that a learning style or metacognition?
Think about what the child is watching.
Here's the answer. It's metacognition, because the child is noticing their own mistakes and choosing how to study, not matching lessons to a style.
7. Intelligence, read carefully
Picture a family at a kitchen counter, reading a school report. One line gives a number from an intelligence test, and a parent asks whether that number says how smart the child will always be. I want you ready to answer that kind of question carefully.
Intelligence testing began with Binet's early tests in France. Modern tests report a standardized score. An IQ score is a standardized score that compares a person's performance on an intelligence test with the performance of others of the same age. The key word is "compares." The score places one child's test performance among children of the same age, at the time of testing. It isn't fixed, and it doesn't measure a person's worth.
A different picture of intelligence came from Gardner, in a book called Frames of Mind, published in 1983. Multiple intelligences is Gardner's theory that people have several distinct kinds of intelligence rather than one general ability. It's widely discussed in schools because it honors many kinds of talent. The documented criticism is that it has limited empirical support. So this course teaches it with that criticism attached.
Pause and try this. A friend calls multiple intelligences "proven science." What would you add to that sentence to make it accurate?
Think about the criticism the course attaches.
Here's the answer. The theory is widely discussed, but it has limited empirical support, so it isn't a settled scientific result.
8. Learning differences, and one record read twice
Every classroom holds children who learn in different ways and at different rates. Some children have a learning disability, a difficulty in learning a specific skill, such as reading, writing, or math, that isn't explained by a lack of teaching or effort. Qualified professionals identify it with careful assessment. Special education is instruction and services designed for a child with a disability so the child can learn at school, and in the United States it's governed by a federal law called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
And here's the firm line for you as an observer. You never assess, screen, or label a real child. If you notice that a child reads slowly, you've noticed a behavior at one moment, not a disability.
Now let's put the whole week together on record R6. What the child did: after the pour, the child says it's "the same" and gives the reason "you could pour it back." What it shows: conservation of liquid, with reversibility as the reason. Which theory explains it: Piaget's cognitive-developmental theory, because reversibility is the logic Piaget placed in the concrete operational stage. What a second theory adds: the information-processing view says the child is holding the before-and-after glasses in working memory and holding back the pull of the taller water level. It describes the change as gradual growth in those abilities, not a sudden new stage.
Pause and try this. In one sentence, what does the information-processing view add to Piaget's reading of R6?
Say your sentence out loud before I go on.
Here's the answer. It adds that the child holds both glasses in working memory and holds back the pull of the taller level, as gradual growth rather than a new stage.
So here's the reading in one plain sentence. Saying the tall glass holds the same amount because you could pour it back shows conservation with reversibility, which Piaget placed in the concrete operational stage, at about 7 to 11.
Closing
Let me pull it together in the order we took it. The body grows steadily in these years, and motor skills get smoother and more precise, always read as ranges. Piaget's concrete operational stage, at about 7 to 11, is logical thinking about real things. Conservation shows in the reason a child gives, and reversibility is picturing the action run backward. Classification groups things, seriation orders them, and class inclusion relates a part to its whole. Information processing breaks thinking into attention, working memory, processing speed, and executive function. Metacognition is thinking about your own thinking, and the learning-styles idea isn't supported by the evidence. An IQ score is a comparison with others of the same age, never a measure of worth, and multiple intelligences has limited empirical support. And a learning disability is identified by professionals, never by an observer.
Next in this module come the slide deck and the Readings and Resources page, then the lecture tutorial, the practice set, the quiz, and the discussion. Next week stays in middle childhood and turns to its social-emotional side: self-esteem, friendship, bullying, and moral reasoning.
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