HD 101 Test 2 Study Guide

Chapter 6 * Development in Middle Childhood * Physical: School- aged children grow at a steady pace; most increases in height come from the legs, not the trunk. Motor skills continue to improve as strength and dexterity increase. Boys tend to excel in motor skills requiring strength; girls excel in fine motor skills and those requiring flexibility and balance. Many U.S. elementary school children are not physically fit, mainly because they are inactive. * Cognitive: From about ages 7 to 11, children are in Piaget’s concrete operational stage, in which they become less egocentric, realize that appearances can be deceiving, and acquire mental operations. At about age 11, school-aged children begin formal operational thinking, in which they can think hypothetically, reason abstractly, and use deductive reasoning. Children begin to use memory strategies about 7 to 8 years of age and learn to self-monitor the effectiveness of their memory strategies. Major theories of intelligence include Carroll’s hierarchical view, Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, and Sternberg’s theory of successful intelligence. Children with learning disabilities have normal intelligence but struggle to master specific academic subjects. U.S. students typically fall behind academically compared to many other industrialized countries, particularly those in Asia. * Vocabulary: * Mental Operations: cognitive actions that can be performed on objects or ideas * Deductive Reasoning: drawing conclusions from facts; characteristic of formal-operational thought * Working Memory: type of memory in which a small number of items can be stored briefly * Long-term Memory: permanent storehouse for memories that has unlimited capacity * Organization: as applied to children’s memory, a strategy in which information to be remembered is structured so that related information is placed together * Elaboration: memory strategy in which information is embellished to make it more memorable * Metamemory: person’s informal understanding of memory; includes the ability to diagnose memory problems accurately and to monitor the effectiveness of memory strategies * Metacognitive Knowledge: a person’s knowledge and awareness of cognitive processes * Cognitive Self-regulation: skill at identifying goals, selecting effective strategies, and accurate monitoring; a characteristic of successful students * Psychometricians: psychologists who specialize in measuring psychological traits such as intelligence and personality * Emotional Intelligence: ability to use one’s own and others’ emotions effective for solving problems and living happily * Analytical Ability: in Sternberg’s theory of intelligence, the ability to analyze problems and generate different solutions * Creative Ability: in Sternberg’s theory of intelligence, the ability to deal adaptively with novel situations and problems * Practical Ability: in Sternberg’s theory of intelligence, the ability to know which problem solutions are likely to work * Mental Age (MA): in intelligence testing, a measure of children’s performance corresponding to the chronological age of those whose performance equals the child’s * Intelligence Quotient (IQ): mathematical representation of how a person scores on a intelligence test in relation to how other people of the same age score * Culture-fair Intelligence Tests: intelligence tests devised using items common to many cultures * Stereotype Threat: an evoked fear of being judged in accordance with a negative stereotype about a group to which you belong * Convergent Thinking: using information to arrive at one standard and correct answer * Divergent Thinking: thinking in novel and unusual directions * Intellectual disability: substantially below average intelligence and problems adapting to an