Life Span Development II School Age and Adolescence

Life Span Development II: School age and Adolescence 3 (2+1)

Lesson 4 : Cognitive development during Late childhood

Significant changes in cognitive abilities during late childhood period

1. The child develops symbolic schemata that permit representative / symbolic behaviour in either verbal / non verbal form.
2. The child will also progress from making judgments formed from a perceptual basis (what he sees) to making judgments from a conceptual basis (what he reasons).
3. The period of concrete operations begins at about the age 7 years and lasts until 11 years. This period is characterized by the child’s ability to solve concrete problems.
4. He begins to understand relationships between classes and sizes of objects, the concept of time, space and arithmetic relations.
5. The child realizes that other people see things differently from the way he does.
6. He now begins to use logic and reason about size, space, width, volume, number and time.
7. Can group objects according to a given attribute such as colour and still realizes that they can be regrouped according to another attribute such as size.
8. He can also order things into a series such as from larger to smaller.
9. He is able to apply the principle of conservation, states that certain properties remain constant and invariant regardless of changes in appearances.
10. The child is curious about all types of changes and wants to know about cause and effects.
11. This level of thinking represents the scientific dimension of recognition and is proceeding from concrete to abstract relations.
12. His memory span increases, poses many enquiry questions, able to use abstract thinking.