Middle School Aged Children and Cognitive Abilities

Hi everyone,
I'm back. Sorry it was such a long break. I finally have a new computer and can get back to posting again. So let's just dive right back in and start off where we left off. Last post we discussed children and motivation. Now lets discuss cognitive abilities.

Middle school is considered to be between the ages of six and eleven or twelve. It's a time that's filled with transitions but most particularly cognitive abilities. The progress children make in their cognitive abilities affects their attitudes and beliefs. A cognitive area that develops to help children is spatial thinking. When children are encouraged and taught to sharpen their skills in analyzing problems and recognizing spatial relationships, parents can help children develop positive, confident attitudes. Spatial thinking is a child's ability to see pictures of words. It's a child's ability to participate in problem solving and use pattern recognition using objects and spatial relationships. For example, being able to use spatial thinking to parallel park.

Another way children grow in cognitive abilities that helps children progress in attitudes and beliefs is cause and effect thinking. Cause and effect thinking indicates a child's ability to understand the sequences of events as they pertain to logical order. For example, if you don't brush your teeth you get cavities. The ability to think problems through in a way that moves a situation forward is important in influencing a child's attitudes and beliefs. Children need to be  able to internally process the consequences of their actions based on what they identify to be right or wrong and act appropriately. When children work through this stage, parents and other members of their micro-system can help them talk it through in order to better prepare them for the future.

Parents need to be aware that cognitive development has the potential to cause children to generalize attitudes and beliefs in ways that may not be true. Racial and gender issues come into play when this happens because cultural messages from outside environments and a child's community may be persuading children that generalizations are true.  Some people use informal logic to make their arguments which can confuse a child. Logic is the study of reasoning and examines the structure and content of arguments. Logic helps describe various types of arguments and evaluates why good arguments work and bad ones fail.  In the next post we'll discuss logic, and informal logic and how to tell the difference.

Last Leg

I apologize it's been a while since you've heard from me and  it unfortunately will be a little while longer. My computer is on it's last leg. I'm going to have to get a new one. I've tried posting other posts but my computer doesn't want to post them whether I post right away or schedule for another time they just aren't getting posted. I'm hoping this one will. SO....bear with me a while longer. I have to get taxes back and then look into getting another  computer before I'm back to posting. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

School Age Children and Motivation

When children become school aged motivation becomes a more self-centered activity and is more individually tailored. Achievement motivation in a school aged child is more related to actually achieving a task. School aged children's motivation may only be seen in one aspect of their life such as achieving their baseball goals but not performing well at school.

Parenting practices influence achievement motivation. If a parent's expectations are unreasonable (too high or low) it affects children's motivation. For example, if a parent expects a child to do the dishes by themselves at age five without an older sibling  or parent helping them, this is an unreasonable expectation. It will affect a child's motivation because it will cause them to think they can't do anything much less right. Low motivation can be caused by expectations that are too easy or too high. Both cause a child to take a why try attitude. Parents whose expectations are developmentally appropriate tend to have high motivation to accomplish a task. Children who show high achievement usually come from homes that include developmentally appropriate timing of achieving expectations. They also come from homes where parents have high confidence in their children's abilities, a supportive family environment and high motivated role models. School aged children who have high expectations of themselves tend to stay with a task longer and end up performing better on tasks than children who have low expectations.

Children who are school aged link self-efficacy to the choice of tasks, effort and persistence and achievement in their choice of task. Children's interpretation of their abilities tends to predict their achievement rather than their interpretation of what others believe their abilities are. School aged children's conceptions about their capabilities are based on whether the ability is considered stable over time. School aged children with high self-efficacy set and embrace challenging goals, use appropriate strategies to achieve them, try hard, persist with difficult tasks and seek help when necessary.Children with low self-efficacy tend to be frustrated and depressed which makes the idea of success more intangible. When a child has low self-efficacy parents, siblings, friends, teachers etc need to help.

These are some of the ways and reasons it is important to encourage children, build a healthy self-esteem and be supportive of and to children.

People Who Influence Preschoolers Attitudes

Attitudes in preschool children are influenced by family, friends, mas media and the community they live in as well as the preschool they're enrolled in. A child's age, cognitive development and social experiences affect the development of a child's attitudes and beliefs. Messages from these influences in a preschoolers life play an essential role in the development of a child.

Family can influence attitude development in a child through modeling appropriate or inappropriate behavior. A child learns to perform behavior simply by watching someone else perform the same behavior, therefore they model the behaviors and attitudes they see in their everyday lives. This comes from interactions they have, conversations they hear among parents, siblings and extended family. For example, if a child is taught to define different as wrong they will not accept anyone who is different from them because they've been different is wrong. If a child has been taught different just means different and that people make different choices and those choices are neither right nor wrong, the child will grow up to accept people, opinions and beliefs and not look down on them because they're different than they are. How children are socialized affects  future attitudes and plays a role in shaping children's futures. For example if a child is taught they can't be friends with someone because they're not a member of their religion, the child will start to see others who aren't of their religion as bad people and this will affect their future attitudes of people who aren't members of their religion. It shapes a child's future because their circle of friends may be limited and a prejudice has been taught.

Friends are a big influence in children's attitudes and beliefs. For most children, preschool is their first experience with school. While at preschool they're exposed to what other children say and believe. They begin to put weight on what their friends say and the things they like and dislike. Children compare the acceptability of beliefs to those of their friends and begin to  compare and contrast similarities and differences of those in their circle of friendship and those out of it.

Children who have contact with people from other generations benefit from these interactions. When visiting grandparents or aunts and uncles it impacts a child's attitude toward other adults. Children who spend time with people from other generations and have direct exposure to older adults have a more positive attitude toward other adults. Activities and time spent with older adults can be seen as boring by children. When they spend time with grandparents or other adults from other generations they see that grandparents and other adults have things in common with them as a child. Children learn adults from other generations like to play some of the same games or like to read some of the same authors they do and it's a great way for children to learn about history.

Parents who promote accepting attitudes and beliefs have children who are more likely to adopt the same attitudes and beliefs. As a result children become more tolerant of  differences and learn to celebrate diversity.

Three Developmental Phases of Attitudes About Cultural Groups

The ways children learn and develop  will affect how they process the messages they receive from their families, friends and community. Therefore, the people in a child's microsystem play a role in shaping their attitudes and beliefs. Piaget's second stage of development is the pre-operational stage which begins around two and continues until age seven. During the pre-operational stage children begin to develop their own  attitudes and beliefs about the world around them. The influences of their attitudes and beliefs are family, friends, mass media and school. All of these groups play a role in the development of a child's attitudes and beliefs.

Attitudes about cultural groups develops in three phases. The first phase is from age two and a half to three years old. This is when children become aware of cultural differences. Phase two starts around age four and this is when children begin to notice the ways they're similar to others and have specific cultural related words and concepts. For example, this is when children notice that they may be white but someone in their preschool class is a different color. This is when children start to use words such as black, white, Christian or Catholic to explain the difference in color or skin or religion.

Phase three begins around age seven when children begin to have attitudes toward various cultural groups. For example, a child may play with a child who is black but not Indian or may play with children who are white but not mixed. The development of attitudes is influenced by a child's age, cognitive development and social experiences. The last stage is important in discussing attitudes and belief development because it's during the middle school years that this phase occurs. During the third stage children become familiar with the various ways people within their family interact with others in the community and begin to notice things like discrimination, violence, and prejudice.

7 Types of Motivation Part 3

The last type of motivation is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the belief in one's competence and is capable of performing tasks in order to reach a goal. Four main factors affect self-efficacy, the are: experience, modeling, social persuasions, and physiological factors.

Experience affects self-efficacy because when children succeed on their own, their self-efficacy increases.

Modeling affects self-efficacy because when children see someone else succeed their self-efficacy increases because they believe they can succeed too. If a friend or sibling fails it causes a child's self-efficacy to decrease because they see the task as hard.

Social persuasion is a factor of self-efficacy because encouragement will help to increase self-efficacy while discouragement decreases it.

Physiological factors affect self-efficacy because stress affects children's physically. Sometimes a child can feel nauseous or have stomach pains or other types of pains and this causes self-efficacy to decrease. For example, if a child has a big test coming us such as the ACT or SAT a child can feel nauseous or have other pains that they're feeling because of the stress of taking the test brings.

Parents can nurture self-efficacy by setting up easy to attain situations so children learn how to complete a large task by first completing smaller tasks of the task first. Parents can model motivation to their children by participating in activities and succeeding in them or showing them how they react to failure. Parents can encourage children. The more encouragement a child receives the more self-efficacy they'll have and this will help them grow to be successful, happy adults.

All seven of these motivations (mastery motivation, achievement motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, locus of control, learned helplessness and self-efficacy) help children develop attitudes and values because they help a child have a positive attitude about achieving goals. These motivations help children see that being motivated to accomplish a goal helps them realize what they're good at and that having a positive attitude to accomplish a goal helps achieve the goal.

7 Types of Motivation Part 2

In the last post I covered the first four types of motivation. Today I will cover the last three types of motivation which are locus of control, learned helplessness and self-efficacy.

Locus of control is one's quality of performance or perception of responsibility for success or failure. For example, if a child's soccer team wins a game and it's the child's perception that they won because they were the one who hit the last goal in the child's perception is they won because of them. Locus of control can be internal or external. When a child associates their performance or behavior to an internal locus the responsibility for the behavior is given to themselves. For example, when a child learns to go potty in the child the child associates their behavior to themselves and the responsibility of going potty in the toilet to themselves and doesn't give any credit to the parent helping or teaching them. A child who associates their behavior to an external locus of control attributes responsibility of behavior to something or someone outside themselves. For example, the child gives all the credit to them going potty in the toilet to the parent who helps them.

 When a child feels powerless over events they may no longer feel responsible for their behavior and lose motivation to achieve. If this happens, it's called learned helplessness. Leaned helplessness is the belief that one is incapable of accomplishing tasks and they have little or no control over their environment or situation. It's characterized by a decreased motivation and failure to learn and often accompanied by negative emotions  such as sadness, anxiety, and frustration. Preschoolers who show signs of learned helplessness interpret their poor performance as a sign of being bad. School age children interpret poor performance to a lack of knowledge. Parents, siblings, teachers, coaches etc., can prevent and help children overcome learned helplessness by teaching children to attempt tasks and activities they're capable of doing themselves. The more children encouraged and feel supported, the more willing they'll be to try new things and try them on their own.

Self-efficacy is the last type of motivation and is the belief in one's competence and is capable of performing tasks in order to reach a goal. There are four main factors that affect self-efficacy: experience, modeling, social persuasions, and physiological factors. In order to go into these in more detail I will discuss this last type of motivation and its factors in the next post.