CHAPTER 12 THE SCHOOLCHILD'S INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT APPROACHES TO INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT Piagetian Approach Information-Processing Approach: Development of Memory Psychometric Approach: Measuring Intelligence in Schoolchildren i DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE Grammar: The Structure of Language I Communication Ability DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVITY Measuring Creativity Family Influences on Creativity Developing Children's Talent THE CHILD IN SCHOOL Changes in Education Teachers Some School-Related Issues 377 Childhood is a world of miracle and wonder: as if creation rose, bathed in light, out of darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us. When the world seems familiar, when one has got used to existence, one has become an adult. —Eugene Ionesco, Fragments of a Journal, 1967 Proudly carrying his shiny new pencil case, Jason walks into his first-grade classroom. A veteran of both preschool and kindergarten, he is not shy or anxious about entering the unfamiliar room. On the contrary, like most new scholars, he finds the idea of school exhilarating, for that first day of school is indeed a milestone signaling to all that Jason has entered a distinctly new stage of development. He feels the change, and he looks forward to going to regular school. At age 11, Vicky trots off to school without giving the routine a second thought. Learning is what she does. She reads, thinks, talks, and imagines things in ways that were well beyond her when she started school. In this chapter we examine the changes that occur in children during the first 6 school years. We'll consider intellectual development according to the three approaches introduced in Chapter 6. First, we'll discuss the Piagetian approach to cognitive development; second, the information-processing approach; third, the psychometric approach. Then we'll look at two important aspects of schoolchildren's intellectual development: language and creativity. In the final portion of the chapter, we'll discuss the role of school in a child's life. grow intel and i are t sevei She • rienc i man Approaches to Intellectual Development In this section, we'll consider the Piagetian approach, the information-processing approach, and the psychometric approach to intellectual development. Kagetconsidered the entire period of middle childhood as one_atage~-thai: of concrete operations: he also focused on children's moral development at this stage, and his thoughts on moral development were expanded by Kohlberg. Moral reasoning becomes increasingly important during these years, as children acquire the cognitive ability to discuss right and wrong. To researchers who favor the information-processing approach, memory is of particular interest. The discussion of this approach will consider thxee-aspects of memory: capacity, strategigsjox jemernberin^ and met$™?mnry The psychometric approach is especially important during this period, since many schools routinely give children standardized tests. By adolescence, most American children have taken some intelligence tests; we discuss these tests and also the difficulties of comparing IQ scores across cultural and racial boundaries. 378 THE MIDDLE YEARS PIAGETIAN APPROACH Concrete Operations (6 to 11 Years) What Are Operations? Somewhere between the ages of 5 and 7, Vicky becomes capable of what Piaget calls operational thinking; that is, she can perform ^-Operational thinking in mental operations, and she develops the ability to base her thinking on the Piaget's terminology, the manipulation of symbols. Previously she had a symbolic function (that is, the loS'cal manipulation of , .,. , ' , . ' . . \ ii. , , symbols and signs. ability to make one thing represent something else which is not present), but she continued to learn almost exclusively through experience. Mental operations make children in the concrete-operations stage more proficient at clas-iv!^%5^^Y sifying, dealing with numbers, understanding concepts of space and time, dis- :^iKft&^\VV~^^^ tinguishing reality from fantasy, and understanding the principles °f MV\hW\Ln\Lii conservation. > ^ i We can understand these new mental abilities better if we consider Vicky's growing ability to play chess. Although considered by many to be a game of intellectuals, chess is concrete enough to capture the interest of many second-and third-graders. Most children of this age, of course, play badly, but if they are encouraged, they can keep at it long enough to become good. On her seventh birthday, Vicky receives a chess set, and she soon learns the rules. She thinks of it as fun, not as education; but slowly, through practical expe- , hence, she learns the importance of thinking operationally. ^ Decenter in Piaget's One important operational skill is the capacity to decenter, or to take SS^erfu^S^a many aspects of a situation into account at the same time, rather than focusing situation in one's thinking. This youngster's ability to play a complicated game like chess reflects the many new abilities children acquire in the cognitive stage of concrete operations. CHAPTER 12 ■ THE SCHOOLCHILD'S INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 379 ^ Reversibility In Piaget's terminology, the realization that an action can be undone and an item returned to an earlier condition. Concrete operations In Piaget's terminology, the third stage of cognitive development, during which children develop the ability to think logically about the here and now, but not about abstractions. on just one, as was typical during the preoperational stage. Vicky learns that in chess, even though a move may look good at first glance, she must make sure that she has not overlooked some dangers as well. During the preoperational stage Vicky was egocentric, but ecocentricjly. diminishes during middle childhood, and this helps her play chess well. It is not enough for Vicky to have a goodldea on her own. She has to watch out for her opponent's plan as well. Still another important feature of operational thinking is reversibility, the realization that an action can be undone, at least in the imagination. With this skill Vicky can consider a move, see its flaws, and, in her head, take the move back. None of these skills will come easily to Vicky. At first she makes too many moves that look good but turn out to have a fatal flaw. Often her opponent surprises her with an attack she never saw coming. And it takes her a long time to select a move, imagine a second move, see its flaw, take it back, and find a better second move. Yet, by the time she is 10, Vicky can do all these things reasonably well. There are still moments when she sees a fatal flaw only after she has made a move. But more often it is Vicky's opponent who pleads to be allowed to take a move back. Vicky considers such begging "childish." These skills rely on concrete operations. They concern the here and now: the chessboard and its pieces sit before Vicky. According to Pi a get, the stage of manipulating symbols^that represent abstract concepts—what he calls formal operations—usually isnot reached until adolescence. Conservation In Piaget's terminology, the awareness that two stimuli that are equal (in length, weight, or amount, for example) remain equal in the face of perceptual alteration, so long as nothing has been added to, or taken away from, either stimulus. Horizontal décalage In Piaget's terminology, the inability of a child to transfer the principle of conservation from one type of conservation to another type: thus a child can conserve substance before weight and can conserve substance and weight before volume. What Is Conservation? Probably the best known part of Piaget's work is his study of conservation, or the ability to recognize that two equal quantities of matter remain equal (in substance, weight, length, number, volume, or space) even if the matter is rearranged, as long as nothing is added or taken away. The principle of conservation can be applied to a number of attributes. For example, in conservation of substance, a child is shown two equal balls of clay and agrees that they are equal. The child is said to conserve substance if he or she then recognizes that even after one of the balls has been rolled into the shape of a worm, both lumps of clay contain equal amounts of matter. In conservation of weight, the child is asked whether the ball and the worm weigh the same. And in conservation of volume, the child is asked to judge whether both the ball and the worm displace an equal amount of liquid when placed in glasses of water. Children develop different types of conservation at different times. At age j 6 or 7, they are able to conserve substance; at 9 or 10, weight; and at 11 or,; 12, volume. Horizontal décalage is the term Piaget used to describe this phe- | nomenon of children's inability to transfer what they have learned about one 1 type of conservation to a different type, even though the underlying principle! is identical for all three kinds of conservation. Thus, we see what concrete 1 reasoning is like at this stage. It is tied so closely to a particular situation that.;| children cannot readily apply the same basic mental operation to a different'^ situation. | Children go through three stages in mastering conservation. We can sgfa how this works in relation to the substance conservation task described abovéM In the first stage, children fail to conserve. They focus on one aspect of;f| the situation (that the clay ball which has been rolled into the shape of a worrrS A CHILD'S WORLD . . . PROFESSIONAL VOICES PIAGET: It's just that no adult ever had the idea of asking children about conservation. It was so obvious that if you change the shape of an object, the quantity will be conserved. Why ask a child? The novelty lay in asking the question. I first discovered the problem of conservation when I worked with young epileptics from 10 to 15. I wanted to find some empirical way of distinguishing them from normal children. I went around with four coins and four beads, and I would put the coins Source: E. Hall, 1970, pp. 27-28; photo: Yves de Braine/Black Star. and beads in one-to-one correspondence and then hide one of the coins. If the three remaining coins were then stretched out into a longer line, the epileptic children said they had more coins than beads. No conservation at all. I thought I had discovered a method to distinguish normal from abnormal children. Then I went on to work with normal children and discovered that all children lack conservation. Q: Isn't it fortunate that you checked? PIAGET: A biologist would have to verify; a philosopher would not have checked. is longer) and do not realize the importance of the fact that the worm is also narrower now. Fooled by appearance, they decide that the worm contains more clay. They cannot recognize that they could restore the original equality by rolling the worm back into a ball. In other words, they do not understand the logic behind, or the implication of, the perceptual transformation. The second stage is a transitional stage, when children vacillate, sometimes conserving and sometimes not. They may concentrate on more than one aspect of a situation but fail to recognize the relationship between dimensions such as height and width or length and thickness. In the third and final stage in conservation, children conserve and give logical justifications for their answers. These justifications may take the form of reversibility (such as, "If the clay worm were shaped into a ball, it would be the same as the other ball"),- identity ("It's the same clay; you haven't added any or taken any away"); or compensation ("The ball is shorter than the worm, but the worm is longer than the ball, and so they both have the same amount of clay"). Operational children in middle childhood show a qualitative cognitive advancement over preoperational preschoolers. Their thinking is reversible, they decenter, and they are aware that transformations are only perceptual alterations. Pja^t_stre^ed_the maturauonal components of conservation flying thm* children will show this ability when they are mature enough ncurologic-nlly -and that it is only minimally affe_ctcd by formal training. However, factors other~tEan maturation also affect conservation. Children who learn conservation skills earliest get high grades and have high IQs, high verbal ability, and nondominating mothers (Almy, Chittenden, & Miller, 1966; Goldschmid & Bender, 1968). Children from various countries—Switzerland, the United States, Great Britain, and others—achieve conservation at different ages, which suggests that this ability has a cultural aspect, rather than relating to maturation alone. We discuss this issue more fully in "Around the World." A child who has developed conservation can understand that even though the shape of a liquid changes, the amount may remain the same. CHAPTER 12» THE SCHOOLCHILD'S INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 381 A CHILD'S WORLD . . . AROUND THE WORLD Is conservation universal? The Wolofs are members of the dominant ethnic group in Senegal, on the westernmost tip of what used to be French West Africa. Wolof children who live in Dakar, the capital city, live in a cosmopolitan environment and go to French-style schools. However, Wolof children who live in Taiba N'Diaye, which is in the bush country, live in isolation) some attend French-style schools, and some don't go to school at all. When a Harvard University researcher (Greenfield, 1966) conducted tests of conservation on Wolof children who lived and went to school in Dakar, on those who lived and went to school in the bush country, and on those who lived in the bush country but had never gone to school, she found a wider difference between schooled and unschooled rural children than between schooled urban and schooled rural children. By the age of 11 or 12, virtually all the schooled children could conserve liquid quantity, compared with only half the unschooled children. Obviously, something the children were learning in school was helping them understand the principles of conservation. This study, like others on uneducated adults, indicates that maturation alone cannot account for the development of conservation. Greenfield suggests, in fact, that "without school, intellectual development, defined as any qualitative change, ceases shortly after age nine" (1966, p. 234). Greenfield's work indicates that the education children receive probably affects conservation more than other aspects of the culture do. In her analyses of the Wolof children's thinking, as revealed in the explanations they gave for their answers, she concluded that cognitive thinking was quite different from that of American children, that the reasons they gave for their answers tended to be quite different from those given by western children, and that some of these differences were dramatically reflected in their native language, which contains no words for some of the concepts taken for granted in previous studies of conservation. And yet the educated Senegalese children still achieved conservation, illustrating how "different models of thought can lead to the same results" (1966, p. 255), although some modes of thinking may be better suited to one type of lifestyle than others. Moral Development Personality, emotions, and society all contribute to moral behavior. Mjjral reasoning, however, depends on intellectual development. The most influential theorists on the development of moral reasoning are Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. They, maintain that children cannot make sound moral judgments until they achieve a certain level of cognitive maturity. This approach, of course, does not imply that the most intelligent people are necessarily also the most moral. World history forbids such an idea. Hitler's government had some of Germany's most evil men at its head, but these leaders might well have scored high on an IQ test. Meanwhile, ordinary people with ordinary IQ levels showed a high moral sense by risking their own lives to help those in danger. The link between morality and cognition concerns moral reasoning. Intellectual prowess does not guarantee moral behavior, but the highest levels of moral reasoning are impossible before cognitive maturity has been attained. At age 9, Vicky has a greater moral imagination than she had at age 5. Whether she acts on her increased understanding is another question. Role-Taking The golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," provides an important justification for linking moral development to cognitive growth. This moral principle requires that a person be able to 382 THE MIDDLE YEARS step into someone else's shoes and imagine how that person would feel. But we have seen that small children are egocentric. The golden rule is difficult for them to follow, not because they are evil, but because they have a hard time imagining how another person feels. Th make, but the druggist was charging 10 times what the drug cost him to make. | He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The :| sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, § but he could only get together about $1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told . the druggist that his wife was dying, and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him ; pay later. But the druggist said, "No. I discovered the drug and I'm going to make .p money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to stealM the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have done that? Why or why not? fKohlberg, ;; 1969) I! 384 THE MIDDLE YEARS A CHILD'S WORLD . . . PROFESSIONAL VOICES _©|i LAWRENCE KOHLBERG: Morality is not taught to children by their parents or their teachers or anybody else. They work out their own systems. At the age of 4, for example, my son became a vegetarian because he felt that it was bad to kill animals. At that time his thinking was in the premoral stage: "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." I was reading him a story about Eskimos going on a seal-hunting expedition, and at the end of the story he said, "There is one kind of meat I would eat—Eskimo meat. It's bad to kill and eat animals, so it's all right to eat Eskimos." The reason I like to tell this story is that it indicates that children construct their own moral values according to their own principles. Nobody taught my son that he should be a vegetarian or that it was wrong to kill animals. In fact, his mother and I tried very hard to talk him into eating meat, without any luck. And, of course, nobody taught him that it was all right to eat Eskimos. Like every young child, my son was a philosopher who wondered about things that most grown-ups take for granted. His response was very different from the way most adults think, and yet it has universal elements. Every child believes that it is bad to kill. In this case the value of life led both to vegetarianism and to the desire to kill Eskimos. This desire also comes from a universal value tendency: a belief in justice here expressed in terms of revenge or punishment. At higher levels, it's expressed in the belief that those who infringe upon the rights of others cannot expect their own rights to be respected. Piaget discovered that if you listen to children, you will find that they ask all the great philosophic questions but that they answer them differently from the way adults do. This way is so different that Piaget called it a difference in stage or quality of thinking, rather than a difference in amount of knowledge or accuracy of thinking. The difference in thinking between you and my son, then, is basically a difference in stage. Sources: Interview by S. W. Olds, Cambridge, MA, Nov. 24, 1975, and a paper presented at the eighteenth summer conference of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, at Star Island, NH, August 1971; photo: Lawrence Kohlberg. The problem of Heinz and the drug is the most famous example of Kohl-berg's approach to moral development. For some 20 years Kohlberg studied a group of 75 boys who varied in age from 10 to 16 years when he began working. Kohlberg told them stories that posed moral problems, dilemmas of the sort that Heinz faced, and asked the boys how they would solve them. At the center of each dilemma was a concept of justice and its relation to 25 basic moral ideas such as the value of human life, motives behind actions, individual rights, and the basis of respect for moral authority. After telling the stories, Kohlberg and his colleagues asked the boys a number of questions designed to show how they arrived at their decisions. Kohlberg was less interested in the answers themselves than in the reasoning used to reach them. From the responses he received, K_ohlberg_goncluded that, the level of moral reasoning is related to a person^s_cognitive level. The rea^ soning behind the boys' answers convinced Kohlbergthiat peopie~~arrive at moral judgments in an independent fashion, rather than merely "internalizing" the standards of parents, teachers, or peers. On the basis of the different thought processes shown by the answers, Kohlberg described three levels of moral reasoning, divided into six stages, as shown in Table 12-2. CHAPTER 12« THE SCHOOLCHILD'S INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 385 Table 12-2 Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Reasoning LEVEL 1: PRECONVENTIONAL MORALITY [AGES 4 TO 10] Emphasis in this level is on external Stage 1: Punishment and obedience control. The standards are those of others, orientation. "What will happen to me?" and they are observed either to avoid Children obey the rules of others to avoid punishment or to reap rewards. punishment. Stage 2: Instrumental purpose and exchange. "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." They conform to rules out of self-interest and consideration for what others can do for them in return. LEVEL 2: MORALITY OF CONVENTIONAL ROLE CONFORMITY (AGES 10 TO 13) Children now want to please other people. They still observe the standards of others, but they have internajized these standards to some extent. Now they want to be considered "good" by those persons whose opinions count. They are now able to take the roles of authority figures well enough to decide whether some action is "good" by their standards. Stage 3: Maintaining mutual relations, approval of others, the golden rule. "Am I a good girl?" and "Am I a good boy?" Children want to please and help others, can judge the intentions of others, and develop their own ideas of what a good person is. Stage 4: Social system and conscience. "What if everybody did it?" People are concerned with doing their duty, showing respect for higher authority, and maintaining the social order. LEVEL 3: MORALITY OF AUTONOMOUS MORAL PRINCIPLES |AGE 13, OR NOT UNTIL YOUNG ADULTHOOD, OR NEVER) This level marks the attainment of true morality. For the first time, the person acknowledges the possibility of conflict between two socially accepted standards and tries to decide between them. The control of conduct is now internal, both in the standards observed and in the reasoning about right and wrong. Stages 5 and 6 may be alternative types of the highest level of reasoning. Stage 5: Morality of contract, of individual rights, and of democratically accepted law. People think in rational terms, valuing the will of the majority and the welfare of society. They generally see that these values are best supported by adherence to the law. While they recognize that there are times when there is a conflict between human need and the law, they believe that it will be better for society in the long run if they obey the law. Stage 6: Morality of universal ethical principles. People do what they as individuals think is right, regardless of legal restrictions or the opinions of others. They act in accordance with internalized standards, knowing that they would condemn themselves if they did not. Source: Adapted from Kohlberg, 1976. Role-taking is a basic component of moral reasoning in Kohlberg's theory.'--! The better a person is at role-taking, the more complicated the dilemma off Heinz and the drug becomes. Vicky in Selman's stage 3 of role-taking deveh opment says that if Heinz were caught, a judge would listen to his explanation^ see the validity of his argument, and let him go. But in Selman's stage 4, Vi 386 THE MIDDLE YEARS realizes that no matter how good the explanation seems to Heinz, the judge has sworn to uphold the law and will not defend the theft. Implications of Kohlberg's theory. If moral development is a function of cognitive development, might it be possible to improve social behavior by teaching better intellectual skills? Research into this question has produced tantalizing but inconclusive answers. In one study (Chandler, 1973) forty-five 11- to 13-year-old chronic delinquents and forty-five boys who had never been in serious trouble were shown cartoon sequences that told a story. They were then asked to relate the stories from the point of view of a person who had arrived late and had not seen all the events the boys knew about. Chandler found that the delinquent boys were less able than the others to put themselves in the place of the person who arrived late. The delinquent boys were divided into three large groups. Those in the first group were enrolled in a 10-week summer program at a storefront, where staff members helped them develop their role-taking skills by making up and filming skits about people their own age. The staff members helped the boys in the second group to film cartoons and documentaries that did not portray the boys themselves. The third group did not take part in the program at all. At the end of the summer, all the boys were retested on role-taking ability. Only those who had received the role-taking training had improved. A year and a half later, Chandler reviewed police and court records and found that the boys who had received role-taking training had committed far fewer reported antisocial acts than those who had not had the training. This approach, then, offers a new way to look at young offenders, enabling us to see their delinquency as the result of a developmental lag and to try some new approaches to help them act in more socially appropriate ways. Chandler, though, conscientiously includes several disclaimers, which are good models that point up the need for caution in evaluating all experimental data. In any study, we need to determine exactly what it is we are studying, to be extremely careful in seeing cause-and-effect relationships in correlations, and to look at our findings with a healthy grain of skepticism. In considering this study, we need to remember that this was a special subgroup of antisocial youths—those who had been caught. Chandler says: The possibility exists that the persistent egocentrism which characterized this group was an index of their ineptitude rather than their antisocial orientation. If such were the case, the apparent reduction in delinquent behavior . . . might only reflect an improved ability to avoid detection and what looked like a promising intervention technique might prove only to be a "school for scoundrels." (1973, p. 15) Evaluation of Kohlberg's theory. Kohlberg's theory has generated many research projects, which have confirmed some aspects but have left others in question. In a 20-year-long study of 58 American boys (aged 10, 13, and 16 at the first testing), Kohlberg and his colleagues found that the boys progressed through the Kohlbergian stages in sequence and that none skipped a stage. Furthermore, moral judgments correlated positively with the boys' age, education, IQ, and socioeconomic status (Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs, & Lieberman, 1983). CHAPTER 12 « THE SCHOOLCHILD'S INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 387 A CHILD'S WORLD . . . THE EVERYDAY WORLD Many teachers, parents, and other adult leaders make use of an approach called values clarification, which was designed to help children make moral judgments by giving them a set of skills that help them analyze the values they say that they hold and the values they actually live by—in other words, skills that help them coordinate their moral thinking and their moral behavior. These skills involve seven steps: (1) choosing a belief or a behavior from among various alternatives; (2) considering the possible consequences of the choice; (3) making the choice on one's own, rather than going by what others say is the right thing to do; (4) feeling good about the choice; (5) being willing to make the choice public, to let everyone know Jbout it; (6) translating the beliefs into action; and' (7) acting on one's values over and over until they form a pattern in one's life (Simon & Olds, 1976). Values clarification uses gamelike exercises called strategies that pose provocative questions and ask children to make judgments. The object is not to teach a prescribed set of values, but rather to teach children how to form their own values. The following strategies are typical (Simon & Olds, 1976): Provocative question. Children are asked to re- spond to questions like "Are there ever times when lying is justified?" "What would the world be like without cars?" and "What are some things that take courage?" "Are you someone who.. . I" Children are asked to answer questions like the following with "Yes," "No," "Sometimes," or "I don't know" and then to discuss their answers: "Are you someone who would take part in a protest demonstration?" "Are you someone who would ever smoke pot with your children?" "Are you someone who throws candy wrappers on the sidewalk?" and "Are you someone who says what you think even when it gets you in trouble?" Values spectrum. Children are asked to place themselves somewhere on a continuum between two extremes: FAMILY A Believes that no one of any age should ever drink any alcohol because drinking is wicked and harmful. FAMILY Z All the family members love to drink, and the parents give their 5-year-old daughter a drink every day so that she'll learn how to. handle alcohol. This approach applies the theories of Piaget and Kohlberg by encouraging children to reflect on values and get practice in making moral judgments. Cross-cultural studies confirm this sequence up to a point. Although older subjects from countries other than the United States do tend to score at higher stages than younger subjects, people from nonwestern cultures rarely score i above stage 4 (Edwards, 1977; Nisan &. Kohlberg, 1982; Snarey, 1985). It's possible that these cultures do not foster higher development—but it's also;; likely that Kohlberg's definition of morality as a system of justice is not as| appropriate for nonwestern as for western societies. The appropriateness ol Kohlberg's definition of morality for women in American society has also been-questioned (Gilligan, 1982). Furthermore, Kohlberg's procedures may miss higher levels of reasoning in some cultural groups (Snarey, 1985). The potential influence of experience on moral judgments is also seen in' research indicating that moral judgments are strongly influenced by education: and by simply telling children the "right" answers to questions involving? moral reasoning (Carroll & Rest, 1982; Lickona, 1973). Findings like these| contradict the traditional cognitive-developmental position that children be-' come "moral philosophers," actively working out their moral systems through'-self-discovery. Other problems with Kohlberg's system lie in the testing procedures8 themselves. The standard tasks (like the story of Heinz) need to be presente| individually and then scored by trained judges. 388 THE MIDDLE YEARS One alternative test is the Defining Issues Test (DIT), which presents a subject with six moral dilemmas and then, for each dilemma, asks him or her to respond to 12 statements about the moral issues involved (Rest, 1975). The DIT can be administered to a group and scored objectively, and it still correlates moderately well with scores on the traditional tasks. Pina]1y studies nn tlt£ rplotirmchip l^fwppn mnnl judgments arid moral behavior suggest that people at thp.{p"bstconventionaJleyel_of thought do not behayj mote oaomLly- tkae al l»y-r IpvpRlFnpfprimirl & Wonderly, 1980). This isn't surprising in view of classic research done to determine whether and under what circumstances children will cheat (Hartshorne &. May, 1928-1930). These researchers found that they could not divide children into groups of "cheaters" and "noncheaters." Almost all the children cheated at some point, although some were more inclined to cheat than others and some situations brought out more cheating than other situations (if the children's grades were likely to be posted publicly, for example, cheating was more probable). Furthermore, children who cheated were just as likely to say that cheating was wrong as those who did not cheat; there was a big difference between moral judgment and moral behavior. While Kohlberg's stages do, then, seem to apply to American males, they are limited in their applicability to women and to people in nonwestern cultures. Questions about the testing methods themselves and about establishing a link between moral judgments and moral behavior raise serious problems regarding some aspects of the theory. Nevertheless, Kohlberg has had a major impact. His influential theory has enriched our thinking about the way moral development occurs, has furthered an association between cognitive maturity and moral maturity, and has stimulated both research and the elaboration of 'theories of moral development. INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACH: DEVELOPMENT OF MEMORY When the police showed a 3-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and sexually abused a set of 12 photographs, she gasped at one and identified the man shown as her abductor. The man was arrested and confessed to the crime (Goodman, 1984). In this case, a very young child seemed to be an accurate witness, but in other instances children's testimony has turned out to be unreliable, mixing fact with imagination or being fuzzy about details. The accuracy of children's memory has been a controversial issue ever since the turn of the century. Recent research shows that very young children can sometimes recall details better than adults cap, but that at other times their memories are poorer. They have the most trouble remembering events they don't understand^apparently becaiiaejdrey can't organize such events in their minds. As cognitive rlevel-~ ogrnent ach£anoesJ_so in most cases does memoryZ The information-processing approach to cognitive P-articvfljix-arlei^^ The ability to remember improves dj^yjdj3pmjmjL_riays great- ly injriiddle childhood, in part because children can now think up and use a. variety of strategies, or deliberate_pJans. to help them remember /another ability that develops at this age is metamemory, or insight into the wav mem-ory works. Metamemory Knowledge' of the processes of memory. CHAPTER 12« THE SCHOOLCHILD'S INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 389 [Encoding The process of classifying information in memory. Storage In information processing, the preservation of information in memory. Retrieval In information processing, the recovery and use of information stored in memory. Sensory memory A fleeting awareness of a sensation: it disappears quickly unless it is transferred into short-term memory. Short-term memory Working memory, which has a limited capacity; the content fades rapidly unless it is stored or actively preserved through rehearsal. Long-term memory Stored memories; the capacity seems unlimited, and the duration of a memory may be permanent. The iivformation-processing theory assumes that memory operates through four basic steps: pemen'trnji^ncoding, storage, and retrieval. First, we have to perceive something—see it, hear it, or become aware of it through another sense. Then we need to encode it, or classify it—as we sort names into people and places. Next, we store the material so that it stays in our memory. Last, we need to retrieve information—get it out of storage. In this section we'll look at three aspects of memory: _Ll) ^PiSiíY/ (2) strategies for remembering, and (3) metamemory. Memory Capacity According to one theory, we have three different types of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968, 1971). Sensory memory is a fleeting awareness of images that lasts about 1 second. Short-term memory is our working memory, the active repository of information we are currently using. And long-term memory is a storehouse of memories. Our ability to retrieve information frnrp lnng-fprm mpmm-y r]*. pends on hovfrwell it was perceived, organized, and stored in the first pln^p The capacity of short-term memory increases rapidly in middle childhood. One classic paper states that short-term memory is limited to seven pieces ("chunks") of information, plus or minus two. Thus, some people in some circumstances can hold only five items in short-term memory, while others' at other times can hold up to nine (G. A. Miller, 1956). We can see how children develop the capacity for short-term memory by asking them to recall a series of digits in the reverse order in which they heard them (to recite, for example, "8-3-7-5-1" if they heard "1-5-7-3-8"). At ages 5 to 6, children can typically remember only two digits; by adolescence, they can remember six digits. Young children's relatively poor short-term memory can help to explain why fhpy havp_trpuble solving certain kinds of problems (such as conservation) They may not be able to hold all the relevant pieces of information in their working memory (Siegler &. Richards, 1982). Strategies for Remembering Seven-year-old Jason has gone with his family to a lake for the summer. He loves to ride in a canoe out to the sandbars that lie offshore. There are too many sandbars for Jason to keep straight, but one day as he and his father paddle toward a sandbar, Jason's father says, "We are heading toward Jason Island," and on Jason Island he points to a nearby sandbar and says, "And that one is Mommy Island." "And that's Timmy Island," Jason says, naming a third sandbar after a ! playmate. Although the names are arbitrary, after playing this little game Jason can always tell which sandbar is which, and he can remember the spatial relations between them. Giving names to the islands has not provided Jason with any new insights into their nature, but it has helped him organize his experience so that he can remember it easily. During middle childhood, children discover that they can take deliberate 1 actions to help them remember things. Techniques that improve memory are 390 THE MIDDLE YEARS called mnemonic strategies. As children get older, they develop better strategies and tailor them to meet the need to remember specific things. But these techniques need not be discovered haphazardly. Children can be taught to use them earlier than they would spontaneously come up with them. Let s take a look at some of the most common strategies: rehearsal, organization, elaboration, and external aids. Rehearsal When you look up a telephone number, you may repeat it over and over in your mind on your way from the directory to the phone. Such rehearsal keeps something in short-term memory. When do people first use rehearsal. Not in the arst grade, according to classic research (Flavell, Beach, & Chinsky, 1966). When an experimenter pointed to seven pictures that children knew they would be asked to recall, first-graders just sat, waited till they were asked for the information and then tried to recall the pictures in the order in which they had seen them. Second- and fifth-graders moved their lips and muttered almost inaudibly between the time they saw the pictures and the time they were asked to recall them. Not surprisingly, the older children remembered the material better When the experimenters asked first-graders to Diaeffle pictures out loud when they first saw them (a form of rehearsal), the children recalled the order in which they were presented better. A later study showed that young children who were taught to rehearse before they did it spontaneously applied rehearsal to a situation in which they were taught but didn t generalize the learning; that is, they didn't carry it over to new situations (Keeney, Cannizzo, & Flavell, 1967). Children paSs through three stages in the use of rehearsal. Preschoolers don't think of using it and can't be taught to use it effectively; young schoolchildren don't think of it on their own but can be taught to use it, and children over age 10 use it spontaneously and keep getting better at it. Organization ItMainstreaming The integration of handicapped and nonhandicapped children in the same classroom. SOME SCHOOL-RELATED ISSUES Educating Handicapped Children Education for handicapped children has come a long way since the family of Helen Keller had to travel to distant cities to find help for their daughter who was deaf and blind. In 1975, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, which assures^anaprrropm^ handicapped children. Tliislawprovides for an evaluation of each child's needs and the design of an appropriate program, for the involvement of parents in the decision about their children's education, and for the allocation of necessary funds. Eight out of ten children in the program are mentally retarded, learning-disabled, or speech-impaired. The law also requires mainstreaming, or the integration of handicapped with nonhandicapped youngsters, as much as possible. Under the principle of mjrinstreaming, handicapped children are in regular classes with nonhandi-capped_voungsters for allHirrparjrqfjThe day, instead ot being segregated into' special__clasfies^ Proponents of this approach emphasize the need for handi-capped people to learn to get along in a society where most people do not share their impediments, and they also point to the need for nonhandicapped people to get to know and understand those who are handicapped. Main-streaming requires innovative teaching techniques that meet the needs of all students. Its critics maintain that handicapped children can be taught better and more humanely in small classes by specially trained teachers. Retarded children have been found to do as well academically in mainstreamed classes as in special classes, but not better (Gruen, Korte, t\ Baum, 1974). Unfortunately, mainstreaming does not seem to diminish the stigma experienced by these children. The best solution is probably a combination of mainstreaming and special classes. A retarded child, for example, might be able to take physical education or shop in a regular class, while receiving academic instruction in a class with slow learners. Or a child with cerebral palsy might be in regular academic classes but receive special physical training while his or her classmates go to gym. Learning disability A disorder that impedes performance in school. Learning Disabilities Many children whose intelligence is normal still have great difficulty learning how to read, write, or work with numbers. They see and hear perfectly well, but they have trouble processing what comes through the senses. As one child said, "I know it in my head, but I can't get it into my hand." Often thought of as "underachievers," such children are said to have a learning disability, a disorder that interferes in some way with achievement in school. The problem is common, affecting as many as 30 percent of all schoolchildren, or an estimated 1.8 million students (Feagans, 1983; Fiske, 1984). Since success in school is important for self-esteem, learning disabilities can have devastating effects on the psyche as well as on the report card. -;J Dozens of different' disorders affect one or more aspects of the learning process. Adam, for example, has problems with visual perception: he confuses, up and down and left and right, and so he has great difficulty learning how to 408 THE MIDDLE YEARS read and do arithmetic. Barbara has problems with auditory perception: she cannot grasp what the teacher is saying when he stands up in front of the room. Charles has difficulties with small-motor coordination: he cannot color inside the lines or draw and write clearly. Derek is clumsy in his large-motor movements, a deficit that is painfully apparent in the school yard when he tries to run, climb, or play ball. Ellen has speech problems: she began to speak quite late and still articulates so unclearly that she is embarrassed to speak out in class and to read aloud. The cause of these disabilities is not known. It's not mental retardation: learning-disabled (LD) children tend to score only 5 to 10 points below average on IQ tests, putting them in the normal range. Some researchers point to behavioral explanations, since LD children show up asless taslc-oriented, more easily distraHe37and less able^to^onTeritrate than other children. Others look at failures lrTcogmtive processing, since these~children are less organized as learners and are unlikely to use cognitive strategies such as the strategies for remembering discussed earlier in this chapter (Feagans, 1983). Still others believe that abnormal brain structures are at the root of their difficulties; this explanation is based on studies that have uncovered differences between the brains of people with learning disabilities and those of people without such disabilities (Blakeslee, 1984). If LD children are given special attention at an early age, they can sometimes overcome their difficulties well enough to lead satisfying, productive lives as adults. Some go on to college and professional careers, and while they're never cured of their disabilities, they can often learn how to get around them. Nelson Rockefeller, the former governor of New York, for example, had so much trouble reading that he ad-libbed his speeches rather than risk garbling written ones (Fiske, 1984). It's essential that LD children receive individualized instruction designed for their own needs. Among the most successful aids are behavioral modification techniques which help them concentrate and which improve their handwriting, spelling, and reading; methods for teaching them how to use cognitive strategies; help in organizing their daily lives outside school as well as in it; and encouragement of their progress in the areas that give them difficulty, as well as in nonacademic areas where they do well. The social problems that all too often accompany the academic problems of LD children—the aggressiveness that makes them unpopular with teachers and other children, the truancy that sometimes gets them into trouble with the law, and the poor self-esteem that interferes with healthy personality development—are a reminder of the importance of school in the lives of children, an importance that goes far beyond the academic skills and facts learned there. School Phobia Many professionals who have studied school phobia claim that it is mis- A.School phobia Fear of named—that the unrealislioiear which keeps children from attending school school. ha^_j£s&JxL_do--with a fear of .school .itself than with a fejr_ofj£aving their mothers. So piany researrliar&_aj:e rnnyinceiLaLrhe hasic^r^ratlon arrxTetv'T^— una^jvirig this problem that virtually no research has been done on the school situation of school-phobic youngsters^ We know very little about their per- CHAPTER 12 a THE SCHOOLCHILD'S INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 409 ceptions of school, how they get along with their teachers and the other children, and whether there is a basic problem in the school itself, such as a sarcastic teacher, a bully in the school yard, or overly difficult work. (In some schools the levels of tension and violence are, of course, high enough to cause realistic fears. In situations like this, it is the environment that needs to be changed, not the child.) What do we know about school-phobic children? First, they are not truants. They are often good students whose parents know when they are absent. These absences extend for long stretches at a time. The children's ages are evenly distributed between 5 and 15, and boys and girls are equally likely to be affected. They tend to be of average intelligence or higher and to perform at least at average levels in school. While they come from a variety of social-class backgrounds, they seem to be overrepresented in the professional classes. Typically, school-phobic children wake up on a school morning complaining of some physical ailment, such as nausea, stomachache, vomiting, or headache. Soon after they have received permission to stay at home, the symptom clears up. This may go on day after day, and the longer they are out of school, the harder it is to get them back. These children are often timid and inhibited away from home, but willful, stubborn, and demanding with their parents. Not all school phobias are the same. In the "neurotic" type, which affects mainly children from kindergarten through the fourth grade, the avoidance of school comes on suddenly, and the child continues to function well in other areas of his or her life. In the "characterological" type, seen in early adolescence, the phobia has come on more gradually, the child is more deeply disturbed, and the outlook for the child's future is less hopeful. The most important element in the treatment of a school-phobic child is an early return to school. Most experts advise getting the child back to school first and then going on with whatever other steps may be called for, such as therapy for the child, for one or both parents, and possibly for the entire family. Getting children back into school breaks up the extreme interdependence between them and their mother, emphasizes the children's basic health, keeps them from falling behind in their work (which would aggravate their problems), restores them to a more normal environment, and breaks the phobic cycle. The return to school is sometimes accomplished gradually, beginning with the parent's driving the child to school and just sitting in the car, then getting out and walking around the outside of the school with the child, next going with the child into the principal's office, and finally having the child go to school alone—first, possibly, for an hour a day, then for several hours, and eventually for an entire day. An approach like this requires working closely with school officials. Usually children can be returned to school without too much difficulty once treatment is begun. The few studies that have followed up school-phobic children in later years are unclear, though, in determining how well treatment helped their adjustment in general (D. Gordon & Young, 1976). 410 THE MIDDLE YEARS Summary KEY CONCEPTS X ■ Piaget says that children aged from about 6 to 11 are in the stage of concrete operations. They can think logically about the here and now, but they cannot yet fj think abstractly. i^U Moral judgment requires the ability to understand other points of view and to consider many factors; thus, the development of moral judgment depends on cognitive development. f\ a Piaget sees moral development as occurring in two stages: first there is a morality of constraint, in which children handle moral concepts in a rigid way, and later comes a morality of cooperation, which is characterized by moral flexibility. /, ■ Kohlberg has devised a set of moral dilemmas to assess moral judgments. The reasoning used to resolve a moral dilemma (not the specific resolution of the dilemma) indicates the stage of moral development that the person is in. Each dilemma rests on a concept of justice. Kohlberg sees moral development as progressing through six stages, which he divides into three levels: preconventional morality, morality of conventional role conformity, and morality of autonomous moral prin- i ciples. X ■ The information-processing approach divides memory into four basic steps: per- ( ception, encoding, storage, and retrieval. Am There are several different forms of memory, such as sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. ■ Creative thinking is divergent rather than convergent. ■ Tests designed to measure an intellectual ability like creativity may be reliable (able to yield consistent results) without being valid (able to measure something outside the test situation). ■ Because it has proved impossible to design a culture-free IQ test, test makers now hope to develop culture-fair tests that rely on experiences that are common to people in many cultures. ■ Although every generation wants the "best" education for its children, opinions about what constitutes the "best" change according to new experiences and new needs. KEY FINDINGS ■ Mental operations performed by children in this stage include the ability to decen-ter (to consider several aspects of a situation at once) and reversibility (the awareness that an object can be returned to its original state). ■ Conservation, the ability to understand that a change in form does not involve a change in amount, develops throughout this period. Children can conserve substance at age 6 or 7, conserve weight at age 9 or 10, and conserve volume at age 11 or 12. ■ Selman found five stages in the development of role-taking: in stage 0, children recognize only their own point of view; in stage 1, they realize that others can see matters differently; in stage 2, they realize that others know that they have a particular point of view; in stage 3, they can imagine a third point of view; and in stage 4, they realize that mutual role-taking cannot resolve everything. CHAPTER 12 ■ THE SCHOOLCHILD'S INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 411 ■ The stages in Kohlberg's theory correlate positively with the age, education, IQ, and socioeconomic status of American males. The theory's, value in assessing the i judgments of females and of people in other cultures is less certain. ■ ■ Memory improves greatly during middle childhood. ■ Short-term memory appears to be able to hold seven "chunks" of information, plus or minus two. Depending on the task and the person, the contents of short-term memory generally can range from five to nine items. ■ During middle childhood, children's understanding of their own intellectual abilities increases. Thus, we see a rise in metamemory (the understanding of memory) and metacommunication (the understanding of communication). ■ Grammatical ability continues to improve as children realize that identical sentence structures do not always imply identical relationships. ■ Children become increasingly skilled at monitoring their own linguistic comprehension. ■ IQ scores are good predictors of achievement in school, especially for highly verbal children. ■ Culture can affect a person's behavior while taking an intelligence test as well as the person's ability to answer the questions. ■ Differences in average IQ scores commonly appear when a group that is more closely associated with the dominant middle-class urban culture is compared with a group that is poor, a minority, or from a rural culture. Thus, differences in average scores are more likely to reflect environmental than genetic differences. ■ Differences between blacks' and whites' average IQ scores do not appear in infancy. ■ Long-term observation of children with high IQs (140 and above) shows that they are likely to be high achievers as adults, but not necessarily creative. ■ Teachers in the early grades tend to be particularly influential in shaping a child's future performance in school. ■ The influence that computers will have on education is still uncertain and may depend as much on a teacher's expectations as on anything inherent in the computer. ■ Girls typically do better in school than boys, especially during the early grades. ■ Retarded children do as well in mainstreamed classes as in special classes, but not better. ■ Effective strategies for remembering include rehearsal, organizing, elaboration, and using external aids. The link between metamemory and actual memory is not particularly strong. ■ In order to nurture creativity, a child's first teacher should foster the joy and playfulness that come from the child's talent. Later, teachers who stress the discipline and rigor associated with the talent should teach the child for a number of years. Teaching should include competition and emotional "highs." ■ The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-R) is the most popular individual measure of a schoolchild's ability. The Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test is a popular group test. The System of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment gives a richer understanding of a person's development but is much more difficult to administer. ■ The most helpful teachers bring a positive, affectionate approach to the classroom.} KEY APPLICATIONS 412 THE MIDDLE YEARS □ A combination of mainstreamed and special classes enables handicapped children to participate more fully in society, while still receiving special attention to the areas in which they need it. ■ Most experts advise that school-phobic children should first be returned to school and then be given any needed special aid or therapy. Suggested Readings Bloom, B. S. (1985). Developing talent in young people. New York: Ballantine Books. An absorbing report of a project in which researchers interviewed 120 accomplished young pianists, sculptors, swimmers, tennis champions, mathematicians, and research neurologists and their parents, teachers, and coaches. The book emphasizes the importance of the parents' and teachers' active development of the young people's abilities. Coles, R. (1986). The moral life of children. Boston: Atlantic Monthly. A prominent child psychiatrist offers his rebuttal to the Kohlbergian theory that moral development rests on cognitive development and that schoolchildren are too young to live profoundly moral lives. The special strength of the book is the many moving quotations it includes by children discussing morality in their own experience. Eysenck, H. J., & Kamin, L. (1981). The intelligence controversy. New York: Wiley. A lively debate on whether intelligence is the result of heredity or environment by two prominent advocates of each point of view, complete with attacks, counterattacks, and rebuttals. Goertzel, V., & Goertzel, M. G. (1978). Cradles of eminence. Boston: Little, Brown. An absorbing study of the childhoods of some 400 prominent persons that seeks to relate factors of early life to eventual success in life. It brings together biography, autobiography, and professional literature about gifted children and adults. Simon, S. B., & Olds, S. W. (1977). Helping your child learn right from wrong. New York: McGraw-Hill. A self-help manual for parents to aid them in establishing moral values and emotional self-awareness in their children. The authors explain why values themselves cannot be taught but how parents can teach children a process for arriving at their own values. CHAPTER 12 a THE SCHOOLCHILD'S INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 413