Recall that emotional regulation, theory of mind, and left–right coordination emerge in early childhood. The maturing corpus callosum connects the hemispheres of the brain, enabling balance and two-handed coordination, while myelination adds speed. Maturation of the prefrontal cortex—the executive part of the brain—allows the child to begin to plan, monitor, and evaluate. All of these neurological developments continue. We now look at additional advances in middle childhood.

Increasing maturation results in connections between the various lobes and regions of the brain. Such connections are crucial for the complex tasks that children must master, which require “smooth coordination of large numbers of neurons” (Stern, 2013, p. 577). Certain areas of the brain, called hubs, are locations where massive numbers of axons meet. Hubs tend to be near the corpus callosum, and damage to them correlates with brain dysfunction (as in dementia and schizophrenia) (Crossley et al., 2014).

The importance of hubs means that the brain connections formed in middle childhood are crucial for healthy brain functioning. Particularly important are links between the hypothalamus and the amygdala, because emotions need to be regulated so learning can occur. Stress impairs these connections: Slow academic mastery in middle childhood is one more consequence of early maltreatment (Hanson et al., 2014).

One example of the need for brain connections is learning to read, perhaps the most important intellectual accomplishment of middle childhood. Reading is not instinctual: Our ancestors never did it, and until recent centuries, only a few scribes and scholars could make sense of marks on paper. Consequently, the brain has no areas dedicated to reading, the way it does for talking or gesturing (Sousa, 2014).

Instead, reading uses many parts of the brain—one for sounds, another for recognizing letters, another for sequencing, another for comprehension and more. By working together, those parts first foster listening, talking, and thinking, and then put it all together (Lewandowski & Lovett, 2014). Indeed, every skill mastered in middle childhood requires connections between many neurons in several brain regions.

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Advance planning and impulse control are aided by faster reaction time, which is how long it takes to respond to a stimulus. Increasing myelination reduces reaction time every year from birth until about age 16. Skill at games is an obvious example, from scoring on a video game, to swinging at a pitch, to kicking a speeding soccer ball toward a teammate.

Many more complex examples involve social and academic skills. For instance, being able to discern when to utter a witty remark and when to stay quiet is something few 6-year-olds can do. By age 10, some children have quick reactions, allowing them to (1) realize that a comment could be made and (2) decide what it could be, (3) think about the other person’s possible response, and in the same split second (4) know when something should NOT be said.

Both quick replies and quick inhibition develop. Children become less likely to blurt out wrong answers but more likely to enjoy games that require speed. Interestingly, children with reading problems are slower as well as more variable in reaction time, and that itself slows down every aspect of reading (Tamm et al., 2014).

Neurological advances allow children not only to process information quickly but also to pay special heed to the most important elements of their environment. Selective attention, the ability to concentrate on some stimuli while ignoring others, improves markedly at about age 7.

School-age children not only notice various stimuli (which is one form of attention) but also select appropriate responses when several possibilities conflict (Wendelken et al., 2011). Selective attention improves as neurological maturity continues (Stevens & Bavelier, 2012).

For example in school, children listen, take notes, and ignore distractions (all difficult at age 6, easier by age 10). Unfazed by the din of the cafeteria, children react quickly to gestures and facial expressions. On the baseball diamond, older batters ignore the other team’s attempts to distract them, and fielders start moving into position as soon as the bat hits the ball.

One final advance in brain function in middle childhood is automatization, the process by which a sequence of thoughts and actions is repeated until it becomes automatic. At first, almost all behaviors that are deliberate require careful thought. After many repetitions, neurons fire in sequence, and less thinking is needed because the firing of one neuron sets off a chain reaction: That is automatization.

Consider again learning to read. At first, eyes (sometimes aided by a guiding finger) focus intensely, painstakingly making out letters and sounding out each one. This leads to the perception of syllables and then words. Eventually, the process becomes so routine that as people drive along on a highway, they read billboards that they have no interest in reading. Children do the same, gradually learning to read without conscious control.

Automatic reading aids other academic skills. One longitudinal study of second-graders—from the beginning to the end of the school year—found a reciprocal process from one type of academic proficiency to another, with automatic processing advancing as learning continues (Lai et al., 2014).

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Learning to speak a second language, to recite the multiplication tables, and to write one’s name also is slow at first but gradually becomes automatic. Habits and routines learned in childhood are useful lifelong—and when they are not, they are hard to break. That’s automatization.

In ancient times, if adults were strong and fertile, that was usually enough to be considered a solid member of the community. A few wise men were admired, but most people were not expected to think quickly and profoundly. Over the centuries, though, we humans have placed higher and higher values on intelligence, and have developed ways to measure it.

In theory, aptitude is the potential to master a specific skill or to learn a certain body of knowledge. The brain functions which have just been described—reaction time, selective attention, and automatization—may be the foundation of aptitude, whether the specific aptitude is the ability to become a proficient soccer player, seamstress, chef, student, or whatever.

Measuring the brain directly is complicated, however. Therefore, intellectual aptitude is usually measured by answers to a series of questions. The underlying assumption is that there is one general thing called intelligence (often referred to as g, for general intelligence) and that correct answers measure g.

Originally, IQ tests produced a score that was literally an Intelligence Quotient: Mental age (the average chronological age of children who answer a certain number of questions correctly) was divided by the chronological age of the child who took the test. The result of that division (the quotient) was multiplied by 100.

Thus if the average 10-year-old answered say, exactly 60 questions correctly, then people who got 60 questions right would have a mental age of 10—no matter how old they were. Anyone whose mental age was the same as their chronological age (in this example, a 10-year-old who got 60 questions right) the quotient would be 10 ÷ 10 = 1. The IQ would be 100 (1 × 100), exactly average.

If a 10-year-old answered the questions as well as a typical 12-year-old, the score would be 12 ÷ 10 × 100, or 120. The current method of calculating IQ is more complex, but an IQ within one standard deviation of 100 (between 85 and 115) is still considered average (see Figure 11.3).

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In theory, achievement is what has actually been learned, not learning potential (aptitude). School achievement tests compare scores to norms established for each grade. For example, children of any age who read as well as the average third-grader would be at the third-grade level in reading achievement.

The words in theory precede the definitions of aptitude and achievement above because, although potential and accomplishment are supposed to be distinct, the data find substantial overlap. IQ and achievement scores are strongly correlated.

It was once assumed that aptitude was a fixed characteristic, present at birth. Longitudinal data show otherwise. Young children with a low IQ can become above average or even gifted adults, like my nephew David (discussed in Chapter 1). Indeed, the average IQ scores of entire nations have risen substantially every decade for the past century—a phenomenon called the Flynn efffect, named after the researcher who first described it (Flynn, 1999, 2012).

Most psychologists now agree that the brain is like a muscle, affected by mental exercise—which often is encouraged or discouraged by the social setting. Brain structures grow or shrink depending on past learning. This is proven in language and music and probably is true in other areas as well (Zatorre, 2013). During middle childhood, speed of thought is crucial for high IQ, with working memory also influential (Demetriou et al., 2013). Both speed and memory are affected by experience, evident in the Flynn effect.

Since scores change over time, IQ tests are much less definitive than they were once thought to be. Some scientists doubt whether any single test can measure the complexities of the human brain, especially if the test is designed to measure g, one general aptitude. According to some experts, children inherit many abilities, some high and some low, rather than any g (e.g., Q. Zhu et al., 2010).

Two leading developmentalists (Sternberg and Gardner) are among those who believe that humans have multiple intelligences, not just one. Gardner originally described seven intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic (movement), interpersonal (social understanding), and intrapersonal (self-understanding), each associated with a particular brain region (Gardner, 1983). He subsequently added an eighth (naturalistic: understanding nature, as in biology, zoology, or farming) and a ninth (spiritual/existential: thinking about life and death) (Gardner, 1999, 2006; Gardner & Moran, 2006).

Although every normal person has some of all nine intelligences, Gardner believes each individual excels in particular ones. For example, someone might be gifted spatially but not linguistically (a visual artist who cannot describe her work) or might have interpersonal but not naturalistic intelligence (an astute clinical psychologist whose houseplants die). Gardner’s concepts regarding multiple intelligences influence the curriculum in many primary schools. For instance, children might be allowed to demonstrate their understanding of a historical event via a poster with drawings instead of writing a paper with a bibliography.

Sternberg described three kinds of intelligence: analytic, creative, and practical (1985, 2011). He contends that schools emphasize analysis (academics), but that creative and practical intelligence should also be valued. He added a fourth type of intelligence—called wisdom—as crucial in adulthood. He writes:

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One needs creativity to generate novel ideas, analytical intelligence to ascertain whether they are good ideas, practical intelligence to implement the ideas and persuade others of their value, and wisdom to ensure that the ideas help reach a common good.

[Sternberg, 2012, p. 21]

Gardner, Sternberg, and many other scholars find that cultures and families dampen or encourage particular intelligences. For instance, if two children are born with creative, musical intelligence, the child whose parents are musicians is more likely to develop musical intelligence than a child whose parents are tone-deaf.

Every test reflects the culture of the people who create, administer, and take it. This is obvious for achievement tests: A child may score low because of home, school, or culture, not because of ability. Indeed, IQ tests are still used partly because achievement tests do not necessarily reflect aptitude.

Scores on aptitude tests are also influenced by culture. Some experts have tried to develop tests that are culture-free, asking children to identify pictures, draw shapes, repeat stories, hop on one foot, name their classmates, sort objects, and so on.

An obvious precaution, required by most IQ tests, is that a friendly, trained adult ask questions of an individual student, in order to avoid cultural test-taking skills. Yet experience still matters. For example, some children are told to never talk to strangers, and so they do not answer the examiner’s questions.

One way to indicate aptitude is to measure the brain directly, avoiding the cultural biases of written exams or individual questions. Brain scans do not correlate with scores on IQ tests in childhood, but they do in adolescence (Brouwer et al., 2014). That suggests that one or the other of these tests is flawed when measuring the intelligence of children. The brain seems to have several localized hubs and lobes, which suggests multiple intelligence, but overall speed of reaction seems a characteristic of the entire brain, which may underlie g. Variation is vast in children’s brains, which makes experts hesitant to argue for any one interpretation of IQ tests and brain scans (e.g., Goddings & Giedd, 2014).

For example, although it seems logical that less brain activity means less intelligence, that is not always the case. In fact, automatization reduces the need for brain activity, so the smartest children might have less active brains. Another puzzle is that a thicker cortex sometimes correlates with high IQ, but cortex thinness predicts greater vocabulary in 9- to 11-year-olds (Menary et al., 2013; Karama et al., 2009; G. Miller, 2006). Brain patterns in creative children differ from those who score high on IQ tests (Jung & Ryman, 2013). These results are puzzling—but so is much brain research.

Neuroscientists agree, however, on three conclusions:

This leads to the final topics of this chapter, children with special needs and how they should be taught.

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