11 Middle Childhood – Cognitive Development

After this chapter, you should be able to:

  1. Describe what cognitive theorists share about children and their thinking

  2. Explain how intelligence is measured, the tests used to assess intelligence, the extremes in intelligence, and the concern of bias

  3. Describe the Information Processing Theory

  4. Explain several theories of language development

  5. Compare typical language development with language difficulties

Cognitive skills continue to expand in middle and late childhood. Children in middle childhood have thought processes that become more logical and organized when dealing with concrete information. Children at this age understand concepts such as past, present, and future, giving them the ability to plan and work toward goals. Additionally, they can process complex ideas such as addition and subtraction and cause-and effect relationships.428


  1. Lifespan Development: A Psychological Perspective by Martha Lally and Suzanne Valentine-French is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0↩︎