Chapter 11

I.  Define overweight and obesity.

  1. Overweight:
  2. It is define as 20% above ideal weight for one’s age and height.
  3. Obesity:
  4. It is define as 30% or more above ideal weight for one’s age and height.

II.  Percent of American children that are obese.

  1. 1/3 or 33.3 % of American children are obese.

III.  Explain why been obese is a problem for children.

  1. Children who are obese increase the risk for serious health problems in adulthood, including heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. They are also more likely to experience psychological as well as physical problems—especially depression.

IV.  Factors that contribute to obesity.

  1. Genes are a part of the reason for childhood obesity. Environmental factors are the major reason for the increase in obesity. Children don’t play outside as much instead they watch TV until they go to bed. Parents who grew up poor and didn’t have much to eat now encourage their children to eat as much as they want when they cook.

V.  Define asthma.

  1. It is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the airways. It affects between 10-20% of school-age children in America.

VI.  Identify causes and triggers of asthma.

  1. It is said to be genetic coming from the chromosomes 2, 11, 12, 13, and 21. Some medical advances that limit childhood diseases may make asthma more likely. Carpeted floors, dogs and cats living inside the house, airtight windows, less outdoor play, and urbanization are all factors that increase the chance of an asthma attack. Air pollution, dust mites, and allergens are all triggers not causes of asthma.

VII.  Describe primary prevention, secondary prevention, and tertiary prevention as they relate to asthma.

  1. Primary prevention: This is the best approach of all, although the hardest to achieve by individuals. Proper ventilation of schools and homes, decreased pollution, eradication of cockroaches, and safe outdoor play spaces would make life and health better for school-age children, especially who might become asthmatic.
  2. Secondary prevention: Depends on families and thus might be easier to achieve. If there is a genetic history of allergies, ridding the house of allergens before the disease appears and breast-feeding newborns can cut the rate of asthma in half.
  1. Tertiary prevention: This is after an ailment is recognized, and it occurs every day in physician’s offices and hospital emergency rooms. For asthma, prompt use of injections, inhalers, and pills that are prescribed and monitored by specialists markedly reduces the rate of acute asthma attacks.

VIII.  Define selective attention and autoimmunization.

  1. Selective attention is the ability of a child to attend to information from many areas of the brain at once and to play special heed to the most important elements. This is one of the advances in middle childhood.
  1. Automatization is another advance of middle childhood. It is a process by which thoughts and actions are repeated in sequence so often that they become automatic, or routine, and no longer require much conscious thought.

IX.  Define reaction time.

  1. Reaction time is part of motor skills maturation of a child. It is the length of time it takes a person to respond to a particular stimulus.

X.  Difference between achievement and aptitude tests.

  1. Achievement test: is designed to measure reading proficiency, math knowledge, science facts, writing skills, and whatever else has actually been mastered. This test is given routinely in school.
  1. Aptitude test: measures the potential to learn, or master, a particular skill or body of knowledge. It is given only when a child’s achievement is unexpectedly high or low.

XI.  Define IQ tests.

  1. An IQ (intelligence quotient) test is an aptitude test designed to measure a person’s intellectual aptitude, or ability to learn in school. It is defined by mental age divided by chronological age, times 100.

XII.  Describe the theoretical distribution of IQ scores.

  1. A person who scores in the range of 85-115 is an average learner; this is 68.26% of the population. People in the 70-85 range are slow learners and this makes up 13.6% of population. 55-70 IQ score are people with mild retardation making up 2.13% of population. And 55-less is moderate to severe retardation and that makes up 0.14%. The ones with 115-130 are superior (13.6%), 130-145 are gifted (2.13%), and 145-160 are geniuses (0.14%).

XIII.  Identify problems with IQ tests.

  1. IQ measures intelligence only in linguistic and logical-mathematical aspects, but not on musical, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal or even naturalistic. Robert Sternberg describes three distinct types of intelligence: Academic (measured by IQ and achievement tests), Creative (evidenced by imaginative endeavors), and Practical (seen in everyday interactions).

XIV.  Define child with special needs.

  1. A child who, because of a physical or mental disability, requires extra help in order to learn.

XV.  What percent of children in U.S. receive special education services?

  1. 13%

XVI.  Define individual education plan (IEP).

  1. A legally required document specifying a series of educational goals for a child with special needs.

XVII.  Define developmental psychology.

  1. A field in which knowledge about normal development is applied to the study and treatment of various disorder and vice versa.

XVIII.  Four lessons that apply to all children which D.P. has provided.

  1. Abnormality is normal
  2. Even children without disorder act in unusual ways.
  1. Disability changes over time.
  2. Behaviors in a person with problems change as the person grows older. Child handicapped at one stage may be more capable at the next stage.
  1. Adolescence and adulthood may be better or worse.
  1. Diagnosis depends on social context.
  1. Disorders may not reside inside the skin of an individual but between the individual and the environment.

XIX.  Define pervasive developmental disorders.

  1. Severe problems such as autism that affects many aspects of a young child’s psychological growth.

XX.  Differentiate between autism and Asperger Syndrome.

  1. Autism
  2. Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder marked by an inability to relate to other people in an ordinary way, by extreme self-absorption, and by an inability to learn normal speech.
  1. Asperger Syndrome
  2. This is a set of less severe symptoms of autism, in which the individual has fairly normal speech and intelligence but severely impaired social interaction.

XXI.  Three deficits that appear when a child is affected by pervasive disorder.

  1. Ability to communicate
  2. Social skills
  3. Imaginative pay

XXII.  Differentiate between ADD and AD/HD.

  1. ADD
  2. Attention-deficit-disorder is when a child has difficulty concentrating for more than a few moments at a time. The child may be prone to depression, anxiety, lost in thought, and distracted.
  1. AD/HD
  2. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity-disorder is the most common type of ADD; except for this one the child is inattentive, impulsive, and overactive.

XXIII.  Define Learning disabled, dyslexia.

  1. Learning disabled is having a marked delay in a particular area of learning that is not associated with any obvious physical handicap, overall mental retardation, or unusually stressful home environment.
  1. Dyslexia is an unusual difficulty with reading.

XXIV.  Describe the treatment of attention-deficit-disorders.

  1. Something that has been proven to work is medications (Ritalin), psychotherapy, and changes in the family and school environments. Some other drugs are Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil.

XXV.  Explain the following approaches to educating children with special needs.

  1. Mainstreaming:
  2. The policy that they should be taught in the least-restrictive environment, which means with other children in the general classrooms.
  3. Least-restrictive environment (LRE):
  4. A legally required school setting that offers children with special needs as much freedom as possible to benefit from instructions available to other children.
  1. Resource room:
  2. A room set aside in some schools for special-needs children to spend part of each day with a teacher who is trained and equipped to work with their disabilities.
  1. Inclusion:
  2. A policy under which learning-disabled children are included in the regular class, as in mainstreaming, but are supervised by a specially trained teacher or paraprofessional for all or part of the day.