ABSTRACT
This chapter examines cognitive development in middle childhood—both its intrinsic character and its shaping by various environmental influences, as revealed by socio-psychological researches. The more obvious cases of precocity or backwardness are a commonplace of observation at all ages. One must, therefore, allow sufficiently wide borderlands at either end of the period of middle childhood. P. H. Mussen and others, discussing prejudice in middle childhood, refer to evidence of lower-middle-class children between 5 and 8 in Philadelphia showing religious and racial prejudice that reflected parental attitudes. Ordinary children can be most attractive in middle childhood, because of their vitality, enthusiasm and combination of naivety and mischief. The social information reminds one of factors acting on very many children which are radically different from the factors taken for granted in the teacher's middle-class world—factors which have often in the past been forgotten in practice even if acknowledged formally.
