a stage in which the individual is still sexually immature, but no longer dependent on parents for survival. In biological terms, middle childhood corresponds to human It is reprinted here with updated references and a new section on the model’s implications for health development in a life course perspective (LCHD). This chapter was originally published as a short paper in the journal Child Development Perspectives (Del Giudice 2014a). 2009, 2012 Del Giudice and Belsky 2011) and discuss three insights in the nature of middle childhood that arise from an integrated approach. Then, I introduce the idea that the transition to middle childhood works as a switch point in the development of life history strategies (Del Giudice et al. I begin by reviewing the main evolved functions of middle childhood and the cognitive, behavioral, and hormonal processes that characterize this life stage.
In this chapter, I show how these diverse contributions can be synthesized into an integrated evolutionary-developmental model of middle childhood. In the last two decades, converging theories and findings from anthropology, primatology, evolutionary psychology, endocrinology, and behavior genetics have revolutionized our understanding of middle childhood. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. Then, I introduce the idea that the transition to middle childhood works as a switch point in the development of life history strategies and discuss three insights in the nature of middle childhood that arise from an integrated approach. In reality, this life stage is anything but static: the transition from early to middle childhood heralds a global shift in cognition, motivation, and social behavior, with profound and wide-ranging implications for the development of personality, sex differences, and even psychopathology. On the surface, middle childhood may appear like a slow-motion interlude between the spectacular transformations of infancy and early childhood and those of adolescence. Middle childhood-conventionally going from about 6–11 years of age-is a crucial yet underappreciated phase of human development.