The Healthy Young Child - Term Paper Example

 Introduction Cognitive development consists of logical construction by human beings of their thought processes that include, among other things, remembering, problem solving, and decision-making that they do all through their lives starting right from infancy that gets matured to a certain degree as they reach adolescence and finally gets fully matured as they grow into adults. Psychologists of yesteryears thought that cognitive ability was intrinsically intertwined with the ability to express cohesively in a recognisable language and thus were of the opinion that the mental development of a child was largely dependent on his or her ability to express cogently in any language. However, modern day psychologists have conclusively proved through minute and elaborate observation of numerous children, that the learning process commences at birth and babies start exploring their immediate surroundings right from the time they are born. The infants collect, collate and utilise available information to develop their perceptions about the real world while their thought processes get strengthened by this process. It would perhaps be proper at this stage to clarify that language development is a very important phase of cognitive development other than the already well known spheres of information processing, memory and logical reasoning. Thus the clear break that modern day psychologists have with their predecessors is that while the earlier school was of the opinion that cognitive process starts after an infant has some expertise over language, the modern school believes that expertise over language – a vital stage in cognitive development – starts the moment a child is born. (Gallahue & Ozmun, 2005) Young children usually do not learn new things in accordance with categorisations and divisions that we as adults have put in place while terming each such category and division as a separate subject. Children actually take their first uncertain steps in the realm of science, or, try out a preliminary interaction with mathematics, or, and this is observed almost in every child, hone their linguistic skills through experiences that are realistic and connect with immediate experiences. (Sharman, Cross, Vennis, & Sharman, 2007) Cognition and motor development An example of a girl child playing in a nursery with water trough, a jug and a water wheel would perhaps clarify the issue further. The child happens to be about three year old and has observed that when water is poured from the jug on the wheel, it turns. She has also observed that the wheel turns faster if the water is poured from a greater height. While as adults we know that the wheel will turn faster as the water pressure on the fins of the wheels increases, and, the water pressure will increase as the height from which the water falls on the fins of wheel increases, a child will surely not be aware of all these details of physics and dynamics but will in his or her own way find an explanation of the phenomenon. On being asked by her nursery teacher as to what was happening, the girl replied that the wheel does not like to get wet, so it runs fast to get away from the water and when all the water is gone (it happens when the all the water in the jug is poured out), the wheel stops. The child has had her first experience of force gravity and power and has also exhibited clear indications of cohesive reasoning and expression. She has come across adults who exhibit attributes of thought and feeling and has also been told umpteen fairy tales where animals, trees and even inanimate objects like a house or furniture speak. So, she, quite, unhesitatingly, attributes the faculties of thought and feeling to the wheel, an inanimate object. But the point of significance in this example is that children learn from their immediate experiences and arrange the acquired knowledge in their own unique way that seamlessly fits in their world where reality and imagination effortlessly segue into one another. (Nutbrown, 1999) An adult has an enormous responsibility in ensuring that children are allowed the freedom of learning and exploring the world around them in their own ways of rationalising occurrences and phenomena. A child must be allowed to the freedom to play and learn and the role of the facilitators and instructors would be to allow them as much freedom as possible while removing the potential risks of allowing a child to move around freely. The restrictions that adults normally place on the free movement of a child inhibit the child to interact and learn as an animal cub starts learning moments after it is born. (Tinbergen, 1973) According to John Brierley, one needs to understand the various stages of development of a child’s brain in order to fully comprehend the impact motor learning skills have on the powers of cognition in a child. Brierley asserts that the first five years of children’s lives are extremely crucial for the development of their brains that reach their adult weights by the time children become ten years of age. So, the brain develops extremely swiftly and these developing years are very critical in the development of a logical and rational adult. During these critical years as a child’s brain develops at a great speed, children absorb a lot of information through eyes, ears and sense of touch essentially through exploration and imitation. It has been conclusively proved that these experiences are absolutely imperative for proper development of sound perception and speech which is an extremely essential ingredient of a fully rounded human existence. Brierley laid forth twenty one principles of teaching and learning based on various stages of brain development and clearly stated that brain is an amazing organ – the more it learns the larger becomes its learning capacity – there would hardly be any situation where the “hard disk” of the brain would be totally full and incapable of accepting any further information. All types of play form an essential part of a child’s learning process at this stage and contributes towards a well-balanced intellectual, imaginative and emotional development of the child. Human brain thrives on stimulation and novelty, thus monotony of existing surroundings or a toy that performs only one set of actions or a nursery display put up for too long soon lose their stimulating capacity and hence are disregarded by the brain. (Brierley, 1994) An example of how the surroundings and acquired knowledge help a child in formulating a somewhat rational (at least considering the limited knowledge that he or she has acquired till then) explanation of an observed phenomenon. A four year old child wanted to know why there is ebb and flow of sea water in the harbour near her house. Her parents tried to explain to her in as lucid a way it is possible about the spinning of the earth and the gravitational attraction of the moon but the child did not quite understand so much physics and formulated a altogether new explanation that was based on all that she saw, knew and had experienced. She thought that the sea came in so that boats could float and it went out so that children do not swim the whole day and get their skins wrinkled. She also passed her judgement that all this ebb and flow of tides is sheer wastage of time and the sea should stay where it is so that boats remain afloat and children are able to swim whenever they pleased during the whole day. The point to note is that the child not only formed some sort of a logical explanation but also ventured forward and passed a judgement on her version of how things should be. (Nutbrown, 1999) Goldschmied has concluded after a series of minute observation of behavioural patterns of toddlers that they use their senses to explore objects they encounter all the while going through consecutive stages of discovery and puzzlement that fuses into a stage of social encounter that concludes into some form of communication. Anyone who has closely observed a toddler must have noticed that they usually pile up objects at one place, preferably the handlers’ laps and keep going to and from carrying one object at a time and following a specific route of movement. Their pattern of behaviour at that point has a consistency in the repetitive back and forth movement along a specific path. This forms one of the foundations of the subsequent learning process of the toddler. (Goldschmied, 1993) Various stages of cognitive development Modern psychologists thus believe that perceptual motor development actually ensures a balanced improvement of both the mind and the body where the sensory perceptions and academic abilities start maturing simultaneously. It essentially means that while children learn to match shapes, they should also learn how they can leapfrog in tandem with other children of the same group. An active and oftentimes boisterous participation in peer group activities that border on dance steps surely enhances self esteem of the children and this goes a long way to help in their learning process. (Harsell, 1985) A group activity targeted towards perceptual motor development actually creates an environment where learning essentially becomes fun without any hint of any sort of coercion or threat. This, quite obviously, allows the children to open up and soak in all the information that is made available to them. Group dance activities also help the children to be emotionally matured too as they learn how to act decisively while interacting effectively with other members of their group. The most important aspect of perceptual motor development programmes is that they help children to value themselves and form a better opinion about them. This increased sense of self esteem motivates them to learn additional skills and improve their levels of autonomy and creativity as they become progressively confident that they can do things on their own. (Kalaikian & Moran, 1977) The most influential theory of cognitive development is the one propounded by Jean Piaget. He had observed children for decades and came to the conclusion that children learnt through modules or schemas which were basic units of knowledge that not only organised their past experiences but also helped in imbibing new ones in the light of their past experiences. These schemas, according to Piaget are continuously modified by two complementary forces – assimilation and accommodation where assimilation is acceptance of new information and assimilation is analysing these new experiences in the light of knowledge that has already been acquired. Piaget believed that cognitive development is the end result of continual balancing of assimilation and accommodation and he termed this new inclusive activity as equilibration which formed the basis of cognitive development in a child. (Wadsworth, 2003) Though quite a few psychologists are not in agreement with such a categorisation, Piaget theorised of two stages – Sensorimotor stage during infancy and Pre-operational stage that stretched from toddlerhood to early childhood. The other two stages of Concrete operational stage and Formal operational stage deal with adolescence and adulthood respectively and are out of the scope of this essay. As soon as a child is born it is able to identify and distinguish the pitch and volume of multiple sounds that envelope it and is also able to see almost all colours and even distinguish between different colours and their brightness. Like an infant is able to identify a nipple and is able to associate the activity of sucking with it. Within three months most infants are able to recognise faces and by the sixth month babies start recognising their parents and start getting afraid of strangers and are able to have an idea about the size of an object. By the ninth month babies are able to recognise their own names and are able to respond to simple instructions as ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and are also able to judge in a very rudimentary way parental response to their actions and start remembering them and oftentimes referring to the accumulated information before doing anything. The first signs of avoiding activities that would cause parental disapproval start appearing at this stage. By the time the child celebrates its first birthday it is able to mumble a few words and start developing attachment with objects. At this stage it is able to distinguish its favourite toy and roundly discards a substitute. (Bjorklund, 2004) In between one and half years and three years of age cognitive development reaches a stage where children show signs of a primitive thought process. They start understanding the import of simple words as “please’ and “thank you”. They are also able to identify with fair degree of clarity what is expected of them and start distinguishing between appropriate and inappropriate behaviour and incorporate a sense of self discipline if only to avoid the opprobrium of parental disapproval. All the while, however, they show streaks of independence and strive to do more and more activities without parental assistance. By the time children are two and a half years old, most of them are able to fully understand about two hundred words and keep on adding five to ten words per day and are also able to comprehend in a better way basic human emotions as love and fear. They also start understanding some basic aspects of life as telling the time or being read to and respond in a more organised manner. (Thornton, 2003) References Bjorklund, D. F. (2004). Children's Thinking: Cognitive Development and Individual Differences. Stamford: Wadsworth Publishing. Brierley, J. (1994). Give Me a Child Until He is Seven: Brain Studies and Early Childhood Education. Taylor & Francis Ltd. Gallahue, D., & Ozmun, J. (2005). Understanding Motor Development: Infants, Children, Adolescents, Adults. Mcgraw-Hill Education - Europe . Goldschmied, E. (1993). People Under Three. Routledge. Harsell, C. K. (1985). Development of a book on kinderdance. Texas: Texas Woman's University. Kalaikian, L. H., & Moran, J. M. (1977). Movement Experiences for the Mentally Retarded or Emotionally Disturbed Child. Pearson Custom Publishing. Nutbrown, C. (1999). Threads of Thinking: Young Children Learning and the Role of Early Education. Paul Chapman Educational Publishing. Sharman, C., Cross, W., Vennis, D., & Sharman, C. (2007). Observing children and young people, 4th Edition. London: Continuum. Thornton, S. (2003). Growing Minds: An Introduction to Children's Cognitive Development. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tinbergen, N. (1973). The Animal in its World, Vol. 2. London: Allen & Unwin; Harvard University Press. Wadsworth, B. J. (2003). Piaget's Theory of Cognitive and Affective Development: Foundations of Constructivism, 5th ed. New Jersey: Allyn & Bacon. Read More