Unique Mind - Essay Example

?Is there an age at which children become able to understand the concept of other people having a unique mind? Famous celebrities including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jim Carrey claim they've attained a lot professionally by using their mind power!! Mind is said to be the most powerful organ of a human body: scientifically proven and socially accepted fact. Perception is such a complex process that it has taken decades and decades to understand its structure and the psychologists and psychiatrists are still looking into it as we speak. The brain is made to grow, learn and adapt and it is brilliant to see how we know the little things in our subconscious that we do not realize until a certain period of time, when the related information is needed. However, to point out one, the most amazing feature of this agenda is the evolution of a human brain, from birth to demise. To move in a chronological manner, it shall be only fair to understand how a child's mind works. David Cohen, in his book 'How the Child's Mind Develops,' suggests that the cognitive process of a child is not marked by his ageing merely but also by the milestones and events that happen in his early childhood which creates the basic structuring of his beliefs. He was of the view that a major landmark includes the point of time when the child realizes that he has a unique name to address with. His attitudes are established partially on the basis of acceptance of this initial fact. A baby soon realises that he or she is a separately identifiable being. Soon enough, a child discovers that other people around him also have a mind and feelings similar to his own. (Cohen, 2002) Minds are unique. However, in the early stages of understanding things, a child doesn’t possibly grasp the concept that other people have a mind not as equivalent or similar to one he bears. Their perceptions differ and their aptitude may not be as great or as dull as the child's. The child needs certain experiences to learn this propaganda. This concept can be better digested by referring to a research carried out by Nicholls in 1978. According to Nicholls, children's understanding of effort and ability changes dramatically with age. In initial academics years, child believes that ability and effort are closely linked: Smart students are smarter because they work hard while weaker students put less effort relatively. In later years, child believes on the contrary: smarter students do not have to put more effort to get the same results as dull students would achieve by working harder. Nichols, on the basis of findings of research carried out, established four levels of children's mind development. At level 1 (5-6 years old), a child is incapable of differentiating between effort and ability and understanding how outcome is product of their chemistry. At the 2nd level (7-9 years old), he will see outcome being purely based on the amount of effort executed. At level 3 (10-11 years old), he begins to grasp the concept of need for ability and effort in certain proportions. Finally, at the 4th level (12 years and above), he will completely understand how the balance between effort and ability is to be maintained and where a limitation occurs, there’s room to improvise to attain the desired results. (Nicholls, 1978) Three experiments were conducted to study children’s understanding of how their minds differ from other people and other non-human entities. A scenario was created wherein children were arranged in a room with a box and a doll placed in front of them. Later, a candy (from a bunch of candies having different colours) was placed in that box and a message was conveyed to the doll regarding which sweet had been transferred. Thereafter, children were instructed to analyse whether the doll knows what color the candy in the box bears. The exercise was repeated several times with candies of different colours. It was observed that children assumed the doll to falsely believe about the colour of the candy placed in the box for each time when doll wasn’t looking in it. Conclusion drawn was that children assessed their own beliefs quite differently from the doll's beliefs as they would in case of other human beings too. (Ruffman, 2007) Doherty presents a summary of the history and evolution of research into children’s theory of mind understanding. He explains that decades of years put into research show signs that children of different ages perceive other people’s mental capacities to be unique and that how, at certain ages, they believe that everyone has different beliefs, true or false. He concludes that a drastic transformation occurs, between ages of 3 to 4, in children’s cognitive processes and attitudes towards false beliefs (Doherty, 2009). On the contrary, another research suggests that children do not differentiate very clearly between the mental contents of conscious and unconscious states. In particular, just as they tend to attribute to little ongoing perception process of a conscious person, they also attribute too much to an unconscious one. Thus, they make imaginary friends and talk to objects they think could think similarly. Since they cannot differentiate to such a basic level, they cannot be expected to believe that there is uniqueness in cognitive abilities and thoughts of different people (Flavell, 2000). To wrap it off, we can try a very basic example. We see thousands of books in our everyday life. Mostly books have a prescribed age bracket for children to read. A major reason for this is the same. Not every child of every age can read and understand what that book conveys. Children on shopping with parents, acknowledge that fact when buying a book for themselves. They know their age range and know what to buy that falls in the relevant category. They would never go for something not meant for their age since they believe that every human being has a unique mind which is framed through ageing and through experiences. Hence, buying a certain thing not meant for their intellectual level would never appeal to them and therefore buying them would be a waste of money and time and thus the little child moves on to the next rack to find something that matches his unique mind more closely. References COHEN, D. (2002). How the child's mind develops. Sussex, Routledge. DOHERTY, M. J. (2009). Theory of mind: how children understand others' thoughts and feelings. Hove, Psychology Press. FLAVELL, J. H. (2000). Development of children's knowledge about the mental world. International journal of behavioral development, 24(1), 15-23. NICHOLLS, J. G. (1978). The development of the concepts of effort and ability, perception of academic attainment, and the understanding that difficult tasks require more ability. Child development, 800-814. Ruffman, T. (2007). Do children understand the mind by means of simulation or a theory? Evidence from their understanding of inference. Mind & Language, 11(4), 388-414. Read More