Cognitive and language development

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Introduction

In the previous unit, we tried to understand the physical and motor development. By now, you must be having fair idea of the stage of the physical and motor development of the elementary school child.

The cognitive theory of piaget

Before we  begin, let us go back a little and try to remember what is cognitive development. To recall briefly, we had learnt that cognition is the human capacity to understand the environment and to solve problem. The  capacity of logical and abstract thought, memory and creativity is also a part of cognition.

● Yesterday, we were watching a science programme on t.v. the programme was on how mechanical energy is converted into electrical energy and the importance of electrical in all aspects of our life.  A 6 year old child who watching the programme, was unable to appreciate the whole explanation. 

● Unlike physical development,we can not see and measure  cognitive development. We  can only observe its development from the  behaviour of the individual

Basics of  paget's theory

We shall proceed  point wise to understand these basics.

Piaget believes that the fetal development in the womb, or the physical and motor development, follow a given sequence, which is universal. 

Before we go further, you may try to sequence the following characteristics in the right order

● sitting 

● drawing

● lifting the head

● running

● standing

● Walking

  Let us proceed to the second point, for him like physical development, cognitive development also occure I  stages, with each stage being qualitatively different from the other.

● thirdly, these stages unfold in an invariant sequence, with the latter stages being dependent on the earlier ones.

● fourthly, piaget gives a great deal of importance to human interaction with the environment. He believes that cognitive development depends greatly on the individual's interaction with the environment.

Cognitive stages

The sensory- motor stages (birth to 2 years)

The sensory-motor stage span form birth to 2 years, that is, almost till the child begins to talk.

While understanding the basics of the cognitive theory, we saw that both physical and mental activities are important for cognitive development. In fact, in the early stages of the development, the beginning of thought is concentrated in the physical activity of the child.

The pre-operational stage( 2 to 7 years)

We saw that towards the end of the second year the child becomes capable of representative experiences mentally without always having to interact with them directly or physically. 

The pre-operational child progresses in the development of abilities that had emerged towards the end of the sensory motor stage.

Thus, we have with us the pre- operational child who is now capable of representing reality mentally and who also understand that objects in reality can be represented by words.

In fact, much of the child's thinking is unsystematic, inconsistent, illogical and disjointed.

● A child of five had just watched a session of some black and white film on the TV the mother said to the child: ' this is a film of our times'. 

A few days later, the mother and child were looking in to an old album of the mother's childhood which again happened to have black and white photographs. This child of five looked at the mother and asked her. So, when did this world become coloured.

Limitations of the pre-operational child's thinking, 

- pre- operational thinking tend to egocentric

That is, the child at this age cannot understand the other's point of view, children of this age group tend to think their understanding is the only interpretation and there can be no other view points.

- pre- operational thinking tend to focus on only one aspect or dimension of a problem at a time

For example, while looking at the height of an object, the child is unable to consider any changes  undergone in its width. The child is unable to handle multiple characteristics.

- pre- operational thinking tend to involve transduction reasoning

Pre- operational child reasons from one specific to another specific event, as opposed to inductive and deductive reasoning. That is, in other words, the child cannot think from particular to general  or general to particular.

- pre- operational child cannot understand relational terms

Such as larger than, darker than, etc. For example- after listening to a story, a child at this stage may like to know who is good and who is bad, and may not be able to appreciate that characters in the story may be good, under certain situation and not so good under other situations.

-class inclusion which means that the child cannot reason between part and whole simultaneously.

- the child at this stage is not able understand how things operate internally or how things relate to one other.

The concreat - operational stage

THE thinking at the concret- operational stage begins to overcome the limitations of the pre-operational stage.

 To begin with, thinking at the concrete-operational stage no longer consists of disjointed representational acts like a film which can be replayed too!

Reversibility the ability by which the child becomes capable of following a series of actions and then being able to 'reverse' these series of action mentally.

Language development

Language development refers to the words, their pronunciation and the method of combining them for the understanding of the others. Language development concerns itself with the length and pattern of sentence structure, grammatical construction and syntax..

How did this progress occure

In this section, we will try and understand the elementary school child's language development.

The early stages

When babies cry and their mothers respond to this cry, the first step in communication takes place. In infancy, babies make their needs and discomfort or comfort known by body movements, facial expressions  and sounds- such as whispering, urgent screams, gentle coos, attention seeking calls and laughter. These are the first and simple forms of communication the infant makes.

It is usually around 3 or 4 months that infants learns to manipulate their tongue and lips along with their throat and voice and experiments with sound they can make. 

These sounds are usually ba, ma, aa, pa, da. This is babbling stage.

The later stages

In the years from kindergarten to seventh standard, speech performance improves, grammer rules are better understood, variation  in construction of sentences, vocabulary and ordering of phrase show variety. There is a general consolidation  of the language skills from kindergarten to seventh grade.

During this period, the child becomes familiar with the language and rarely makes an error in their usage. The child also attempts to understand the subtle variations in constructing sentences, tries to them too.

Cognitive and language development

Verbal ability helps in thinking and problem solving. We saw that learning of language at the age of 3 or 4 also made significant difference in the way of thinking and understanding the world.

Creater

Kirti sharma