Child Development Theories, Essay Example

Jean Piaget suggested that children develop differently than adults. Prior to this theory it was thought that children were little adults and developed the same as adults. Piaget proposed a cognitive development theory that changes in the development of children play a huge role into their adulthood lives especially involving the development of their mental processes. Schemas involved a process of interpreting knowledge and processing that knowledge as children. As information is given to the brain the brain processes that information and transfers it to different areas of the brain. An example may be a situation where a child has a schema with a small dog and then has an encounter with a large dog. The child would then take this new information of the large dog and modify the previous schema into his/her brain. The process of transferring the new information into the brain is known as assimilation. This process of assimilation is very subjective because it is a personal belief rather than an objective belief.

School aged children of the classroom I was involved with of ages 7-8 were exposed to pets of fury nature on pet day both large and medium size. They were given questionnaires of what they believed thought of small and medium sized animals prior to being exposed to the other animals before they presented their pets to the other children. The results showed that they all loved their animals very much and thought the animals showed no threat to them or other people in the classroom. After they were exposed to the other animals they represented having some fear of the medium sized animals because some of them were aggressive and they were not used to being around the other animals. This was a very subjective viewpoint and some of the views were objective in a sense because other people including teachers noticed the animals had an aggressive nature and had to be restrained with collars and leashes and began to growl amongst the teachers and the students.

As the experiment continued the students exposed the large and small animals to balls and treats and the animals both large and small began to become acclimated to the teachers and students and began to become friendly to the environment of the teachers and students. By the end of the classroom pet day showing most of the animals were students friendly. The teachers noticed that the students were more acclimated towards playing with the animals both large and small and shared the opinion that the animals were safe to play with and they began to want to play with them.

This situation showed the ability of the students to accommodate a new process of thinking and believing as expressed in Piaget’s theory. Further the student’s expressed and equilibration into their process of thinking as expressed in Piaget’s theory. Children try to form a balance of assimilation and accommodation between previous learned knowledge and adaptation of new behaviour from learned experiences. “The children have to move to this stage in order to move to the next stages in behavioural development in life.” (Wagner, 2009).

Erik Erikson believed that each stage of child development is necessary to overcome future conflict that could infringe the develop of a proper social personality. The ego identity is one of the foremost stages of Erikson’s personality development. This theory states that we will develop through the conscious self through social interaction in life. The ego changes as we acquire new social identity through interaction with people in our social circle. It is in the first year of life that a child develops the necessary skills to learn to trust a person. During the second year of life a child learns self-control. “With learning to control a person’s bodily functions a person learns that he/she can learn a sense of independence.” (Wagner, 2009). Children progress through life learning a sense of confidence and self-control over choices in life.

During the observation with the animals the teachers learned that the students began to feel a sense of security, confidence and self-control over their feelings as the animals began to cooperate. The students learned that the animals were under control by the collar and leash and their behaviours were under control by the students. Further the teachers were there to reassure the students that the situation was under control. As the students spent more time with the animals and trusted the environment they felt more in control of themselves and trusted the situation.

People learn from their surroundings, the people they spend most of their time with and their social influences. Adults and primary caregivers mostly influence cognitive development in a person’s life. Childhood stimuli are mostly influenced by social and cultural influences. In western world the cultural influences are not as grave because western children spend less time with parents and caregivers and more time on computers and watching television. “There are a variety of educational programs available, such as Sesame Street, in which studies have shown the benefits for children in low income families but there are others which promote violence which can sometimes influence a child negatively.” (Berk, 2003). (“Effects of Culture on Cognitive Development”).  In countries like Haiti, India and Saudi Arabia culture plays a huge role on the influence of cultural development because the parents’ are the primary caregivers and spend the most time with the children hence affecting the cognitive development of the children at a very young age. Even in the classroom it was recognized that children from India that were born here in the states that were born to a parent of one from India and one from the states showed signs of development tendencies affected by Indian culture. Even though these two children were not born in India they had been affected by the culture of their father who was born in India.

References

Wagner, K. (2009) Stages of Cognitive Development Retrieved November 8, 2009 from, http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/a/keyconcepts.htm

Effects of Culture on Cognitive Development (2009) Retrieved November 8, 2009 from, http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Effects-Culture-Cognitive-Development/173657