Introduction
Children achieve successive developmental milestones that determine how they think, explore, and understand the world around them. The common characteristics associated with cognitive development in children are information processing, reasoning, and language development. Whereas some of the features are observable, others are abstract and only identifiable through the behavioral outcomes and a child’s interpersonal skills development toward socialization. Therefore, two other abstract developmental characteristics are reasoning and memory acquisition throughout the four stages of growth. The four videos assigned for this reflection provide insightful information on a diverse range of child advancement milestones, covering executive function, learning motivation, and life skills. The key observation from assigned resources is that brain development is a continuous process impacted by a child’s learning environment, where parental/guardian assistance integrates cognitive learning on social skills and language literacy.
Infant Cognitive Development CDE
Infancy is the period between birth and the first year in a child’s growth cycle. It is the most remarkable period in a child’s cognitive development because most brain functions begin to manifest. The video by Suitt (2014 a) provided explanations of the sensory and motor developmental achievements in infancy, a stage where children cannot explore the world independently despite amassing enough information to sense and respond to various environmental stimuli. According to Suitt (2014 a), infants acquire plenty of information through the senses, especially since they develop sensory motor skills like sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing at the onset of cognitive development. The children develop an interest in objects that fancy their attention, which they demonstrate by keeping close eye contact, especially with adult faces. Therefore, Suitt’s (2014 a) idea of the infant cognitive brain development is that children acquire the reasoning and thinking by drawing from the learning memory to recall faces and other interesting objects. Equally important in infancy growth and advancement are the executive functions, such as the ability to pay attention and focus.
Executive functions are critically essential to infants for regulating behavior and defining other correlated social and interpersonal survival through the development of adaptive skills. According to Suitt (2014 a), infants develop practical cognitive intelligence, such as the ability to recall and pay attention to interactive environments characterized by activities such as responding to people or object sounds between four and eight months. Infants recognize rattling sounds, can sustain plays initiated by adults and can recall where they put the toys. The other significant executive functional development is demonstrating self-control, albeit to a limited degree, among children between 0-3 years. Suitt (2014 a) observed that infants tend to dominate their environments, showing abilities to control themselves and objects in their environments. The toddlers use communication and feedback to assert control over others in proximity, indicating that they also command attention within their social dynamics.
Preschool Cognitive Development CDE
Cognitive skills acquired in infancy multiply as pre-schoolers get more opportunities to explore their surroundings, learning through sustained attention and parental guidance. According to Suitt (2014 b), pre-schoolers undergo rapid mental skills development, given the curiosity to question things beyond their understanding. The children learn and integrate cognitive and social knowledge through problem-solving, which makes them foolhardy on acquired knowledge (Suitt, 2014 b). The video presented by Suitt (2014 b) showcases the role of play in pre-schoolers’ cognitive development. Unlike infants whose play activities might be restricted to safe spaces within the house, the preschool category prefers to initiate outdoor activities. Brain advancement makes the group practically extra innovative, indicating that curiosity expands knowledge receptiveness. Suitt (2014 b) observed pre-schoolers establish a logical order for common tasks and language syntax. That implies the child who gets a logical order wrong is more likely to repeat the wrong syntax or task procedure repeatedly (Suitt, 2014 b). The implication to teachers is that they must be procedural with the learning activities and language syntax to avoid confusing the young learners.
The most remarkable observation of pre-schoolers’ cognitive development is that their executive functions, learning motivations, and life skills development is more pronounced than the infants. Unlike toddlers’ cognitive development capacities that are majorly abstract, pre-schoolers show bold executive functions on working memory and attention skill through repeated goal-achievement on tasks like picking toys or dressing (Suitt, 2014 b). According to Suitt (2014, b), pre-schoolers need assistance integrating the logical order for mini-task completion. However, the most remarkable executive skill development is self-regulation, especially through cooperative play and turn-taking with other peers (Suitt, 2014 b). Self-regulation is observable through the pre-schoolers’ understanding of rules and structures and showing independence on basic tasks. Moreover, pre-schoolers’ rigidity in task approaches results from the children’s illogical approach, which they hardly rectify until they are school-aged when they begin to take logical perspectives on normal tasks (Suitt, 2014 b). The implication to teachers is that they must focus on logic when teaching young children self-regulation skills on established rules and structures once they join the school.
Child Development: Stepping Stones
Child development towards holistic independence on tasks and moral reasoning is a celebrated achievement anchored on cultural and religious beliefs. The video by Coast Learning (2015) highlights the most culturally-celebrated stepping stones, such as when a child joins school or transitions into middle school. Cultural notions that a child gains moral reasoning upon joining middle school is a global phenomenon, as common in North America as in any other part of the world (Coast Learning, 2015). Coast Learning (2015) demystified the belief by adding that most middle-school-going children have the mental capabilities to learn multiple cognitive skills with complex language learning and sophisticated logical approaches to thinking processes. Culture plays a significant role in shaping a child’s mental advancement; most societies expect children between six and eight years to give up their playful ways to concentrate on social learning and moral development (Coast Learning, 2015). The implication to teachers is that they must provide complex tasks to middle school children to match their cognitive reasoning levels.
Inside the Teenage Brain
Understanding child cognitive development from infancy to middle-schoolers aged between 6 and 10 provides basic knowledge on predicting behavioral changes during adolescence. The video by Frontline (2002) described the teenage period when children become behaviorally sporadic, erratic, unthoughtful, and most difficult to understand. Frontline (2002) explained that teenagers undergo synapse overproduction in the frontal context, which is responsible for executive function skills like planning, prioritizing, or controlling impulses. Interestingly, children develop 95% of the adult brain capacity by age 6, indicating that overproduction at teenage can lead to too many extra connections, which require pruning, more like tending to a tree (Frontline, 2002). Many parents and educators fail to notice that teenagers with deviant behavioral tendencies need exposure to cognitive, social skills, and technical knowledge, which strengthen the neural pathways and consolidate brain wiring to prune unwanted behaviors (Frontline, 2022). The implication to parents and teachers is that they should subject adolescents to life skills and cognitive learning opportunities for wiring emotional response/activation towards thoughtful behaviors and heightened moral reasoning.
Working with Children
The information learned from reflected videos is impactful in defining how I will guide children at various developmental stages to learn and improve their mental capacities and socially accepted behaviors. The videos provide a sequential understanding of child growth, especially the cognitive developmental needs and behaviors which mark milestone achievements in executive function, learning motivation, or life skills acquisition. Whereas infants are help-dependent and highly motivated to learn sensory motor skills and other brain developmental functions, pre-schoolers show some degree of independence and rigid logical orders of approaching simple tasks. Therefore, when handling infants, I will focus on initiating play tasks that involve sensory communication through sight, touch, taste, and smell. I will ensure the toddlers get enough activities involving movements and playing with objects to improve their motor skills. I will define the logical order of performing tasks or language syntax when introducing pre-schoolers to new experiences.
Conclusion
Child development is a scientific and culturally-defined phenomenon where each movement uses different milestones and expectations to gauge maturity. Societies believe that children reach an age of reason where they can distinguish right from wrong, given the newly-acquired cognitive abilities when they socialize with peers at school. Teenagers are considered behaviorally erratic because of the diversity in developmental outcomes, especially in executive functioning skills such as self-control. However, the behavioral descriptions are mere universal stereotypes because scientific knowledge of teenage development clarifies the cognitive patterns that develop into problematic conduct. Rapid brain development during adolescence can result in poor management of essential skills such as planning, prioritizing, or impulse control. Therefore, teachers and parents/guardians should monitor the child’s environment to ensure they are exposed to cognitive stimuli that promote socially acceptable behaviors.
References
Coast Learning. (2015). Child development: Stepping stones – Lesson 17: The school years: Cognitive development [Video]. YouTube. Web.
Frontline. (2002). Inside the teenage brain [Video]. PBS. Web.
Suitt, R. (2014). Infant cognitive development CDE [Video]. YouTube. Web.
Suitt, R. (2014). Preschool cognitive development CDE [Video]. YouTube. Web.