BT Collab Topic: Language and Cognitive Development - prepared by Manohar Behaviour Therapist.
Cognitive Development
Children construct their own cognitive worlds, building mental structures to adapt to the world. They actively construct their meaning and understanding. The progression of cognitive development from infancy to adolescent can be seen as described below.
Infancy:
The infant organizes and coordinates sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical movements. They quickly learn and are able to understand that things they see continue to exist even though these things are no longer around them. They can scan patterns actively and display a growing capacity for remembering in ways that current neuroscience is still exploring.
Early Childhood:
The child’s mental life is becoming more expansive with experiences. They have pictures in their minds about various things in the world. Their capacity for new vocabulary and making mental pictures allows for more learning about the world and other people. They have begun to make sense of others, getting a sense of how people and things work. Their memories can hold much more than adults give them credit for!
Middle Childhood:
By now, the child can think through reasons using language and ideas, understand well how people and things work around them, and give order to these things in terms of value and size. Their capacity to remember and use what they remember to do activities is growing in leaps and bounds. They even devise ways to remember better and are able to analyse, problem-solve, imagine alternatives.
Adolescence:
The adolescent individual thinks in diverse and complex ways with a growing capacity for working with ideas and logical analysis. This enables them to plan, solve problems, and systematically test solutions. They are able to mentally look back at their own actions and evaluate, are forming a sense of themselves as different and similar to others, able to engage with ideas of right and wrong. They can be focused and flexible in their thinking and make decisions with reasoning.
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