Cognitive has an impact on child development, including intelligence and learning, memory and language, perception and actions. During the first years of life, children explore the world around them, creating a cognitive “map” of what they have seen, heard, felt, and experienced. Children with handicapping conditions are often compromised in their ability to enjoy the full range of what Piaget terms “sensory motor” experiences. In Piaget’s scheme, a child comes to under- stand “up” and “down” by literally climbing up to the top of a chair and looking down. Similar experiential learning is required for the child’s comprehension of size relationships, texture, movement, and shapes. Developmental monitoring must acknowledge the acquisition of risk status throughout the early childhood years.
Cognitive has a great impact on further development of a child as it determines leaning skills and memory. The main stages of cognitive skills development are innate anilities, sensory and motor skills, cognitive skills and instruction. In addition, they provide comfort, affection, privacy, familiarity, and space as well as opportunities for cognitive growth. Cross-age tutors are junior and senior high-school students who are failing in school and specifically trained to be competent tutors, no matter what their reading/writing level is. The training is viewed as academic language study, and the tutors work with younger elementary students in reading (Berger, p. 43).
The learning thesis solves cognitive problem very simply. The response-term is included in the primitive learning operations postulated by the theory. A “learning operation” is a set of events resulting in a change in behavior called “learning.” A learning operation is “primitive” if a theory presents it as a given rather than deriving it from some more basic behavioral principle. Paradigms of classical and operant conditioning are examples of primitive cognitive operations in that they specify the temporal configuration of a set of events which result in learning, but they are, in most theories, not derived from other conditioning principles. In specifying primitive learning operations, theories include a response as one of the events that must stand in a particular temporal relation with other events in order for learning to occur. The response appearing in the primitive learning operation is then the response appearing in statements about behavior deduced from this theory. The gap between the theory and behavior is easily bridged, and the deduction of behavior is determinate. Modeling theories appear to successfully link cognitive constructs to behavior. Nevertheless, even with a modeling theory as sophisticated as Bandura’s, implicit intuitions about the reasonableness of the behaving organism intrude into derivations from the theory. Bandura frequently speaks of his cognitive construct, coded information, as “guiding” rather than determining behavior, once again opening a schism between the construct and behavior. The relationship between intervening variables and episodes is also important for understanding the controversy between advocates of cognitive behavior modification and supporters of more traditional forms of behavior therapy. Behavior therapists claim to modify directly undesired behavior by manipulating the environmental variables of which it is a function. In opposition to behavior therapy, cognitive behavior modification claims that therapy techniques produce behavior change by changing the client’s cognitions. Now, in their everyday meanings, convictions and expectations are dispositional concepts (Berger, p. 49).
Cognitive has an impact on the family determining the main tasks and games selected for a child by pedants. The daily activities should reflect an emphasis on the cognitive goals. Children should be prepared to enter public kindergarten on an equal footing with their more affluent peers, recognizing letters, colors, and numbers and knowing how to behave in an academic group setting. Children with disabilities receive appropriate preparation for school and learn through their experiences in Head Start how to take part in the mainstream. Parents are encouraged to participate in different learning and development programs so that they can carry over at home the lessons the child has learned during the day. Within the family, the center-based group activities should be designed to enhance the children’s cognitive and social development and to facilitate their healthy growth in a community of caring people. The group activities promoted recognition of the special qualities of others though the celebration of diversity and the exploration of cultural customs and holidays (Berger 93). Because virtually all changes in behavior, even the most elementary, involve classes of behavior and classes of environmental events, it is nearly always possible to find systematic relationships among these classes and to construct an intervening variable. Therefore, nearly any behavior change can be conceptualized in cognitive terms. Consider a simple case of operant conditioning. A rat presses a lever, a pellet of food is delivered, and the rat then presses the lever at an increased rate. Although powers of ratiocination are not usually attributed to rats, it is nevertheless possible to interpret the rat’s behavior with cognitive intervening variables because the changes in behavior due to operant conditioning are widespread, and the independent variables are numerous. Within the family, cognitive development influences behavior of a child and his socialization, interaction with other people and family members.
Works Cited
Berger, K. S. The Developing Person. Worth Publishers; Fifth Edition edition, 2008.