Language and intelligence
It is evident that the fundamental nature of human knowledge and the way it is acquired has been witnessed. The main tension lies when it comes to acquisition of words (language), theories and concepts. Such tensions develop precisely when researchers opt to pit one type of content or process onto the other.
The truth is that such strategy can never be successful since there is insufficient consideration primarily on the diversity and structure of the words and concepts. For young children (infants) who are learning, they take advantage of both perceptual and conceptual strategies on information, just to establish categories and also to acquire words.
As far as language and cognitive development is concerned, there are two different metaphors that are related. The first one “child-as-data analyst” describes the child as an analyst who poses an exceptional impressive brain capacity that assist in solving statistical regularities within their environment (Sandra & Susan 365).
Moreover, they have rich sensory perception resources that again attend to the task of knowledge acquisition. The second metaphor, “child-as-theorist” demonstrates the capabilities of infants to capture and impressively express the core knowledge of physical objects (Sandra & Susan 367). Furthermore, this metaphor also captures the infants array of conceptual capacities expressing their aggressiveness in skeletal theories of intimate objects.
Generally, these two metaphors shouldn’t be competing since most infants completely depend on both theories they hold and also the statistic they witness in their environment to be able to acquire and describe concepts and words. As far as language development is concerned, a strong difference still exist on whether the human knowledge especially on conceptual primitives came exactly from the bedrock of perceptual primitives or whether they are precisely built upon the very same conceptual primitives (Sandra & Susan 378).
However, the only option is to marry both metaphors, which has yielded a productive interchange and also a supportive debate. On language development, the child-as-data-analyst is categorized to be the most exclusive associationist as afar as the approach to early word learning is concerned.
Such infants witness sensory and perception experience via interactive learning and similarity assessments (Sandra & Susan 380). Moreover, the child also demonstrates higher sensitivity to statistical regularities. Nevertheless, it has been proven that very high levels of conceptual processes exhibited in most children are not a must for infant early word developments.
On the other hand, child-as-theorist model simply supports the fact that the child must be a theorist for the process of early word learning and also conceptual development to take place. Intellectually, words are simply symbolic elements that refer and that they hardly associate (Sandra & Susan 368).
Intelligence is just like belief. Any time it can be changed and that it is an acquired trait or ability exhibited by an expandable quality. It is good to note that, similarly to word development of infants, intelligence can also be exposed to students.
This can either be accomplished by teaching students different views of intelligence, different interpretations of failure (lack of the efforts) and direct perspective of orienting student on different reasons for better achievement (Lori & Paul 813). It is important to note that, different feedbacks given to students have general impacts on their intelligence beliefs hence alter their intelligence and motivation. Motivation is an essential trait as far as achievement and intelligence is concerned.
Contrary, the second category is malleable intelligence. In this case, believes ensure that students develop their potential putting in focus what they want and not just to be smart (Lori & Paul 813). This allows students to concentrate on studies rather than aiming on acquiring best grade.
Children according to research can learn new words if only they are subjected to incidental exposure and that if they can retain such knowledge longer.
A research conducted on children and adults measuring their levels of intelligence and language learning, involved 20 minutes training children (mean age 3.7 years) and Adults University graduates on manipulation of four familiar objects and six novel (Lori & Paul 814). Although the adults were much better than the children, there was no recorded significance difference in terms of age at longer intervals. This is because with time even smaller children learnt very well just like the adults.
Moral development and motivation
Can moral judgment be accomplished by either intuition reasoning or conscious reasoning? In this aspect researchers have identifies three strong principles that govern moral reasoning and judgment.
The first being that harm arising from action is worse than that caused by omission, harm as a result of physical or manual contact with the victim is more worse than that involving no physical contact and finally harm intended as a mean of a goal is considered to be worse that when perceived as side effects a goal (Fiery, Liane, & Marc 1082). This has been the central focus for most students. As an implicit assumption, many people globally generate moral judgment via conscious reasoning.
The main challenge especially in moral development is that, the main objective involved is not to generate the subsequent moral judgment, but just to act as a stepping stone to provide a post hoc basis precisely for developing moral justifications (Fiery et al. 1083). Moreover; it is argued that moral judgments are generated through cognitive processes that are automatic.
It is argued that for moral judgment to be achieved there must be coordination between conscious and intuition reasoning. Important to state that intuition reasoning exhibits an increasing support in its role on judgment and justification (Fiery et al. 1083). Researchers investigated on the major principles in an aim to compare judgments across various scenarios.
The term principle was used to mean each individual factor that contributes to the divergence of moral judgments. This has been widely researched on especially in the field of psychology. It is always referred to as an omission bias (Fiery et al. 1082). This principle supports the fact that harm caused by any action is extra worse than an equivalent harm caused by omission.
Finally, the contact principle that supports that physical contact generates more harm to victims than an equivalent where there is no physical contact (Fiery et al. 1082). It is hypothesized that all principles employed on judgment are also articulated in justification and that they are available to conscious reflection precisely during justification.
Contrary, intuitive responses are closely accompanied by explicit insufficient justification together with uncertainty on how to justify (Fiery et al. 1082). Finally, all these principles cited cannot operate without conscious reasoning and that if they are not justified, then they are inaccessible by the conscious processes of reasoning.
These three mentioned principles are evidences that entirely guide judgment especially for moral dilemmas. Moreover, most subject contents were rated to vary greatly in terms of principles. For example, in the action principle, majority of subjects were capable of producing enough satisfying justifications for their judgments. This happens although very few people were not able to justify or even doubted whether they have the ability to justify.
All this information is consistent with the conscious reasoning. For the intention principle, based on the research done, it was concluded that, less than 1/3 were able to justify (Fiery et al.1082). The reason is because, this data are consistent with the intuition model of judgments and that such subjects generated a pattern of moral judgments that was considered to be parallel with intuition principles.
Psychopathology
It is evident that majority of children who grow up in an antisocial upbringing also end up being very anti-social but some do not (Caspi et al. 851). Genetically, an enzyme called monoamine oxidase (MAOA), which is a neurotransmitter metabolizing enzyme, is the one responsible for moderating all effects of maltreatments or victimization (Caspi et al. 853).
Furthermore, it is clear that the earlier the child is exposed to maltreatment, the earlier they are more likely to face problems. Scientific research has revealed that about 50% of maltreated children end up not becoming criminal adults. The basic reason for this is not known but might be due to genetic susceptibility factors. Circumstantial evidences have clearly revealed that early childhood maltreatment and hostility strongly contributes to adulthood criminal behavior of an individual.
Genetically, this is applicable to children whose MAOA is insufficient to accommodate all the maltreatment the child is exposed to (Caspi et al. 852). Furthermore, such maltreatment alters the neurotransmitters body systems in such a way that it persists even in adulthood. All this are developed by violent exposure of a child either by parents, step parents or even relatives hostility.
Such discrimination with time will definitely be adapted by the body genetic systems; hence the trait of hostility will be carried even to adulthood (Caspi et al. 851). Although many studies tend to ignore the fact that even relatives can cause victimization to young children. It is clear that children in step parent family are more exposed to all kind of abuse despite the social-economic status of the family.
Scientifically, such conflicts attribute to generally an imperfect memorable stimulus to the child, for example, egoism or poor parental skills the child adapted from the parents (Martin & Margo 519). Although parent-offspring conflicts are normal characteristic of sexual reproducing organisms, parents should be very keen when dealing with their children’s.
The effects are more in cases whereby the parent uses dangerous weapons in a conflict with the offspring. Contrary, in some cases a child who is often exposed to violence for long end up being merciless and violent. In such aspect such children end up even killing their parents whenever angry.
One major implication is that majority of substitute parents, will always offer less concern to offspring’s they are taking care of especially if not biologically their own. Many cruel step parenthood cases have been reported and in most cases such children end up running away from such homes.
Such children are frequently subjected to psychological injuries due to assaults they face frequently. Several studies have also revealed that, most step family’s relationship lack the internal deep commonality exhibited in a natural family in terms of feeling and affection towards one another (Martin & Margo 519).
In conclusion, scientists have genetically confirmed that the impacts of individual genetic variationon risk factors are more stable over the individual’s period of development. Moreover, the effect of phenotype generation, the genome is considered to be more dynamic especially during the childhood and adolescent stage. Whenever a child at this growth stage is frequently exposed to any risk phenomenon like hostility, it is easier for that trait to be carried on genetically to adulthood.
Works Cited
Caspi, Avshalom, McClay, Joseph, Moffitt, Terrie, Mill, Jonathan, Martin, Judy, Craig, Ian, Taylor, Alan, & Poulton Richie. “Role of genotype in the cycle of violence in maltreated children.” American association for the advancement of science 297 (2002): 851-853. Print.
Fiery, Cushman, Liane, Young, & Marc Hauser. “The role of conscious reasoning and intuition in moral judgment: testing three principles of harm.” Association of psychological sciences 17 (2006): 1082-1087. Print.
Lori, Markson, & Paul Bloom. “Evidence against a dedicated system for word learning in children.” Department of psychology, university of Arizona 385 (1997): 813-814. Print.
Martin, Daly, & Margo Wilson. “Evolutionary social psychology and family homicide.” American association for the advancement of science 242 (1988): 519-524. Print.
Sandra, Waxman, & Susan Gelman. “Early word-learning entails reference, not merely associations.” Elsevier Limited 258 (2009): 364-661. Print.