Childhood development is the physical, interpersonal, and cognitive growth and development process a child goes through from infancy until maturity. Environmental and biological factors, which include aspects such as genes and nourishment, nurturing, or social aspects such as upbringing and other environmental agents, impact how a child grows. This essay will focus on child cognitive development and how growing children might become mentally weak due to emotional neglect.
In the video, there are two categories of children two from well-parenthood and six from institutionalized children’s homes taken from emotionally damaged parents. Both categories of children are in their preoperative development phase; therefore, this criteria suits the application of Vygotsky’s Theory to explain their behavior. According to Vygotsky’s Theory, social interaction is essential for the development of cognition (Taylor, & Francis, 2021). The two well-brought-up children seem to be explorative and playful when provided with playing objects, and they have less attention to the psychologists (Mental Health Treatment, 2020). The institutionalized children seemed less explorative about the playing object and paid more attention to the experimental room and the psychologists.
Most of these institutionalized children exhibited anxiety toward the psychologists surrounding them. These characteristics included thumb sucking to comfort themselves, twitching lips movement, and irregular breathing rates. One child stayed still while looking at the psychologist while restless, and her anxiety seemed to have advanced into autism disorder with time (Mental Health Treatment, 2020). This showed that Affection neglect in children could have disastrous effects, such as stunted growth, impaired cognitive development, irritability, hostility, despair, and low self-esteem. Therefore parents and teachers should maintain emotional affection and a positive attitude while bringing up children, as they need them for intellectual development and well-being. Considering a child’s learning culturally dependent mechanism, children experience social traditions, perceptions, and problem-solving skills during interactive conversations with more informed community members.
In conclusion, although Vygotsky has recognized the importance of curiosity and participation in learning, he has placed more emphasis on society and culture. A child’s primary drivers of development are internal forces. However, Vygotsky thought that people and environmental influences are more important for cognitive development, a proven theory from this investigation. Emotional deficiency in young children may result in a syndrome that includes strange behaviors and growth problems. Therefore, parents’ and teachers’ emotional affection is healthy for children’s cognitive development.
References
Mental Health Treatment. (2020). Effect of emotional deprivation and neglect on babies. YouTube.
Taylor, & Francis. (2021). Vygotsky’s theory in-play: Early childhood education. Taylor & Francis.