Laura Dee's Article Early Learning News

The TED Talk, “The surprisingly logical minds of babies,” was presented by Laura Schulz who is an associate professor of cognitive science in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department at MIT. Schulz has been studying about how babies and children learn various things very quickly. During this presentation, Schulz focused on generalization and causal reasoning during infant stage.

All babies and young children can show different rates of development. It is often linked to experiences during conception, pregnancy and childbirth.

Chapter eight is about promoting communication and language development in early childhood education. Early communication is mostly non-verbal. Communication goes beyond the words we use; it develops with the use of gestures, facial expressions, hand movements and positioning of our body. Some of the first displays of communication by infants include, smiling, fussing and looking at an area, person or object. Later, communication extends to give signals such as pointing, reaching and body movements to indicate a want or need. The primary functions of early communication are behavior regulation, social interaction, and calling joint attention. Students with visual impairment and other disabilities are at risk for developing communication and

The NYS Early Learning Guidelines were created as a reference guide by the Early Childhood Advisory Council (ECAC) for those who are responsible for the care and education of young children. These guidelines can help early childhood professionals with learning and developing their skills in order to foster children’s growth and development. The guideline focuses on the five domains: Physical well-being, Health and Motor Development, Social and Emotional Development, Approaches to learning, Cognition and General Knowledge, Language, Communication and Literacy. Each of these domains are separated by milestone that children, generally, accomplishes at a certain age. The three age groups are Infancy (birth to 18 months), Toddlerhood (18 months

The book “The Whole-Brain Child” written by Bryson and Siegel conveyed some important information on the functionality of a child’s brain. This book also delivered an explicit means on “how to help make our lives as parents easier as well as how we can apply the scientific concept in order to make our relationship with our child/children more meaningful through connection and redirection.” (Bryson & Siegel, 2011, pg. 25). After reading this book in its entirety there were many mind-boggling discoveries within the text that I found enthralling to learn. The key points that I felt was the most relevant in this book was gaining an understanding of why children think the way they do, behave the way they do and process information the way they do. In understanding the fundamental nature of the whole brain, “it is because they mostly operate from the right brain which happens to be regulated by emotions which has an identified tendency to dominate the left brain where logical thinking is generated.” (Bryson & Siegel, 2011, pg. 16).

I enjoyed learning about Piaget’s beliefs that infants are smart and active learners who adapt to experience. He theorizes there are four distinct periods of cognitive

The Harris Early Learning Center, which opened in 1995 and is currently operated by Auburn University and home to an estimated two hundred children pre-formal school age children is the facility in which I conducted my observations for EEC 300. Prior to beginning my observations, I visited the center’s website in order to obtain a greater understanding of their mission and gain insight as to how they operate. The website, albeit, simple is quite effective at providing information to parents and welcoming them. Among the features of the website is a section dedicated to the parents and provides vital information such as a generic calendar, newsletter and family resources. The school newsletter, accessible via download, offered helpful tips for students struggling with anxiety as they adjust to their new school year, a list of upcoming events and a “parent representative group” meeting schedule. The parent representative group sought to find parents opting to be an integral part of their child’s learning. This group hoped to ensure parents were proactive at home and invested in how the classroom was managed by seeking out new ideas which would help the individual teachers teach effectively. Furthermore, the website including a resource section which provided links to seminars, at-home educational strategies and miscellaneous tools for parents with young children.

Very young children from the age of two to five years old are part of the ‘’limited processors’’ which means that these children cannot use these strategies to retrieve information or enhance learning, even when they are encouraged to do so.

The development of a child in the first year of life is extremely intense; in just 52 weeks’ an infant goes through major physical, cognitive and social and emotional developments.

The first two years are a period of rapid growth with infants quadrupling their birth weight and reaching half of their adult height. In the first days of life, a newborn has significant sensory, motor, emotional, cognitive, and language capabilities, which rapidly develop the more they continue to use these senses over the next 24 months.

I am married with two girl 23 & 37. I have 7 grandchildren and one on the way in October.

Successful levels and stages of development are majorly associated with the increasing efficiency and memory capacity. These explain a progression to higher stages and individual differences which increases by same age persons and cognitive performance. Research indicates that the performance of children at a given age is changeable from domain to domain such as the understanding of social, mathematical, and spatial concepts that it is impossible to place the child in a single stage. This level involves processes that define the volume and kind of information that the individual child can process. For example, reflexes arise before birth and are still present in newborns. Sometimes, prenatal development and birth complications may also be connected to neurodevelopmental disorders. Young children react to various motivations in various ways (Damon & Lerner, 2006). For example infants’ sight blurry in early stages improves over time.

There are many different theories when it comes to how children learn best, but when bits and pieces are taken from each a strong theory can be crafted for each individual child. These theories come from information processing, Jean Piaget, Lev Vgotsky, and Maria Montessori. Information processing looks at children’s scripts and how long-term memory works to help children learn, Piaget uses the concepts of object permanence and egocentrism to explain the ways children view different things, Vygotsky focuses on the zone of proximal development and scaffolding to give children the best environment to lean, and lastly, Montessori uses a trained adult and self-directed play to enhance learning in young children. These concepts combined are great ways to help a child develop cognitively and it is important to understand each one.

For decades psychological research has accepted the cognitive theory and ideas proposed by Jean Piaget in the early 20th century without much skepticism. While Piaget’s theory holds many vital aspects of childhood cognitive development, certain aspects may be worth examining or perhaps re-evaluating. Piaget largely contributes cognitive development to the acquisition of knowledge in stages, this suggests that children are only capable a finite amount of tasks at a given time. However, development particular cognitive development is much more complex and does not fit neatly into ordered categories without some variance. While, cognitive development can be characterized by linear or step-like progressions for the acquisition of some skills, this is not the case for many developmental milestones and tasks. Children’s cognitive abilities are not as linear or step-like as previously proposed. Rather, cognitive strategies ebb and flow similar to the movement of waves. The theory of overlapping waves proposed by Robert Siegler suggests that children and adults alike may use a variety of different strategies with varying degrees of frequency instead of large shifts in thinking or problem solving (Siegler, 1994). Siegler’s cognitive theory focuses on the variability within and among children for how they think about concepts in different ways.

Another group of theorists have explained cognitive development in terms of changes in children’s ability to process information (Duchesne, 2012 pg. 94). Kindergarten, according to Jean Piaget, is the time children would fit into the Preoperational stage of development. This is the stage in which a child is not yet able to operate or carry out logical physical actions mentally but is reliant on manipulating real materials. Piaget emphasized the limitations of children’s thinking during this stage (Duchesne, 2012 pg. 60). With this information we can recognize that at this age, children’s information processing is not yet at it’s strongest.