Psychological Perspectives of Understanding the Development of a Child’s Behavior

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who created theories on the stages of mental development among children that has had a profound impact in child development. Jean Piaget was the first in his field to make a study of cognitive development. Piaget’s theory of cognitive developments tells how a child constructs a mental model of the world and is a process which occurs due to biological maturation and interaction with the environment(McLeod, 2015). He did not believethat intelligence was a fixed trait. He did not measure how well a child could count, spell or solve

Children can classify and order, as well as organise objects into series. The child is still tied to the immediate experience but within these limitations can perform logical mental operations. For example, can solve mental problems using counters and objects.

Developmental psychology denotes to the psychological ways in which human beings progress from birth to adulthood. For the purposefulness of this paper, the focal point will be on childhood developmental psychology. The subject perceived will be my five-year-old nephew Richard Tafoya. Furthermore, the interactive methods utilized throughout my observations will include: games, test of conservations, interviews, and cognitive assessments. This paper will indicate which physical actions were observed, verbal statements given, and what activity the child was doing in relation to one or more of the various theories of development.

Children develop cognition through two main stages that Jean Piaget theorized. The stages run from birth and infancy to school age children. Sensorimotor is the first stage and goes from birth to about the age of two. This stage implies that the children learn about the environment they live in and they learn this through the reflexes and movements they produce. They also learn that they are separate people from their parents and they can say goodbye to them and know they will come back. The second stage is called the preoperational stage. During this stage of development, children will learn how to incorporate symbols to represent objects. This is also the beginning of learning the alphabet and speech. The child is still very much egocentric at this point in time, but with the help of understanding educators, the child will grow appropriately onto the next stages of development. Finally, the children need to develop emotionally/socially.

Children are complex, and the way a child develops differs from individual to individual. The study of children is a field that researchers, scientists, theorists and educators have been exploring for decades. CHYS 1F90 studies the foundations of childhood development and allows the students to look at the way children develop through multiple lenses. Many conclusions have been drawn, observing how, when and why children develop the way they do. Jerry and Samantha are both grade one students who are unrelated. Although these two students are both the same age, they are different on a variety of accounts. Jerry is a shy and introverted boy who quickly becomes uncomfortable while talking to adults, teachers and peers, contrariwise

While observing a child practitioners need to take into consideration the different relationships the child has with adults and children within the setting and in their home environment to gain a full picture. All practitioners within the setting should be involved In observing behavioural issues even if it is not always written down. Practitioners should record significant information throughout the day so that a more accurate picture of a child's behavioural issue is gathered from different areas of a child's day.

Given the two optional sets of topics to choose from for this module, I was immediately drawn to choose choice 1. The goal is to cover my observations at the 1st two years of a child's life especially after gaining some experience with my children. Different concepts that we can apply to that child's behavior such as:

Jean Piaget · He was famous for working out a universal sequence of stages of cognitive development · Notable for his idea that children (and adults) are continually generating theories about the external world · He set out stages for when certain new aspects of generating theories; 1. Sensorimotor stage: which occurs from birth to age two (Children experience through their senses) 2. Preoperational stage: which occurs from ages two to seven (motor skills are acquired) 3. Concrete operational stage: which occurs from ages seven to eleven (children think logically about concrete events) 4. Formal Operational

Psychology is a field that is broken down into many subfields, each field distinctive in their nature. One of the most studied fields is developmental psychology. Before I explain the field in depth, it is important to understand what developmental psychology is, and how it came to be. Developmental psychology is mainly a scientific approach, which aims to explain how children and adults change overtime (Lerner, Lewin-Bizan, & Warren, 2011). Most uniquely, it is a field that looks at change over time and what instigated those changes (Miller, 2011). The discipline itself has two main goals: to describe the behavior at each point in the person 's development, and to identify the causal factors involved in producing changes in behavior (Vasta et al. 1998). Developmental psychology as a field has informed many other subfields of psychology as well including educational psychology, child psychopathology, and forensic developmental psychology. Developmental psychology also encompasses other fundamental research fields in psychology including social psychology, cognitive psychology, ecological psychology, and comparative psychology.

Theories of child development can be tied to particular philosophical groundings of the major schools of psychology. This paper will provide the basis for the application of behavioral learning theory to an observation of three children in a natural context. A discussion of the rationale for choosing behavioral learning theory over cognitive, contextual, psychodynamic, or social-cognitive learning precedes the explication of behavioral learning theory. As summary of notes and conclusions regarding the observation is provided following the theoretical discussions.

For this paper I will be exploring Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget, theorized that children progress through four key stages of cognitive development that change their understanding of the world. By observing his own children, Piaget came up with four different stages of intellectual development that included: the sensorimotor stage, which starts from birth to age two; the preoperational stage, starts from age two to about age seven; the concrete operational stage, starts from age seven to eleven; and final stage, the formal operational stage, which begins in adolescence and continues into adulthood. In this paper I will only be focusing on the

Society today, through education has increased our awareness and understanding on how our brain functions. This effect is having a phenomenal impact on issues such as behaviour in children. Scientific studies are building an evidence-based platform for the fundamental attributes which supports the whys and the hows. Child behaviour is an ever-growing area to explore as the increases of problematic behaviour is continuously rising.

Jean Piaget believed in the theory of cognitive development which explains the way that children mentally perceive the world. Piaget believed that intelligence and behaviors were learned rather than already being present at birth. The theory of cognitive development is a series of four stages which correspond to specific ages and behaviors. Stage one is the sensorimotor stage and is believed to take place from birth to age two. Stage two is the preoperational stage and lasts from age two to four. Stage three is the concrete operations stage

There are four main stages of this theory. They are categorized into many substages each. The first one is sensorimotor. Babies going through this phase get the knowledge the need through their senses and exploration. They try to use all their senses to get to know the object in their hand. This stage is divided into the following six subgroups.

Jean Piaget, a cognitivist, believed children progressed through a series of four key stages of cognitive development. These four major stages, sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational, are marked by shifts in how people understand the world. Although the stages correspond with an approximate age, Piaget’s stages are flexible in that if the child is ready they can reach a stage. Jean Piaget developed the Piagetian cognitive development theory. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development proposes that a child’s intellect, or cognitive ability, progresses through four distinct stages. The emergence of new abilities and ways of processing information characterize each stage. Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.