Essay about ece353 final-Synthesis of Learning

Children are ‘thinking beings’ which involves the ability to think. How significantly their cognitive ability to think for others follows them taking part in a range tests, such as the ‘sally- Anne test’ and ‘smarties’ test. It comes to the conclusion that children under the age of four fail the standard ‘false belief’ test. Subsequently the meta-analysis results monitor these theories of children failing ‘false beliefs’ tasks.

In the “Study of the Child: Theories of Development I” (Learning Seed, 1997), according to Vygotsky, the cognitive development in children is in direct relationship, and dependent on interaction with others. (Feldman 2010, pg. 20). Vygotsky believed to truly understand cognitive development; a child’s social and cultural experiences must be considered.

Vygotsky proposed that children’s development is affected by their culture and social interaction. He also suggested that children are not born with knowledge but they gain it through their social interactions with peers and adults; he does not rule out the importance of biological processes but proposes an interdependent relationship between biological development alongside social activity and cultural interaction.

Vygotsky’s theory can be applied in a daycare setting to foster cognitive development. When guiding children, the adult-child dialogue, scaffolding, and the zone of proximal development are important for their cognitive development. Vygotsky believed that cognitive development required social interaction to develop fully (Manheimer, 2015). The need for language and communication is especially important in a daycare setting. Children are encouraged to participate in social interactions when being in a daycare around many other children and other adults. Vygotsky

A second strength of the sociocultural perspective is the emphasis on the role of adults in childhood cognitive development through guided participation. Vygotsky introduced the idea that children learn in a zone of proximal development. Meaning the distance between what an individual can do alone and what they can do with guidance and assistance from a capable member of society (Mcleod, 2010). Any skills outside the zone would be already mastered or still too difficult to attempt alone. “To Vygotsky, learning in collaboration with more knowledgeable companions drives cognitive development (Sigelman).” This is true throughout the world. Children in many cultures learn from a teacher, from family members, and many others. In other cultures, children learn skills from relatives, members of their village or tribe, or from other skilled members in their group. This perspective satisfies the need to recognize the role of adults in

Bee H., & Boyd D. ( 2003). The Developing Child, 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

The intelligence of a child is demonstrated by the use of signs, improvement of language, memory and the imagination when articulating in the non-logical and non-reversible way. The child’s sphere of socialization improves when the child is engaged with other people around them; if this does not happen and the child is reserved to itself there is a possibility the child will lack ability to make his/her own decisions in life after (Dodge, 2004).

Social cognition is the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing, of information in the brain. It is a process that is generalized within a species, and relates to members of the same species. At one time social cognition referred specifically to an approach to social psychology in which these processes were studied according to the methods of cognitive

Dunn and Brown (1993) observed children in naturalistic settings, largely supportive of laboratory findings and suggest that children use internal states to understand social situations. These studies, therefore suggest theory of mind is an adaptive function for enhancing social relationships.

At an early age, children begin the process of socialization. In order for one to be able to communicate with others, it is essential for one to learn to socialize with the people around them. One cause

Children rely heavily on the input of their surrounding environments to develop these skills further (Eileen Allen & Marotz, 2003). The communication strategy used by children over the first year of life is predominately non-verbal before development progresses to include verbal communication (Rodnick & Wood, 1973). McDevitt and Ormrod (2010) suggest social emotional, physical and cognitive development is facilitated by the experiences children have in their “family, school and community” (p. 5). This raises the idea that the level of communicative development may differ greatly between children depending on experiential exposure. Rodnick and Wood (1973) expand on this further suggesting children will actually develop a level of grammatical and language understanding which is essential to communication, long before they commence schooling. In research conducted by Rodnick and Wood (1973) it was noted in their findings that the children subject to their research demonstrated a lower level of communication than expected at around the age of seven and suggest it may be due to environmental factors. This then draws some attention to the educator and their ability to teach a developing child not only the importance of communication, but also the skills of appropriate and effective communication.

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of development suggested that to develop cognitively, children must have social interaction. He also “believed that this lifelong process of development was dependent of social interaction and that social learning actually leads to cognitive development” (Riddle, 1999). Vygotsky believed that children 's social learning must come before social development. Vygotsky also believed that "human activities take place in cultural settings and cannot be understood apart from these settings" (Woolfolk, 2004). Therefore, our culture helps shape our cognition.

Researchers have identified the importance of interplay in the healthy development of cognition and social development (Biro, Alink, Huffmeijer, Bakermans‐Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2015). Engaging in daily interaction will allow infants to mimic and learn socialization, this will influence the way that toddlers and young children engage with peers and caregivers throughout their childhood (Biro, Alink, Huffmeijer, Bakermans‐Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2015). Learning to connect with others will encourage individuality, cognition and social skills that can only be learned by experience. Researchers conclude that caregivers and parental figures prove invaluable to developing a healthy attachment with effective social-emotional experiences (Biro, Alink, Huffmeijer, Bakermans‐Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2015). Middle childhood, cognitive development throughout childhood is a valuable process that will allow children to flourish both independently and within peer groups (Burger, K., 2009). Scrutinizing diverse social backgrounds and educational availability, researchers have identified long and short term effects in the cognitive development of children (Burger, K., 2009). Data supports that the higher quality of both education and social activity is beneficial to the overall development of an individual, it is important to acknowledge that the quality need not equate to fiscal quality, as it is the time and energy that is given to a child

Unlike Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory, which stresses that cognitive development was expected to mature through self initiated discovery, Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory places greater emphasis on the influence a child’s culture, social factor, and language. Meaning, Vygotsky believed a child learns more from personal interaction with in his/her culture, rather than through individual experiences of chance and random. Social interaction with one’s culture plays a tremendous role in the cognitive development of an individual. Culturally specific tools and language, taught and passes from generation to generation, are perceived practice for one’s survival in social

Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social Cognition (2nd Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. In http://penta.ufrgs.br/edu/telelab/3/enactmen.htm. Date of access 2014\02\25.