Cognitive Skills - Defination, Stages And Its Importance For Children

What Are Cognitive Skills?

 

Cognitive abilities are the tools we employ to intellectually evaluate our surroundings. These abilities are utilised to do all tasks, from the simplest to the most difficult. These nueral connections are related to how we –

 

     
     ·       Attention and response

·       Language learning

·       Memory

·       Thinking

·       Information processing

·       Problem-solving

·       Simple reasoning

·       Understanding cause and effect

·       Pattern recognition

 

Cognitive development can be compared to a child’s air traffic control tower – taking in information and processing it on a daily basis with intent and purpose.

Processing Speed is an overarching cognitive talent that has to deal with other cognitive talents. It is the rate at which your brain operates when given tasks.

  

Illustration by Joshua Seong, Verywell

Stages Of Cognitive Development

In 1952, Swiss researcher Jean Piaget proposed the cognitive development hypothesis. The environment, according to Piaget, does not determine a child's behavior; rather, children and adults actively attempt to comprehend and adapt to their surroundings.

                                                                   

The most complete theory of cognitive development in children is Piaget's hypothesis. We may learn as much about a child's intellectual growth from their poor responses to test questions as we do from their good responses, according to the notion. Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete, and formal phases of cognitive development in children are described by him.

 

1.     Sensorimotor Stage - From infancy until age two, we form mental experiences based on our five senses. As much as possible, our brain wants to See, Hear, Taste, Smell, and Feel. We begin with rudimentary reflexes and quickly establish our initial habits. From the age of four months, we become aware of things outside of our own body, and as we get older, we learn to do things purposefully. Our "realisation of object permanence," in which kids grasp that an object persists even if it isn't visible or heard, is a significant milestone. We learn to crawl, walk, leap, and even run, which leads to improved mobility and cognitive development. We're still egocentric, which means we can't imagine ourselves in someone else's shoes.

2.     Preoperational Stage - We have a lot of dreams and think that items are alive at this age. We also enjoy playing pretend with our friends, which helps us get a lot of experience and learn a lot. We learn to communicate and decipher secret meanings in words and gestures. We begin to understand the symbolic significance of an artwork. However, we are still unable to create thoughts and hypotheses based on facts and data. The 'intuitive age,' as Piaget called it, is when most of us become highly interested and ask a lot of questions. At this point, our thinking is still rather egocentric.

3.    Concrete Operational Stage - Finally, logic forms and actual cognitive activities emerge, such as sorting objects into a logical order. We improve our inductive reasoning skills, which means we can now make general inferences from a set of facts and evidence. Our brain develops the ability to reorganise thoughts in order to categorise and construct tangible operational mental structures. We now understand that we may undo an action by performing the exact opposite. We begin to apply our newly learned abilities in our everyday activities, at school, and in conversations, and as a result, we get a deeper understanding of ourselves. At only this stage we acquire the ability to perceive the world from a different point of view, and we now understand that each individual has their own distinct viewpoints and thoughts.

4.    Formal Operations Stage - We become formerly operational after we reach the age of adolescence. We can now consider hypothetical events and abstract concepts. We are now able to comprehend objective concepts such as success and failure, love and hate. We have a better knowledge of who we are and what we believe in. We also believe that we have a better understanding of people's behaviour and the reasons for it, and hence are more compassionate as a result. We now have the ability to compare two sets of evidence and establish a logical conclusion using deductive reasoning. The last stage of cognitive development, according to Piaget.

 

Why Focus On Cognitive Development Is Crucial

Early Life Experiences are the architect of a child's brain. Over the first several years of life, the infant brain continues to acquire neurons and expands at an incredible rate. In the first year, it doubles in size, and by the third year, it has grown to 80 percent of its mature size. This expansion is mostly due to the formation of new synapses and the proliferation of neurons.

 

Even more critically, throughout these years, relationships are made at a quicker pace than at any other period. Indeed, the brain makes many more connections than it requires: by two or three years old, the brain has up to twice as many connections as it would have in maturity. Throughout childhood and adolescence, a child's experiences have a large part in deciding which excess connections are progressively eliminated.

 

There is a strong link between a child's early growth and the degree of success he or she will achieve later in life. Infants who are better at identifying the building blocks of speech at six months are better at other more complicated language abilities at two and three years of age, and better at learning to read at four and five years of age. Not unexpectedly, a kindergartener's understanding of the alphabet is one of the most important predictors of a child's ability to read in tenth grade.

 

Some young children may have developmental delays or issues that, if detected early enough, can be diagnosed and handled. As a result, parents, schools, and caregivers should pay close attention to each child's development and address any problems as soon as feasible. This can help the youngster avoid difficulties later in life.

 

 

Conclusion

 

To protect young children from the impacts of toxic stress, the best policy strategy is prevention. Chronic stresses, like seeing violence on a daily basis, caregiver neglect or abuse, inadequate nutrition, and other environmental dangers can have long-term and profound repercussions on adult physical and mental health. we should make an active effort to shield young children from negative experiences in their early years of life.