Babies grow quickly in terms of both physical size and cognitive skills. The development of thought processes begins in infancy and accelerates through early childhood. Cognitive abilities include all parts of information processing, such as learning new things, being able to understand and remember them and knowing how to use the information in different ways. There are scientific theories to measure stages of cognitive development, but imaging technologies depicting actual brain activity--such as MRI, PET or CT--cannot provide meaningful insight into the cognitive development process.
Social
The U.S. Department of Education states that cognitive development is most effective in a social environment rich with personal interactions. This insight is based on developmental learning theories, especially Jean Piaget's stages of cognitive development. According to Piaget, using language and activities that are appropriate to the age of your child support strong cognitive development. Piaget's and his followers' child development research helps parents, teachers and other caregivers to understand when and how children develop learning skills and are able to implement them.
Infants
Infants think in the moment, Piaget observed. They see what is happening at the present time and don't store it in their brain to recall later. Once the image moves out of sight, the thought goes with it. Two important cognitive developments occur when babies begin to associate an action with getting something they want and when they realize objects that can no longer be seen are still real.
Toddler
Between 2 and 4 years of age, your child will use visual skills to associate pictures with events and remember images for future use. Piaget's theory of cognitive development explains how this new ability to retain information allows a child to put images on paper and talk about things from memory.
Young Child
Intuitive thought will emerge between 4 and 7 years of age, when children naturally start to ask a lot of questions about why things are happening, Piaget noted. Your child will constantly seek new information at this stage, ask you many questions and start to associate objects with past and present events in real life.
Information
Your child's skills to process information are formed between 2 and 5 years of age. When he gets a new piece of information, he will process it in different ways. His developing memory will allow him to remember objects and events and will give him the ability to recall the information at a later time. At the same time, he is developing long-term memory and rudimentary problem-solving skills .
Purpose
Your child will associate learning information with specific outcomes at ages 5 to 7. This is the time when she goes to school and is exposed to information that will need to be recalled for tests or discussion in the classroom. Your child will connect things that were learned in the past to new information and use both to think at a higher level for reading and comprehension.
Language
Babies and toddlers can understand words that they can't yet speak. Most children have a significant increase in vocabulary between 3 and 6 years of age. Single words turn into two- or three-word phrases and, eventually, full sentences. Children learn grammar as they learn to speak--recalling it from their memory of hearing spoken language and then developing the skills to assimilate it in their own words.
References
- U.S. Department of Education: A Summit on Early Childhood Cognitive Development
- Child Development Institute: Stages of Intellectual Development in Children and Teenagers
- MentalHelp: Early Childhood Cognitive Development Introduction, Symbolic Function, Intuitive Thought, Information Processing, Language Development
- MentalHelp: Infancy Cognitive Development
