Applying Concepts in Child Development: Identifying Children's Cognitive Processes

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Infancy (Birth–2)

A Youngster’s Experience:

One Monday morning, 13-month-old Miguel meets his child care provider’s new kitten for the first time. Miguel isn’t sure what to make of this creature. When he sees that his caregiver is happily petting the kitten, he smiles and reaches out to touch the kitten’s head.

Developmental Concepts (Identifying Cognitive Processes):

Miguel is engaging in social referencing, checking to see how a trusted adult reacts to the new kitten and then responding in a similar way. Social referencing is an aspect of intersubjectivity, in which participants in a social situation have some awareness of what other participants are looking at, thinking, or feeling.

Implications (Promoting Effective Processes):

As you introduce infants to new people, animals, and objects, model appropriate ways of interacting with and responding to them.

Early Childhood (2–6)

A Youngster’s Experience:

A kindergarten teacher is reading Mercer Mayer’s What Do You Do with a Kangaroo? to his class. As he often does during story time, he picks up a globe and points to the spot where the story takes place—in this case, Australia. “Most kangaroos live here in Australia,” he says. “How come they don’t fall off the world?” 5-year-old Andrea asks.

Implications (Promoting Effective Processes):

Listen carefully to children’s comments for clues regarding their beliefs about their physical and social worlds. With age-appropriate explanations, nudge them toward more accurate understandings.

Middle Childhood (6–10)

A Youngster’s Experience:

Although 10-year-old Kendall seems quite capable of doing typical fifth-grade work, he rarely stays on task for more than a few minutes during the school day. He is especially distractible during small-group activities and on other occasions when class activities are fairly noisy. He tends to remember very little of the material that is presented during such times.

Developmental Concepts (Identifying Cognitive Processes):

Attention is critical for getting information into working memory and then (with further processing) into long-term memory. Distractibility is common for children in the preschool and early elementary years, but it is unusual for a boy as old as Kendall. Quite possibly Kendall has an undiagnosed learning disability or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Early Adolescence (10–14)

A Youngster’s Experience:

When Faith was in elementary school, she was a conscientious student who earned mostly As and Bs. Now, as a 13-year-old seventh grader, she often forgets to do her homework—sometimes she doesn’t even know what her homework assignments are—and her grades have slipped to Cs and Ds. “I need to get my grades up,” she tells the school counselor, “because I want to go to college. Next year I promise to work harder.”

Developmental Concepts (Identifying Cognitive Processes):

Faith apparently has not acquired many self-regulated learning skills: setting goals, planning study time, and so on. Such skills become increasingly important as students move through the grade levels and are expected to work more independently.