Essay Example on Physical Growth: A Journey from Embryonic to Adolescent

Introduction

Physical growth is the procedure that starts in the human embryonic stage and lingers into late adolescent intent on fine or gross motor skills and also puberty. Physical growth includes growing control over the body, mostly the muscles and bodily coordination. The gross motor skills include the mastery of huge muscle movements and also the edifice of strength in muscle groups such as the core, legs, and arms. Cognitive development is how children explore, think, and figure out things. This is the growth of knowledge, problem-solving skills, dispositions, and skills that assist people in thinking about and apprehending the people and the universe around them. The growth of the brain is also considered as a section of cognitive development. Social development is the procedure by which a child learns to interrelate with other people and children around them. As children grow and recognize their personalities within their society, they also acquire skills to communicate with other individuals and process their won deeds. With social development, a person can manage his or her feelings and instincts that are required to learn and grow. Social development helps children to build peace with other people, understand them better and intermingle with them without offending anybody. This paper is about cognitive development and its importance during growth.

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Importance of Cognitive Development

Cognitive development is the most important development phase because the cognitive skills assist children in understanding the affiliation between concepts, in gripping the procedure of cause and impact, and in enhancing their logical skills. Not only does cognitive development help your child in the classroom but also outside the school environment (Feinstein & Bynner, 2004).

As a parent, it is essential to nurture the cognitive development of your child as he or she is born because it offers the foundation for the success of your child in the classroom and also in life. For example, according to studies, it was revealed that children who can differentiate sounds at the age of six months are better at learning to read at the age of four and five years (Feinstein, & Bynner, 2004). With cognitive skills, not only can your child learn new information, but he or she can also process it, think of it, and speak about the latest information. Cognition includes the application of newly acquired information to the previously attained information.

As children grow older, they acquire the skill to think on sophisticated levels. This helps them to process information more skillfully and create networks for other information easily. This enhances their brain development, and their thinking skills get gradually better. As children age, cognitive development can enhance their capability to remember information, focus, and think more critically (Feinstein, & Bynner, 2004). This also enhances their ability to understand the affiliation between notions and their analytical skills.

When children distinguish the connection between the cause and effects, they can avoid peer pressure, and also they can make the right decisions all by themselves. For example, they can understand that playing video games too much will lead to poor grades in class if they do not create time to study.

With cognitive skills, children can pay more attention to reasoning about the universe around them, and this allows them to see mistakes made by other people and learn from them. When they think about the world around them, children can know the dos and don’ts that affect a person’s life (Feinstein, & Bynner, 2004).

Stages of Cognitive Development

In Piaget’s theory of cognitive growth, it defines the nature and growth of the human intellect. In his theory, Jean Piaget suggested that people evolve through four developmental phases, concrete operational stage, pre-operational stage, formal operational period, and sensorimotor stage (Huitt, & Hummel, 2003).

Sensorimotor Stage

This stage starts from birth to the attainment of language. During this stage, infants gradually create knowledge and understanding of the universe by synchronizing experiences like hearing and vision from physical relations with items such as stepping, sucking, and grasping. When they perform physical actions with items, they gain knowledge from them. Children advance from reflexive, intuitive deed at birth to the starting of figurative thought towards the end of the phase. When growing up, children understand that they are different from the environment, and they can think of the environment's features, including those beyond their senses. According to Piaget, he said that the essential accomplishment in this stage is the object permanence.

Pre-operational Stage

This stage begins when the children are two years old when they start to speak, extending to when they are seven years old. During this stage, children cannot understand concrete judgment, and they cannot mentally deploy information. Pretense and augmented playing are the most common actions during this stage. Piaget regarded this stage as meager and logically insufficient concerning mental processes. This stage is critical because children can create stable ideas and also magical beliefs. This is known as magical thinking. The pre-operational phase is divided into two phases; these are, intuitive thought and symbolic function substage (Huitt, & Hummel, 2003). During the instinctive thought substage, children have the need to understand everything around them, and they ask questions suggest questions such as (how come? And why?) In the symbolic function stage, children can remember, represent, understand, and imagine objects in their mind without looking at the object at that moment.

Concrete Operational Stage

This phase happens between seven years and eleven years. In this stage, the thought procedures of a child become more mature because it takes place between middle childhood and early adolescent years. The right use of logic also defines them because children can solve problems more logically. Even though at this stage, hypothetical thinking is not fully enhanced, children can solve problems that regard to particular items and events.

Formal Operational Stage

This is the final phase of cognitive growth, and during this stage, people are proficient in deductive and hypothetical thinking. Individuals also develop the capability to think about abstract ideas. During this stage, children develop intellectual thoughts and think about the effects and results of their actions. Also, people develop metacognition, which permits them to think about their procedures and monitor. Adolescents and adults can solve problems more logically, and also other methodical ways appears.

Conclusion

In conclusion, cognitive development is the most important because children can undergo all these stages fully and to understand the world around them. Cognitive development also aids social development because when you understand the people around you and think logically, interacting with people around you will be easy. Cognitive skills and language skills are connected, and when children have cognitive development, they are most likely to succeed in their classwork.

References

Huitt, W., & Hummel, J. (2003). Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Educational psychology interactive, 3(2), 1-5. https://intranet.newriver.edu/images/stories/library/stennett_psychology_articles/Piagets%20Theory%20of%20Cognitive%20Development.pdf

Feinstein, L., & Bynner, J. (2004). The importance of cognitive development in middle childhood for adulthood socioeconomic status, mental health, and problem behavior. Child Development, 75(5), 1329-1339. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00743.X