health intellectuall development

• Language development

  • Essential for organising thoughts
  • Essential for sharing and expressing ideas
  • Important for clarification
• Problem Solving

  • Important skill required to work things out
  • Important skill required to make predictions
• Memory


  • Required for storing, recalling and retrieving information
• Moral development

  • Allows for reasoning and making choices
  • Informs the individual how to act in particular situations
  • Informs the individual how to act towards yourself
• Abstract thought


  • Essential for thinking and discussing situations and events that cannot be observed
• Creative Thinking


  • Essential for thinking and discussing situations and events that cannot be observed
• Over an individual's life span, their brain grows at an amazing rate
• At birth an infant's brain is about 30% of the size of an adult's brain
• By the age of 5, the child's brain has increased to approximately 80% of the size of an adult brain
• Sensorimotor stage

  Birth - 2 years old
• Egocentrism


  A young child's concern that everyone can see something the way they do
• Preoperational stage


  • Child continues to add to their schemas
  • Child is still dominated by sensory information
  • Child fails to be able to carry out logical operations
  • Child shows concentration on only one aspect of an object at a time
  • Child lacks conservation - inability to realise that some things remain constant or unchanged despite changes in visible appearance
• Concrete Operational stage

  • 3-11 years
  • Child is able to carry out mental operations such as conservation
  • Child can decentre - generally can see another person's point of view
  • Child can complete class inclusion tasks and the three mountains test successfully
• Formal Operational stage


  • 11+ years
  • Ideas can be manipulated in the head and reasoning/deductions can be carried out on verbal statements without the aid of visual/concrete examples
  • Child can think about hypothetical (forethought) problems
  • Child can think about abstract concepts
• Piaget's observations were based on a small number of children
• Piaget underestimated/underestimated children's cognitive abilities
• Research suggests children take longer than 11 years to become skilled at abstract logical thinking
• Cognitive development could be linked to a child's environment and the quality of their formal-informal education, not just their maturation process
• Noam Chomsky's theory


  • Ability to develop a signed or spoken language is genetically programmed into individuals
  • All individuals have the ability to understand and use language regardless of other abilities
  • Children become fluent in their first language by the age of 5 or 6
• Language Acquisition Device (LAD)


  • Chomsky believed individuals are born with this, enabling them to recognise and develop the language they experience
  • LAD contains the principles which are universal to all human language (grammar)
  • For the LAD to work, children need to sample natural languages (family speaking around them), which serves as a trigger to activate the device
  • Once the LAD is activated, children are able to discover the structure of the language to be learned by matching the knowledge of basic grammatical principles to the structure of the particular language in the environment
• Chomsky's theory lacks scientific evidence
• Bruner (1983) argued that social interaction has more of an impact than Chomsky suggested
• Chomsky's theory doesn't take learning disabilities into consideration, e.g. Down's syndrome
• Children develop at different stages
• accomodation


  making sense of a new situation
• assimilation


  adjusting an extisting schema often with little effect to the original
• schema

  a pattern of thought that oraginises information
• a child evelops concepts about the world aroungd them as a state of equilbrium.
• as they experience new situations where new information is presented, their schemas are upset and they reach a state of disequilbrium.
• realistic


  realist have a firm grip on reality and can see things for what they ar, not what they are told they are. realists have their own views and do not fall victim to propaganda, misconception or titles.
• pragmatic


  dealing with things sensibly and realisticly in a way that is based on practical experience rather than theorectical consideration. can be quick to take advantage of situation.
• in early adulthood individuals apply the knowledge,skills and experience they have gained through there life to make decisions. they are able to think logically and make realistic answers.
• early adulthood application

  • thinking through problems
  • makes descisions on complex situations
  • learn new information, knowledge and skills
• middle adult hood

  • new brain cells will continue to develop
  • although there may be a gradual decline in the spped of processing information
• later adulthood

  ageing can involve a loss of nerve cells in the brain and a reduction in the ability of how nerves transmit electron
• later adulthood

  does not mean they lose their ability to think
• later adulthood

  many older people experience cognitive impairment, report problems with memory recall" where did i put my glasses"