Introduction
Cognitive development refers to the focus on how children develop on the basis of different aspects. It is a field of study categorized under psychology and neuroscience. The different aspects included under the cognitive development include; language and learning, conceptual learning, information processing and perception. Perception is the process of the organizing, recognizing and explaining the knowledge to provide an environmental description. The integral purpose of perception is brought by the nervous system that constitutes receiving of signals. The nervous system gets the original information and passes the signals to the other body parts for sensation. The perception process activity involves two different activities. The first process involves the sensory input helping in the transformation of information with less sensitivity level to high-level sensitivity. Attached to the second process is the existing knowledge in the human mind and choosing the method for the means of influencing perception. Perception, therefore, contains the views of the human thinking and its psychological activities. It is influenced by expectation, learning, attention and memory. It starts from the triggering of the sensory organs within the body. Aspects such as sound and light induce the nervous system to act on them. The action involves a transduction process. The sensory organs convert the input action to a neural activity. Perception provides the platform for the people’s reactions and actions concerning the various socio-cultural and physical circumstances within their life experiences. The theme presented by this paper is how children’s thinking develops within a social context. The parents, peers, teachers, and overall community influence what children think about, how and why they come to think in particular ways. Specifically, the paper will focus on a number of aspects relating to children’ perception besides other factors that either directly or indirectly affect their line of thoughts.
A Summary of the Current Knowledge that Exists on the Chosen Theme
Social context is a factor that influences the thinking way of the children. The social context of the children comprises the people and the surrounding of a child. In the latest circumstances, children mainly interact with the family members, teachers and friends. These people have the power to influence and determine the way the children think and thus form part of the environment where the children grow and develop. Children have the tendency to imitate the character and behaviors of these people.
There is a need for system of directing children’s behavior with neither rewards nor consequences. The solution to controlling the children behavior is through teaching them to engage reasoned thoughts just as the skills used in teaching them how to read and write. Giving rewards in terms of praise makes the children struggle to be more competent instead of earning an external reward. There should be a considerate behavior among children even though mistakes are unavoidable and do not call for punishment but teaching. Children adopt different attitudes from their age group members. They should be exposed to circumstances that have positive effects on how they think and perceive situations and objects.
Children acquire different credit from their parents. Children should acquire relevant social and psychological characteristics from their parents. It is based on the powerful aspect of nature and nurture rule in determining the traits of the children. There is an extent to which the parents should be blamed when their children come out with bad behavior since the parents provide the environment. The nature and nurture define what the children will turn out to be. Nature refers to the genes while nurture means the way the children are raised by the parents. Not everything comes out the way it is as a result of genetic inheritance and marches. On the contrary, the environment, just like the genes is also important. The experiences of the children, as they grow, are as significant as the things they are born with.
Teachers should acquire the appropriate literacy skills to enable them handle the children within the schools. Increasing the literacy skills of the children is by focusing on their writing and making sure that they write more and more. Children have different ways of learning. In the early childhood stages different circumstances occur within their lives. The circumstances include cognitive, physical, emotional and social changes. An active interaction between the children and the teacher foster a healthy learning environment. When a child is born, there are limits as to the skills they posses. They get to learn different things as they grow within the different age groups that they pass through. There are specific processes through which children internalize the values obtained from social contexts. Young children can respond and interact with other people to achieve a goal-oriented objective. Looking at the context of problem-solving, adults employ various methods of behavior to influence children to participate in combined problem-solving activities. The behaviors may include instructing, modeling and guided participation. The same practices can be used by the children when solving problems with their peers. In the infancy ages of the children; they are engaged in activities that can be defined to be aimed at joint problem-solving.
Analysis of the Applicability of Findings to the Differentiation of Instruction for Children of Different Needs and Abilities
Children are exposed to different environments and circumstances which influences their perception. The different environments of the children therefore define their different need s and abilities. The entities in the society concerned with influencing the thinking of the children therefore engage different instructional guidelines depending on such ability and need factors. The findings from the analysis of the existing literatures indicate that some children display such differences as a result of age differences.
Parents play a huge role in influencing the thinking capacity of the children. The parenting process involves enforcing certain beliefs, feelings and thoughts to the children. The attitudes displayed by the parents’ results in different reactions by the children- anger or happiness. Those children brought up by stressful families full of anger normally adopt similar feelings even in the future. Parents should strive to display high relationship levels and care to their children. children who are exposed to such environment usually adopt a positive perspective concerning their lives.
Teachers influence the way of thinking of the children. They impart various knowledge to the children including individual thinking and time management. The caregivers and the teachers in school affect the thinking capacity of the children by giving directions on different activities depending on the needs and the abilities of the children. The instructions given to achieve fully such activities are different across the children. Different children have different abilities and needs. The instructions given to the children always vary according to different children based on their perceptions concerning various aspects.
Anticipated Challenges to the Chosen Cognitive Development and Theme
The chosen are of cognitive development is the concept of perception. The aspect of perception suffers from different anticipated challenges. The major challenge facing perception is criticism. Criticism can come from different people within the society including the parents. Different messages of criticisms relayed to the children could negatively impact their way of perceiving different situations. A parent who occasionally criticizes his child makes the child feel low and despised. The negative perception developed by such a child would impact on the way he or she thinks. Parental or societal criticism influences the children’s attitudes and leads to adjustment downfalls, anxiety and weird children behaviors as a result its impact on their personal perception about themselves.
Another possible anticipated challenge to perception is gender based. When the children are growing and developing. They therefore, get engulfed into different life experiences. The feeling a growing child gets on realizing that they belong to a given gender could be a challenge to their perception about themselves and others. The pressure is always bound to the girls who could sometimes feel left out in many aspects as their male counterparts are given superior roles.
The theme is how children’s thinking develops within a social context. The development of the thinking capacity of the children within the social context is faced with several challenges. The major problem dates back to the family background and believes. Different families are founded on different values and beliefs. Some of these beliefs may be culturally related. The parents, therefore, are meant to keep the children within such contexts of beliefs that hinder the development of their thinking. The children do not become dynamic in their thinking capacity but are rather rooted in same reasoning contexts. Thinking the development of the children might also be hampered by peer influence. Children belonging to a given age group always tend to similar thinking capacities and therefore influence one another. None of the children would, therefore, be willing to quit the thinking behavior of the fellow children and adapt to another by doing a different activity from that of the peers.
The third challenge to the development of thinking of the children in the social context is the health complications. Some children have low levels of brain development compare to others. Children with mental ills are slow in the development of the brain and thus thinking capacity. Moreover, such children with mental health have their thinking capacity stagnant and not changing at all cost.
Conclusion
The thesis statement indicated that different entities are involved in influencing what children think about and why they think about such things. The entities mentioned include; the parents, teachers or peers. The analysis of different literature works by various scholars supported this fact. The influence on the thinking of the child can range from instructions, education or observation. Instructions majorly occur at homes with the parents. Education is imparted to the children to influence their ways of thinking by the teachers. It should not be forgotten that even the parents can change the thinking of the children through a set of rules and home-based teaching and education. Observation is also a very vital way that affects the mind of the children. Children are good observers. Any action by the parents, peers or teachers can easily be memorized by the children and influence how they think giving them what to think. The challenges facing the concept of perception were got to be illusion and hallucination. They both reveal a subjective view of perceiving different objects and situations. The concept of perception and development of the thinking capacity are concurrent, and one influences the other. The correctly one tries to understand events and objects, the greater indication of mind development. The greater the development of the thinking capacity, the greater the degree of correct event and object perception.