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Social effects on cognitive development
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The general argument made by Salman Khan in his work, The Learning Myth: Why I’ll Never Tell My Son He’s Smart, is that the form of communication you use with developing children heavily affects their mindset of their personal capabilities. More specifically, Mr. Khan argues that intelligence is not fixed, and can grow as we embrace tasks we can possibly struggle or fail with. He writes, “They’ve found that neural connections form and deepen most when we make mistakes doing tasks rather than repeatedly having success with easy ones (Khan,2)”. In my view, Mr Khan is right because intelligence is not a virtue only some obtain, rather a trait everyone already possesses to develop upon as they struggle with difficult tasks. However, research performed
As Dweck explains, children who are praised for their intelligence does not want to learn hence develop a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset is where people believe that their qualities such as talent and intelligence are essentially fixed traits. Such people would only concentrate on documenting their intelligence instead of looking for ways for developing the same. In addition, these people make the assumption that their intelligence would make them successful. On the other hand, a growth mindset is where people are aware that it is possible to develop their abilities through hard work and dedication. When I was in Grade 7, a teacher encouraged all students that they all had the ability to perform well in science. After the initial interaction, the teacher was aware that a certain percentage of the class performed way below average; yet, he did not water down their spirit. I remember the way he used to acknowledge even some insignificant improvement made in his tests by comments such as “You are making good progress so far”. Primarily, this teacher focused on the perseverance, strategies, and efforts the students put towards improvement as opposed to praising talent (Dweck 5). The result was that we changed our attitude and focused more on self-improvement.
In Carol Dweck’s article titled, “Brainology” Dweck discusses the different mindsets that students have about intelligence. Some where taught that each person had a set amount of intelligence, while others were trained that intelligence is something they could develop and increase over time. in Dweck’s article she writes, “ It is a belief that intelligence can be developed that opens students to a love of learning, a belief in the power of effort and constrictive, determined reactions to setbacks” (Dweck pg. 2). Dweck is talking about a growth mind-set in which is how students perceive the growth of knowledge and that no one person is born with a certain amount of intelligence, it too can be trained and developed over time. By introducing Dweck’s ideas of a growth mind-set to students, students will enjoy learning and be less devastated by setbacks, because they know they can develop intelligence. Dweck also writes that students with a growth mind-set, “believe that intelligence is something that can be cultivated through effort and education. They
Results of students who received praise for intelligence: The students in this category had negative results after receiving praising. When asked afterwards if they wanted to do the same level of problems or try more challenging ones, they chose the task that would allow them to look smart and do well on. Consequently, while telling a child how smart he or she is, we are sending a message to not take risks and just look the part. Afterwards, these children were given a hard task, which they performed poorly on, and they know longer liked the problems and did not want to practice them at home. Children also felt “dumb” and when given the initial task (in which they did well), they performed significantly worse. Lastly, their opinions of intelligence reflected that it was an innate capacity as though you cannot improve.
For more than a century, the topics of intelligence test have raised many strong and weak arguments which presented supporting both the “professional” side of the proposition and the “anti” side of the proposition. Like many anti-IQ tests’ arguments, Isaac Asimov’s “Thinking About Thinking (1976)” is a relatively common argument when he argues that intelligence is not something that can be measured or tested. In this essay, it presents common ideal that intelligence is defined by people who are subject to their own biases and to the ideas of their culture, the prevail definition of intelligence is not reliable. Asimov uses personal experiences, hypothetical situation, and casual/semi-simple language to convince readers of his view. With these
Intelligence tests have been developed by scientists as a tool to categorize army recruits or analyze school children. But still discussing what intelligence is, academics have a difficult time defining what intelligence tests should measure. According to the American researcher Thorndike, intelligence is only that what intelligence tests claim it is (Comer, Gould, & Furnham, 2013). Thus, depending on what is being researched in the test and depending on the scientist’s definition of intelligence the meaning of the word intelligence may vary a lot. This essay will discuss what intelligence is in order to be able to understand the intelligence theories and aims of intelligence tests.
Culture has a unique role in the case of intelligence and without describing the part of culture the intelligence portion will become incomplete. Besides, individuals in diverse societies have distinctive certain views on intelligence, therefore in one culture one behaviour may consider as smart or intelligent and in other it may consider as unintelligent or stupid. Then, the connections between diverse parts of intelligence can fluctuate crosswise over societies, with relationships that are optimistic in one setting ended up being pessimistic in an alternate. Then, first of all we should understand what is mean by Intelligence and what the definition of a culture is.
The DSA do not admit that genes determine developmental result, and it would also guide educators to avoid believing genetic determinism (Kim & Sankey, 2010). Therefore, teachers are given more space and confidence about teaching since they realise that children could change dramatically and their intelligences can be cultivated through postnatal education, their work has become more meaningful and valuable. Furthermore, the DSA stresses that child development is depends on the human brain which perceiving, thinking and acting in response to, and inter-relationship with, the multiple complexities of the natural and social environments (Kim & Sankey, 2010). It encourages teachers and parents to view children as ever-changing, well-integrated organisms which are the functioning brains (Siegler, DeLoache, Eisenberg, & Saffran, 2014). When educators understand that brains are plastic and can change, they are more likely to be more compassionate and devote themselves to educate the children as they believe that their effort could make a significant difference. The idea that thinks children as functioning brains and educators are able to change their mind will
Most researchers believe that we are born with a certain intelligence or potential intelligence. They also believe that the intelligence we are born with is difficult to change. Psychologists use short-answer tests to assess one’s intelligence (Gardner papers). It was believed that intelligence was a single inherited thing. Human beings start out initially as a blank slate and could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way (Multiple Intelligences and Education). Currently an “increasing number of researchers believe the opposite. Gardner defined intelligence as: “the ability to create an effective product or offer a service that is valued in culture; a set ...
In the essay “The Secret of Success”, Michael Bond focuses on the idea of nature versus nurture in kids success. He looks at speech done by the mayor of London to which he discusses the idea that success is based upon IQ. Studies from King’s s College London suggested that Children academic success can be attributed more to heritable traits than teaching or environmental factors. Michael also looks at the effect that environment and how that has an impact on learning success. Studies that he looked at saw a connection with how socioeconomic could negatively impact kids. Research done by the University provided information that kids under the age of 5 with little to no affection and poor communication with parents. He points out that to grow
“Because brain development is so heavily dependent on early experience, most babies will receive the right kind of nurturing from their earliest days, through our loving urges and parenting instincts. “there are so many things that I’ve read that could make a baby smarter like reading to them while pregnant or even talking to them so the brain can develop the right way while in the womb but loving your child and catering to them is the right way and will eventually lead them to the right path to learn. Yes, speaking to your child and listening to them can and will critically develop the brains –building years. Parents do forget that a child’s developments are not when school begins but before that. If a child comes from a home that listens and speaks when the other one is done and knows manners the child will develop that and learn that is the right way to go about things as oppose to a house hold who may talk over each, shout or even hit their brains will pick all that up like a sponge. So talking to your child and actually listening to them is one of the best brain developments. “Language is fundamental to most of the rest of cognitive development, this simple action—talking and listening to your child—is one of the best ways to make the most of his or her critical brain-building years.” (Zero to
The true nature of intelligence has been debated more intensely then ever over the last century. As the science of psychology has developed one of the biggest questions it had to answer concerned the nature of Intelligence. Some of the definitions that have been given for intelligence have been the ability to adjust to one’s environment. Of course by such a definition even a person who is generally considered to be dull can be regarded as being intelligent if he can take care of himself. Other definition is such as having the tendency to analyze things around yourself. However it can be argued that such behavior can lead to over-analyzing things and not reacting to one’s environment and dealing with it in an intelligent manner.
A number of aspects can influence one’s mind and its relationship with the world, and how it grows and flourishes. Both genetic and environmental traits have a contribution to the development of cognition and intelligence. Biologically, a person is born with the same number of brain cells they will ever possess, however, a person’s complete brain function capacity and strength will take years to solidify as neural networks grow more complex (Hank, 2014). Biological maturation will allow for such growth processes, and it enables orderly changes in behavior to take place. Cognitive development refers to how thought, intelligence, and language processes change as people mature (King, 2017). The development of thought processes, including memory, problem-solving, and decision-making, expand from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. Jean Piaget (1896-1980), proposed his theory on how children actively construct and seek to
The author argues that certain decision leads to vast amount of untapped human potential and limits success to few who are selected unjustly. This example supports “Mathews Effect”. The Gladwell’s example of Bill Gates proves the “10,000 Hour Rule”, He explained that the timing and opportunity played a huge role to become an expert at computer programming. Bill Gates had access to computers decades before computers became mainstream. Such a timing helped him capture the opportunity to master the tool of trade and put him in the perfect position to start Microsoft. The Gladwell’s example of experiment by Lewis Terman, He argues about that a person’s IQ have a limited control over success. He claims that there is a minimal difference in the levels of success attained by those with IQs between 125 and 170. The author adds that IQ cannot efficiently measure person’s creativity. A person who has a high IQ does not mean that it has a high chance of winning a Nobel Prize because other kind of intelligence matter too. With the help of these facts, Gladwell proves that the relationship between IQ and success is
1940 The Thirty-ninth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education: Factors Influencing the Growth of Intelligence in Young Children. US Public School Publishing Co. Cherry, Kendra “What Is Nature versus Nurture?” Accessed February 20, 2014.
Fischer, K. W. 1980. A theory of cognitive development: The control and construction of hierarchies of skills. Psychol. Rev. 87:477-531