Mel Levine's A Mind at a Time
Mel Levine’s book, A Mind at a Time, describes many aspects of cognitive psychology and attempts to apply them to the educational system for young children. This book also makes suggestions for parents that have children with cognitive difficulties. The chapters in this book are designated to various aspects of cognitive psychology as they pertain to children. This paper focuses on chapter six in A Mind at a Time, which is titled “Making Arrangements: Our Spatial and Sequential Ordering Systems.” This is a very interesting chapter because it incorporates many aspects of cognitive psychology. In this chapter, Levine focuses on how children organize their world in terms of learning, thinking, and remembering.
Levine states that children have two ways in which they organize the information they receive from the world around them. He refers to these methods as sequential ordering and spatial ordering. He defines spatial patterns as, “assembled parts that occupy space and settle on the doorsteps of our minds all at once” (Levine, p.151). Many examples are given of when spatial ordering is prevalent, for instance, when a student draws a map or recognizes the features of a person’s face. Levine defines sequential patterns as information gaining “admission to the minds one bit at a time and in an order that’s meant not to be missed” (Levine, p.151). He says that sequential ordering is used when students try to master a science project or learn a telephone number. Neurologically, Levine states that sequential ordering is carried out on the left side of the brain and spatial ordering is carried out on the right side of the brain. He also makes references to the possibility of childr...
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...e abnormalities in their ability to learn efficiently. Throughout the book he is very supportive. He offers parents many great strategies for dealing with the problems of their children. The book A Mind at a Time gives parents a way to learn about their child’s mind without a lot of technical terms. The main problem I see with this book is that it may lead parents to discover potential problems with their children at much too young an age. Levine’s most important error is that he does not mention the age at which the minds of children develop. I feel that this book could be helpful to many parents and harmful to others. Parents, as well as other readers, need to be cautious when reading this book.
Works Cited:
Levine, M. (2002), A Mind at a Time. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Matlin, M.W. (2002). Cognition. (5th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Jean Piaget became fascinated with the reasons behind why children cannot correctly answer questions that require logical thinking. Piaget was the first psychologist to conduct an organized study of the intellectual advancement in children. Before Piaget’s study, many believed children were merely less efficient thinkers than adults. Due to his study, however, Piaget proved children think in remarkably different ways than adults. Children are born with a very primitive mental complex that is genetically inherited and learned on which all the following knowledge and learning is based (McLeod, 2015).
Slater, A., and Muir, D., (1998). The Blackwell Reader in Developmental Psychology. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd.
As every child grows up in a different environment, not all have a safe one to grow up in and as a result everything that surrounds them becomes apart of the clarity that their mind incorporates and becomes apart of that child 's behavior of way. In terms of brain development children or teens often listen, and see what is around them, it is also said, by researchers of the National Institute of Health, that in recent studies that were made that in teen years massive loss of brain tissue...
Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlett Letter is an American Classic and has proved to be a great contribution to American Literature. Hawthorne has allowed his readers insight into a Puritan past that held strict principles and unyielding consequences that he was all too familiar with and haunted by these horror stories of his heritage led by his own ancestors. In composing this tale Hawthorne presents a realistic image of the 16th Century and threads the importance of his knowledge of the Transcendentalist movement which brought focus to the nature of life and the right of individuals to pursue their natural desire a great contrast to the Puritanic existence he was so custom to. Although the author Nathaniel Hawthorne had doubts about the seriousness of his work, his novel The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, gained huge recognition and notoriety because of its insight into a changing American culture and the issues that would shift its' direction. Hawthorne was born in 1804 on July fourth in Salem Massachusetts. Hawthorne’s heritage went back six generations in Salem where he was raised and reared for manhood. His own ancestors had been there to judge in the Salem Witch Trial of the seventeenth century. This undoubtedly was one of the many things that shaped and influenced this American author’s style in this and many of his other works.
Jean Piaget was a theorist which “who” focused on people’s “children’s” mental processes (Rathus, S., & Longmuir, S., 2011, p.10). Piaget developed (words missing) how children differentiate and mentally show(tense) the world and how there , thinking , logic , and problem solving ability is developed (Rathus, S., & Longmuir, S., 2011 , p.10). Piaget analyzed that children’s cognitive processes develop in an orderly sequence or series (Rathus, S., & Longmuir, S., 2011 , p.11) . But each stage show how children understand the world around them. – sentence fragment; should be joined to the previous sentence. Every child goes through the same development”al” steps but some are more advance(d) than others . Piaget described four stages of child
A classroom of thirty is filled with a diverse group of students that think in all different ways. Each child’s brain processes informat...
These pressures of being unable to obtain the economic means necessary to achieve a minimal standard of living have been show to lead to deviant behavior, particularly youth delinquency (Curry and Spergel, 1988). It can therefore be deduced that youth individuals are more likely to take part in these behaviors if they reside in these neighborhoods where gangs are already known to exist, as well as neighborhoods that are high in juvenile delinquency (Spergel, 1995).
Juvenile criminal gangs have long been a significant issue with the criminal justice establishment. Youths coming together to commit criminal acts normally attributed to adult and more vicious criminal organizations are now being routinely committed by juveniles. The reasons for these youths in committing the activities have somewhat baffled author tries as well as scholars and researchers. It must be noted however, that juvenile delinquency is not new; laws in the past have sought to control the criminal and deviant tendencies of children, and prescribing changes from rehabilitative to retribution against criminal acts committed by juveniles. Many of the common assumptions-from being accepted and venting violent behavior- have long been considered as the more traditional reasons accepted as the reasons why youths join gangs. However, research studies have shown that youths are joining gangs for different reasons than just material gain and acceptance. The paper seeks to use the theories espoused by Agnew as well as other supporting postulates proffered by Akers and Sellers, Guillon, and Merton in analyzing the issues as well as the possible solutions in lowering the propensity for youths to join these gangs.
Every child’s cognitive development is different. Cognitive development is the process of gaining skills by brain development to gain the ability to think and comprehend. These skills once matured are beneficial to youth especially when they begin grade sch...
An important theory of cognitive development was proposed by psychologist Jean Paiget. His theory states that through four stages of cognitive development, children can actively construct their understanding of the world. Organization and Adaptation are two processes of cognitive construction in the world. To understand the world, one must organize their own experience. For example, most people detach significant ideas from less significant ideas. Letting an individual to connect one idea to another, allowing them to arrange their reviews and life events. People often adapt thinking to incorporate new ideas because extra information expanding their understandi...
Walkup. (2008). Learning and Cognitive Development. In B. a. Kay, Advanced Early Years (pp. 132 - 149). Harlow: Heinemann.
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development describes his belief that children try to actively make sense of the world rather than simply absorbing knowledge as previously thought. Piaget’s theory claims that as children grow and develop they experience four different cognitive stages of life. As a child grows through each stage they not only learn new information but the way he or she thinks also changes. “In other words, each new stage represents a fundamental shift in how the child thinks and understands the world” (Hockenbury, page 368).The first stage of Piaget’s theory, known as the sensorimotor stage, begins at birth and continues on until about age 2. As the name suggest, this stage is when children begin to discover
Piaget was biologist and psychologist that is known for “constructing a highly influential model for child development and learning”. Piaget’s theory is based on the premise that the developing child “builds cognitive structures”. These structures are things like mental maps, “schemes, or networked concepts for understanding and responding to physical experiences within a child’s environment.” Piaget further demonstrates that a child’s “cognitive structure increases in sophis...
Gangs have been in existence since the beginning of time. These kind of groups, or gangs, usually participate in several criminal and illegal activities that negatively affect society. These activities include theft, robbery, extortion, rape, and many types of vandalism. Gangs have increasingly became a problem society has often had to deal with. People wonder where and how it all started. It is in fact evident that gangs can change a person’s life in a negative way. Many fall into these bad steps by peer pressure or even movies. Being influenced by what the media projects, accepting peer pressure, and how a person is raised in the wrong household are all examples of how one is led into a gang. These groups have had many negative effects on society for many years. The impacts that gang membership lead to affect society are what people should be aware of.
Wood, A. E., Wood, E. G., & Boyd, D. (2007). Child development: The world of psychology.