What Is Cognitive Development Case Study

This is a case study of the cognitive, physical, identity, social and moral development of a seven year old female who is entering into the second grade. For the purpose of this study, the participant will be referred to as Elsa. She belongs to a traditional, married family made up of a mother and father. She also has a younger brother who is four. The mother is employed full time in an optical clinic and the father has a full time position with a local transportation company. The Father has a bachelors in sociology. Elsa 's family has a beautiful mixture of cultural backgrounds. Her father is African American and her mother is of European descent mixed with the cultural norms via Hawaii. They identify as one race with variations in skintone.
Piaget proposed four stages of cognitive development. The first is sensorimotor which refers to babies ages 0-2. In this stage, babies acquire object permanence (memory). They are acquiring knowledge from experiences through physical interaction. Next is the stage of preoperational which us from ages two to six or seven years. During this stage, children are considered egocentric and do not posses logical thought or reversibility. Also, magic appears real at this age level. Moving along we come to the third stage from Piaget 's list of cognitive development. The concrete operational stage usually occurs around the ages seven to eleven. The characteristics of this stage include the ability to form logical sequencing of concrete objects. Last is the fourth stage, formal operational for ages twelve and up. This level may never be actualized for everybody, however, it is characterized by the ability to think abstractly. Another important idea to understand when talking about cognition is metacognition. As per Snowman, this is the ability to think about thinking where a person will plan on learning, monitor what they are leaning, then evaluate what they
Erickson theorized 8 stages of psychosocial development. One stage I will focus on is where children ages six to eleven are developing either a sense of industry or inferiority. According to Erickson, when children are praised for doing their best and encouraged to complete tasks, industry may result. This leads to positive academic achievement. A child 's effort to successfully complete a task help to form a positive self-concept and self-esteem. Self concept is a sense of who you are while self esteem is if you like what you see in the mirror (Snowman). Inferiority occurs if a child is treated as bothersome and their efforts to complete a task are unsuccessful. This sense of inferiority can result in a lack of enjoyment in intellectual work and lead to the belief that they cannot be good at anything. This leads to a low self-esteem and self- concept