MENTAL OR INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHILD

MENTAL OR INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHILD

Ø  Mental development includes various aspects such as development of concepts, perception, language, memory, reasoning, thinking, imagination and intelligence.

VARIOUS AREA OR ASPECTS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

1. Intelligence and mental development:

Ø  In the first-place mental development implies increase in intelligence.

Ø  The results of intelligence tests show that mental or intellectual growth is rapid in infancy, moderate in childhood and slow in youth.

2. Sensation and perception:

Ø  Both sensation and perception are considered important aspects of mental development.

Ø  Senses are the elementary impressions gathered by sense organs.

Ø  Impressions take the form of perception when they are interpreted and some definite meanings are attached to them.

3. Concept Formation:

Ø  Another important aspect of the child’s mental development is the acquisition of concept. 

Ø  A concept is the generalized meaning that is attached to an object or idea. It is the result of one’s perceptual experiences.

Ø  It involves both discrimination and generalization.

4. Development of Language:

Ø  The development of language contributes to the mental growth and development of the child.

Ø  Important aspects of language development are speech, vocabulary and length of responses, etc.

5. Development of Memory:

Ø   Memory is also an important element of mental development.

Ø  There is little memory at birth but it gradually increases with maturation and experience.

Ø  During the first-year memory is only aroused by sensory stimuli. With the learning of speech, the child is able to remember ideationally by the end of the second year.

Ø   During the first and second years the memory is stronger for persons and object than for situation.

6. Creativity:

Ø  It may be stressed that creativity is the most single ability which is at the root of human progress.

Ø  Like many other activities, it can be developed at a young age.

Ø  In general sense, creativity is the ability to think in novel ways which result in some new and original solution.

7. Problem solving:

Ø  All thinking and reasoning involve meeting difficulties, facing complex situations and finding out solutions.

Ø  Thinking and reasoning powers are used in problem solving and these begin to grow as early as two and a half or three years of age. Gradually the ability to reason grows.

STAGES OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT

q  Piaget divides the stages of cognitive development of the child into the following categories;

1. Sensory-motor stage (Birth to 2 years):

Ø  This stage covers the period from birth to two years.

Ø  This stage is marked by sensation.

Ø  Simple learning occurs but the child does not think at this stage.

Ø  These early sensory motor experiences of the child have a great bearing on the development of his later intellectual abilities.

Ø  In the world of the child an object exists when it is physically present.

Ø  He then gains some consciousness about the stability of the object.

2. Pre-conceptual stage (2 to 6 years):  

Ø  This stage is roughly between two years and six years.

Ø  The child develops ways of representing events and objects through symbols, including verbal symbols of language.

Ø  He can now think about things that are not immediately present. The child now becomes ego-centric i.e. primarily concerned himself.

3. Intuitive Stage (4 to 8 years):  

Ø   The reason of the child is not logical and is based on intuition rather than systematic logic.

Ø   The intuitive thought is primarily concerned with static conditions but the child is able to use concepts as stable generalization of his past and present experiences.

Ø  He, however, cannot adequately link a whole set of successive conditions into an integrated totality.

4. Concrete Operations stage (6 to 11/12 years) :  

Ø   At this stage a child is concerned with the integration and stability of his cognitive system.

Ø  The child develops logical operations from simple associations.

Ø  He learns to add, subtract, multiply and divide. He is in a position to classify, concrete objects.

Ø  These operations are called concrete because they relate directly to objects.

Ø  Piaget has given a long list of operations which make it possible to handle numbers in various relations to each other, the arrangement of objects into classes and sub classes and the ordering of objects according to one or more attributes.

5. Formal Operational Stage (12 to adolescence):

Ø   At this stage, the thought process of the child becomes quite systematic and reasonably well integrated.

Ø   The child is in a position to free himself from the concrete operations related directly to objects and to groups.

Ø   He is capable of reasoning with propositions removed from the concrete.

Ø   He develops an experimental spirit.

Ø   Now he solves problems more systematically and the bases of action are not trial and error.

Ø  The youngsters at this stage are able to organize information, reason scientifically, build hypotheses based on understanding to causality and test their hypothesis.

EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS AT THE PRE-SCHOOL AND PRIMARY STAGE

1. The teacher should familiarize himself with the theoretical and practical aspects of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
2. The teacher should try to assess the level and type of thinking of each child in his class.
3. Each child may be asked to perform some of the experiments as suggested by Piaget.
4. The teacher should spend a lot of time in listening to each child’s reaction to the experiments.
5. Plenty of equipment materials and opportunities should be given to children to learn on their own.
6. For social interaction, group situations may be arranged so that children learn from each other.
7. Learning experiences should be so arranged as they take into account the level of thinking of mental development attained by an individual or group.
8. It should be kept in mind by the teachers that the children may e influenced by egocentric speech or thought.

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