Introduction
It is widely believed that developing one’s physical talents can also assist in developing one’s personal and social skills. This includes self-confidence, interaction, taking turns, getting along with others, and other abilities of a similar nature. Their manner of life and precisely how kids view things have altered as a result of this, and as a result, they exhibit pretense. This is connected to the amusement and play fighting they watch on computers and other electronic devices. Today, children are more used to watching television to the point of displacing their reading time. Piaget, Ferschmann, Erickson, and Sigmund Freud discuss these aspects in their respective development theories across the lifetime.
Case Study Analysis: Presenting Challenges
The increasing amount of time spent watching television by youngsters aged 2 to 6 presents several issues which ultimately impact the children’s future. Screen time for children in the United States has increased from 13 to 16 hours, with most kids spending at least two hours a day consuming some media (Ferschmann et al., 2019). This has affected their cognitive outcomes because the child’s physical growth aids the development of their cognitive capacities. When children move around and investigate their surroundings, they learn about the characteristics of things and their potential. Some of the videos that children see on television and in the movies are considered to have the potential to be harmful (Freud, 2021). This is because it reduces the time they have to study, which may affect their behavior and how they interact with one another.
Lifespan Theory: Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory
Newborns learn about their surroundings by investigating their surroundings using their actions and senses. During this period, a wide array of cognitive capacities begins to emerge. Piaget and Vygotsky claimed that pretend play ceases when children enter elementary school (Singer, 2022). The most notable of these abilities include self-recognition, symbolic play, object permanence, and postponed imitation. Infants are entirely focused on the here and now at this period. They do not remember anything at all that is associated with this planet inside their mind. At eight months, the newborn will begin to grasp the permanence of certain items, and when those objects are absent, the infant will begin to look for them (Maree, 2022). Newborns begin to show signs of having a general symbolic function, and they can use two things to stand in for each other. When kids realize they can use words to depict emotions and things, this marks the beginning of their language development (Broderick & Blewitt, 2020). The youngster will begin to file away the knowledge he has learned about the world, give it names, and eventually remember it.
Concepts, also known as mental models, are referred to as schemas and are used to assist us in classifying and interpreting information. According to Piaget, infants construct schemas to better comprehend the world around them (Singer, 2022). By reaching adulthood, children will have developed schemas for almost every aspect of life as they continue to watch. As children acquire new knowledge, their schemas are modified in two ways: via assimilation and accommodation. People first integrate new information or experiences into their schemata (Singer, 2022). This means that people take in information similar to what they already know. Accommodation refers to how people adjust their schema in response to new knowledge (Broderick & Blewitt, 2020). This process continues when youngsters engage with the environment in which they find themselves.
Erickson’s Development Theory
Children can initiate activities and exert control over their world once they reach the preschool stage, which occurs between the ages of 3 and 6. During this stage, children are active participants in social interactions and play. According to Erikson, children in preschool need to figure out how to balance their feelings of initiative and remorse (Maree, 2022). Pre-schoolers can become experts in this endeavor if they are taught how to organize their activities and accomplish their objectives while collaborating with their peers. Those that can accomplish this will grow in self-confidence and experience a greater sense of purpose. Those who are unsuccessful at this stage—with their initiative misplaced or not taken—will go on to the next.
Sigmund Freud’s Development Theory
At each of the five stages of development, children’s pleasure-seeking urges are focused on a different part of the body, which Freud referred to as an erogenous zone. These zones are the body’s oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital regions (Freud, 2021). This can describe the different changes in children’s play. However, what we can take away from Freud’s theory is that personality is shaped, at least partly, by the experiences we have when we are young (Freud, 2021). Psychologists today dispute Freud’s psychosexual stages as a legitimate explanation for how the development of one’s personality takes place.
Intervention Process
As a strategy for intervention, he emphasizes open education, fostering increased cognitive growth in youngsters and allowing them to learn about their surroundings and adapt appropriately. According to Piaget, actions are the outcome of the structure of the mental processes arising from the child’s biological makeup and environmental experiences (Singer, 2022). He felt that children of varying ages made various errors, such as spending too much time in front of a screen and not being present, because the “quality rather than quantity” of their intellect was responsible. In addition, Piaget hypothesized that the process of cognitive development occurs at the human body’s core. Language development depends on acquiring information and comprehension via cognitive growth. In addition, Ivan Pavlov proposes that behaviors can be learned and unlearned (Akpan, 2022). Because of this, children may modify their habit of spending too much time in front of screens by being limited in what they can view.
Individual and Cultural Differences
Throughout a person’s life, they pick up bits and pieces of their culture from various sources, including their family, friends, teachers, and the media. The traditions and values that develop through time in a specific culture serve to assist people of that culture’s society in performing effectively within that society and cherishing that society (Yu et al., 2020). We tend to feel that the norms and customs associated with our culture are correct. The notion that one’s own culture is superior to others is ethnocentrism and is a natural consequence of growing up in a particular culture (Yu et al., 2020). On the other hand, it becomes an obstacle when it prevents people from comprehending the cultural traditions of other civilizations. The concept of cultural relativism refers to an awareness of different cultural traditions and the realization that cultural activities are best comprehended when seen from the perspective of the specific culture in question.
Understanding development entails determining which aspects are founded on cultural norms and assumptions, given that culture is an essential component of the human framework for growth and change. This comprehension is very recent, and more investigation is now being carried out (Lee & Kelley-Petersen, 2018). A significant portion of what developmental theorists have articulated in the past has been culturally bound and challenging to adapt to various cultural settings. For instance, Maree’s idea that adolescents struggle with identity assumes that all adolescents live in a society where they are presented with various choices and must make independent decisions about their future (Maree, 2022). In many areas of the globe, a person’s identity is decided by their family’s position or the norms of their culture.
Conclusion
During adolescence, the kid continues to develop physically, intellectually, and emotionally, evolving from a child into an adult. Although the most rapid cognitive changes occur throughout childhood, the brain continues to grow throughout adolescence and even into the 20s. At the same time, when teenagers acquire more complex patterns of thinking and a greater sense of self, they attempt to establish their own identities, creating meaningful affiliations with individuals other than their parents. The increased cognitive capacities obtained throughout adolescence may also give birth to new emotions of egocentrism, in which teenagers think they can achieve anything and know more than everyone else, even their parents. For that, the habit of children having too much time sent to the screen affected their cognitive capabilities. One of the interventions that can be applied to curb this issue is education and altering this behavior. Additionally, society plays a more significant role in a child’s development since their habits are modeled by society.
References
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Ferschmann, L., Vijayakumar, N., Grydeland, H., Overbye, K., Sederevicius, D., Due-Tønnessen, P., & Tamnes, C. K. (2019). Prosocial behavior relates to the rate and timing of cortical thinning from adolescence to young adulthood: Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 40, 100734.
Freud, S. (2021). A General introduction to psychoanalysis. In The Dreams of Childhood, pp. 130–180.
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Singer, E. (2022). Piaget and Vygotsky: Powerful inspirators for today’s students in early education and developmental psychology. In Piaget and Vygotsky in XXI century (pp. 129-143). Springer.
Yu, D., Yang, P. J., Geldhof, G. J., Tyler, C. P., Gansert, P. K., Chase, P. A., & Lerner, R. M. (2020). Exploring idiographic approaches to children’s executive function performance: An intensive longitudinal study. Journal for Person-Oriented Research, 6(2), 73.