INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

The child at the time of his birth or in early childhood cannot be expected to perform such
tasks that require high mental abilities. As he advances in his age, his mental abilities and
capacities gradually get developed and he becomes able to solve the problems he could not when
younger. The Growth & Development of the mental abilities and capacities which help an
individual to adjust his behaviour to the ever changing environmental conditions or to enable
him to accomplish a task that needs complex abilities is referred to as Mental or Intellectual
Development.
The intellectual development on an individual at any stage of his development includes
the overall development of the abilities like sensation, perception, imagination, memory,
reasoning, understanding, generalization, interpretation, language ability, problem solving
ability, etc.
Intelligence The term Intelligence is used to explain
the differences in mental ability that are the products of age and maturation from infancy to
adulthood. A variety of definitions have been given by psychologists but the most comprehensive
definitions are the following given by:

Weschler: Intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully,
to think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment.

Stoddard: Intelligence is the ability to undertake activities that are characterized by (1)
difficulty, (2) complexity, (3) abstractness, (4) economy (5) adaptiveness to a goal, (6) social
value and (7) the emergence of originals; and to maintain such activities under conditions that
demand a concentration of energy and a resistance to emotional forces.

Stern: Intelligence is a general capacity of an individual consciously to adjust his thinking to
new requirements. It is general mental ability to new problems and conditions in life.
All the above definition gives an incomplete picture. These definitions partly emphasizes that
(i) Intelligence is the ability to learn.
(ii) It is the ability to deal with abstraction.
(iii) It is the ability to make adjustment or to adapt to new situations.

Process of Intellectual Development
Development of Intelligence takes place in an individual through sensation & perception,
reasoning & problem solving as well as memorization of relevant information.

I. Sensation and Perception
Sensations are elementary impressions gathered by sense organs. It is the process by which
sensory receptor neurons detect information and transmit it to the brain. In other words, sensation
is the process of taking in information / stimuli with the help of our nervous system, through the
various sense organs. Contact with the external world is obtained through our sense organs
through the process of sensation.
When sensory impressions are interpreted some definite meanings are attached to them, they
takes place the form of Perception. Perception is an active process involving the organism.
Perception is the true beginning of the knowledge. Sensations give us only the raw material of
knowledge and perception is the first step by which that material is elaborated into definite
knowledge of the external world, the attributes and relations of objects outside us.
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Perception is sensation plus meaning. The activity of the organism in converting a sense
impression into the awareness of the object is called the process of perception.
Perception is the process of becoming aware of objects, qualities or relation by way of sense
organs. While sensory content is always present in perception, what is perceived is influenced
by prior experiences.

Determinants of Perception
Subjective factors: The structure and functions of sense organs determine to some extent
our perception.
Brain and nervous system: Various relationship which we perceive as characteristics of the
environment are deduced because of the brain.
Past experience: Perception depends upon ones past experience by creating various kinds
of prejudices and assumptions regarding the object perceived.
Set or Attitude: Ones mental set or attitude at a given moment influences his perfection.
Illusions: Illusion is misinterpretation. The stimulus is wrongly interpreted because the
stimulus is wrongly perceive due to subjective conditions with no clarity with object. E.g.:-
A rope is perceived as a snake due to fearful attitude or due to semi- darkness.

Laws of Perception
Perception involves a process of combing and grouping stimuli. The activity of combining
and grouping enable us to perceive definite patterns or meaningful figures. a) Figure-ground
relationship
The individual will face or perceive two factors, one is figure and other is ground. Figure
is the central part. The figure and ground can be changed in accordance with the emotional
condition and background of the individual.
The central figure may not be common for all the people. The most attractive part will be the
figure and the less attractive part will be the background.


Here A is the attractive part it is the figure. We first focus on the figure and then focus on
the ground. In second phase the ground will become the figure (100% attention).

Here the individual cant distinguish the figure and ground. The factors present in the
figure or ground is more or less similar.
Camouflage: It is the condition denoting confusion or conflict in differentiating figure and
ground.
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Vase-Face figure

Implications of figure ground relationship
When a teacher presents a learning material, the figure and ground must be clearly
demarkable. E.g. 1) Sound of the teacher must be demarkable from other sounds within the
class or outside the class. i.e.; teachers sound must be figure. (Control the ground factor). 2)
The handwriting of the teacher must be legible. And demarkable from other diagrams so that
students can easily perceive it as figure. 3) In drawing diagrams, the diagram must be used
different colours for clear demarcation and correct labelling.

b) Law of Similarity
Others being equal, the stimuli that are more similar to one another will have greater tendency to
be grouped while perceiving.

c) Law of Proximity

Perceptual groups are favoured according to the nearness of the parts. This means that we
perceive all closely situated things as groups.

d)
Law of Closure
Closed areas are more stable than unclosed ones and therefore more readily form figures in
perception. The tendency of human beings is to perceive the goal by filling the gaps is considered
as closure.




II. Memory
Memory plays an important part in our daily life. Life becomes richer due to memory ability of
past experiences. It plays a significant role in process of learning. It is necessary to recall the
learnt material at a particular time and to learn more one has to remember what has been learnt.
James Drever: Memory is that characteristic which underlines all learning, the essential
feature of which is reflection. In a narrow sense, it is recall and recognition.
Woodworth and Marquis: Memory is mental power which consists in learning, retaining and
remembering what has previously been learnt.
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Memory involves four basic factors- learning, retention or storage, recall or retrieval and
recognition. These are very closely inter-related.

Types of Memory
Depending on the nature of learning tasks and age, nature and capacity of the learner, memory
could be different categories.
a) Short Term Memory (STM): Dr. Murray Grossman, a neurologist and his colleagues came
up with a model- STM. It is also called working memory- no more than few seconds long.
Situated in the prefrontal cortex of the individual, it lets the individual keep several things in
mind at the same time. For instance, it lets one to perform several functions at the same time.
Waving to attract someones attraction while talking to someone else and continue to open a
mail.
b) Long Term Memory (LTM): It retains huge amounts of information for a long period of
time with relatively high degree of permanence. It represents our general knowledge about
the working of the world. The memory of words, symbols, corporate trade marks, etc. are
unforgettable. Though not used for years, they will not fade away.
c) Habit Memory or Implicit Memory: is the function of the body and is related with the
motor mechanisms. Once learnt how to ride bicycle, drive a car, or swim, it is likely that
those are not forgotten. We often call this muscle memory. It doesnt require awareness,
which explains why one can be lost in thought behind the wheel of a car and arrive at
destination. These are stored in cerebellum.
d) Remote Memory: it is the life time accumulation of wide variety of topics. It is spread
around the cerebral cortex. It seems to diminish with age. The decline could be retrieval
problem.
e) Rote Memory: Result of rote learning by children, they remember without understanding.
f) Episodic Memory: This is the memory of specific personal experiences. E.g.: The food one
has chosen at a restaurant at last week, the result of the football game, etc. when some
important information is presented in an emotionally satisfying way- a story or a film- it is
usually well remembered.
g) Sensory Memory: sensory impressions retain the knowledge. (a) Auditory memory-
memory of auditory impressions, (b) Visual memory- memory of visual impressions, (c)
Tactual memory- memory touch is rich in mind, (d) Olfactory memory- memory of smell
iddle childhood.

Piaget's Cognitive Processes
Piaget believes that all schemes, all forms of understanding, are created through the
working of two inborn intellectual processes that he calls organization and adaptation.
Organization is the process by which children combine existing schemes into new and
more complex intellectual structures. Piaget believed that children are constantly organizing
whatever schemes they have into more complex and adaptive structures.
The goal of organization is to promote adaptation- the process of adjusting to the
demands of the environment. According to Piaget, adaptation occurs through two complimentary
activities- assimilation and accommodation.
Assimilation is the process by which the child tries to interpret new experiences in terms
of his existing models of the world- the schemes that, he already possesses. In other words the
child tries to adapt to a novel stimulus by construing it as something familiar. For e.g., an young
child who sees a horse for the first time will try to assimilate it into one of her existing schemes
of a four-legged animal end thus may think of this creature as cow. However, truly novel objects,
events and experiences may be difficult or impossible to interpret in terms of one's existing
schemes, and hence may try to modify the existing schemes to interpret the new experience.
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Accommodation, the complement of assimilation, is the process of modifying existing structures
in order account for new experiences. Accommodation involves modification of some elements
of old scheme or learning new scheme which is more appropriate for the new object.
Piaget believes that the two processes - assimilation and accommodation work together
to promote cognitive growth. Sometimes assimilation and accommodation do not occur together
and when the assimilation of experiences do not fit with the existing schemas they will lead to
cognitive conflict or doubts or confusions which promote further accommodation, which
ultimately lead to a state of equilibrium. Piaget called this process
equilibration. It is the process of restoring balance.


The ongoing processes of assimilation and accommodation enables children to adapt to
changes and restore equilibrium or balance between cognitive structures and the environment.
Piaget criticizes many school systems on the ground that information learned through simple
repetition does not help children to develop intellectually. He believes that intellectual
development comes more from the posing of problems, than from the delivering of solutions.

Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development
Piaget identified four major periods of cognitive development:
the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years)
the preoperational stage (2 to 7 years)
the concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years) and
the formal operational stage (11 years and beyond)
These stages of intellectual growth represent completely different levels of cognitive
functioning and form. All children progress through these stages in precisely the same order,
without ever skipping a stage. The ordering of stages is also same for everyone. These stages
could never be skipped because each successive stage builds on the accomplishments of all the
previous stages, and hence Piaget called these stages as an invariant developmental sequence.
Piaget believes that biological maturation plays an important role in determining how a
child thinks, and that there are tremendous individual differences in the ages at which children
enter or emerge from any particular stage. Piaget was of the view that cultural factors and other
environmental factors may either accelerate or retard a child's rate of intellectual growth, and
suggested that the age norms that accompany the stages are only rough approximations.


Accommodation Assimilation
Equilibration