Cognitive development refers to the development of thinking across the lifespan of a person especially

in children. A mindset of a 3-year-old child is far different of a 6-year-old child.

Thinking requires high mental processes including problem solving, reasoning, creating, conceptualizing
and so on. Thinking also involves basic mental processes including seeing objects and understanding
language.

Main Types of Theories of Child development

Piaget’s Stage Theory – focuses on whether children progress through qualitatively different stages of
development.

Qualitative stages of development are the changes in the person’s way of thinking, behavior and
perceive the world as they mature.

Sociocultural Theories – emphasizes how other people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the
surrounding culture, influence children’s development.

Information processing theories – examines the mental processes that produce thinking at any one
time and the transition processes that lead to growth in that thinking.

1. How do nurture and nature interact to produce cognitive development?

During intellectual development, genetic factors are believed to determine the susceptibility of
an individual to environmental influences. As such, heredity creates an array of abilities whose
expression in the form of IQ are shaped by environmental factors. intelligence is a product of
heredity-environment interactions; thus, inherited abilities interact with environmental factors.
In nature, some children who possess particular inherited traits are suited to particular
environmental conditions.

Nature refers to our biological endowment, the genes we receive from our
parents. Nurture refers to the environments, social as well as physical, that influence our
development, everything from the womb in which we develop before birth to the homes in which
we grow up, the schools we attend, and the many people with whom we interact.
Some aspects of the development of living organisms, such as the growth of the width of a pine
tree, involve quantitative changes, with the tree getting a little wider each year. Other changes,
such as the life cycle of a ladybug, involve qualitative changes.

Quantitative changes are changes that can be measurable. For example, height, weight.

Jean Piaget - a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive
development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology". Piaget placed great
importance on the education of children.

The four stages of development are: sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), thepreoperational
reasoning stage (2 to 6 or 7 years), the concrete operational reasoning stage (6 or 7 to 11
or 12 years), and the formal operational reasoning stage (11 or 12 years and throughout the
rest of life).
During the sensorimotor stage, children’s thinking is largely realized through their
perceptions of the world and their physical interactions with it. Their mental
representations are very limited.
During the preoperational stage, children can solve not only this simple problem
(which they actually can solve after 9 months) but show a wide variety of other
symbolic-representation capabilities, such as those involved in drawing and using
language.
The concrete operational stage is the third in Piaget's theory of cognitive
development. This stage lasts around seven to eleven years of age, and is
characterized by the development of organized and rationale thinking.
The formal operational stage begins at approximately age twelve and lasts
into adulthood. As adolescents enter this stage, they gain the ability to think in an
abstract manner by manipulate ideas in their head, without any dependence on
concrete manipulation
Is cognitive development fundamentally continuous or fundamentally discontinuous? A
reasonable answer seems to be, “It depends on how you look at it and how often you
look.” For example, under relatively facilitative circumstances, infants show early forms
of object permanence by 3 or 4 months, and they gradually extend the range of times for
which they can remember hidden objects as they grow older. However, on Piaget’s
original object permanence task, infants do quite quickly change toward the end of their
first year from not reaching for hidden toys to reaching for them, even after they’ve
experienced a substantial delay before being allowed to reach. Thus, the debate between
those who emphasize discontinuous, stage-like changes in cognitive development and
those who emphasize gradual continuous changes remains a lively one.

phonemic awareness— awareness of the component sounds within words

Research into cognitive development has shown us that minds don’t just form according
to a uniform blueprint or innate intellect, but through a combination of influencing
factors. For instance, if we want our kids to have a strong grasp of language we could
concentrate on phonemic awareness early on. If we want them to be good at math and
science, we could engage them in numerical games and activities early on. Perhaps most
importantly, we no longer think of brains as empty vessels waiting to be filled up with
knowledge but as developing organs that develop all the way through aging.
 Gender

sex refers to the biological category of male or female, as defined by physical differences
in genetic composition and in reproductive anatomy and function. On the other hand,
gender refers to the cultural, social, and psychological meanings that are associated with
masculinity and femininity. You can think of “male” and “female” as distinct categories
of sex, but “masculine” and “feminine” as continuums associated with gender.

gender identity refers to their psychological sense of being male or female.

Developmental intergroup theory suggests that adults’ focus on gender helps children to pay
attention to gender as a key source of information about themselves and others and to seek out
any possible gender differences around them.

Gender schema theory argues that children are active learners who essentially socialize
themselves. In this case, children actively organize others’ behavior, activities, and attributes
into gender categories, which are known as schemas.

Social learning theory argues that gender roles are learned through reinforcement,
punishment, and modeling.

Differential treatment on the basis of gender is also referred to gender

discrimination

hostile sexism refers to the negative attitudes of women as inferior and incompetent
relative to men.

benevolent sexism refers to the perception that women need to be protected,

supported, and adored by men.

Important Gender-related Events in the United States

1920 -- 19th Amendment (women's Suffrage Ratified)

1941-1945 -- World War II forces millions of women to enter the workforce

1948 -- Universal Declaration of Human Rights

1963 -- Congress passes Equal Pay Act

1964 -- Congress passes Civil Rights Act, which outlaws sex discrimination

1969 -- Stonewall riots in NYC, forcing gay rights into the American spotlight

1972 --Congress passes Equal Rights Amendment; TitleIX prohibits sex discrimination
is schools and sports

1973 -- American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from the DSM

1981 -- First woman appointed to the US Supreme Court

1987 -- Average woman earned $0.68 for every $1.00 earned by a man

1992 -- World Health Organization no longer considers homosexuality an illness

1993 -- Supreme Court rules that sexual harassment in the workplace is illegal

2011 -- Don't Ask Don't Tell is repealed, allowing people who identify as gay serve
openly in the US military

2012 -- President Barack Obama becomes the first American president to openly
support LGBT rights and marriage equality

1. What are the differences and associations among gender, sex, gender identity,
and sexual orientation?

"sex" refers to the biological differences between males and females, such as the
genitalia and genetic differences. "Gender" can refer to the role of a male or female in
society, known as a gender role, or an individual's concept of themselves (Male,
Female, LGBT)

Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Sexual identity may refer
to sexual orientation identity, which is when people identify or dis-identify with
a sexual orientation
 2. Discuss the theories relating to the development of gender roles and gender
stereotypes. Which theory do you support? Why?

Developmental intergroup theory suggests that children learn about their

gender differences and stereotypes from the focus of adults on gender.

Gender schema theory argues that children are active learners who essentially
socialize themselves. In this case, children actively organize others’ behavior, activities,
and attributes into gender categories, which are known as schemas.

Social learning theory tells that people learn through observing others’
behavior, attitudes, and outcomes of those behaviors

For me, social learning theory is what I support because it is a more applicable
theory than the rest. It focuses more on what children see around them to
determine differences in gender.

Gender roles - The behaviors, attitudes, and personality traits that are designated as
either masculine or feminine in a given culture.
Gender stereotypes - The beliefs and expectations people hold about the typical
characteristics, preferences, and behaviors of men and women.