Cognitive Development In Children

Cognitive development refers to the growths and changes that occur in an individual’s cognitive abilities, that is, their intelligence and mental abilities, and how and why they think. (Gleitman, Gross & Reisberg, 2011) These changes never stop, they continue from birth right up into adulthood and old age. While in later years this development can be detrimental (ie, a diminishing of these abilities), in childhood, cognitive development is an improvement in how the child sees, thinks about, and interacts with the world. This essay will examine the cognitive abilities that emerge and are present in children between the ages of 7 - 11, often referred to as middle childhood.

One of the most influential psychologists in this field was Jean Piaget.

They begin to understand classes and hierarchies of objects, for example, if A is greater than B and B is greater than C, then A must be greater than C, or that cats and dogs are part of the group “pets”, which in turn is part of the group “animals”(Yawkey & Johnson, 1988). They start to evaluate and compare themselves to others, and employ the use of stereotype schemas, such as “boys are sporty” and “dogs are friendly”. These stereotypes can have an effect on friendships. Compared to children of other ages, in middle childhood children will often only make friends with those of the same gender, because “boys are icky” or “girls don’t know how to have fun”(Cairns & Cairns,

They can understand jokes and puns, and at 9, they begin to apply complex grammatical rules. A study conducted by Zhozephina Shif (Vygotsky, 1986) examined how much children can apply reasoning and logic to language. 8 and 10 year olds were given the first half of a sentence, ending in either ‘although’ or ‘because’, and asked to fill in the rest. All, especially the 8 year olds, gave less logical answers to the ‘although’ questions. For instance, “the man fell off his bike although he broke his arm” This shows that adversative reactions (but, although, however, though) appear later than causative ones (because, since). The same study also found that children had more trouble with spontaneous, abstract concepts than with scientific, ‘real-world’