Question

1.Create a fictitious child with a name, an age during early childhood, and a gender. 2.Describe one component of the fictional child’s physical development. 3.Explain one component of the fictitious child’s cognitive development using Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. 4.Explain one component of the fictitious child’s cognitive development using the information-processing approach to cognitive development. 5.Describe one environmental factor that affects the fictitious child’s physical development or cognitive development.

Answer 1

1) Let's say the name of the fictional child is, 'Ariel', she is a female, aged 10 years old.

2) The one component of Ariel's physical development is her height which is very good as compared to other kids of her age.

3) To understand Ariel's cognitive development, let's understand Piaget's theory in short.

Jean Piaget's theory consists of four stages namely:

Sensorimotor (birth to 2 years)

Preoperations (2 to 7 years)

Concrete operations (7 to 11 years)

Formal operations (11 to 16 years)

Ariel is 10 years old so would come under concrete operations stage. In this stage, the intelligence is both symbolic as well as logical. The child is able to understand the simple rules like, keeping their toys in the basket, differentiating between two similar objects like a stuffed toy and a real animal. They generally learn different colors in this stage.

So, let's say Ariel's cognitive development may be anyone of the following:

Schemas (to learn through experience)

Assimilation (applying new information to the schemas)

Adaptation (to build the experience and knowledge of past)

Equilibration (when most information fits the schemas, when it doesn't fit, cognitive progression is possible)

So, Ariel's component is Adaptation, where she is trying to relate her past experience of touching a hot red bowl to current situation where she feels red color means danger/heat etc.

4) Considering information-processing approach, the component is, recognition. Where she can recognize and relate to similar shapes, colors etc like trees, water, crow etc.

5) Environmental factor that could affect Ariel's physical development, is society's pressure on gender related roles which hinders her growth as she isn't allowed to play for longer time and expected to do chores instead. Her cognitive development too gets hindered by the same expectations. She starts stereotyping at a very young age which makes her a less confident girl.