Knowledge and Memory Development in Children

• Knowledge is crucial for cognitive development and academic success, enhancing speaking, reading, listening, and reasoning skills.

Ways of Acquiring Knowledge

• Knowledge acquisition begins at birth through sensory experiences and via task performance.

How Children Use Knowledge

• Knowledge building enables children to encode, retrieve information, learn new material, and think critically.

Memory Development

• Memory development occurs throughout life and is tied to personal experiences.
• Explicit memory for events and facts emerges within the first two years, specifically around 8 to 10 months.
• Working memory improves from ages three to four through adolescence, boosted by attention, language acquisition, and knowledge.
• Implicit memory, which is unconscious/unintentional, starts early in infants and matures with brain development.

Perceptual skills and development

• Perceptual skills begin developing at birth and significantly contribute to cognitive development.
• Newborns possess senses like sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.
• Sensory and motor skills are used to communicate through environmental interaction as children grow.
• Visual, tactile, and auditory skills combine into perceptual skills that are used for spatial understanding, figure-ground discrimination, and hand-eye coordination.

Problem Solving and Exploration

• Early problem-solving is evident in young children via play. It intertwines with perceptual skills and memory.
• Demonstrating problem-solving skills is achieved through activities such as playing with blocks or looking for objects, known as heuristic play.
• Cognitive growth and language acquisition enable children to solve abstract and logical problems.
• Exploration and problem-solving are interconnected and form the basis of science, engineering, and mathematics.

Real-Life Cognitive Development Examples

• Understanding practical cognitive skill applications help reveal how people process information.

Cognitive Development and Decision Making

• Decision-making requires weighing information to make the best choice, exemplified by analyzing options on a restaurant menu.

Cognitive Development and Facial Recognition

• Cognitive processing explains why faces are still recognizable despite changes in appearance.

Cognitive Development and CBT

• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps people to change their thought patterns
• CBT operates under the assumption that thinking patterns and actions are linked.
• Negative thinking patterns are often overcome with the aid of CBT.
• CBT provides positive thought patterns to promote a more positive behaviors.

Cognitive Development and Forgetting

• Short-term and long-term memory processes affect forgetting.
• Forgetting occurs when information is not transferred from short-term to long-term memory, such as failing an exam due to lack of studying.

Cognitive Development and Reasoning

• Intellect, thinking, and cognition are needed for reasoning.
• Reasoning involves searching for truth from new or existing information, as seen in debates.

Cognitive Development Theories

• Cognitive development is subject to several theories

Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory

• Jean Piaget is known for his cognitive theory involving four developmental stages.
• During the sensorimotor stage (0-2 years), infants learn about the world via senses and movement and develop object permanence.
• Language and abstract thinking emerge during the pre-operational stage (2-7 years), which includes symbolic play.
• At age 7, children enter the concrete-operational stage (up to 11 years), characterized by logical and concrete thought.
• The formal operational stage, from age 11 onward, brings the ability to learn logical rules and solve problems.

Vygotsky's Theory

• Lev Vygotsky's theory suggests that cognitive development arises from physical interaction with the world.
• Higher psychological functions are developed with the support of adults and peers.
• Sociocultural theory is based on the support of those around the child.
• Social interactions initiate development, followed by the internalization of learning, which shifts cognition to an individual level.
• Children learn like apprentices from more experienced individuals.
• The zone of proximal development marks the difference between the actual and potential development levels.
• Collaboration helps determine the zone of proximal development
• Collaboration is aided by collaboration with peers or adult guidance.
• Some children perform better around others with more skills but worse alone because of cognitive support within the zone of proximal development.
• Speech and thinking are essential and linked.
• Younger children use speech to think aloud and evolve silent inner speech following cognitive development.

Ecological Systems Theory

• Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory suggests that a child's environment affects their learning via different structures.