week3 discussion 2

Running head: DEVELOPMENT 1

DEVELOPMENT 5

Cognitive Development of Children

Student’s Name

Institution

Date

By the age of four years, children become highly aware of the information provided to them by adults, their parents are their individual caregivers. Gullibility refers to the susceptibility of a person to getting fooled easily or manipulated by an individual. In regards to their development, children between the ages of three to five years are typically unable to formulate and create their sense of separate self from their caregivers (Forrester, 2013).This fact means that children are highly affected by the perceptions of their parents towards them. Also at an early age, most children usually see themselves through the reflection imposed from the eyes of their caregivers. The message conveyed through the various communication processes by parents is highly robust and affects their level of self-regard. A great example is where parents view their children as incompetent in all aspects of both academic and social excellence. These perceptions of inferiority lead children to grow eventually old seek acceptance and a particular life direction from others. As the children see themselves as inferior due to the influence of the parents on their perception, another person’s viewpoints might impact their beliefs. This issue is due to the children profoundly unable to make incisive inquiries needed in proper decision making (Greenspan, 2008). As a result, children are cornered into make choices that counter their better sense of judgment.

1. Development stage of Theory of Mind

In the chosen example, the development stage of the theory of the mind is social cognition. This phase is the primary facet of the ability of a child to interact appropriately with other children and also to see the world through their lenses. The fundamental fact of this knowledge mainly lies in the development of the theory of the mind. Theory of the mind refers to the comprehension of different people as capable individuals that have their various states such as feelings, motives wants, and thoughts (Pennington, 2012) .Around three to four years in children, a significant development occurs whereby children become aware that the ideas inside their minds might not be implicitly true. An instance of gullibility is whereby children are allowed to find out that a similar candy box contained pens and asked what their friend would think of the exact contents of the box before knowing what truly is inside the box.

2. Support of theory

Concerning the theory within the given example, most three-year-olds acknowledge the different needs of other children, their emotions, and their preferences. By the fourth year, children realize that people have different points of views. They also comprehend that sometimes the beliefs of an individual may not be entirely accurate however the actions of the person are based on a false belief. (Keating, 2010)

3. Nurture perspective

Nurture highly plays a role in this example. How the child views the world concerning the environment and how their caregivers influence these perspectives. Some caregivers know that children are easy prey to manipulation for their personal gain.

4. Discontinuous development process

Since both continuity and discontinuity are proponents of development, the gullibility of children is a discontinuous process. Discontinuity is the development that occurs in different stages. Here, people children progress through various stages of life that that vary qualitatively from each other. Children progress from thinking in literal terms to a more abstract term. The children can now acknowledge the differences between the views of their caregivers, discern the real motive of their sentiment to a point, and then develop specific evaluation by themselves (Baron-Cohen, 1997).

5. Domain general process

In regards to the example, domain-general processes highly apply. This compatibility is because general domain theories state that individuals develop a world view knowledge structure that profoundly contains a complete knowledge of experience that has been internalized since childhood.

References

Baron-Cohen, S. (1997). Mind blindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind

A Bradford Book: Learning, development, and conceptual change. MIT Press

Forrester, M.A. (2013).The Development of Young Children's Social-Cognitive Skills Essays in Developmental Psychology. Psychology Press

Greenspan, S. (2008). Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It. ABC-CLIO

Keating, D.K. (2010). Nature and Nurture in Early Child Development. Cambridge University Press

Pennington, D. C. (2012). Social Cognition. Routledge