December 24 Case Study Findings

I thought I would share with you some of my findings from the case study. After reading Chapter 6 yesterday I found that the book gave a lot of information on theories with child development but no actual parenting suggestions. So for my case study I called my friends’ mothers and got their feedback on cognitive development with infants. I recorded each mothers age and occupation to see if there was a correlation between the two. When I researched their opinions and findings with that of psychologists they were very similar. Most of the mom’s really emphasized the importance of creativity as did that of the article. They said that they had their kids do a lot of coloring exercises to work on cognitive development with color association. All the mothers had different methods of developing cognition with their toddlers so hearing the different views was really interesting. The article said that teaching your toddler math and words was not as effective as doing it naturally. But a lot of the mothers I spoke to used flashcards and read a lot to their children. One mother felt that social interaction with other babies was the most important way to help with a child’s’ cognition. She felt that learning through deferred imitation was very helpful. Although they all had different views they all agreed that it was best to be in close proximity with your child instead of letting them be independent at such a young age.

December 24 Habituation

While I was completing the reading for today, which was chapter six, I ran into some interesting topics. What I thought was the most interesting to me was the process of habituation because it was something I feel we all can relate to in a way. According to Berger, habituation is from the word habit and refers to the process of getting used to an object, or event after repeated exposure to that object or event (2008). What came to my mind was sitting in class and you hear the radiator go off, at first I am paying attention to that radiator and not as much to the professor; however, eventually I tune that radiator out. This made me realize that I "habituated" the radiator after continues exposure to the noise. In a sense you are able to block out the noise and go back to concentrating on what you are learning. I think this is useful process for college students, because I know whenever I personally am at the library studying it never seems to be quite. So if we consider habituation; it is a good thing our brains engage in this process, because I can eventually after repeated exposure to the talk tune it out and continue my studying.

Berger, S. K. (2008). The Developing Person: Through the Life Span. New York, NY: Worth Publisher.

Question on Paper#1

Dec 23 Cognitive Theory

The cognitive theory focuses on how people think. The theory aslo says that thoughts and expecations profoundly affect a person's attitude, beliefs, values, assumptions and actions. The cognitive theory is very popular; a sub divison of the cognitive theory is the information-processing theory. This theory is closely focues on the step-by-step process of thinking. I think that figuring out how people perceive something or the way they react to certain stimuli can help change an unwanted behavior. Which is why I think this is the most effective form of theraphy. Cognitive theorapists work on changing the way a person thinks and or reacts to an external stimulus. The founder of the cognitive theory is Piaget. Piaget came up with periods of cognitive development associated with ones age. The periods are sensorimotor, peroperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The descriptions of each period really caught my attention. I know how toddlers can be, everything is mine, always ask why. But I never knew why they did this. After reading the descriptions, it was like an ah-ha moment. Toddlers have an egocentric form of thinking. which explains why they are so possesive of toys and do not like to share. Anyone who has a lot of contact with young children, such as teachers, or day care professionals would find this information very informative and helpful.

Chapter 1&2 Blog

Before entering this course I had a very limited background in psychology. As a young professional, it is important to have a thorough understanding of how, and why people develop from birth to death. I am studying to become a teacher and it is an advantage to be empathetic to a broad range of students. After only two short days and two chapters I have realized that everything in a person's life is linked two past and present reactions. Influences include cultural environment, and socioeconomic status. No one person's life is identical.
My favorite portion of the readings so far was the short story about the nephew David. An embryo and it's mother had reached both of them in rural Kentucky. Once David was born, he was in need of immediate medical treatment for cataracts, a heart ailment, and multiple malformations. David would not grow through childhood like most healthy children. His progression and development was slow. David slowly overcame these obstacles and eventually learned a second language and went to college. After student teaching and having four life skills students, it made me reflect on the challenges these students are faced with daily and the struggle they endure. I am very fortunate to have my health.

Dec 22 Identity vs Role Confusion

Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development interested me most from our readings so far—particularly the identity vs role confusion stage. This stage is supposed to be during adolescence when people are figuring out who they are and what they believe in (Berger, 2008, 36). It is most interesting to me because I didn’t figure that out until this past summer/fall, and I’m 23. Since middle school I felt like I had to be a teacher for various reasons, none of which were because I wanted to teach. The culture of my family, church and school encouraged it, and I stuck with it because everyone I was close to expected me to. I even tried to convince myself that it was what I was “meant to do” since so many people told me so. I avoided thinking about my nagging discomfort with it because I wanted to do what I was “meant to do”. It took graduation and the necessity of employment as a teacher for me to have enough courage to disappoint everyone and refuse to teach. Since then, I finally allowed myself to think about what I want my career and life to be instead of what people expect. I discovered occupational therapy and found that it matches my personality, values and career objectives very well. Now I am excited for the prospect of grad school for OT because I have chosen it for myself based on who I am and what I want.

It seems that I was stuck in Erikson’s identity vs role confusion stage for a long time past adolescence. Looking back, it’s easy to see the cultural influences and expectations that helped keep me at that stage, but at the time it was difficult to understand. The most interesting part is that I don’t feel like I waited until I had figured out “who I am” and passed the identity vs role confusion stage to enter the intimacy vs isolation stage. I made very close friends at college and my boyfriend and I met at Millersville, all before I figured out what I want from life, let alone anything about grad school and OT. The text didn’t make it clear if the theory allows a person to skip a stage and then come back to deal with that crisis later, but I think my experience would argue that you can.

Contact Comfort and The Social Learning theory

After reading chapter 2, I found a few things that were very enlightening as well as interesting. The first being the whole concept of contact comfort and Harlow’s experiment. I assumed and would have guessed that the monkeys in his experiment would have clung to the food source, not something soft and warm. The results of his experiment did not support behaviorism or the psychoanalytic theory. I also found the social learning theory to be interesting. I think everyone can recall a time when they saw a friend or family member get burned, shocked, or show pain from something that had happened to the person and knew that they did not want to experience the same pain. It is basically learning from other people’s mistakes and achievements, without experiencing it for yourself . I have experienced this many times in the past and still do in the present. When I was about 5 years old my sister, (who would have been 8 or 9) out of curiosity reached up on the ironing board and touched the iron and burned herself. The way she screamed and cried, left me without an ounce of curiosity as to what the iron felt like, and I completely left it alone. I believe this is a good example of the social learning theory.