From lectures and readings it seems to me that most of the research conducted in the area of cognitive development has been with infants who come from a Westernized society. My question is whether culture plays a role in infant's cognitive development and whether children that come from other cultural backgrounds learn capabilities at a different rate compared to infants whp come from a Westernized society?
I found an article titled "Cognitive Development in Social and Cultural Context" by Mary Gauvain. She explains that infants acquire social and intellectual skills that are adapted to circumstances in which they grow. Culture possesses structure and direction and combined with social contact these systems help an infant develop. If it weren't for the social interactions that infants receive they would understand less from their environment. Tools can enhance thinking in unique ways. For example toys and play can help infants grow in capabilities. If infants are exposed to a stimuli that allows exploration and learning then their cognitive development will grow.
How do children develop the skills and knowledge to become competent members of their community? According to Mary Gauvain, material, symbolic and social resources are important in supporting mental growth.
I often have wondered if infant's in other cultures learn and develop at different stages or rates than infants who are raised in Western society? Most likely in those cultures where infants are exposed to less learning stimulus such as having less toys then perhaps learning and cognitive development takes place at a slower speed than infants who are raised in a society where they are exposed to greater learning stimulus. If there are any studies done based on different cultural background, it would be interesting to see the results.
Parents also play a big role in the development of their infants. Learning takes place through play and through social interactions and I was wondering if those children who have less interactions with a caregiver might perhaps have lower cognitive abilities than infants who have a caregiver present most of the time and that engages to play with them.
I am mostly interested in the cultural context of cognitive development and would like to see how different studies from other cultures compare to studies from our culture, perhaps further studies will be done in the future in this area since culture is know playing a big part in psychology.
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I think that you bring up some very good points and that cognitive development must in some way be influenced by our social and cultural context in which we are raised. I have a feeling though that cognitive development must also rely heavily on the socioeconomic class status of our parents that we are raised by. If someone were born into a family of lower working class status they would certainly be exposed to different experiences than if they would have been born into a family in the upper or elite class. Some of these major differences between the two families include access to education, health care, and child care to name a few.
As we discussed in class cognitive development includes remembering, categorizing, symbolizing, communicating, metalizing, reasoning, planning and problem solving to name a few characteristics. All of these characteristics all relate to what the parents can expose their children to and how they do this. It is essential in all of Piaget’s stages of development to expose children to the proper stimuli to enhance their learning abilities and capacities. In the Sensorimotor Stage (0 to 2) learning to interact with the world and the development of intentional behavior is developed. While in the Preoperational Stage (2 to 6/7) there is the development of symbolic thought. In the Concrete Operational Stage (6/7 to 11/12) the ability to transform and manipulate mental representations is accomplished, and finally in the Formal Operational Stage (11/12 to. . .) is when abstract and hypothetical thought are developed.
Certainly different socioeconomic classes of children will be exposed to different things throughout their lives and the Piaget Stages and thus creating more than likely an individual with a higher intelligence. I was also wondering if there have been any studies on this describing the different things that children of different socioeconomic statuses are exposed to, and how this affects their overall intelligence.
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