Child Development | Essay-1

Running head: CHILD DEVELOPMENT
CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

CHILD DEVELOPMENT1
Child development is a series of physical, emotional, mental as well as language
changes that takes place in a child from the time of his birth to adulthood. Child development
is affected by both family as well as environmental factors. During child development a lot of
changes in language also takes place (Doebel, Rowell & Koenig 2016). During this age the
child also tries to develop his/her personality. The events that take place during childhood
directly affect the development of the child. Therefore, the primary aim of the essay is to
discuss the cognitive as well as personality development that takes place within a child
referring to a young niece who is now eight years old in the family.
The niece in the family is though is eight years old her development has been closely
observed. When she was less than two years she had started showing signs of cognitive
development as it was mentioned by Jean Piaget in his theory of cognitive development
(Meadows, 2017). Piaget stated that every child goes through four stages of cognitive
development. He not only focused on how children acquired knowledge but also on how their
intelligence was shaped (Meadows, 2017). Four stages of Piaget’s cognitive development are
as follows- sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and lastly formal operational.
The niece now is in the preoperational stage but before entering this stage she started sensing
the movements that were taking place around her and learned basic actions like sucking,
looking as well as listening as it was mentioned by Piaget in his theory (Siegler, 2016). Most
of her experience occurred through motor responses. She started discovering and
experimenting with things, and at the same time tried to interact with people who surrounded
her in her own language. During this stage she learned a lot as it was mentioned in the theory
where it was stated that children at this stage walked as well as crawled (Siegler, 2016). They
also learn a lot about language development from people with whom they interact. The
preoperational stage is the foundation of language development that is laid in the previous
stage. At this stage the niece started showing emergence of language that is one of the major

CHILD DEVELOPMENT2
changes that takes place during this stage as stated by Piaget. During this stage kids learn
while playing and they also learn from their mistake. During this stage the young niece
started to communicate, express as well as understand feelings (Siegler, 2016).
As stated by Skinner, language is an aspect in child development that is learned by a
process of reinforcement as well as punishment. That is the above aspects encourage the child
to speak so that he can get the reward that he/she desires (Verhaegh, 2019). According to Lev
Vygotsky cognitive abilities are socially guided as well as constructed. He stated that specific
abilities, memory, learning as well as problem solving helps the child to develop that was
observed in the niece who was developing her skills through various activities as well as
interaction with others (Dastpak et al., 2017). It is these social interactions of the child that
helps the latter in developing their language skills. According to him the language
development in the child takes place from the verbal interactions that the child has from his
or her tutor or other members of the family (Foley & Thompson 2017). He also applied the
concept of scaffolding while explaining the development of a child. Here he stated that there
are some things that makes the child dependent on others. With assistance of the more
knowledgeable other the child is able to make sounds and then identify objects that helps the
child in communicating as well as interacting with others (Foley & Thompson 2017). The
same development as well as assistance was given to the needs that helps her in her language
development.
Another essential aspect of development that takes place within a child is personality
development. Personality development takes place when the child is between four to seven
years of age. During this stage the child gains the sense of being separate as well as
independent from his parents (Herzhoff et al., 2017). It should be noted that personality traits
are found in both adults as well as children. Personality development takes place within the
child due to social interactions that they engage in with their family as well as peers. This