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Hidden Object Permance Test (8 months)
James begins to display an understanding of object permanance, which is an important cognitive advancement. He is able to find a hidden object, however, if the object is hidden the same place repeatedly, and then somewhere else, he tends to look in the old hiding place. James is making an A-not-B error as described by Piagett (p. 150). The A-not-B error is when a child believes that uncovering the object depends on their actions and do not yet understand that object exists regaurdless. -
Little Scientist
James is studying his enviornment more and likes to preform "little experiments". He will push his bath toys under the water and watch them float back to the top. James is demonstrating the fourth substage in Piagets Cognitive Development Theory which is Coordination of secondary schemes (p. 149). This is where a babys actions begin as intentional, goal-directed behavior. This is an important milestone in a bays sensorimortor and cognitive development. -
Deferred Imitation and Categorization
James is able to imitate actions he learned at an earlier time, this is known as deferred imitation (p. 188). As the hippocampus in the brain matures, long-term memory and recall improve. Jame is also able to categorize into simple groups like big or little, and blue or red. Jams is demonstrating a type of mental representation Piaget deemed Categorization (p. 189). -
Brushing teeth (2 years)
Being able to brush his teeth on his own demonstrates a milestone in development of fine motor skills. The ability to grip and hold a smaller objects occurs around 12 months. By 24-32 months toddlers commonly begining brushing their teeth (p. 183). -
Fast Mapping
Jame's vocabularly has grown significantly. He knows many new words, can sound out most words, and is starting to read some books on his own. The rapid increase in vocabularly seen in early childhood is done through a process known as fast mapping (p. 250). Fast mapping occurs as young children learn new words, they begin to form a mental map of interconnected sets of word categories, allowing them to process and understand new words more easily. -
Enjoy boardgames Together (8 years)
James and I have started to play board games together. This demonstrates an increase in ability to focus on particular tasks and understand rules. The development of these cognative abilities are common in middle childhood due to increased mylenation of neurons in the brain. This develops the corpus callosum which increases the speed of information processing (p. 296). -
Divorce (Age 12)
At age 12 James deals with his parents divorce. He blames himself somewhat for the divorce and he becomes more shy, nervous and less social after the divorce. Children vary in their response to divorce and boys often have a more negative response to divorce than girls (p. 317). Many begin to internalize and externalize problems. Divorce can have a strong impact on emotional and social developement, with some boys showing problems even five years after the divorce. -
Increasing Independence (age 13)
James has entered adolesence and is spendinding more time away from home and with friends. Adolescence tend to rely more on friends than parents for support and fun (p.375). Spending time with friends and devloping those relationships are important for healthy emotional and social development of adolesecence. -
Self-esteem
James is now in entering high school and has started to become more concerned about his appearance and what clothes he wears to school. Self-esteem is a person's overall sense of worth and well-being. Appearance becomes increasingly important through middle childhood and into adolescence. Self -esteem often declines in adolsecence (p. 365). -
First Girlfriend (16 years)
At age 16 James enters his first relationship and says he is in love. Romantic relationships are common at this age, with over 80 percent of adolesence having had a relationship by 11th grade (p.378). Intamicy is an important aspect of adolesence emotional and social development.
