Childhood: A Cognitive Analysis

Why do children learn at different rates? Why do children interpret things differently? Children are very smart but can they simultaneously be aware that they can have two emotions at the same time? This may be difficult to comprehend but recent research suggests that cognitive developments within a child pays a crucial role in the integration of the concepts about the self and emotions. The construction of thought processes, including remembering, problem solving, and decision making, from childhood through adolescence to adulthood is known as cognitive development (Cognitive development, 2016). This also deals with the concept of how people perceive things according to their genetic and learned factors. According to the article, Cognitive …show more content…
This was an open ended interview in which children between the ages 4 and 12 were asked a question in which the findings were revealed in a three stage sequence. The question they asked was, “Tell me how two different feelings can go together. How could you have two feelings together,?” (ARTICLE) they then broke down their results in three sequences. Sequence one was the denial of the co-occurrence of two feelings. This part was sought out by the youngest children between the age of four and five denied the occurrence of multiple emotions can occur at the same time. The second sequence was the feeling were put in a temporal order. This part was sought out by children between the ages of six and eight and they believed that one feeling could be followed by another but there is could not be multiple emotions at the same time. The third and last sequence was the simultaneity of two feelings. This part was sought out by children between the ages of eight and twelve in which they can describe that two emotions can occur together. I believe that as the children get older their reasoning kicks in more and they can understand that multiple emotions can occur at the same time but this can be limited because they are still young. Basically children within ages eight and twelve seem to understand this concept but not to the extent that adults reason this out …show more content…
This research utilized pictorial representations to ensure that young children fully understood the concept of the task given to them. These combinations were administered using 126 children from the ages four through twelve. A large collection of facial expressions that were photographed, they selected four negative emotioned pictures and three positive emotioned pictures. The children were first asked to separate the seven pictures into two piles of negative and positive emotions. The children did not seem to have any problem in doing this and this was already confirmed within the previous research. After this, for each previous combination two placement boards were used, each with two photographs at the top. There was a line drawn from one pictures to the square to depict how the feelings were associated with one target and the second feeling was associated with a different target. Combination A was the same valence same target combinations in which the children were asked to pick either both positive or both negative feelings and they had to use the placement board with one square in which this represented a single target. In combination B they were given the board to represent two different targets. Combination C consisted of different valence, different targets in which they were given a two target board and then asked to select a picture from the