Cognitive Development Activities

Read Chapters 7 and 8 in your textbook.The purpose of this assignment is for you to continue working on elements that will become part of your Community Center Proposal Final Project. This week you will be creating three activities that address cognitive development in the age groups assigned. These will become part of the infant room, early childhood room, and adolescent room of your center.

Using Piaget’s, Vygotsy’s, and/or Information processing theories of cognitive development, you will continue to build your Community Center Proposal by identifying activities for the assigned rooms that promotes cognitive development for children and adolescents. The activity must be focused on the cognitive milestones of the age group and must be clearly tied to specific theory. You must use at least one credible source. Your activities might be focused on object permanence for infants, conservation, egocentrism, or conservation for early childhood, or deductive reasoning for adolescence. Table 7.1 in your textbook will be useful in completing this activity.

Focus on the primary developmental tasks of each age period. For each of the three activities, write a paragraph that addresses the following:

Describe the activity in some detail (provide more than just the name of the activity).
Identify the specific concept from cognitive development theory that supports the use of this activity.
Identify how the activity enhances cognitive development in the specific age group.
Example 1: Cognitive Development Activity for Infant Room: Peekaboo.

One of the activities we will incorporate into the infant room is peekaboo. This is a game where the caregiver hides himself from the child (covering the child’s eyes or hiding behind a chair, etc.) and then appears again by uncovering the child’s eyes or coming out from behind the chair. Another variation of this would be hiding a treasured object under a scarf and then revealing it again. One of the milestones of the first year of life is the development of object permanence. Object permanence occurs when an infant grasps that something (an object, a person) still exists even when the infant cannot see it. This is a concept from Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and is one of the developmental tasks of the sensorimotor stage. Newborns do not have a sense of permanence. When they cannot see you, you do not exist for them. During the first year of life, they slowing learn that objects and people continue to exist even with they cannot be seen (Mossler, 2014). Playing peekaboo is one way to foster the development of object permanence. Infants usually delight in seeing someone appear and then hide, only to reappear. This activity will support the cognitive development domain and also the psychosocial domain because of its interactive nature.
Example 2: Cognitive Development Activity for Adolescent Room: Board Games Involving Strategy and Problem Solving.

In the adolescent room, we propose having a collection of board games that require logical thinking and problem solving. Adolescence is the beginning of more sophisticated thinking. Children in this age group move from concrete operations to what Piaget calls formal operations. They are becoming capable of deductive and hypothetical reasoning (Mossler, 2014). Games like chess, Battleship, and checkers all require players to engage in this kind of thinking. Another game that can be used is the game of Clue. This game supports the development of prepositional logic and requires players to think hypothetically (Neller, Markov, and Russell, 2006). These games will not only promote cognitive development but will further support psychosocial development because of the required interactions.