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Cognitive, Biological and Psychosocial Theories

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ASSIGNMENT: Observe a child between ages 2 to 9. Record my observations and then develop a summary from a biological, cognitive, and psychosocial point of view. I spent two hours sitting near a public playground and made the following observations. Would you make some suggestions on how to approach this assignment once you have read my observations and keep in mind that I need to think about how my observations can be interpreted from a biological, psychosocial, and cognitive point of view. Thank you.

OBSERVATIONS:

Two kids playing together, while another child joins them and plays until his parent picks him up and takes him back to where his parents are sitting

-Child walking along obstacle course. Parent is walking aside him with his arm positioned to catch the child if he loses balance. At the same time a mother and younger child are walking along the same course but the mother is hold the boys arm and directing him along the course.

-There is a fence around the perimeter of the play area. One child in particular is curious about people outside of the play area. Other children appear oblivious to surroundings outside.

-One parent is watching carefully to see how her child is interacting with other kids. Parent eventually call out to the other parent "Is she being obnoxious?"

-For the most part children appear to be interacting alone, with a sibling, or guardian. It doesn't appear that the majority of kids are socializing/interacting with other children outside of their family or group they came with.

-An hour into my observation an older girl joined the children at the park and quickly started interacting with two younger children. Parent of younger children sat near by and observed as older child led the younger kids in building a sand castle.

One of the older girls in the park. is sitting alone in the corner with her back to the other kids. She occasionally turns around to see what the other kids are doing but appears content playing alone.

A majority of the parents appear to be observers while a few parents are constantly on their feet following their child around.

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Solution Summary

Based on the scenario ob observing a child at the play, this solution examines how to interpret the information from a biological, psychosocial, and cognitive point of view.

Solution Preview

Please see response attached, which is also presented below. I hope this helps and best of luck!

RESPONSE:

You have made some excellent observations! However, it is important for you to think back and add the approximate age, because 2 years olds act differently than 4 or 5 years old, and you have used 'young' and 'older' which is not specific enough to analyze the observed behavior from the three perspectives, mainly development is age specific. Let's go through each observation and see how each behavioral observation could be explained in terms of cognitive, biological and psychosocial views. Erikson's theory is a psychosocial perspective and Piaget is cognitive perspective, with mental develop and schema driven by biology.

1. Greetings! I need to complete the following assignment: ASSIGNMENT: Observe a child between ages 2 to 9. Record my observations and then develop a summary from a biological, cognitive, and psychosocial point of view. I spent two hours sitting near a public playground and made the following observations. Would you make some suggestions on how to approach this assignment once you have read my observations and keep in mind that I need to think about how my observations can be interpreted from a biological, psychosocial, and cognitive point of view. Thanks

OBSERVATIONS:

-Two kids playing together, while another child joins them and plays until his parent picks him up and takes him back to where his parents are sitting.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 'psychosocial' is 'pertaining to the influence of social factors on an individual's mind or behaviour, and to the interrelation of behavioural and social factors'.1 This definition is likely to have important implications for developmentalists and other behavioral researchers, because it implies that psychosocial factors, at least in the context of maturation research, can be seen as: (1) mediating the effects of social structural factors on individual's development of the mind or behavior, or (2) conditioned and modified by the social structures and contexts in which they exist. http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/31/6/1091

From a psychosocial view, then, the three children's (how old?) behavior can be explained in terms of the interaction between biology (age) and social factors (playing with other children) with each other that impact the child's psychosocial development e.g. mind through such things as negotiating, conflict and interacting with each other, and learning social behaviors (e.g., how to get along with other children, how to separate from parents, etc.). Indeed, from a psychosocial point of view, playing is a part of the children's psychosocial development, which includes both psychological factors (the one child decides to leave the safety of the parent to join the other two children, what from a biological view, is the child maturing to an age where she or he starts to explore the world, while having the parent in view and as a safety net to go back to) and social ...

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