Development of the Different Thinking - Research Paper Example

? Development of the Different Thinking This paper will consider the development of thoughts from infancy to early childhood. Evidently, thoughts have the potential of affecting the lives of different people as they grow up. Environmental factors such as cultural aspects determine exert impact on the development of thoughts, with the family being of the most critical influence. Children interact with parents immensely in the initial stages of life, a factor that determines the attitudes and values adopted by children, and that eventually affect how children think. The greater society outside the family setting also exhibits a level of influence in the way an individual thinks. This paper will describe how societal values affect thinking in children as they grow up and interact with people in the society. A classic example of the influence of the environment is evident from the difference in thinking exhibited by children growing up within the United States and those from the Asian setting. In this essay, the focus will be on the factors that affect the thinking process in children. Moreover, the paper will highlight what motivates different people to act in specific ways. In the second section of the paper, it will focus on the views of different scholars on the correlation between thinking and language. Introduction The thinking process is an integral part of life. Thoughts form part of the driving force of both the mind and the body both consciously and unconsciously. The thinking process begins after birth, but only a few people spare some time to analyze the thinking process critically. Analysis of the changes in the brain during the thought process has revealed that different cells are responsible for initiating the thought process. However, it is evident that certain factors are responsible for pressing the trigger for the thought process. It is intriguing to understand how the production of thoughts occurs (Arwood, 2010). These two aspects will be the focus of this paper. The modern civilization is a salient product of the process of thought that has served to transform life completely, at least in comparison to the ancient life. This research paper will adopt the perspective of considering the thought process from its initial stages in childhood. It will then analyze how thinking develops into an advanced concept of language, which exhibits a close relationship with the complex thought process. It is worth noting that thinking is a fundamental aspect of consciousness (Costello, 2004). However, there are times when individuals exhibit preconscious thought, when no consciousness is associated with the production of thought, and the individual accords no attention to the thinking process. On the other hand, conscious thought occurs when the individual accords attention to the thought production process. The third type of thought is the unconscious thought, which is beyond the individual’s access, but plays a significant role in behavior determination. Thought is a natural process, present during the entire life span of an individual. Thinking is one of the complex processes that prove to be beyond full comprehension regardless of the approach used in analyzing it. There is some evidence of attempts of understanding the thinking process more precisely in fields such as psychology, philosophy, and science. However, the complexity of the process has dissuaded many scholars from exploring the topic. It is worth highlighting that the uniqueness of the thinking process in every human being have made the topic overwhelming (Costello, 2004). Moreover, the fact that thought can exist without an individual’s consciousness only emphasizes on the complexity of the neural processes that define the thinking capacity. After birth, children begin an unending process of interacting with family, friends, and neighbors, people who are significant in forming the initial social relationships. The contribution of parents in the development of the thinking process in children cannot receive any form of underestimation. Parents have the opportunity to influence the social cues that define the thinking adopted by children. As initial social agents to children, parents have the potential to define the type of attitudes and motivations children depict (Weber, 2011). These initial social relationships serve as critical contributors to the rigorous growth in the thinking capacity.The influence of the family environment through the values, attitudes, and habits conferred to the children serves as the initial and integral trigger of the development of thinking patterns that conform to the culture. The contribution of parental upbringing serves to place emphasis on the seriousness with which parents approach this responsibility. In the initial years of children, development depends on both the conscious and unconscious influence from parents. The findings of a studycarried out by a renowned pediatric psychiatrist named Rutter prove quite informative. In his attempt to analyze the effects of different forms of treatment for children, he realized that the attributes exhibited by parents and the approaches they used when addressing children affected the personality of children. For example, parents who allowed children to develop a selfish nature only increased the chances of such children being subject to frustrations and depression when situations did not favor them. Moreover, parents who exerted an insurmountable pressure and control on their children prompted them to develop an impulsive personality. Moreover, such children were more likely to register poor performance in school. These findings made it evident that parents should cease to be overly controlling to their children, and grant them room to exercise a level of autonomy through self-expression. Such freedom is likely to foster the development of self-esteem in children (Adler& Proctor, 2013). A closer analysis of personality development reveals that temperament is an integral part of personality development that depends on the genetic coding. This means that the determination of temperament depends on certain genes expressed prior to birth in the fetal stages. Temperament denotes a ‘basic nature’ of an individual that becomes evident in the individual’s responses to varying situations. After birth, mental development of children depends on the guidance provided by parents on the development of ideal personality traits and emotional nature. Apparently, children who receive information construed as either right or wrong lack the opportunity to apply their thinking capacity, limiting the development of the faculties involved in thinking. Such children will exhibit a lower thinking capacity in the future, with evident difficulties in communicating well thought-out concepts. Other studies reveal that children who receive exemplary education in the early developmental years are likely to exhibit a competent level of thinking. One of the studies revealed that about 20 percent of children in a certain elementary school had the potential of exhibiting an accelerated growth in their intellectual capacities (Maynard & Thomas, 2009). A follow up study carried out eight months later revealed that the identified children had registered a relatively higher intelligence quotient in the eight-month period. The growth of intelligence translates to a higher capacity of carrying out a thinking process defined by a high level of creativity and critical. The children identified as possessing such potential had received an exemplary basic education in the early developmental period. This study revealed that imparting children with a definitive and distinct perspective of thinking in the initial stages of education affected their future thinking potential. During early childhood, children exhibit a unique level of creativity as they develop their thinking abilities. The responsiveness of teachers and parents often determines the rate at which children develop diverse thinking skills. Through their salient manipulation or play materials such as toys, children develop different patterns of thought (Nanda & Warms, 2007). The initial three years of a child’s life are the most critical. At this level, the contribution of the teachers and parents help shape the thinking capacities of the children. Through a diverse range of activities, children develop different thinking skills. Language and Thinking Language is an additional process that is closely interlinked to thought. According to a hypothesis developed by Edward Sapir and his assistant Benjamin Whorf, it became clear that language is a significant determinant of the patternof thinking adopted by an individual, and the perspective with which an individual perceives the world. This hypothesis established the connection between development of thought and language. In order to support this hypothesis, analysis of language in a different cultural setting was critical (Maynard & Thomas, 2009). Such analysis revealed that each language used either a unique word or phrases to denote a certain concept. A critical analysis of the set of words in each culture and language exhibits a specific pattern of thought. For example, these two researchers highlighted the difference between the Hopi language and the European languages. In the Hopi language spoken by Hopi Indians, time was of no relevance, a factor that makes the language lack any grammatical form or time. On the contrary, the researchers realized that time was of critical importance to the Europeans, and this explains why their language had many grammatical forms and numerous denotations of time (Lund, 2003). An additional classic example used by these researchers to describe this aspect was the fact that Eskimos had arranged of terms that denoted ‘snow’ depending on its purpose. On the contrary, the usual language spoken by other people has only a single noun for snow. This only implies that they exhibit a complex thinking process regarding snow than it occurs in other people (Vygotskii? et al, 2012). In 1836, Humboldt described his findings on the close connection between language and thought. This researcher acted as a pacesetter, because he defined the initial theories concerning the relationship between thinking and language (Nanda, & Warms, 2007). He asserted that the two were interlinked, supporting such views with his opinion that language was an intrinsic part of thought. In order to place emphasis on the concept that language and thought had a close relationship, a comparison of human beings and animals can help link the two aspects (Lun and Ward, 2010). Although animals exhibit thought, they lack language, and this poses a great difference between human beings and other members of the animal family. Moreover, it would prove difficult for language to exist without thought. The brain plays a critical role in determining the content expressed in the language through a chain of coordinated neural processes. One of the fascinating studies that have produced evidence that language and thought have a close interrelationship is the field of psycholinguistics. This field strives to analyze all the cognitive processes such as comprehension and acquisition of a certain language (Arwood, 2010). Language has a significant function that cannot receive any form of underestimation. After a thought is processed in the brain, an individual relies on the symbols, words, and syntax that defines a certain language to express that thought. Other studies have revealed that the kind of language an individual uses plays a certain role in initiating a pattern or thinking (Madani, 2013). The difference in thinking exhibited by Asian and western students serves to highlight the fact that the language used triggers a certain pattern of thoughts. Studies indicate that Asian students are likely to adopt a dialectical thinking in their attempt to address critical thinking issues compared to students from the western world. Moreover, children growing up in bilingual societies such as Singapore and Philippine,registerhigh grades on assessment of the verbal skills they exhibited in both languages. However, children born into monolingual families but opting to learn a second language later in life, often exhibit a high level of reliance on their first language when thinking (Lund, 2003). However, other scholars have highlighted that language and thinking are separate entities, refuting the assertion that language and thinking are inseparable. This school of thought has highlighted that it is possible that people about similar things, but people of different languages only talk about distinct aspects of what they think that is usually reflected in their thoughts. Conclusion As described above, the family and the society contribute immensely to the development of thinking in early childhood. Members of the family act as the initial social agents to children, imparting them with certain attitudes and habits that define the pattern or thinking that they adopt. Exposure to an education system that commit itself to harnessing the potential of children can help them register remarkable development of the thinking process. Language has a close relationship with thinking. Researchers have developed theories that link the two closely. References Adler, R. B., & Proctor, R. F. (2013).Looking out, looking in. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Arwood, E. L. (2010). Language Function: An Introduction to Pragmatic Assessment and Intervention for Higher Order Thinking and Better Literacy.London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Costello, P. J. M. (2004). Thinking skills and ealrly childhood education.London: D. Fulton. Lun, R., and Ward, C. (2010).Exploring cultural differences in critical thinking: Is it about my thinking style or the language I speak . Retrieved on 27th November 2013 from http://works.bepress.com/vivian_lun/1/ Lund, N. (2003). Language and Thought.London: Routledge. Madani, K. A. (2013). The interaction between people’s learned language and their habitual thinking patters, Language in India, 13 (10), 270-278. Maynard, T., & Thomas, N. (2009).An Introduction to Early Childhood Studies. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Nanda, S., & Warms, R. L. (2007).Cultural anthropology. Belmont, Calif. [u.a.: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. Vygotskii?, L. S., Hanfmann, E., Vakar, G., &Kozulin, A. (2012).Thought and language. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Weber, B. (2011). Childhood, Philosophy and Play: Friedrich Schiller and the Interface between Rason, Passion and Sensation. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 45, 235-250 Read More