Philippine Normal University

The National Center for Teacher Education

College of Graduate Studies and Research
Special Education Program

FLEXIBLE LEARNING ACTIVITY #5

SPED 540: Psychology and Education of Children with Intellectual Disabilities

3rd Trimester, School Year 2017-2018

Submitted to
Teresita G. de Mesa, Ed. D.
Professor

Submitted by
Mary Rosedy A. Detayson
MAEd in Special Education (I.D. Stream)

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 Week 5. Theories of Human Development – Cognitive, Moral and Psychological

Introduction

After knowing how a human is developed physiologically and how different disabilities are

acquired, the next thing we need to understand about a person is on how the other domains in his

existence are also developed. This narrative will focus on the different theories which explained how a

person develops in various areas such as cognitive, moral and psychological. These theories would also

introduce persons who have been great influencers on how the special education system is up to the

present time.

To begin with, a theory is an organized set of ideas that is designed to explain development.

There are no truly comprehensive theories of human development to guide research (Newman &

Newman, 2007). Instead, five general perspectives influence current researches: (1) psychodynamic

theory, (2) learning theory, (3) cognitive theory, (4) ecological and systems theory and the theories

involving (5) life-span perspective, selective optimization with compensation and the life-course

perspective.

However, this narrative will only focus on the several theories which explain how the basic areas

of children with intellectual disabilities are developed.

I. Cognitive perspectives that correspond to cognitive development

There are three distinct approaches that were constructed to explain how the human mind

processes information and how construction of knowledge is developed over the lifespan of an

individual.

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 1. Piaget’s Theory

This cognitive-developmental perspective focuses on how children construct knowledge

and how their constructions change over time. Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was the most influential

developmental psychologist of the 20th Century who proposed the Four Stages of Cognitive

Development shown in Table 1. Piaget’s theory has had an enormous influence on how

developmentalists and practitioners think about cognitive development.

Table 1. Piaget’s Four Stages of Cognitive Development

Stage Approximate Age Characteristics

Infant’s knowledge of the world is based on senses

Sensorimotor Birth to 2 years and motor skills; by the end of the period, uses

mental representation

Child learns how to use symbols such as words

and numbers to represent aspects of the world but

Preoperational 2 to 6 years
related to the world only through his or her

perspective

Child understands and applies logical operations to

Concrete 7 years to early
experiences provided that they are focused on the
operational adolescence
here and now

Adolescent or adult thinks abstractly, deals with

Formal Adolescence and
hypothetical situations and speculates about what
Operational beyond
may be possible

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 1.1 Sensorimotor Stage (Birth-2 years old)

At this stage, information is gained directly through the senses and motor actions. Child

perceives and manipulates but does not reason, symbols become internalized through language

development. Object permanence is acquired - the understanding that an object continues to exist

even if it can’t be seen or sensed.

Figure 1. Sensorimotor Stage

Figure 1 shows the sensorimotor stage when infants are developing their motor skills.

They do not have the ability to predict cause and effect yet, so they experiment with movement

to learn what the results of their actions. For example, the baby may throw a ball but he does not

have an understanding of what happens once he throws it. Memory develops around 7 to 9

months of age, and babies begin to realize that objects do not disappear once they are hidden.

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 Figure 2. Object Permanence

Figure 2 exhibits how object permanence is experienced by the child during the

sensorimotor stage. Before 6 months infants act as if objects removed from sight cease to exist.

1.2 Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)

The word operations refer to logical, mental activities; thus, the preoperational stage is

also termed a pre-logical stage. Children can understand language but not logic. At this stage,

emergence of symbolic thought is observed - ability to use words, images, and symbols to

represent the world.

The child's development consists of building experiences about the world through

adaptation and working towards the (concrete) stage when it can use logical thought. During the

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 end of this stage children can mentally represent events and objects (the semiotic function), and

engage in symbolic play. Following are key features of the preoperational stage:

1.2.1 Centration. This is the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation at one

time. When a child can focus on more than one aspect of a situation at the same time they have

the ability to decenter.

During this stage children have difficulties thinking about more than one aspect of any

situation at the same time; and they have trouble decentering in social situation just as they do in

non-social contexts.

1.2.2 Egocentrism. This refers to the inability to take another person’s perspective or

point of view. Children’s thoughts and communications are typically egocentric (i.e. about

themselves).

According to Piaget, the egocentric child assumes that other people see, hear, and feel

exactly the same as the child does. Figure 3 displays an egocentric conversation among typical

children in the preoperational stage.

Figure 3. Example of an egocentric conversation

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 1.2.3 Lack the concept of conservation. Conservation is the understanding that

something stays the same in quantity even though its appearance changes. To be more technical,

conservation is the ability to understand that redistributing material does not affect its mass,

number, volume or length. Several aspects of the conservation tasks have been criticized, for

example that they fail to take account of the social context of the child's understanding.

Rose and Blank (1974) argued that when a child gives the wrong answer to a question,

we repeat the question in order to hint that their first answer was wrong. This is what Piaget did

by asking children the same question twice in the conservation experiments, before and after the

transformation.

When Rose and Blank replicated this but asked the question only once, after the liquid

had been poured, they found many more six-year-olds gave the correct answer. This shows

children can conserve at a younger age than Piaget claimed.

Another feature of the conservation task which may interfere with children's under-

standing is that the adult purposely alters the appearance of something, so the child thinks this

alteration is important. McGarrigle and Donaldson (1974) devised a study of conservation of

number in which the alteration was accidental. Figure 4 shows an example of a conservation task

experiment done on children in the preschool. Children would think that the liquid in the taller

glass has more volume that the shorter glass.

Figure 4. Conservation Task Experiment

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 1.2.4 Pretend or symbolic play

Toddlers often pretend to be people they are not (e.g. superheroes, policeman), and may

play these roles with props that symbolize real life objects. Children may also invent an

imaginary playmate.

'In symbolic play, young children advance upon their cognitions about people, objects

and actions and in this way construct increasingly sophisticated representations of the world'

(Bornstein, 1996, p. 293).

As the pre-operational stage develops egocentrism declines and children begin to enjoy

the participation of another child in their games and “let’s pretend” play becomes more

important.

For this to work there is going to be a need for some way of regulating each child’s

relations with the other and out of this need we see the beginnings of an orientation to others in

terms of rules.

1.2.5 Animism

Animism is the belief that inanimate objects (such as toys and teddy bears) have human

feelings and intentions. By animism, Piaget (1929) meant that for the pre-operational child the

world of nature is alive, conscious and has a purpose. Table 2 shows Piaget’s four identified

stages of animism, the first two are observed during the preoperational stage.

Age Characteristics

4 to 5 years the child believes that almost everything is alive and has a purpose

5 to 7 years only objects that move have a purpose

7 to 9 years only objects that move spontaneously are thought to be alive

9 to 12 years the child understands that only plants and animals are alive

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 Children with intellectual disabilities might have a prolonged stay at the preoperational

stage unless given early intervention.

According to Piaget, children understand the world with schemes – psychological

structures that organize experience. Schemes are mental categories of related events, objects and

knowledge. Schemes change constantly, adapting to children’s experiences. In fact, intellectual

adaptation involves two processes working together – assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation occurs when new experiences are readily incorporated into existing

schemes. Accommodation occurs when schemes are modified based on experience. Both are

often easier to understand when we think of Piaget’s belief that infants, children and adolescents

create theories to try to understand events and objects around them.

1.3 Concrete Operational Stage (7 years to early adolescence)

There are three important limits of preoperational thinking: (1) preschoolers are

egocentric, believing that others see the world as they do, (2) children at this stage are sometimes

confuse appearances with reality and (3) preschoolers are unable to reverse their thinking. None

of these limits applies to children in the concrete-operational stage. Egocentrism wanes

gradually. Why? As youngsters have more experiences with friends and siblings who assert their

own perspectives on the world, children realize that theirs is not the only view. The

understanding that events can be interpreted in different ways leads to the realization that

appearances can be deceiving. Also, thought can be reversed, because school-aged children have

acquired mental operations, which are actions that can be performed on objects or ideas that

consistently yield a result. A concrete-operational child takes “an earthbound, concrete, practical-

minded sort of problem-solving approach” (Flavell, 1985, p.98)

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 1.4 Formal Operational Period (Adolescence and beyond)

With the onset of the formal-operational period, which extends from roughly age 11 into

adulthood, children and adolescents expand beyond thinking about only the concrete and the

real. Instead, they apply psychological operations to abstract entities too; they are able to think

hypothetically and reason abstractly (Siegler & Alibali, 2004).

2. Information-Processing Theory

Just as computers consist of both hardware and software, information processing theory

proposes that human cognition consists of mental hardware and mental software.

I.1 Mental hardware refers to cognitive structures, including different memories where

information is stored.

I.2 Mental software includes organized sets of cognitive processes that enable people to

complete specific tasks such as reading a sentence, playing a video game or hitting a

baseball.

3. The Ecological and Systems Approach

This was proposed by Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005) who believed that the

developing person is embedded in a series of complex and interactive systems. Following are the

levels of environment discussed by Bronfenbrenner.

3.1 Microsystem. This consists of people and objects in an individual’s immediate

environment. These are the people closest to the child, such as parents or siblings.

Some children may have more than one microsystem; for example, a young child

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 might have the microsystems of the family and of the day-care setting. Microsystem

strongly influences the development of a child.

3.2 Mesosystem. Microsystems are connected to the mesosystem because what happens

in the prior environment greatly affects how the child behaves to the next. This

indicates that the microsystems of home and work are interconnected for the

emotional development of the child.

3.3 Exosystem. This refers to the social settings that a person may not experience

firsthand but that still influence the development. Although the influence of the

exosystem is secondhand, its effects on human development can be quite strong.

3.4 Macrosystem. This refers to the broadest environmental context. These are the

cultures and subcultures in which the microsystem, mesosystem and exosystem are

embedded.

II. Moral Development

While Piaget focused on how the cognitive domain of a person is developed, Lawrence

Kohlberg created stories about moral issues such as his most popular ‘Heinz Dilemma’ story.

Kohlberg analyzed responses of children, adolescents and adults to a large number of dilemmas

and identified three levels of moral reasoning, each divided into two stages. Across the six

stages, the basis for moral reasoning shifts. In the earliest stages, moral reasoning is based on

external forces, such as the promise of reward or the threat of punishment. At the most advanced

levels, moral reasoning is based on personal, internal moral code and is unaffected by others’

views or society’s expectations.

1. Pre-conventional Level. At this level, moral reasoning is based on external forces

usually controlled by rewards and punishments.

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 1.1 Obedience Orientation – moral reasoning is based on the belief that adults

know what is right and wrong.

1.2 Instrumental Orientation – moral reasoning is based on the aim of looking

out for one’s own needs.

2. Conventional Level. At this stage, adolescents and adults look to society’s norms for

moral guidance. In other words, moral reasoning is largely determined by other’s

expectations of them.

2.1 Interpersonal Norms – moral reasoning is based on winning the approval of

others.

2.2 Social System Morality – moral reasoning is based on maintenance of order

in society.

3. Post-conventional Level. At this stage, moral reasoning is based on a personal moral

code. The emphasis is no longer on external forces like punishment, reward or social

roles.

3.1 Social contract – moral reasoning is based on the belief that laws are for the

good of all members of society.

3.2 Universal Ethical Principles – moral reasoning is based on moral principles

that apply to all.

Kohlberg proposed individuals move through the six stages only in the order listed and in

only that order. Consequently, older and more advance thinkers should be more elevated in their

moral development, and indeed they usually are (Stewart & Pascual-Leone, 1992). In addition,

longitudinal studies show that individuals progress through each stage in sequence, and virtually

no individuals skip stages (Colby et al., 1983).

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 III.Psychological Development

1. Infancy

Infancy is the period between birth and the acquisition of language one to two years later.

Besides a set of inherited reflexes that help them obtain nourishment and react to danger,

newborns are equipped with a predilection for certain visual patterns, including that of the

human face, and for certain sounds, including that of the human voice. Within a few months they

are able to identify their mother by sight, and they show a striking sensitivity to the tones,

rhythmic flow, and individual sounds that make up human speech. Even young infants are

capable of complex perceptual judgments involving distance, shape, direction, and depth, and

they are soon able to organize their experience by creating categories for objects and events (e.g.,

people, furniture, food, animals) in the same way older people do.

Infants make rapid advances in both recognition and recall memory, and this in turn

increases their ability to understand and anticipate events in their environment. A fundamental

advance at this time is the recognition of object permanence—i.e., the awareness that external

objects exist independently of the infant’s perception of them. The infant’s physical interactions

with his environment progress from simple uncoordinated reflex movements to more coordinated

actions that are intentionally repeated because they are interesting or because they can be used to

obtain an external goal. About 18 months of age, the child starts trying to solve physical

problems by mentally imagining certain events and outcomes rather than through simple trial-

and-error experimentation.

Three-month-old infants already display behavioral reactions suggestive of such

emotional states as surprise, distress, relaxation, and excitement. New emotional states, including

anger, sadness, and fear, all appear by the first year. Infants’ emotional life is centred on the

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 attachments they form toward the mother or other primary caregiver, and through these mutual

interactions infants learn to love, trust, and depend on other human beings. Babies begin to smile

at other people beginning about two months, and by six months they have developed an

attachment to their mother or other caregiver. These attachments form the basis for healthy

emotional and social development throughout childhood.

2. Childhood

The second major phase in the psychological development, childhood, extends from one

or two years of age until the onset of adolescence at age 12 or 13. The early years of childhood

are marked by enormous strides in the understanding and use of language. Children begin to

comprehend words some months before they themselves actually speak. The average infant

speaks his first words by 12–14 months, and by the 18th month he has a speaking vocabulary of

about 50 words. The child begins to use two- and then three-word combinations and progresses

from simple noun-verb combinations to more grammatically complex sequences, using

conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and tenses with growing fluency and accuracy. By the fourth

year most children can speak in adult-like sentences and have begun to master the more complex

rules of grammar and meaning.

In their cognitive abilities, children make a transition from relying solely on concrete,

tangible reality to performing logical operations on abstract and symbolic material. Even a two-

year-old child behaves as though the external world is a permanent place, independent of his

perceptions; and he exhibits experimental or goal-directed behavior that may be creatively and

spontaneously adapted for new purposes. During the period from two to seven years, the child

begins to manipulate the environment by means of symbolic thought and language; he becomes

capable of solving new types of logical problems and begins to use mental operations that are

flexible and fully reversible in thought. Between the ages of 7 and 12, the beginnings of logic

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 appear in the form of classifications of ideas, an understanding of time and number, and a greater

appreciation of seriation and other hierarchical relationships.

Emotionally, children develop in the direction of greater self-awareness—i.e., awareness

of their own emotional states, characteristics, and potential for action—and they become

increasingly able to discern and interpret the emotions of other people as well. This contributes

to empathy, or the ability to appreciate the feelings and perceptions of others and understand

their point of view. These new abilities contribute to the child’s moral development, which

typically begins in early childhood as concern over and avoidance of acts that attract pain and

punishment and progresses to a more general regulation of conduct so as to maintain parental

regard and approval. A further shift in moral reasoning to one based on the avoidance of internal

guilt and self-recrimination marks the passage from childhood and adolescence to adulthood. All

of these emotional advances enhance the child’s social skills and functioning.

3. Adolescence

Physically, adolescence begins with the onset of puberty at 12 or 13 and culminates at

age 19 or 20 in adulthood. Intellectually, adolescence is the period when the individual becomes

able to systematically formulate hypotheses or propositions, test them, and make rational

evaluations. The formal thinking of adolescents and adults tends to be self-consciously

deductive, rational, and systematic. Emotionally, adolescence is the time when the individual

learns to control and direct his sex urges and begins to establish his own sexual role and

relationships. The second decade of life is also a time when the individual lessens his emotional

(if not physical) dependence on his parents and develops a mature set of values and responsible

self-direction. Physical separation and the establishment of material independence from parents

mark the adolescent’s transition to adulthood.

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 4. Adulthood

Adulthood is a period of optimum mental functioning when the individual’s intellectual,

emotional, and social capabilities are at their peak to meet the demands of career, marriage, and

children. Some psychologists delineate various periods and transitions in early to middle

adulthood that involve crises or reassessments of one’s life and result in decisions regarding new

commitments or goals. During the middle 30s people develop a sense of time limitation, and

previous behaviour patterns or beliefs may be given up in favour of new ones.

Middle age is a period of adjustment between the potentialities of the past and the

limitations of the future. An emotional rebellion has been observed in some persons, sometimes

referred to as a mid-life crisis, engendered by the recognition that less time remains to be lived

than has been lived already. In women, dramatic shifts in hormone production lead to the onset

of menopause. Often women whose children have grown or have left home experience the

“empty-nest syndrome”—feeling unwanted or unneeded. During late middle age individuals

become more aware of ill health and thus may consciously or unconsciously alter the patterns of

their lives. Individuals accept the limits of their accomplishments and either takes satisfaction in

them or despairs and become anxious over unobtained objectives. During old age sensory and

perceptual skills, muscular strength, and memory tend to diminish, though intelligence does not.

These changes, together with retirement from active employment, tend to make the elderly more

dependent on their children or other younger people, both emotionally and physically.

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Synthesis and Reflection

According to a research finding by Fakouri (1991), there is a delay in cognitive

development of children with intellectual disability during primary school years, which corresponds to

preoperational, concrete operational, and transition to formal operational stages. From a genetic

epistemological perspective, research evidence supports a “developmental lag” approach to learning

disabilities. This pertains to the most prominent characteristics in the cognitive development of children

with intellectual disabilities, since the disability is basically from a genetic defect. How they reason out

or think of logical things around them are 2 to 3 years behind that of their typical peers. However, this is

easily lessened with the proper early intervention to the child and of course, with a great support from

the community. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory emphasizes the many levels of influence on human

development. People are affected directly by family members and friends and indirectly by social

systems such as neighbors and religious institutions – which, in turn, are affected by the beliefs and

heritage of one’s culture and on how we view people with intellectual disabilities

A research by Perry & Krebs (1980) concluded that adolescents with intellectual disabilities

scored significantly lower on role-taking ability and moral development than the adolescents matched

for chronological age. They did not differ from children of their same mental age in role-taking ability;

and they tended to score lower in moral development. The results supplied qualified support for

Kohlberg's theory of moral development.

The other domains such as the moral and psychological development are also essential factors to

be considered in assessing and drafting an appropriate program for children with intellectual disabilities.

We could identify a child’s intellectual disability because of their distinct features because of their

genetic makeup but delving deeper into their moral and psychological aspects would greatly enlighten us

on their capabilities aside from their exceptionalities. We could also comprehend that the support they

get from us connects them to a more normal life they could have in the community and in the society.

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 References

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