Introduction
Proper presentation of data collected during a study is imperative to the credibility of a research. In fact, lack thereof compromises the interpretation embraced by the people relying on such information due to the possibilities of miscommunication in the presentation process. As such, researchers ought to follow a compelling approach whilst communicating the results of their study regardless of the research design followed. With this in mind, it is worth acknowledging the fact that there are multiple research approaches followed in the delivery of psychological research information. According to the Emergency Medicine Journal, the popular research designs include observational and correlational research, true and quasi experiments (Mann, 2003). These four approaches are influential and can be used to gather quantitative and qualitative data depending on the nature of situation to be analyzed. For this study, the observational research approach was taken due to the type of scenario that was being analyzed. This study is non-experimental and it involves the observation of an ongoing behavior (Mann, 2003). Its use is mostly prevalent in social sciences and marketing. Specifically, the application of this approach in the social science environment involves the observation of a specific phenomenon in its natural setting. Since this is a psychological report, it focuses on the social science perspective.
This report is based on the stages of childhood development. Specifically, it involves the observation of two children aged below nine years at different locations. The first section of the report describes the setting of both children and it provides insight on all the parties that were involved. The behaviors of the children will be presented in a different section within the report and an analysis of these behaviors will be discussed in the next section. Finally, the conclusion section will summarize the entire report and bring it to an acceptable close. The observational approach was selected as it is the most appropriate method to record and analyze behavioral activities in this specific setting. The structuring of this report is aimed to communicate the stages of cognitive development in a procedural way.
Setting
The first case of observation took place at a restaurant in a mall. The café was not fully occupied before I commenced the observation process. I was seated at a table close to the right corner of the restaurant. The child to be observed arrived moments shortly after I did with her mom. Since this was a public environment, there was no need of obtaining permission from the guardian or the restaurant’s management. Due to the anonymity I maintained in the observation process, my presence did not seem to affect the behavior of the child. In fact, it was barely recognizable that I was collecting data from the behavior exhibited by this child in the research process. However, to maintain the confidentiality of the child, personal information such as age and place of residence was not recorded during the observation process. Nonetheless, the fact that the restaurant became crowded after sometime affected how the child behaved in a large section of the data collection process. To ensure that optimal information gathering was achieved during the observation, I left the restaurant some few minutes after the child and the parent did. This precaution ensured that all the aspects of the analysis at the restaurant environment was done.
The second observation place took place at a public children’s playground within the city. Similar to the first instance, I did not need to obtain any form of permission from the parent or public authority to continue with the research process. However, the observational activities were primarily limited to the public environment. The child to be observed was playing with his father while in the environment. I was sitting at a tent within the park alongside a group of individuals who were watching their children play. Since the child and parent barely noticed my presence during the data collection process, my presence did not affect the outcome of the research process. However, the fact that the park was filled with activity made the data collection process somewhat challenging as I was constantly blocked by other children in the playfield. Nonetheless, I managed to find a more appropriate position to complete the observation process. I left the playground moments before the child and his parent did as I felt the observations made were enough and they began being too repetitive at some point. This action did not affect the outcome of the research in any way as I had collected enough information during this process.
The observations made during the process
Child one activity
Observation time: 2:00-3:00pm
Child’s sex: female
The child is in a café with the parents
The café is half full
A group of people come into the restaurant and it becomes full
The child begins nagging his mom
The mom gives the child a stack of cards and some few toys
The child leaves her chair and begins to play with the toys
The child continually speaks with the toys as if they are animate
She has assigned names and roles to each of the individual toys
The child puts one of the toys in her mouth
Mom tries to take it away and the child retaliates by crying and scratching her mom
As they leave the restaurant, the child falls over
She claims that the wind must have blown her out of her stability
“Someone blew the wind to hard today mom.”
They descend a fleet of stairs
Mom picks her up and they drive off
Child two activity
Observation time: 2:00-3:00pm
Child’s sex: male
The child is at a playground with his dad
The father plays with his son and the child becomes abnormally inquisitive
“Why are all my toys painted with these colors”
“why is that dog larger than the other”
As the child plays with his toys the father tries to call out his name but the child does not respond
The father physically makes contact with him to raise his attention
The child notices the father is taking some water from a glass and the requests some
The father issues the child a bottle of water with a similar capacity
The child turns down the offer and still requests for the water in the glass
“I want the same water in the glass dad.”
The father is compelled to transfer the water from the bottle into a glass
The child stops crying and takes the water comfortably
The child runs off and the father quickly follows as they play
Description of the behaviors
Gross motor behavior
According to Ozmun and Gallahue (2016), gross motor skills includes abilities acquired during early childhood and infancy as part of the motor development. It involves the movement coordination of limbs such as the arms and feet. During the observation of the first child, it was quite evident that her motor development was nearly at an advanced level. This claim is largely accredited to the fact that she could descend the fleet of staircase with one foot at a time. According to Stenberg (2014), children below the age of four experience a difficulty while descending down the staircase and they often use their arms and legs. However, the first child was quite successful in her gross motor behavior since movement was not challenging in any way.
In the second case, the male child equally had good motor behavior. Specifically, he could run at a fast rate and do some sizable jumps while getting away from his father.
Fine motor behavior
Fine motor behavior involves the coordination of muscles in the body. As opposed to the gross motor behavior that encompasses the general movement of the limbs, this type of behavior is somewhat more specific as it covers defined muscles joining the limbs (Ozmun & Gallahue, 2016). For instance, if a child has the ability to move his wrists and elbows while moving their hand, it can be concluded that they have commendable fine motor behavior. The first child did not seem to exhibit any problem while playing with his toys and the stack of cards. As such, her fine motor behavior was okay.
On the other hand, the second child seemingly did not have any issue with his fine motor behavior. This claim is largely accredited to the fact that he could effectively hand some toys to his father without any problem. Additionally, he juggled his interaction with the multiple toys he had with no problem.
Eye-hand coordination
This skill involves the coordinated control of the hand and eye movement. Specifically, it defines an individual’s ability to utilize their hands to perform actions that are monitored with their eyes independently (Ozmun & Gallahue, 2016). During the observation process, I identified some instances of perfect eye-hand coordination in the first case. In fact, in most instances the child could hand some selected cards to specific toys or pick all the toys and place them at specific locations.
In the second case, the child had equal capacity to coordinate the activities he engaged himself in. For instance, when his father handed him a glass of water, he gazed upon the glass and picked it as he stared at his father. This action was a clear indication of eye-hand coordinated movement.
Social behavior
Multiple observations were made on the children’s social behaviors. For instance, in the first case, the child seemed to express a high degree of ego-centrism. Specifically, he liked things to be viewed from his personal perspective even when her mom was right. For instance, she began to cry and scratched her parent when she tried to pick the toy from her mouth. Additionally, she believed that the environment played an immense role in the outcome of her life. In fact, when the restaurant was nearly full, she became restless and nearly cried before her mom issued her toys to her. Finally, she found it difficult appreciating the relationship between cause and effect. For instance, she could not acknowledge the fact that she fell because she was unstable or might have tripped over something.
In the second case, the child was quite observant and very inquisitive. In fact, he spent a large section of his time observing how his environment was and he posed multiple questions to his father about its outlook. In some occasions, he completely took his attention away from his immediate surrounding and he instead focused on playing with his toys. In simple terms, he dedicated all his attention to one activity at a time. Finally, he had an ego-centric personality as he wanted things to be done in the way he preferred regardless of the alternatives offered by his father.
Discussion
In the first case, after the child got into the restaurant and the café was nearly filled, the young girl felt uneasy around a multitude of individuals. As such, she became nervous and reached out to her mother. According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, children in the preoperational stage can form stable concepts and magical beliefs (Feng et al. 2016). As such, the child might have anticipated the danger the clients at the restaurant posed to her life, therefore, she turned to her mother. After being issued with the stack of cards and the toys, the child calmed down when she commenced playing as she immersed herself in her desired world of fiction and play. Piaget’s theory argues that children in the symbolic function sub stage of the preoperational stage can desist themselves from the real world during their symbolic play. In this sub stage, the children can think in form of images and symbols. As such, the young girl believed that her toys were alive and she could communicate with them. Specifically, she developed imaginary friends that were represented by the toys she owns during this process. According to the Journal of Human Behavior In The Social Environment, children in this stage are quite social in their symbolic play and they often assign roles to one another (Lefmann & Combs-Orme, 2013). In this case, the young girl had assigned specific roles to her toys and she issued the cards based on the categorization she had in mind.
When the parent tried taking the toy from the young girl’s mouth, the child retaliated by yelling and scratching her mother. Her violent character can best be explained by the ego-centric nature children tend to embrace while in the symbolic function sub stage. According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, children in this stage are unable to distinguish their perspectives from those of other people. Specifically, they tend to be biased towards their personal opinion that they ignore what other people want them to believe. In fact, the Transylvanian Journal of Psychology, children in this stage are unaware of the existence of other viewpoints aside from their own (Stemberg, 2014). The child therefore acted violent towards her mother’s action because she believed that she was trying to desist her from achieving what she wanted. On the other hand, her communication with the toys can best be described by the animism concept in the principles of causality outlined in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. This principle states that children have a belief that inanimate objects are capable of performing certain actions and that they have lifelike qualities (Lefmann & Combs-Orme, 2013). She, therefore, spoke to them because she assumed they had the capacity to hear her and could even react to whatever she was communicating to them.
As they were leaving the restaurant and the child fell down after descending the flight of stairs, she claimed she fell down because someone was blowing the wind too hard. According to Piaget’s theory, artificialism is a characteristic of children in the preoperational stage of cognitive development and it leads them into believing that the environmental properties are as a result of human intervention. For instance, children can believe that the sun is yellow because someone painted it that color. Similarly, the young girl assumed that she fell down because an unknown individual was blowing the wind harder than usual. On the other hand, she managed to descend the flight of stairs with ease because her gross motor capabilities were well developed. According to Ozmun & Gallahue (2016), children above the age of three have the ability to walk, run and jump under normal circumstances due to their motor skills and overall level of body development. Finally, the child’s eye hand coordination was good while she was playing with her toys because the visual input received from her eyes was processed and her hands could move accordingly due to the proprioceptive abilities mastered during the early stages of infancy.
In the second case, it was evident that the child was very inquisitive in the presence of his father. In fact, a large section of the time the two spent together at the playground was set aside for conversation. According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, children in the intuitive thought sub stage of the preoperational stage of cognitive development tend to exhibit a wide form of primitive reasoning (Stemberg, 2014). This condition implies that the child becomes alarmingly curious and he or she constantly asks many questions to satisfy their curiosity. According to Feng et al. (2016), children at this stage want to know why things are the way they are since they discover a lot of information that is alien to them during this cognitive development stage. It is worth noting that in the intuitive thought sub stage, there is a vast array of information available to the child and he or she begins to wonder why they are unaware of such insight. Consequently, they resolve to being inquisitive as a measure of dealing with their curiosity. While in this stage, children tend to pose complex questions even if the answers given are very comprehensive for their understanding. In this case, the male child playing with his father was overly inquisitive because he was in this stage of cognitive development.
While the child was playing with his toys and the father tried to call out his name, he was unsuccessful because the young lad was hooked to his current activity. Based on Piaget’s theory, this phenomenon is referred to as centration. It refers to the action of focusing all the attention on one on one dimension or characteristic of a situation (Lefmann & Combs-Orme, 2013). Owing to the fact that children in the pre-operational stage of cognitive development exhibit symbolic play, the child mush have been immersed in an imaginary world with the objects he was playing with that he shut himself out of the immediate environment. As a result, it was challenging for the father to get his attention since it was not possible to allocate similar priorities to the different activities he was engaging in. However, when the father made physical contact with his son, he was at a better position of capturing the young lad’s attention. When the child requested for a glass of water but the father issued a water in a bottle instead, the child turned down the offer because he thought the water was different. Based on Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, children at this level of mental development do not appreciate the principle of conservation. Specifically, the child found it difficult understanding that altering the appearance of an object does not change its physical properties.
Before leaving the playground, the child ran off and his father quickly followed after him. He made a series of successful jumps over the swings in the playground. From this observation, it was quite clear that his gross motor development was at an advanced level for his age. As a result, he did not experience any difficulties moving from one location to another. On the other hand, his seamless interaction with the toys could lead one into concluding that his fine motor behavior was equally commendable for his age. He, therefore, found it less challenging to move his toys around or stretch his arms out to pick the cup of water due to appropriate eye hand coordination.
Conclusion
This report sought to analyze the behaviors of children aged between three and nine years. For this case, two children were randomly sampled and an observational procedure was done at a public place. From the findings of the study, it was evident that children in this age bracket exhibit some similarities and differences in the way they handle logic depending on their ages. For instance, the child in the first case seemed to exhibit a lower intelligence capacity than the second one due to her tender age. Additionally, she drew some conclusions about the environment that were irrational to a mature individual but completely reasonable to a five-year-old. It was also evident that children in this age bracket only see things from their personal perspective due to the existence of their ego-centric nature. Despite the success achieved during the observation process, the results of this study would have been more optimal than they currently are if some things were done differently. For starters, trying to communicate with the guardians of the children before the commencement of the observation to gather information such as the date of birth of the children involved. This measure would have heightened the accuracy of the conclusions drawn from the observations since the ages of both children were assumed to be five and seven respectively. Finally, it was evident that children below the age of seven have different gross and fine motor behaviors depending on their levels of physical development. This conclusion was made evident from the observations made on the two children under observational analysis. Overall, the observational approach taken in the collection of data for this research was quite resourceful as it provided the required information to be used in the analysis process.
References
Feng, H., Meizi, L., Di, Y., Mingyu, L., & Doss, D. A. (2016). Cognitive Models: Piaget, McCarthy, And Organizational Management. Allied Academies International Conference: Proceedings Of The Academy Of Organizational Culture, Communications & Conflict (AOCCC), 21(1), 17-22.
Lefmann, T., & Combs-Orme, T. (2013). Early Brain Development for Social Work Practice: Integrating Neuroscience with Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development. Journal Of Human Behavior In The Social Environment, 23(5), 640-647. doi:10.1080/10911359.2013.775936
Mann, C. J. (2003). Observational research methods. Research design II: cohort, cross sectional, and case-control studies. Emergency medicine journal, 20(1), 54-60.
Ozmun, J. C., & Gallahue, D. L. (2016). Motor development. Adapted Physical Education and Sport, 6E, 375.
Sternberg, R. J. (2014). The Current Status of the Theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability in Relation to Theories of Intelligence. Transylvanian Journal Of Psychology, 9-13.
