How imitations affects the cognitive development of children

Cognitive development is a branch of neuroscience and psychology that explores learning of languages and processing of information from the time of birth to adulthood. It also stretches its focus to the child’s conceptual resources and perpetual skills and especially covers how the child’s brain develops. This paper seeks to highlight the significance of imitation in cognitive development.

Young people influence each other through imitation, and this helps to improve cognitive development. The majority of people have had experienced a lot of imitations during their early childhood (Siegal & Surian, 2012). For instance, a good number of my imitations as revealed by my parents happened at the time between my infancy stages and my early childhood. Beginning from the very basic actions during infancy period and at the sensorimotor stage, infants learn through senses and motor activities (Siegal & Surian, 2012). When I saw my father let out his tongue, everyone laughed. But, I eventually copied his action and did it repeatedly and as a result got smiling faces from the adults. As I grew older to about 2-years, I was able to perform some more complex visible imitation. For instance, kicking a ball and playing tape jumping game. This was after learning from my cousin on how it was done.

When I was six months of age, my parents introduced me to the word “ ba,” which is how “ dad/ da” pronounced it in Chinese. When I was a year-old, I started using the “ ba” word to imply that I needed someone. For this reason, it is evident that the constant vowel I was making was a babbling rather than a complete meaningful vocabulary.

Home telephone and television were the only technological devices that my parents owned during my middle childhood stage. Apparently, children in my generation were less dependent on media use. I was allowed to watch the television after completing my homework, and this was only permissible not later than 10 pm. Television channels were limited, and I can remember I used to watch cartoon and drama movie episodes each day. Also, I used greater portions of my time engaging in outdoor activities with my neighbors who we were in the same age group.

My favorite subject in elementary and middle school was physical education (P. E.) class. This was because it was the only subject which was not examinable. Additionally, P. E. class was fun and enabled students to socially interact in different competitions within the school. When I joined high school, I became more contented and thoughtful of my future career. I was good in solving math’s calculations and had a strong urge to have an in-depth understanding and knowledge of basic principles and fundamental base for accounting since it was my favorite subject.

Bilingual education involves instructing using both a native and the secondary language (García, 2009). Most learning institutions in Hong Kong practiced bilingual education. For instance, the school I attended and some of the local schools adopted this education beginning from the middle school. Schools taught most of the academic contents in the English language except for the practical subjects such as Chinese and the Chinese history. Therefore, bilingual education has contributed to my cognitive development. Also, it has played a significant role in improving my listening skills making it easier to interact with others in the native language.