Role of Diversity in Cognitive and Social-Emotional Development
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How diversity shapes cognitive and socio-emotional development
Fictional human character to be discusses: Kevin Hart. Kevin Hart is an American stand-up comedian, producer and film actor. He has been in the film industry since he was a little boy.
The nature of human culture is more complex compared to other species. The culture of human beings is made up of skills, beliefs and practices that are shaped by various elements and have been modified for the past many generations. Because people grow up in various cultures, it leads to variations in psychological and social-emotional adaptations. Human behaviours are created culturally and transmitted subsequently. The human species is composed of a heterogeneous population; people display different behaviour and characteristics.
Human beings have the ability to learn from what they see in their environment and grow up to imitate the same. Social learning is also influenced by interaction with other human beings. Also, factors that socio-economic status may affect the social-economic development of a person. Kevin Hart, for example, belongs to a high social-economic class. Such a person may fail to understand the needs of the poor in society. Kevin may fail to understand why someone does not have a luxurious life. To him, people must be rich and economically stable. Having grown up in a rich family and also being a celebrity, Kevin has been exposed to an environment of economically empowered people.
The environment one grows up also affects the cognitive processes especially in terms of perception and categorization. Normally, sensory organs receive environmental signals or feeds itself with information, processes the information and relay feedback (Carstensten et al., 2019). As a black American, Kevin Hart has grown up in a country that experiences racial discrimination since time immemorial. The kind of treatment he has received as a black American may have an impact on how he perceives whites. To him, a white may be a less kind-hearted person. In this case, the colour discriminate is affected by both colour lexicon ad perception.
Social-emotional development is deeply rooted in biology and evolution. However, cultural conditioning lay an important role I emotional processes of an individual. Cultural settings and experiences shape the emotional growth of children and adults too. Emotionally rich conversations between mothers and children lead to good emotional development (Wag & Yang, 2019). Such children are able to solve problems in life compared to their age mate who lacked emotionally fulfilling conversations with their mothers. Research also reveals that children who have perceived ethnic-racial discrimination lack enough emotional knowledge.
References
Carstensen, A., Zhang, J., Heyman, G. D., Fu, G., Lee, K., & Walker, C. M. (2019). Context shapes early diversity in abstract thought. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(28), 13891-13896.
Wang, Q., & Yang, Y. (2019). Culture and emotional development: introduction to the special issue. Culture and Brain, 7(2), 95-98.