All parents are very concerned about their children's intellectual development, afraid that they will lose at the starting line. Starting from kindergarten, some children have exceptional intelligence, while others have poor intelligence. According to systematic research in contemporary neuroscience, there are several important stages in the development of human intelligence that play a crucial role in determining a child's growth. Next, let's learn about the critical period of children's intellectual development.
The first important stage is when fetal nerve cells begin to divide and proliferate, usually from the 8th week of pregnancy until delivery. Human nerve cells are non renewable cells, so the maximum peak of the number of nerve cells in a human individual is at birth, with approximately 1 trillion neurons and a brain weight of about 390 grams. It is obvious that this stage of fetal neural development lays the material foundation for future intellectual development. Therefore, for shaping a healthy and intelligent human brain, the period of pregnancy is extremely crucial and should be given sufficient attention.
After birth, newborns enter a critical period of three years of intellectual development, which is the second important stage of human brain development. The first three years of human life are referred to as the period of motion perception by Swiss psychologist Piaget. In addition to recommending breastfeeding and developing a healthy immune system, the main guiding principle for this stage of cultivation is sufficient exercise perception. Listening, watching, crawling, touching, and moving more not only provide rich and colorful visual stimuli for infants, but also require them to speak, sing, and caress more, roll and crawl more on the ground, and suck their fingers and toes more. These are all necessary for the development of neural pathways.
After the age of 4, there is no need to pay special attention to intellectual development. The main focus should be on cultivating children's social cognitive abilities until they enter the third important period of intellectual development, namely the intellectual sublimation period. In terms of intellectual development, this stage should mainly break through the barriers of concrete thinking and shape highly developed abstract thinking abilities. On the one hand, we need to strengthen the training of mathematical thinking and gradually develop mature logical thinking abilities; On the other hand, it is necessary to strengthen the training of metaphorical imaginative thinking and continuously improve creative thinking ability. Mature mathematical logic thinking and metaphorical imagination thinking are the two most important steps for intellectual advancement.
