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Individual Differences ProfileElizabeth Covarrubias College of Southern IdahoInstructor: Doctor Tracey MeyerhoefferEDUC 205: Development/ Individual DifferencesSpring Semester 2016Individual Differences ProfileIntroductionThere are many people in society who have cognitive disabilities, but look like everyone else around them. As a result, it can be difficult for the individual when those around them do not recognize their disabilities or take them serious just because they do not have the physical features that would indicate a cognitive disability is present. My friend, ‘Morelia’, is a teenage girl who has a cognitive impairment that at times can interfere with her life and school. In this paper, I will discuss the general information, physical development, cognitive development, and socio-emotional development of a student with a cognitive impairment, and provide a summary of my findings. General InformationMorelia is fifteen years and three months old, mixed race, Hispanic and Caucasian, living with a cognitive impairment. Morelia lives with short-term memory loss which is an inability to form or retain new information. It takes her a long time to retain information that she needs. Sometime she has to be taught the same thing over and over again until she can retain it. She was not born with this impairment; it happened when she was prescribed an adult does of Ritalin for her obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). She was overdosed and it caused damage to her short-term memory; she was about four or five when it happened. Before that, she was developing very well; in fact, she was very advanced for her age group with a vocabulary of a seven year old by the age of two. Her family configuration consists of her living with both her parents and siblings. She comes from a family that speaks both English and Spanish at home. Her parents are divorced, but they still live together. She has two older siblings, an older brother who is twenty-four and an older sister who is twenty-three. Her mother works from home, but during farming season, she works long hours and is not home until real late and her father works as milk driver for Glanbia. Her family also hosts exchange students, and at the moment, they have two girls aged fifteen, one from Thailand and one from South Korea. Her daily schedule consist of her going to school from 7:45 am to 3:45 pm. She is enrolled in physical science (regular class), English 9 (regular class), survey of alg/geom (resource class), weight training (regular class), study skills (resource class), advisory (regular class), study skills (resource class), and art I (regular class). In all her regular classes, she has someone with her who can help her if she needs help. After school, she gets home and does her homework. She often has her sister help her in math, English, and science, sometimes Morelia helps her sister make dinner. Morelia spends her spare time either watching TV or playing outside if the day is nice and goes to bed at 10 at night. Physical DevelopmentMorelia is a normal looking teenager, but does not always acts like a normal teen due to her impairment and mental health issues. She stands out among her friends, because she is about six feet tall and a majority of her friends are under five feet six inches. She has dark shoulder length hair, and her skin color is a light brown. Some distinguishing features that she has are her button nose and her circular face; she has big cheeks that get huge when she smiles. She has big, wide hazel eyes that she says makes people feel like she is looking through to their souls. Morelia is ambidextrous, but prefers using her right hand to do things. Morelia’s maturation is a little behind for her age group, but I feel she will be able to catch up if she works at it. She has some health problems; she has liver issues, bi-polar, Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and anxiety. Morelia has almost perfect vision and has perfect hearing. She is slightly obese, but does weight training at school, and is active at home when she has the time. Her daily food ingestion consist of mainly white chicken and vegetables. Morelia’s family rarely eats beef or pork. Her hand-eye coordination and motor skills are appropriate for her age. She does not play sports even though her height would be perfect for basketball, but she is somewhat embarrassed of her height and being in front of a lot of people. Cognitive DevelopmentMorelia is a freshman in high school, but she has regular and resource classes mixed into her school schedule. She excels in all of her classes. Overall, she is an A/ B student who is on the honor roll. She is behind in math, but her resource teacher wants to place her in a regular math class next year since she has advanced so much this year. As for what stage of cognitive development she is for her age, Piaget says she should be in his final stage called the Formal Operational. For the most part, she fits into the stage, but she sometimes has trouble when it comes to solving some life problems. She has some academic weaknesses that she could overcome with hard work. She has trouble with spelling, reading, and math. She is in a regular English class, but has the option to get extra help if she needs it for her spelling and reading. Her academic strength is that she is an excellent listener. Morelia does, however, have trouble retaining the information for long periods of time. Additionally, she is a hard worker and very curious when it comes to learning new things.Her academic behavior is great and her attention span is strong when the classroom is quiet. She only has trouble focusing when the classroom is loud or she is near a student who is loud and disturbs her. She is very shy so when it comes to participating in class, it does not happen much. It happens more often when she is in a classroom with her friends. Social-emotional DevelopmentMorelia interactions with her peers only happen if it is a requirement. She likes to be alone most of the time if she is in class. When she has class with her friends, it is a whole different story. She interacts with her friends and students around her. She becomes very social, she laughs and jokes with her classmates and friends. She does not interact with adults as much unless she needs help. I did notice that she interacts with adults more if she is comfortable around them. I was curious to see what kind of friends she has since she is of mixed race; a large portion of her friends are Hispanic and from a similar background as her. She did tell me that she does not spend much time with her friends out of school. She says that it is because she does not feel comfortable enough to be away from home. I have a feeling she is a homebody or it could be her anxiety that makes her feel that way. She says that she would be okay spending time with her friends if they came to her house, but none of her friends have a driver’s license and she says she lives out of town, so it makes it harder to spend time with her friends. From what I have seen and looked up concerning her social-emotional development stage, I believe she operates in what Erickson calls Ego vs. Role Confusion. She is a very independent child, but this was not always that case. She has become more independent since she entered high school. She now does her own laundry, completes more demanding chores, and practices for her driver’s education class. In all, she is starting to figure out who she is and who she wants to become. She is thinking more about the role she wants to have in society. She says she has been trying on different hats to see what she likes the most. She has figured out that she excels in art and wants to have a career as an artist. She says that she does not know if she wants to teach art or just produce art as a living. Whichever she chooses, she will be amazing at it!Summary of Major FindingsMy major findings show that Morelia does not let her cognitive impairment interfere with her learning and daily life. She is in the cognitive stage called Formal Operational and in the social-emotional stage called Ego vs. Role Confusion. She is still learning about herself and I feel that she is still trying to figure out how to process life problems. She works hard to make sure that she can be just as successful as a teenager without cognitive difficulties. Morelia is constantly trying to adapt the way she learns so that she can continue to learn like everyone else. ConclusionIn conclusion, I believe Morelia is basically a normal teenage girl who works hard so that her cognitive impairment and mental health issues do not affect her day to day life. She knows what to do so that she can learn and develop like teenagers around her. She knows that she just has to work a little harder but that the hard work is important for her. She does not let this stop her. I know that she will do well in the future and I hope that I get a chance to see what kind of woman she becomes. References TA \l "Berk, L. E., & Meyers, A. B. (2016). Infants, children, and Adolescents (8th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson." \s "Berk, L. E., & Meyers, A. B. (2016). Infants, children, and Adolescents (8th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson." \c 1 Berk, L. E., & Meyers, A. B. (2016). Infants, children, and adolescents (8th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson. McLeod, S. (2008). Erik Erikson. Retrieved March 11, 2016, from updated 2013 ................
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