SENSITIVE

PERIODS
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 The term sensitive
periods was used
for the first time by
a Dutch geneticist
Hugo de Vries
during his work
with the
developmental
stages in animals.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 The term was adopted by the Italian
educator Maria Montessori and she
used it to refer to important periods
of childhood development.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 The idea seemed
hard to digest at that
time, and took many
years to get accepted
in psychology only
after Piaget's
elaborated
Montessori's initial
explanation.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 She noticed her
children
developing in
specific areas
tremendously at
specific times.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 She hypothesized
that this sudden
speed up in the
learning process
during specific
times is due to the
development of
specific areas of the
human brain, which
she called nebulae.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 She further
discovered that this
was more common
in children aging 0 –
6 years.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 During such periods
the child is
particularly
sensitive to certain
types of stimuli and
repeatedly
concentrates on
tasks which provide
such stimuli or
experiences.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 She also found that
such periods overlap
each other, which
means that a child
may begin to get or
get sensitive towards
another type of
stimuli while going
through one period.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 She described these
as "sensitive
periods".
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 Montessori found that
during a sensitive
period it is very easy
for children to acquire
certain abilities, such
as language,
discrimination of
sensory stimuli, and
mental modeling of the
environment.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 After the sensitive
period for a
particular ability has
passed away, then
the development of
the brain has passed
the point when
information can
simply be absorbed
automatically.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 After a sensitive period
for specific ability the
child must then be
taught that ability with
conscious expenditure
of efforts, however, the
result still can't be as
great as if the sensitive
period was utilized
properly
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 She believed, adults
should observe the
behavior and activities
of children to discover
what sensitive periods
they are in.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
SENSITIVE PERIODS
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 It is important to
remember that the
child's learning during
sensitive periods is not
fully complete, nor
has it reached the
internalized
abstraction stage that
will develop as he
grows older.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 It is actually the
framework on which
most of what follows
is built. Wherever this
concrete framework is
lacking, children will
experience difficulty
in learning and
operating later on.
SENSITIVE PERIODS
 Moreover, it becomes
impossible to reach
maximum potential if
these periods are
wasted.