Where Does Learning Occur?
During the early elementary years, the child develops motor skills, visual-motor coordination, reasoning, language, social understanding and memory. As learning is consolidated into neural networks, concepts combine into meaningful units that are available for later use. An ability to generalize and abstract begins at this stage and continues into adulthood. Also during this time, the child learns about perspective-taking and social interaction. The ability to understand one’s social place is crucial for the development of appropriate relationships with other people. These skills are closely tied to development of the tracts of the right hemisphere as well as in the areas of the brain that are tied to emotional processing (also called the limbic system) (Semrud-Clikeman, 2007). (A tract is a pathway that connects one part of the brain with another, usually consisting of myelin-insulated axons. Tracts are known collectively as white matter.)During the later elementary years and early mi
