COGNITIVE maturation refers to the biological development of brain by which an individual’s thinking, reasoning and problem-solving abilities evolve and become more sophisticated as they grow older.
This process is assessed by significant changes in how individuals understand abstract concepts, engage in formal operational thinking, apply reasoning skills to complex situations and able to solve the problems.
A cognitively immature human contributes to – through their attitudes, behaviors, dealings, responses and languages – a poor ability to plan and make rational decisions, poor problem solving and information processing abilities, risk-taking behaviours, showing less impulse control, more susceptiblele to negative influences and adopt peer pressure etc.
In the last two to three decades, advances in the interdisciplinary field of cognitive and brain science have contributed greatly to our understanding of the development of human brain and cognition. The human brain develops through life-time learning process of knowledge, skills, languages, habits and changing attitudes etc. However, the biological cognitive maturity of brain reaches at a certain agein life, which is not a fixed time period of chronological age of any human, but rather a biological age of brain.
In 2020, School of Health in Social Sciences, The University of Edinburgh UK prepared a study for consideration of the Scottish Sentencing Council, entitled as ‘The Development of Cognitive and Emotional Maturity in Adolescents and its relevance in Judicial Contexts’. According to this study, human’s cognitive development generally undergoes maturational change up to the age of mid to late twenties, an age range typically considered adult rather than child or adolescent. Thee time period for attaining of cognitive maturity can vary to a large degree for every human, depending upon one’s nature (biology) of developing cognitive maturity in life and experiences faced by an individual during their childhood and adolescence.
Cognitive maturity development process can be affected by many complex environmental and biological factors like adverse childhood experiences in the form of abuse, neglect and exploitation, stress, traumatic brain injury, substance or alcohol use, pubertal hormones, genetics includingpsychological and psychiatric disorders etc., and produce gender specific implications.A human being who experiences any one or more of the underscored environmental or biological factors during childhood and adolescence may take longer time than others to develop cognitive maturity in their life-time.Thus, the process of development of biological cognitive maturity in human being does not specify an exact chronological age at which cognitive maturity is definitively reached at an individual level. The inter-individual variationin timescale for development ofbiological cognitive maturity is the field, which is yet to be fully explored and identified.
Biological Mental Age is a psychological concept that measures an individual’s biological cognitive maturity and ability compared to the average abilities demonstrated by others of the same chronological age. It represents the typical biological mental age at which most individuals demonstrate a comparable level of intellectual functioning. Every human has their own biological mental age, which is not necessarily their chronological age. For example, a person who is chronologically 20 years old may have a biological mental age of less than 15 years, or a person who is chronologically 15 years old may have a biological mental age of more than 20 years.
Exact biological mental age can be assessed within the interdisciplinary field of cognitive and brain science, with contributors from various fields, including psychology, neuroscience, biology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, and computer science. Psychologists typically assess biological mental age by applying various psychological tests, including live assessments of one’s attitude, behavior, emotions, and intelligence. Standardized psychological tests used to determine biological mental age include intelligence quotient (IQ) tests, emotional/social/adversity intelligence tests, etc. Each test provides its own findings in the form of thresholds on cognitive abilities and can be used collectively to determine the biological mental age of cognitively mature and immature individuals.
The general societal perception of a child is that they are innocent, irrational, and cognitively immature. People often consider the transition from childhood to adulthood to occur when individuals undergo pubertal changes in their bodies. This typically happens during the teenage years and may start before reaching the age of eighteen. Puberty is often seen as the defining marker of adulthood because a pubertally developed individual may be mature enough to engage in sexual relationships but may not yet be cognitively mature enough to perform other rational acts in daily life. Therefore, puberty is not the scientific way to define a child.
Internationally accepted definition of child is ‘every human being below the age of eighteen years.’ This definition emphasizes on the chronological age of human being since the birth, but pays no consideration to the biological mental age and cognitive maturity age of human being. It is possible that a child has attained the biological mental age or cognitive maturity of an adult person and vice-versa. Due to the problematic nature of definitions and perceptions about child, make children vulnerable for abuse, neglect and exploitation across the nations.
To address the problems highlighted above, the definition of child needs to be amended by eliminating the chronological age threshold in it and incorporating the biological mental age or cognitive maturation age along with pubertal maturity thresholds in it. Besides, this diagnosis must be assessed by a team of qualified multidisciplinary experts collaboratively, which inter alia can include psychologists (cognitive/developmental/biological), cognitive neuroscientist, developmental neurobiologist, psychiatrist (child/forensic), developmental paediatrician, linguist, anthropologist and computer scientist.
Recommendations: Based on the above discussion, I propose hypothetically following new definitions of child; Definition-1 of Child: A child means a human being, who is pubertally immature and/or is below the biological mental age threshold of cognitively mature human being provided that such diagnosis must be assessed by a multidisciplinary team collaboratively. Definition-2 of Child: A child means a human being, who is pubertally immature and/or is below the age of his sufficient biological cognitive maturity provided that such diagnosis must be assessed by a multidisciplinary team collaboratively. Definition-3 of Child:A child means a human being, whose biological mental/cognitive maturity age is below the biological age threshold of cognitively mature human being provided that such diagnosis must be assessed by a multidisciplinary team collaboratively.
—The writer is Advocate High Court & Child Rights Expert, former Program Policy Advisor at National Commission on the Rights of Child, Govt of Pakistan.
(adv.wajahat.ali@gmail.com)
