HUMAN DEVELOPMENT & LEARNING - Essay Example

In terms of psychology, there are many different theories in the sub discipline of Human Growth and Development in that each theory may describe part of a construct well, but may not necessarily address every single problem and component. Cognitive development theory deals with, how as children, we develop different ways of thinking. This can vary from the way in which we learn to our perceptions of people and the environment. Because each individual is unique in the way in which they develop cognitively, psychologists have had a difficult time tailoring theories to get very specific on cognitive development.

The first psychologist to develop a theory on cognitive development theory was Jean Piaget. One of the biggest issues argued in terms of cognitive development theory is the debate of nature vs. nurture. Some psychologists believe that we are who we are as a result of how we are biologically encoded. This encoding is what grants us our intellectual and cognitive processing abilities. Those that believe in the nurture concept believe that our cognitive abilities are influenced by our interaction with the environment and people.

The middle ground of this argument is that epigenetics is responsible in that both biology and environment play equal and vital roles in cognitive development. . This is the stage in which infants begin. The learning that takes place here is based highly on the assimilation through motor functions, which develops from reflexes to intentional movements. The second stage is the preoperational stage. This is where a child begins to start processing and interpreting things such as shapes in the environment in a rudimentary manner.

Children are able to form stable cognitions and this is often when they come up with the ideas of imaginary play. They are still unable to do many operational tasks and often remain egocentric. The third stage is the concrete operations stage, which normally takes place between seven and eleven years of age. Children are now able to use logic to solve problems, however this is only limited to concrete problems as they have problems with abstract thinking, The last stage is the formal operations stage and this progresses all the way into adulthood.

Here, individuals have a full range of mental abilities and are capable of solving problems through deductive reasoning and hypothetical testing (Sigelman, & Rider, 2008). Jerome Bruner was also similar to Piaget in the fact that he felt that children had to interact with the environment in order to learn, however he placed a greater emphasis on social factors, which he believed were largely responsible for intellectual growth through scaffolding. Rather than in Piaget’s stages in which different thinking emerges, Bruner thought that at certain ages, children used different types of cognition.

The first mode is the enactive mode, and like Piaget, he believes that the majority of learning, which occurs during this stage, is due to muscle movement and coordination. The infants learn by doing. The second mode is