The Cognitive Development Theories of Piaget and Vygotsky - Essay Example

Critically evaluate the cognitive development theories of Piaget and Vygotsky Introduction When addressing issues of cognitive human development, itis almost impossible to overlook the work of Piaget and Vygotsky. Cognitive development is the process whereby the child's reasoning of the world changes as function of age and experience.Developed by jean Piaget, cognitive development theory has provided numerous concepts that are fundamental in the field of developmental psychology. His work was also affirmed by another Russian psychologist called Vysgotsky. This paper gives a critical analysis of Piaget and Vygostsky's theories of cognitive development as well as their application in social work. Jean Piaget Cognitive Development Theory Jean Piaget was one of the most influential researchers in the field of developmental psychology. He came up with the cognitive development theory where he showed two major aspects to his theory: the process of coming to know and the stages used to acquire the ability to know. In his book, Miller, (2002, p.32) stated that Piaget viewed knowledge as a process and that children have an active process of knowing their surrounding. As a biologist, he was interested in how a given organism adapts to its environment. Behaviour is controlled through mental organization where an individual uses some schemes to represent the world and designate action. This adaptation is motivated by biological drive to obtain balance between the schemes and the environment. Piaget hypothesized that an infant is born with schemes that operate from birth. These schemes are reflexes which are used to adapt the environment and are later replaced by constructed schemes. He described two processes that are used by individual to adapt to the environment; assimilation and accommodation. These processes are used throughout life as the person progressively adapts to the environment in a more complex way. Assimilation is a process of transforming the environment so that it can be suitable in the pre-existing cognitive structures. An example is where an infant uses a sucking schema that was developed by sucking a small bottle when trying to suck a larger bottle. Accommodation on the other hand, is the process of changing the cognitive structures in order to accept anything from the environment. An example would be when the child wants to modify a sucking schema that was developed through sucking on a pacifier to one that could be thriving for sucking on a bottle. The two processes are simultaneously useful throughout life. Piaget proposes that there are four distinct stages of mental representation that children pass through right from their infancy stage to the adult level of intelligence. The four stages are; sensorimotor period, preoperation period, concrete operational stage and formal operational stage. Sensorimotor stage starts from birth to two years. It is the primary stage in cognitive development; this is where infants create an understanding of the world by coordinating the sensory experience with physical actions. They gain knowledge from the world through the physical actions hence, progress from reflexive instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought towards the end of the stage. Piaget subdivided the sensorimotor stage into six sub-stages. Simple reflexes are a sub-stage where the infant coordinates the sensation and action through reflexive behaviour. It starts right from birth to the period when the infant is one month old. First habits and primary circular reactions phase is the second sub-stage (Bateson 2005, p 127). It starts from one month to four months after birth. Other sub-stages include: secondary circular reaction phase, coordination of secondary circular reaction phase, tertiary circular reactions and curiosity and internalization of the schemes. By the end of sensorimotor stage, the child acquires the sense of object permanence. The child understands that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be heard, seen or touched. According to Piaget, acquiring the sense of object permanence is an important accomplishment that can be achieved by the infant (Wood, 1998, p 42-9). Preoperational stage is the second of the four stages of cognitive development. It commences at around two years of age and continues to seven years. Piaget was able to show that a qualitatively new way of psychological functioning occurs towards the end of the second year. At this stage, the child learns to utilize and to represent objects by words, images and drawings. The child is able to form steady concepts as well as magical beliefs and mental reasoning. However, the thinking of the child is still egocentric; the child is not able to perform mental operations because there is difficulty in taking the view point of others. Piaget argued that children learn through imitation and play, as they create symbolic images through the internalized activities. Concrete operational stage is the third stage of Piaget's cognitive development theory. It occurs between the age of seven and twelve years and is characterized by appropriate use of logic (Bateson 2005, p55). Formal operational stage is the final stage of Piaget's cognitive development theory. It begins at the age of thirteen and continues into adulthood. In this stage, an individual moves beyond concrete experiences and begins to reason logically and draw conclusions from the available information, as well as apply these processes to solve hypothetical problems. Relevance of Piaget's theory of cognitive development Piaget's theory has promoted cognitive growth through its straightforward implications. For instance, his theory accommodates other developmental aspects as well as behaviour changes such as moral and social development. He further linked moral development with children's cognitive development in addition to pre-moral, moral and autonomous realism. Piaget claims that children are curious, dynamic explorers who take part in building their own development. If children are provided with materials, they will discover how the world works. His explanation of broad sequences of intellectual development provides a logically precise overview of how children at different ages think. Children benefit from experience only when they use cognitive structure in thinking and interpretation of experience. Cognitive growth can be rapid when the children discover inconsistencies in their own thinking (Piaget, Jean, and Brbel Inhelder, 1956, p 112). If a child makes mistakes in subtraction problems, the teacher should not correct the error directly, but instead should motivate the child to look at larger numbers of the error to discover where he or she going wrong. Piaget's ideas have also influenced the thinking about social and emotional development as well as many practical implications for the educators. Cognitive development theory by Jean Piaget has a number of strengths. To start with, it recognizes the fundamental role of cognition and goes beyond other spheres such as social development, clinical psychology as well as education among others. Weaknesses of Cognitive Development Theory Although Piaget has contributed to cognitive growth, some elements of his theory portray some shortcomings to cognitive structure. The theory underestimates cognitive competence in infants and children but overestimates it in adolescence. Moreover, the theory shows that cognitive development is steady in early childhood. This contradicts the theme of modern child development science which indicates that infant and toddler are extraordinarily competent. Infants have greater understanding of objects than what Piaget believed. Also, he overestimates the cognitive competence of adolescence, which often makes them regress to less sophisticated reasoning. Another significant shortcoming is that many key components of this theory are not scientifically testable. For example assimilation and accommodation cannot be tested scientifically (Wood, 1998, p 114-9). Piaget's theory undervalues the power of socio-cultural environment on cognitive development. These criticisms do not mean that the Piaget theory is vague but rather, it will remain the most complete theory for cognitive development. Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development reasons that the social interaction plays a basic role in the development cognition. It claims that instructions can be made proficient when learners engage in activities within an environment and receive directions mediated by appropriate tools (Daniel & Gillian 1999, p116). These tools can be: a mentor, peers, computers, printed materials and other instruments that provide information for the learner. An important concept in this theory is that, the potential for cognitive development is limited to a certain period of time which is referred to as zone of proximal development (Miller, 2002, p 57). Vygotsky's theory has four learning stages. These stages range from low limit of what the learner knows to upper limit of what the learner anticipate to accomplish. The four stages are: assistance provided by others who are more capable, assistance by self, internalization automatization and recursiveness through prior stages (Case, Robbie, 1991, p 123-9). Vygotsky claims that children experience instant changes in their efforts to solve problems, and that exposure to various cultures enlightens a child. He investigated child development and how it could be guided by the role of interpersonal communication. He further observed how high intellectual functions developed through social interactions in with significant people in a child's life. Through these social interactions, the child is able to learn the habits of his or her culture, including written language, speech patterns and symbolic information (Vygotsky, Lev.1978, p 203-9). Relevance of Cognitive Development Theory by Vygostsky Generally, this theory pays particular attention to relationship between social, emotional as well as cognitive domains in a social-cultural perspective. This is to mean that the cognitive development of a child does not only depend on itself, but rather on a child-society boarder. Vygostsky did integrate learning and intellectual development whereby according to him, the notion of learning drives cognitive development. In addition to this, the theory integrated diverse cognitive development by acknowledging societal differences within diverse cultural limits (Saxe, Geoffrey, 1991, p124). Weakness of the Theory Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development and some of its element have been criticized. Its idea of zone of proximal development is hazy and has limitations of knowing only the width of the zone. Additionally, the theory has unsatisfying cognitive developmental concepts such as cultural issues and others. His emphasis on cooperation and guidance has prospective pitfalls if the facilitators are helpful in some ways, for instance overbearing and controlling parent. He argues that some children may become indolent and expect help from others when they can do some work on their own. He is also criticized for his in the cross disciplinary study of the child developed under padeology, as well as ignoring the role of practice and his emphasis on research on the role of language (Daniel & Gillian 1999, p241). On the other hand, criticism on his emotional factors in human development was discarded. Another area of critique of this theory comes from major figures of soviet psychology as Rubinstein and his followers who criticized notion of mediation and its development in the students work. Some other critiques indicate that Vygotsky has overemphasized the role of language in reasoning. Social work According to Vygotsky, the parents should expose their children to variety of social situations in order to achieve the highest level of development. It is important to introduce children to new ideas and people, since interaction is part of learning experience. Both Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories of cognitive development have improved the social work practice in UK (Daniel, 1999, 194). For instance, in a case where a mother and her child has come to seek the attention of the social work department and the mother airs out that her child is having a mild learning disability. When asked what abnormalities she has observed, she explains that the child has is not responding accordingly when he is swung, he does not communicate with other children of his age mates. When showed how to arrange items in order she does not follow suit and is found alone in most of the times. According to the mother's description of her child, it is quite evident that her child is having some learning disabilities. In relation to the above discussed cognitive development theories of Jean Piaget and that of Vygostsky, both theories acknowledges the fact that the child is experiencing learning disabilities as a result from the environment in which the child is being reared or growing up in as well as the interaction or socialization process. Perhaps the child is having this problem perhaps due to the fact that his environment is not conducive for his proper learning. The society at his disposal is not displaying the right "image" for his learning thus retards in his cognition growth. Since these two theories concurs that socialization process is imperative to a child ought intellectual growth, the mother to redefine her socialization to process to suit that of her child's requirements. However, the two theories may argue this issue differently. Piaget may argue that the disability of the child is as a result from his developmental stage, since according to him, thought process undergoes four sophisticated levels of thought. At the same time, Vygostsky may argue that the learning disability of the child has resulted from his cultural background whereby culture contributes immensely to the child's cognitive development. Additionally, he may conclude that the disability is due to limitation of what he called zone of proximal development (wood, 1998, p 34). Therefore, the two theories can help the mother of the child by informing her that the learning disability has resulted from his socialization process as well as his age and with proper interaction process this can change. Conclusion Cognitive development is generally the ability to think and reason. The key founders of this theory are Jean Piaget and a Russian psychologist called Lev Vygostsky. According to Piaget's theory of development, older children usually think qualitatively different from younger ones. Further than these, he argued that cognitive development fall under four stages which will be discussed later in this paper are sensorimotor (0-2years), Preoperational stage (2-7years), Concrete Operational stage (7-11 years) as well as Formal Operational Stage (11+years). To him, as will be seen later, intellectual development is integration between maturation of he brain and nervous system as well as experiences that help children to cope or adapt to their new environment. On the other hand, Vygotsky in his work argued that social-cultural environment is imperative for cognitive development. According to him, cognitive processes such as reasoning, language and thought usually develop through social contact and that development is a product of culture. Therefore, it is worth noting that culture, social interaction as well as language are quite essential in cognitive development. These theories have contributed immensely in the social work in a number of ways. Therefore, the way in which children learn and grow mentally plays a key role in their learning process as well as their abilities. References Bateson, G 2005, Steps to an ecology of mind: A revolutionary approach to child's understanding of himself. Jessica Kingsley, London. Case, Robbie. The Mind's Staircase. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991 Daniel, B, Wassell, S & Gilligan R 1999, Child Development for Child Care and Protection Workers, Caspian publishing company, Norwich. Miller, PH 2006, Theories of Developmental Psychology, 4th edn, Cambridge press, Cambridge. Piaget, Jean, and Brbel Inhelder. The Child's Conception of Space. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956. Shaffer, DR & Kipp 2009, Developmental Psychology, 8th edn , Wadsworth, UK. Saxe, Geoffrey B. Culture and Cognitive Development: Studies in Mathematical Understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991. Wilson, K. 2008, Social Work: An introduction to contemporary practice. Pearson Education, Essex. Wood, D. 1998, How Children Think and Learn (2nd edition) Oxford; Blackwell Publishing. Vygotsky, Lev. Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. Read More