The Cognitive Development Theories of Piaget and Vygotsky - Essay Example

The Strengths and Weaknesses of The Cognitive Development Theories of Piaget and Vygotsky The cognitive development theories of Piaget and Vygostskyare similar in some ways as they both envision children passing through clearly defined stages of intellectual and cognitive growth. The contrast between them is that Piaget postulates an essentially internal process that the child will pass through almost irregardless of outside influences, whereas Vygotsky suggests that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. Both theories are of great importance to both childcare and pedagogical ideas. In his famous work Vygotsky states the following: Every function in the child's cultural development occurs twice: first on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate in actual relationships between individuals. (V , 1978) The very title of his seminal book, Mind in Society, implies that minds are indelibly linked with and dependent upon the society within which the individual is living. Vygotsky thus suggests that "consciousness" is in fact the end product of socialization, rather than, as Freud et al. suggested, that social interactions depend upon the level of consciousness that has been achieved. Thus there is an essentially social aspect to the human mind. A good example of Vygostky's theory at work is that within the learning of language the first attempts are for the purpose of communication with adults/peers, but once mastered they become internalized and allow for what he terms "inner speech" (Wertsch, 1985) This theory's strengths lie in the fact that to understand a child's development the researcher (or the parent) must carefully consider the environment within which that child is placed. Thus the theory encourages a great deal of interaction between the child and her parents, teachers and contemporaries. It also reflects what anecdotal evidence would suggest is true: children are deeply influenced by the situation in which they are living. One of the great weaknesses of Vygostksy's theory, one that cannot be really laid at the door of the man himself was, ironically, the environment within which he was living. Thus living in a totalitarian Communist regime the idea that social contact between a child and its environment was of the utmost importance neatly correlated with the Marxist idea that "the smallest human unit is not one, but two" (Marx, 1998) So Vygotsky's cognitive theories were based upon an overarching philosophical, sociological and economic theory (Marxism) that claimed to explain everything through the scientific method. In fact it did nothing of the kind, so Vygotsky 's theories must be seen as being based upon infirm foundations that essentially dictated the results of the analysis before any data had been collected. Jean Piaget was, luckily for him, not subject to the intellectual limitations of a totalitarian regime. He lived in Switzerland and was thus allowed to follow his data towards the theories that they suggested, rather than that which were required. Piaget's ideas are called the "Stage Theory of Cognitive Development". He postulated that there are four major stages of cognitive development. A child develops rapidly through these stages until the age of eleven, when there is little change. Before detailing the actual stages, it is clear that the idea that the human brain develops little after the age of eleven is incorrect, and this is one of the basic weaknesses of Piaget's theory. The human mind at eighteen is vastly more developed than it is at eleven, as other theorists have illustrated. Turning to the actual stages; these are the sensorimotor stage, from birth to 2 years, when the child deals with reality in terms of sensations and motor movements. At this stage the child is unable to reason in mental symbols. In the preoperational stage (2-7), the child is capable of symbolic thought and rapidly acquires the use of language, but its thought processes are often "illogical" from an adult perspective. In the concrete operational stage (7-11) the child has the ability to reason like an adult in every way, "except for reasoning about abstract concepts such as justice, infinity, or the meaning of life" (Lahey, 2002) In the formal operational stage (11 on), most individuals have progressed to full adult cognition, now including the ability to reason using abstract concepts. One of the great strengths of Piaget's theory is its concentration upon the move towards more abstract thought that the child goes through. This is of great importance for childcare and education: the fact that a child uses certain words but has no idea of their adult meaning is an essential piece of knowledge that will help an adult in caring/educating the child. One of the weaknesses is that placing the different cognitive stages within a chronological framework ignores the fact that children with different innate intellects develop at different rates. Thus some five year-old clearly have the ability for abstract reasoning, whereas anecdotal evidence suggests that many adults never reach the stage of genuine abstract reasoning. Thus the examples that Piaget uses: "justice, infinity or the meaning of life" are concepts that most adults would draw a blank on when attempting to discuss them. They might be able to define the word (but then so would a very talented eight year-old), but they are no more capable of discussing them than an infant. Thus Piaget seems rather overoptimistic in his view of human cognitive development. Piaget's theory is based on the idea that "knowledge acquisition is a process of continuous self-construction . . . . knowledge is invented and re-invented as the child develops and interacts with their surrounding world." (Corry, 1996) It is thus, within a Vygotskian view, all based upon an "interpsychological" paradigm of development. Piaget's ideas have been some of the most successful in cognitive development, partly due to the sheer volume of work that he produced, and also because of his influence on other researchers. Vygotsky's have been less so, mainly because of the essential limitations of a purely "social" (ie interactive) view of cognitive development. Other psychological theorists (Erikson et al.) have correctly suggested that cognitive development in fact occurs across the whole lifespan rather than just in childhood. It is true that development in childhood occurs at a spectacularly fast rate, but this should not imply that profound cognitive changes do not take place, albeit more slowly and less visibly, at later ages. To conclude, a comparison of these two theorists raises two important questions. First, how far should an ideological construct influence the development and practice of a scientific study The easy answer to this is "not at all", but as Foucault (among others) illustrated, even science that appears to be non-ideological and purely rational in nature in fact is supporting an "ideology" of its own: that which valorizes the scientific method over more egalitarian principles. Vygotsky was attempting to develop a theory of childhood development that reflected the ideals of the society that he lived within. Thus he fell into the trap of suggesting what should be the case rather than what actually is. Ideologies tend to be overarching and all-conclusive, and do not happily sit with opposing points of view. Vygotsky's idea of social development is in fact correct on at least one level: as the tragic cases of children that have been completely isolated from others, and who remain infantile in their socialization, illustrate. A human being needs social interaction in order to develop, but part of that development, as Piaget correctly argues, is purely internal in nature. The interesting point here, leading to the second question raised by a study of these theorists, is whether a combination of theories can in fact explain reality most closely. Like ideology, the theory tends to be all-encompassing, but if research can move beyond the jealously guarded boundaries of thought into a more inclusive, bricoleur approach that takes useful tools and methodologies from a variety of sources to explain reality, then a mixture of Vygotsky and Piaget is the most powerful tool, Thus envision a theory that combines these two theorists with those (such as Erikson) who saw development as occurring over the whole of life. An overarching theoretical framework would thus be created with various authors being slotted into the particular periods of development where their own theories are strongest. This approach would offer the advantage of flexibility and also honesty, as it would admit that our understanding of the workings of the human brain, and even more so, of the human mind, are really only embryonic in nature. Piaget and Vygotsky provide useful (if somewhat crude) paradigms that will surely shift to a more complex and artful description of human cognitive development in the future. ___________________________________________ Works Cited Corry, M. "Jean Piaget's Genetic Epistemology". home.gwu.edu. Lahey, B. Essentials of Psychology. McGraw Hill, New York: 2002. Marx, Karl. The Communist Manifesto. Signet Reprints, New York: 1998. V , L. Mind in Society. Harvard UP, New Haven: 1978. Wertsch, JV. Culture, Communication and Cognition: Vygotskian Perspectives. Cambirdge UP, Cambrigde: 1985. Read More