Cognitive Development Theories - Essay Example

Cognitive Development Theories Cognitive Development Theories Introduction A lot of research has been done to determine how children learn. Most researchers have looked into this aspect through the psychological perspective of education (Slater, 2011). Their studies have led to the research on what they call cognitive development whereby the development of children’s thinking is studied throughout their growth and development until they reach adulthood (Leman, 2012). Among the best known research models that have given the best insights on the idea of cognitive development is Piaget’s. Other researchers such as Vygotsky have also developed their own outlook on cognitive development and have had their ideas being borrowed by other behavioral psychologists. The aim of this paper is to probe on the Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s models of cognitive development comparing the two scholars’ insights on the matter. Discussion Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, provided a highly influential theory of child development, cognitive development, that is. The development of his theory was based on his observation on how different his children answered questions. According to Piaget, the children did not give different answers due to the differences in the level of intelligence or rather one of them is less literate but because they interpreted their father’s questions differently. Piaget then decided to look at the children as scientists who interpreted the questions differently and who should learn by themselves. According to Piaget, children’s understanding of the world is organized into different schemas. These schemas are structured patterns of understanding and action. Since the birth of the child, the child has what Piaget called action schemas. In other words, the child understands the world through working on it. In its second year, however, the child starts to think about actions thus developing mental schemas. As Piaget believes that human beings are programed to adapt to their environment, he uses this argument to support the cognitive development of a child. In which case, he argues, the child continues to develop new schemas and incorporates them to the existing ones through the years. All through, the child is motivated to continue organizing the schemas. In relation to the child’s adaptation to the environment, Piaget asserts that the children learn new ideas and knowledge as a result of their interactions and encounter with the environment. He then splits the idea of adaptation through looking at two different forms of adaptation. First, he discusses assimilation. In this case, Piaget argues that a child learns something that readily slots in their already existing schemas. On the other hand, accommodation refers to when the child needs to alter their existing schemas so that they can ‘accommodate’ new experiences or knowledge. Since schemas are, in general, knowledge, memory, information, or experiences, they help the individual child make sense of the world. In this case, we can state that a child’s cognitive development is essentially the process through which a child revises the knowledge they have so that it fits in this world of theirs. Piaget also delves deeper into his theory of cognitive development through mentioning a very important detail on a child’s development- that the learning process has to be balanced. In other words, this whole system of leaning needs to be in an equilibrium in which case he mentions the invariant ‘equilibrium’ that keeps the whole system in balance. He develops the self-regulating theory model interaction which showed a link between the social and natural environment in relation to the child’s cognitive structure. Piaget’s view looks at cognitive development as a process that occurs in stages and at which stage the child recognizes how they think and interpret the world around them. To better elaborate his concept of cognitive development as occurring in stages, Piaget identified the stages as follows; Stage 1: The Sensorimotor Stage Piaget identified this stage as occurring during the first two years of the birth of a child. At this stage, as it had been mentioned briefly, the child identifies with the world through sensation and action. He premeditated this stage through studying on his own children. At this point, Piaget identified two principle features. The child developed the realization that objects existed permanently even when they did not see them. He named this the development of object permanence. The second feature was the action schemas whereby the child related to the world or learnt about what was around them through touching it. He then divided the sensorimotor into 6 stages. Critics were quick to dismiss his theory on object permanence. To check whether the children really believed in object permanence, Bauer (1992), conducted a research whereby an object was placed at one given point and then a screen placed in front of it concealing it from a baby who was observing the object. When the screen was removed and the object the baby had been observing removed, the child expressed surprise meaning that they expected the object to be there but it wasn’t. The study was conducted on children as young as 5 months old which leads to many refuting Piaget’s theory on object permanence. While the idea was not to disagree completely with Piaget’s thoughts, it simply showed that object permanence may actually occur, only that Piaget may have underestimated the level of brain development in infants. Stage 2: Pre-Operational Stage’ According to Piaget, the pre-operation stage occurred between 2-7 years when the child stopped understanding the world through touch and action and through non-logical assumptions and visual appearances. At the age of 2, children start using representational thought symbolizing objects and actions in their minds. The thoughts are expressed as play, fantasy, drawing, and language. Piaget went ahead to divide this stage into two extra sub stages. The first was the preconception stage that occurred from 2-4 years and the intuitive stage from 4 years to the remainder part of the pre-operational stage. In the first phase, the ability of the children to grasp concepts is there but very vague. In this case, they may think that if a cow is small enough, it becomes a goat or if a dog could be small enough to be the size of a cat, then it becomes a cat. Stage 3: Concrete Operational Stage This stage occurs when the child is over 7 years to 11 years. At this stage, the child develops some degree of reason and logic only that they are limited to practical problems and the finding of specific examples. The stage is characterized by the development of the children to begin decentered leaving behind operations Egocentrism. During this stage, the children master simple principles of class inclusion and thus classification. Eventually, they can fully do conversion involving volume, quantity, and numbers. Their knowledge of the world stops being theoretical and assumes a fact-based and a more practical approach. Stage 4, operations stage This stage occurs when the child is over 11 years. At this stage, the child has already developed mature thinking and is able to carry out abstract theorizing and the use of scientific reasoning. By the time they reach 12, the child’s brain is fully developed. In general, adolescents are scientific in how they conceptualize everything around them. They theorize and use abstract logical reasoning to make hypotheses and test them systematically. They also make conclusions from the deduction they make from the hypotheses they developed. At this stage, they rely heavily on language as they see that through their own reasoning. This also means that instructions given to them are more effective than it ever was in their earlier stages of life. Like every other theory on the planet, Piaget’s has some few loopholes. Like mentioned above, he greatly underestimated the age at which a child is capable of doing certain things. This could be blamed on the schools lack of identifying the difference between a child’s competence (what the child can actually be able to do), and performance (how a child does a given task). While he did well in testing a child’s performance, he was wrong to assume that a child who was incapable of completing a given task only lacked the cognitive structures that were essential in completion of the task. Vygotskys theory of cognitive development may not be as wide as Piaget’s but his thoughts are also very important in the understanding of the subject. Basically, Vygotsky considers cognitive development as a result of social instruction. He stated that children learn through social interactions between them and more experienced members of the society. In other words, children’s knowledge was based on cultural expectations and not anything else. He applied the zone of proximal development (ZPD) to illustrate the level of knowledge an individual can learn alone while compared to what they can learn were they in the company of other more experienced individuals in a society. At this point, he believed that children cannot be accelerated beyond ZPD meaning that children learn very little if they are left alone to struggle and completing a given task. He also maintained that children do not learn a thing if an adult helps them complete a task. After a child learns to do something, Vygotsky advices that a gradual process of withdrawal can be very effective in the cognitive development of the child. He called this support framework. Like Piaget, Vygotsky believes that language is very crucial in the learning process of the child. The use of speech, according to him, has a lot of impact on a child’s development. As noticeable to everyone, children usually talk to themselves when growing up. He called this private speech. According to Berk (2002) ‘private speech’ is imperative to the cognitive development as a child normally talks to themselves more when doing a difficult task that when tackling an easier one. While Piaget’s shares the same thought with Vygotsky, he called his version the ‘egocentric speech’. Vygotsky thinks that they need to talk to themselves throughout a task so that they can be able to complete it. Both Piaget and Vygotsky believe that children are active in their learning process. However, they differ in the belief of how the external environment affects their models. As discussed by Vygotsky, culture is a crucial part of a child’s development. This can be supported by the fact that gender roles are learnt in that although we are all born male and female, it takes socialization to learn being a man and a woman. Piaget ignores a very important factor such as culture in the cognitive process. Like noticeable in children, boys are socialized not to cry and to be hardy while girls are taught the benefits of crying. In fact, even in adults, it is perfectly normal for a woman to cry, but it is not normal for a man to cry; it shows weakness. In conclusion, both models of cognitive development have shed a lot of light in the development of a child through their learning process. Piaget’s theory tends to dwell more on biology whereby it divides the cognitive development into 4 distinct stages. For Vygotsky, development does not occur in stages, but it is a continuous process that is hugely determined by culture. Nonetheless, their models, if incorporated together, can lead to a more advanced approach of cognitive development whereby not a single aspect will be overlooked. References Bauer, P. J. (1992). Holding it all together: How enabling relations facilitate young childrens event recall. Cognitive Development, 7(1), 1-28. Elias, C. L., & Berk, L. E. (2002). Self-regulation in young children: Is there a role for sociodramatic play?. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 17(2), 216-238. Leman, P, Bremner, A, Parke, R & Gauvain, M, (2012). Developmental psychology. McGraw Hill. Piaget, J. (1964). Part I: Cognitive development in children: Piaget development and learning. Journal of research in science teaching, 2(3), 176-186. Slater, A, W. & Bremner, G. (2011). Introduction to Developmental Psychology. Second Ed.: BPS Blackwell. Read More