Cognitive Development

Cognitive development 
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skills, language learning, and other aspects of brain development.

Introduction
As we discuss cognitive development, the main development theories underlying how children think and learn will be introduced. These theories include Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, Lev Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development and information processing theories as Neo-Piagetian theories.

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was trained in the field of biology. However, he had a keen interest for the nature of knowledge and how it changes with development. He began to observe infants and children to draw inferences about the thinking and reasoning that underlie their behavior.
The key ideas in his theory are:
  • Children are active and motivated learners
  • Children organize what they learn from their experiences
    • The things children learn and do are organized as schemes, organized group of similar actions or thoughts that are used repeatedly in response to the environment, and when they use these schemes repeatedly, they form into operations, larger systems of organized and integrated system of logical thought processes.
  • Children adapt to their environment through the process of assimilation and accommodation
    • Assimilation is the process of responding to a new event in a way that is consistent with an existing scheme, accommodation is the process of responding to a new event by either modifying an existing scheme or forming a new one
  • Interaction with the physical environment and other people is critical for cognitive development
  • The process of equilibrium promotes increasing complex forms of thought
    • Children are in a state of equilibrium, when they are able to address new events with existing schemes, they sometimes encounter disequilibrium when their existing schemes are not able to address new events. When they form a new scheme and go back to equilibrium, it is called equilibration, the process of going back and forth between equilibrium and disequilibrium.
  • Children think in qualitatively different ways at different age levels


Recent research has questioned whether the stages that Piaget proposed occur in such a manner. Here is what they found:
  • Infants and toddlers are more competent than what Piaget proposed, preschoolers’ capabilities were underestimated under Piaget’s stages, and adolescents’ idea of operational thinking was overestimated.
  • The ability of thinking logically in a particular situation depends mostly on background experiences relevant to the situation
  • Culture is a great factor on how cognitive development occurs
  • Developmental stages are more thought of as gradual trends now

Lev Vygotsky’s Cognitive Development Theory
Lev Vygotsky is a Russian psychologist who had training in law, history, philosophy and literature. He was deeply influenced by Karl Max’s proposal of how people think and behave is greatly impacted by changes of society.
Vygotsky’s theory is considered a sociocultural theory, a theoretical perspective that focuses on children’s learning of tools, thinking processes, and communication systems through practice in meaningful tasks with other people.

The key ideas in his theory are:
  • Some cognitive processes are seen in a variety of species; other are unique to human beings
  • Through both informal interactions and formal schooling, adults convey to children the ways in which their culture interprets the world
  • Every culture passes along physical and cognitive tools that make daily living more effective and efficient
    • Cognitive tools are considered concept, symbol, strategy or other culturally constructed mechanism that helps people think more efficiently
  • Thought and language become increasingly interdependent in the first few years of life
    • Children begin to talk to themselves, called self-talk, when thought and language emerge to guide themselves through a task
    • With time, self-talk evolves into inner speech, in which people “talk” to themselves mentally to guide themselves through a task
  • Complex mental processes begin as social activities and gradually evolve into internal mental activities that children can use independently
    • The process of gradual evolution of external, social activities into internal, mental activities is called internalization
  • Children acquire their culture’s tools in their own manner
    • Appropriation means the gradual adoption and adaptation of other people’s ways of thinking and behaving for one’s own purposes
  • Children can perform more challenging tasks when assisted by more advanced and competent individuals
  • Challenging tasks promote maximum cognitive growth
    • The range of tasks that children cannot yet perform with the help and guidance of others is called zone of proximal development, which includes learning abilities that are beginning to develop in a child.

 
  • Play allows children to stretch themselves cognitively
    • Vygotsky and Piaget agree that play takes an important aspect of child development. A specific type is sociodramatic play, where children take specific roles and act out s scenario of imaginary events.
Neo-Piagetian theory (information processing theory)
Neo-Piagetian theorists share Piaget’s beliefs that children’s developing skills and understandings change in distinct, qualitative ways over time. However, they suggest that children’s skills and understandings are fairly domain specific and tied to personal experiences in particular contexts.
Information processing theory is a theoretical perspective that focuses on the specific ways in which people mentally acquire, interpret, and remember information and how such cognitive processes change over the course of development.