Cognitive Development of Children

Piaget's phase concept explains the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development implies transformation in the cognitive procedure and skills. In Piaget’s vision, initial cognitive development involves processes based upon measures and afterward proceeds into changes in the cerebral operations. Schemas; a schema clarifies both the cerebral and physical actions occupied in comprehending plus knowing. Schemas are sorts of information that help us to explain and understand the world. In Piaget's vision, a schema includes both a group of understanding and the procedure of gaining that knowledge. As practice occurs, this new information is used to adapt, add to, or change formerly presented schemas. For example, a child may have a schema about a type of animal, such as a dog. If the child's only experience has been with small dogs, a child might consider that all dogs are small, furry, and have 4 legs. Assume then that the child stumble upon a very large dog. The child will take in this new information, amending the formerly existing schema to include this new information. Assimilation; the process of taking in new information into our earlier existing schema’s is known as assimilation. The development is rather subjective, as we lean- to amend experience or information to some extent to fit in with our preexisting values. In the example above, seeing a dog and labeling it "dog" is a case in point of assimilating the animal into the child's dog schema. Accommodation; another division of adaptation involves changing or altering our existing schemas in light of new information, a method acknowledged as accommodation. Accommodation entails altering existing schemas, or thoughts, so of new information or new experiences. New sc...

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...of mental operations. Children begin thinking logically about concrete events, but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts. Piaget determined that children in the concrete operational stage were fairly good at the use of inductive logic. Inductive logic involves going from a specific experience to a general principle. On the other hand, children at this age have difficulty using deductive logic, which involves using a general principle to decide the outcome of a specific event. One of the most important developments in this stage is an understanding of reversibility, or awareness that actions can be reversed. An example of this is being able to reverse the order of relationships between mental categories. For example, a child might be able to recognize that his or her dog is a Labrador, that a Labrador is a dog, and that a dog is an animal.