The purpose for this week’s assignment is to discuss cognitive development as it relates to the mental aging process of infancy through adolescence. As instructed in the assignment outline, I will choose and discuss three important cognitive functions and they are as followed; thinking, intelligence, and language. In addition, I will discuss Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development as it relates to the infancy stage through adolescence. Although infants are born with some nature abilities, they are not born with skills of perception, metacognition, intelligence, language, memory, and physical co-ordination. Therefore, they have to go through a process called cognitive development. Cognitive development is a process of different stages that newborns go through as they gradually learns these skills. Newborns do not come into this world with knowledge of perception or the skills they need to interact with their surroundings; therefore, they go through five different stages of development. The five stages of development are as followed; emotional and social development, sensory and motor development, and language and physical development, as well as cognitive development. Each stage plays a critical role in the early life of newborns and infants. During the first month of life, newborns only have a desire to sleep. While in the process of researching information for this assignment, I read that an infant’s cognitive skills develops and change rapidly during the first year of life. However, as infants continue to grow, they gain an understanding of their environment and learn how to interact with their surroundings. In this section of the paper I will briefly discuss three cognitive functions of development and the environment... ... middle of paper ... ...guage and physical development, as well as cognitive development. In conclusion, I have discussed cognitive development as it relates to the mental aging process of infancy through adolescence. As instructed in the assignment outline, I chose the following three cognitive functions; thinking, intelligence, and language. To the best of my knowledge, I briefly discussed each function based on the information outlined in the text. I also attempted to discuss Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development as they relate to the infancy stage through adolescence throughout the lifespan. However, the main focus of this assignment involved Piaget’s theory of cognitive development as it relates to the mental function from infancy through adolescence. To gain the understanding needed to complete this assignment, I focused on Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development.
In chapter one, cognitive development was briefly discussed and now in chapter 5 it goes a little deeper. One of the first names that comes to mind when thinking of cognitive development is Piaget. Piaget’s theory is described as constructivist view to cognitive development. A constructivist view is that people create or “construct” their own view and knowledge of the world by the information they already know. They view life through the experiences and knowledge they already obtain. The essential building block to Piaget’s theory is schemes which are patterns of physical or mental action. Throughout life people just build on the schemes when they experience something new they relate it an old experience. An example would be an animal that
According to Piaget,cognitive development in children is a mental process which they acquire from maturation and environmental experience. Piaget categorized children's developmental stages into four- Sensorimotor,preoperational,concrete operational
clearly. Therefore, much about what experts know about mental and cognitive development is based on the careful observation of developmental theorists and their theories, such as Piaget's theory of cognitive development, which we discussed.
Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980), was a Swiss psychologist who was the first to make a systematic study of cognitive development. Before Piaget’s work, the common assumption in psychology was that children were merely less capable thinkers than adults. After Piaget’s work it was realized that fact of the matter was that young children think extraordinarily different than adults (McLeod, S. A). According to Piaget’s study, we are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge is based. The theory explains the methods and procedures by which the infant, and then the child, develops into an individual (Boeree, G.). Piaget’s theory focuses more on development than learning, it doesn’t seem to address learning of information or specific behaviors. The theory seems suggest distinct stages of development, marked by qualitative variances, rather than a regular increase in number and complexity of behaviors, concepts, and ideas (Atherton J S).
Beginning at birth and lasting for the first 24 months of a child’s life, the sensorimotor stage is a period of rapid cognitive growth. The infant has no concept of the world around him, other than what he sees from his own perspective and experiences through his senses and motor movements. One of the most important developments in
Piaget believed that young children’s cognitive processes are intrinsically different from adults and that when they moved from a position of egocentrism to sociocentrism (during adolescence) that they had reached their potential in cognition.
Piaget built up a characterizing hypothesis of adolescence advancement which places that kids advance through a progression of four basic phases of intellectual improvement. Each phase is set apart by shifts in how kids comprehend and associate with their general surroundings. These four phases are sensorimotor intelligence, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, and formal operational stage. Piaget says, the sensorimotor intelligence happens between birth to two years old, the preoperational stage happens at the preschool ages, the concrete operational stages happens with middle childhood, and the last stage, formal operational stage, happens in adolescence.
According to Singer & Revenson (1996), there are many journal articles and books of Piaget’s theory that, in fact, many students and adults’ well somewhat get confused of his work because of all the information he has provided. Though, the main purpose of Piaget’s articles is to describe what I child is actually thinking. What is going on through their head? How did they learn something specific such as counting to five or learn the letters of the alphabet? These questions are referred as cognitive, which is the mentality of a child throughout his/her stages.
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Jean Piaget developed four stages of cognitive development, each catering to their own age group. Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational are the names of each stage of cognitive development. In the case of the 3-year-old preschooler, the preoperational stage would be used (when examining cognitive thinking), while the concrete operational would be applied to the 9-year-old student. One can not only infer there will be immense difference between the two because of age, but also because of the clear distinction in which stage each individual is in.
Cognition is the process involved in thinking and mental activity, such as attention, memory and problem solving. In this essay on cognitive development I will compare and contrast the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, who were both influential in forming a more scientific approach to analyzing the cognitive development process of the child active construction of knowledge. (Flanagan 1996 P.72). I will then evaluate the usefulness of these theories in understanding a child's development.
McInerney (2014) explores Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development, explaining that language is used as a communication instrument and a way to organize our own thoughts. Vygotsky believed that children develop a tool called self-talk or private speech as a way for them to make sense of their own actions and thoughts. This then develops to then internalizing their thoughts and further to public speech, Vygotsky’s belief was that children develop cognitively with exposure to their surroundings and social situations. Learning how to process, project and receive language at a young age is important in the development of higher mental processes including; planning and evaluating, memory and reason, which are important in the functioning in society as adults. According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, language is the basis for learning the skill of internalizing problems instead of using objects and increasing their mental capacity (McInerney, 2014). At young ages not being able to develop and maintain language skills, for example having Specific Language Impairment, which restricts the ability to retain language skills to memory. This is problematic as it can impact children academically and psychosocially, and can extend to mathematical concepts, attention capacity and motor skills. If a child has issues absorbing these concepts it can lead to other problems in cognitive applications including problem solving, working memory and logical thinking (Reichenbach, Bastian, Rohrbach, Gross, & Sarrar, 2016). Piaget’s theory states that between the ages of 2-7 children are in the preoperational stage of development which means they have a sense of eccentricity, when talking to a child we can hear the use of instrumental and personal language functions. As
The two theories that will be discussed throughout this paper are Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development and Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development. The major themes and concepts of the two theories share both differences and similarities. Specific emphasis will be placed on the earliest years of life and will also be related to separation, individuation, and attachment theory.
Piaget’s Cognitive theory represents concepts that children learn from interactions within the world around them. He believed that children think and reason at different stages in their development. His stages of cognitive development outline the importance of the process rather the final product. The main concept of this theory reflects the view th...
Peter Sutherland (1992) ‘Cognitive Development Today-Piaget and His Critics’ Paul Chapman Publishing London. Smith et al, 1998, as cited in ‘Children’s Cognitive and Language Development, Gupta, P and Richardson, K (1995), Blackwell Publishers Ltd in association with the Open University. Vygotsky, L.S. (1988) ‘The genesis of higher mental functions’ in Richardson, K and Sheldon, S. (eds) Cognitive development to Adolescents, Hove, Erlbaum