Question

Describe the major theories of cognitive development

Answer 1

1, Piaget's cognitive developmental theory-

Jean Piaget(1896-1980) Was a Swiss philosopher and psychologist deducted his life work to observing and interacting with children to to determine how their thinking process differed from adults.

According to Piaget's theory of personality development child passes through four main dcrcrete stages .

• The sensory motor stage
• The preoperational stage
• The stage of concrete operations
• Stage of formal operations

Each stage reflects a range of organizational patterns that occur in definit seqence and with in an approximate age plan.

Development is influenced by biological maturation ,social experiencesand experience with physical environment. Cognitive thoery explains how thought process are structured ,how they develop and their influence on  behavior.Structuring of thought process occurs through the development of schema(ie; mental images or cognitive structures).

Magor cognitive developmental stages;

stage 1. Sensory motor (birth to 2 years)

•   The major developmental task during this stage are increased mobility and awaerness, developing a sense ofself as a seperate from the external environment.
• In this stage ,child concerned only with satisfying basic needs and comforts
• The child develops greater understanding regarding objects with in the external rnvironment and their effects up on him or her.Knowledge is ghain regarding the ability tomanipulates objects and experiance with in the environment.

Stage 2. Preoperational (2-6 years )

• The major developmental tasks during this stage are " learning to express self with language,develop undedstanding of symbolic gustures,achievement of object permanence"
• Uses language and can repressent object by images and words
• Remain egocentric; Unable to think from anothers point of view.Cannot distinguish reality from fantacy .
• Acquires language ;only intuitively guesess about cost and effect.

Stage 3. Concrete operations

• The major developmental task during this stages are; learning to applylogic to thinking ;develop understing of reversibility and spatiality;learning to differentiate and classify
• Able o thik about past and present events but not future.The child is nop able to aknowledge the view points of others and appreciate feeling.

Stage 4 .Formal operations period

• The major developmental tasks during this stage are; learning to think and reason in abstract terms;makes and tests hypothesis .
• Logical thinking and reasoning ablity expand and are refined.
• Can think of future events and develop srategies for solving complwx problems.Cognitive maturity is achieved during this stage.

2 ND COGNITIVE DEVLOPMENTA THEORY

2. vygotsky's sociocultural theory of cognitive development

Lev Vygotsky,a Russian psychologist developed a theory of cognitive developmen t known as sociocultural theory of cognitive development

The main assertionof the Vygosky theory is that cognitive development of children is advanced through social interaction with other people'perticularly those who are mpor skilled.In other words Vygotsky believed that social learning comes before cognitive development,and that children construct knowedge actively

Zone of proximal dvelopment

Vygotsky is most recogised for his concept of Zone of proximal development pertaining to the learning process of children .According to this theory , children who are in the zone of proximal development for a perticular task can alm0st perform the task independently, but no quitet there yet. They need some help in orderto perform the task successfully.

For example,a five -year-old child knows how to ride a tricycle. However,she cant ride a bicycle (with two wheels) without his grandfather holding onto the back of her bike. With his grandfather's help'this lttle girl learns to balance her bike. With some more practice,she can ride the bike on her own. . In this scenario, we can say that the child is in the zone of proximal development of riding bike.

The Vygotskys theory also called attention to the variability of cultural realities,stating that development of children who are in one culture or sub culture , suc as middle class Asian Americans, may be totally defferent from children wh are from other cututers.There fore it would not befitting to utilize the developmental experiance of cildren from one culture as a norm for children from other culture.