Cognitive+Development

__Cognitive Develoment__ = __**Development**__ =

Different Kinds of Development:

 * Physical Development: Changes in the body
 * Personal Development: Changes in ones individual personality
 * Social Development: Changes in the way an individual deals with others
 * Cognitive Development: Changes in thinking

The environment is seen as critical to development, as well as biological factors and individual differences. There is disagreement about how development takes place, yet there are general principles almost all theorists would support (Woolfolk, 2010):
 * 1) People Develop at different rates
 * 2) Development is relatively orderly
 * 3) Development takes place gradually



=__**Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development**__= Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget developed a model describing how humans go about making sense of their world by gathering and organizing information. According to Piaget, our thinking process changes from birth to maturity because we strive to make sense of the world.

People are born with a tendency to organize there thinking process into phycological structures. Piaget called these structures schemes. Schemes are the basic building block of thinking. They allow us to think about the objects and events in our world. People have the tentency to adapt to their environment. Assimilation takes place when people use their existing schemes to make sense of events in their world. Accomidation, on the other hand, occurs when a person must change existing schema to respond to a new situation. According to Piaget, thinking takes place through the process of equilibration, which is the act of searching for balance (Woolfolk, 2010). We are always aiming to achieve equilibration and test our thinking process in order to achieve that balance.

Piaget believed that all people pass through the same four stages of development. These stages, are associated with specific age, but they are to be used as guidelines. Knowing a students age is never a guarantee that you know how the child will think. (//Click on each stages below to see a video of an actual experiments done with a child at that stage.)// //Information about each stage taken from// //[].//
 * **[|Sensorimotor stage]** (Birth to 2 years old). The infant builds an understanding of himself or herself and reality (and how things work) through interactions with the environment. It is able to differentiate between itself and other objects. Learning takes place via assimilation (the organization of information and absorbing it into existing schema) and accommodation (when an object cannot be assimilated and the schemata have to be modified to include the object.
 * **[|Preoperational stage]** (ages 2 to 4). The child is not yet able to conceptualize abstractly and needs concrete physical situations. Objects are classified in simple ways, especially by important features.
 * **[|Concrete operations]** (ages 7 to 11). As physical experience accumulates, accomodation is increased. The child begins to think abstractly and conceptualize, creating logical structures that explain his or her physical experiences.
 * **[|Formal operations]** (beginning at ages 11 to 15). Cognition reaches its final form. By this stage, the person no longer requires concrete objects to make rational judgements. He or she is capable of deductive and hypothetical reasoning. His or her ability for abstract thinking is very similar to an adult.

There are limitations with Piaget's theory. One problem is the lack of consistency in children's thinking. Piaget might have also underestimated the cognitive abilities of children. Critics also say that Piaget overlooked the importance of the a child's cultural and social group and how that effects cognitive learning (Woolfolk, 2010).

[|Click here if you want to learn more about Piaget!]

=__**Vygotsky's Sociocultural Perspective**__= Psychologists today recognize that culture shapes cognitive development by determining what and who children will learn about the world (Woolfolk, 2010). Vygotsky believed that human activities take place in cultural settings and cannot be understood apart from these settings. Mental structures and processes can be traced to our interactions with others and these social interactions are influences on cognitive development. According to Vygotsky higher mental processes are first co-constructed during shared activities between the child and another person. The process is then internalized by the child and become part of that child's cognitive development.

Vygotsky put a lot of emphasis on the role of learning and language in cognitive development. He believed that children talking to themselves, which he called collective monologue, guides cognitive development and moved children into stages of self-regulation. Vygotsky also believed that as children mature they develop socialized speech.

According to Vygotsky, there are certain problems that a child is on the verge of being able to solve. The zone of proximal development is the area between the child's current development level and the level of development that the child could achieve. Vygotsky believed that when a student is at the zone of proximal development for a particular task, providing the appropriate scaffolding will allow the student to achieve the task. Once the student masters the task the scaffolding can then be removed and the student will then be able to complete the task again on his own.

Just as with Piaget, there are limitations with Vygotsky theory. Critics say that Vygotsky may have overemphasized the role of social interaction in cognitive development. Unfortunately Vygotsky never had the option to develop and elaborate on his theories due to passing away at an early age (Woolfolk, 2010).

[|Click here if you want to learn more about Vygotsky!]

=__**Implications for Teachers**__=
 * As children grow and mature their brains develop and they are better able to focus their attention, process information more quickly, hold more information in memory, and use thinking strategies more easily and flexibly. Teachers can help students develop their formal thinking by putting them in situations that challenge their thinking.
 * All students need to interact with teachers and peers in order to test their thinking, to be challenged, to recieve feedback, and to watch how others work out problems.
 * Children should be guided and assisted in their learning processes. Teachers can do things such as adapt material, demonstrate skills or thinking, and give students feedback.
 * Students should act, manipulate, observe, and then talk/write about what they have experienced.
 * Communication with others makes students use, test, and change their thinking.

=Resources= == Stage theory of cognitive development. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.learning-theories.com/piagets-stage-theory-of-cognitive-development.html ==

Woolfolk, A. (2010). Educational psycology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
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