cognitive theories of child development

There are some basic issues and theories of child development that I would like to talk about. We can approach child development from psychoanalytic theories, cognitive theories, learning theories and ecological theories. Among these theories, the cognitive theories are the ones that I will give some information about now. We can talk about two theoriticians in this area; Piaget and Vygotsky. And besides them, there is also info processing which I will talk about a little bit.

In Piaget's theory, there are four stages:
sensorimotor,
preoperational,
concrete and
formal operations. Sensorimotor stage starts at birth and lasts until about age two. These are motor and reflex actions through which a child learns about himself and his environment. Sensation together with the movement make the child think. At first, it is difficult for children to distinguish themselves from the environment but during this stage they learn that they are separate from around. This 'around' is mostly the primary caregiver or the favorite toy. The child notices that they continue to exist even though he cannot reach them. If you want to teach a child in this stage, you should gear the education to the sensorymotor system, that is you can modify behavior by using the senses; for instance a bad look or a soothing voice may be good examples for appropriate techniques.

Preoperational stage begins about the time the child starts to talk and last to about age 7. Now the child knows how to speak, he knows a language. He begins to use symbols to represent objects. He can personify objects and he now starts thinking about events or things that are not currently there but he has a bad time conceptualizing time because he is totally oriented to the present. His perception is manipulated by his fantasies. He takes the information in and changes it in his mind to fit his ideas, assuming that others see situations from the viewpoint he does. Teaching, in this stage, should take into consideration child's vivid fantasied and undeveloped sense of time. Using neutral words, body outlines and equipment that a child can touch give him an active role in learning.
The third stage is the concrete stage which lasts from about the first grade to early adolescence. The child starts to think abstractly. He used to alter the situation physically in order to understand but now he can make rational judgements about concrete and observable phenomena. Therefore the accomodation increases. In teaching the child in this stage, giving him opportunity to ask questions and to explain things back to you allows him to mentally manipulate information.The last satge is the stage of formal operations, in other words stage of adolescence. Cognition completes its final form. Concrete objects are not necessary anymore to make rational judgements. He is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning from now on. Teaching for the adolescent may be comprehensive because he is now able to consider many possibilities from several perspectives.
The child is active while developing according to this theory. He is developing a cognitive fit with the environment. Adaptation is the key issue.

Vygotsky also claims that a child develops by experiencing, like Piaget. But unlike Piaget, on the edge of learning a new task -called 'zone of proximal development', intervention of adults may help children learn new tasks. But he important thing is that this intervention should be timely and sensitive. This is a technique called 'scaffolding' since it builds on the previous knowledge that the child already has. Anything that the mother shows until the child can do it himself may be a good example for this teaching -it should be appropriate to the child's age of course-.The child was focused on importance of culture in determining the pattern of development of a child claiming that all the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals. According to this theory, the culture influences voluntary attention, logical memory and conception of concepts. Every function first appears on the social level -between people (interpsychological)- and then on the individual level -inside the child (intrapsychological)-.

There is a qualitative transformation in child's mental functioning during development.


We can see that in both theories (Piaget and Vygotsky), nurture dominates nature. The child learns mostly everything from his environment. But this is of course open to criticism and discussion just like every other theory.


And info processing talks about the memory stores that an individual has. There are 3 types of memory; sensory memory, short term memory (STM) and long term memory (LTM). Once there is a stimuli that we can perceive with one of our five senses, the information is settled in the sensory memory store where it stays a very very short time. If this information is processed, it goes to short term memory where is stays for still short time, but otherwise it is lost. Unless it is processed in STM, it is lost after a short time but otherwise it goes to long term memory store where it is kept for a long time.
It is a continous and quantitative process, we cannot talk about stages because the person has more of something while time goes on. Thinking, intelligence, computer analogy etc. are all aspects that are related to info processing.
source: wikipedia and the lecture