Cognitive Development and Language Skills Development “Cognitive development underpins all the other aspects of development as children start to explore and make sense of the world around them. It is closely linked to the development of language and communication skills as children interact with the people around them.” There are many theories written on the subjects of cognitive development and language and communication. These theories vary in several ways, but they all seem to make the link between the too subjects. Childcare settings put these theories into practise in a lot of ways, sometimes without even realising it, just through conversation. Cognitive development ===================== Piaget’s theories of cognitive development are that children learn through exploration of their environment. An adult’s role in this is to provide children with appropriate experiences. He said that cognitive development happens in four stages. 1. Sensory – motor · Babies and young children learn through their senses, activity and interaction with their environment. · They understand the world in terms of actions. 2. Pre – operations · Young children learn through their experiences with real objects in their immediate environment. · They use symbols e.g. words and images to make sense of their world. 3. Concrete operations · Children continue to learn through their experiences with real objects. · They access information (using language) to make sense of their immediate and wider environment. 4. Formal operations · Children and adults learn to make use of abstract thinking. Piaget also believed that children would only learn when they are ready. Children's use of language represents their stage in cognitive development, but he didn’t see language as a ‘central’ to children's development, as cognitive development begins at birth and is required for language development. He also states that children are egocentric – they can’t understand another person’s point of view. Criticisms of Piaget’s work =========================== Margaret Donaldson suggests that Piaget underestimated young
The cognitive aspect utilizes Piaget’s theory of development. Piaget’s theory includes four stages: The Sensorimotor Stage, The Preoperational Stage, The Concrete Operational Stage, and The Formal Operational Stage (Siegler et al.,135). For children, ages 0 to 6, the stages focused on are the sensorimotor and preoperational stages. Piaget’s focus was on nature and nurture to encourage cognitive development. Nurturing is the everyday interactions that a child experiences not only with parents but with other children and community members. Nature is a child’s biological development and their ability to learn and make perceptions of the world around
Both Piaget and Vygotsky agreed that children's cognitive development took place in stages. (Jarvis, Chandler 2001 P.149). However they were distinguished by different styles of thinking. Piaget was the first t reveal that children reason and think differently at different periods in their lives. He believed that all children progress through four different and very distinct stages of cognitive development. This theory is known as Piaget’s Stage Theory because it deals with four stages of development, which are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. (Ginsburg, Opper 1979 P. 26).
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.
Social and environmental variables affect cognitive development. Cognitive development focuses on the person’s ability to intellectually, perceive and process information. (35589) defined the cognitive ability as the process in which people learn, think and use language; it is the progression of their mental capacity from being irrational to rational (35589). Piaget and Vygotsky are two cognitive theorists who are interested in the cognitive development of a person across their life span and its relation with social and environmental factors. Piaget is the most known cognitive theorist who affected the world of psychology greatly, and was a great influence to many psychologists out there; however his main intention was the innate maturity process and, unlike Vygotsky, he underestimated the role of language and social interaction and his theory wasn’t useful in the teaching field.
Cognitive development is very crucial in the development of a child. A friend of mine, Julie just recently had a perfect baby boy. Since Julie found out she was pregnant she has been reading book after book, each book that she has read talks about cognitive development, but never really explains what cognitive development is or how to improve ones development. Julie has asked me to help her to understand what she can do to give Hunter the best optimal cognitive development though out his life. I'm going to start by telling Julie exactly what cognitive development is, the four stages of cognitive development and what kinds of activities to do together as he gets older. I believe that this will help Hunter develop into a very smart child he most likely will be ahead of his classmate's in school and will excel through out his life.
In this semester, we are learn a lot of knowledge about ourselves, start from an infant to early adulthood. We know that, some of our behavior are development since we are infants such as intimacy with others. Other than that, we learned that most of our emotional development are more likely same as stated in Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development stages. In this report, we are using Bandura Social Learning Theory, Treisman’s Filter Model of attention, and information processing theory to explain the cognitive development in our group member and using Erik Erikson’s intimacy versus isolation theory to discuss the emotional development in relation with friendship and family.
“The influence of Piaget’s ideas in developmental psychology has been enormous. He changed how people viewed the child’s world and their methods of studying children. He was an inspiration to many who came after and took up his ideas. Piaget's ideas have generated a huge amount of research which has increased our understanding of cognitive development.” (McLeod 2009). Piaget purposed that we move through stages of cognitive development. He noticed that children showed different characteristics throughout their childhood development. The four stages of development are The Sensorimotor stage, The Preoperational Stage, The Concrete operational stage and The Formal operational stage.
I think that there is a connection between the cognitive shifts that children make between about five and seven of years of age. When I was 5-year old, I focused on situations like how things look or feel rather than logic. I had trouble focusing on deciding, and my perception of things was different at that age, I know that my cognitive development, while between the age of 5-7 adjustments in thinking and reasoning occur as a child slowly moved from preoperational thought to concrete operational thoughts. I always thought when I did things that everyone else was doing the same thing for example, like being driven to school by their mom each day, and it never hit me, until later in life, I learned that it wasn’t the case. Now, I’m working in a second-grade classroom as a substitute teacher and notice the same thing that I did between the ages of 5-7 a lot of students in the classroom are doing, such as thinking that everyone else is doing the same thing that they are doing. What makes me think this way is because when asking second grader questions they will answer as if everyone is doing it also. I think the second-grade students have developed certain aspects of conscious awareness of the existence of their memory
...d to determine exactly which part of the language is innate and universal so that humans can further uncover the valuable mechanism.