Vygotsky Cognitive Development

Cognitive development is an important detail in the proper development of children. Development occurs in stages and requires the intervention of others to meet specific milestones. Understanding how to recognize these milestones and potential delays within each cognitive area. Within the text, a closer look will be taken on developmental stages, theoretical milestones within each stage, and skill areas as well as suggestions for parents and teachers to work with children. Theoretical perspectives to be discussed will be Piaget, Vygotsky, sociocultural, social learning, information processing, and brain research. The eight skill areas that are important to discuss are language development, memory development, perception, executive functioning,

At birth, children are separated from their mother, but are still dependent upon her for meeting their own needs. Children do not master language until after the age of three, but their needs are continued to be met by adults with assistance. Children can communicate during this stage, but often have simple words they use to indicate needs.

The process of social learning refers to learning social skills and behavior. Children under the age of two use a form of mimicry to learn how to achieve goals. For example, a child may watch her mother take a grocery cart from the group of carts and place groceries in the cart. After watching many times (or just one), the child may take her toy cart and do the same thing while playing. Children do not have to reproduce the same action as the model, if they are mimicking the same behavior of the

There are four aspects of language development: phonology, semantics, grammar, and pragmatics. During the first two years of a child’s life, great strides in language development are made. Infants between birth and six months begin making sounds that start with reflexive verbalizations like crying because of distress and transitioning to cooing during social interactions. After the cooing stage, vocalizations to transition into babbling. Babbling is the repetitive vocalizations of consonants and vowels, like “dada.” Babbling lasts through the twelfth month, and jargon begins to take its place. Jargon, per Bjorklund and Hernandez Blasi, is “strings of sound filled with a variety of intonations and rhythms to sound like meaningful speech” (Bjorklund & Hernandez Blasi, 2012). During the nineteen to twenty-four-month stage, children can learn many new words and possess the knowledge of anywhere between ten and twenty